So what about that financial meltdown? Wouldn't the carnage we've seen in the financial sector of late have wrecked all of these private Social Security accounts? It isn't likely. The earliest the Bush plan could have been implemented would have been January 2003. The Dow at that time stood at 8607. Last Friday the Dow closed at 10,325, its lowest point in two years. Even if you had invested your entire account in stocks on the day the Bush plan took effect, and then retired on Friday, you'd still likely have come out pretty well.

Of course, no one gets his first paycheck five or six years before retirement. And all of the plans for full or partial Social Security privatization called for bringing in private accounts in phases. People already near retirement would have received the same benefits they were anticipating. But younger people would have had 20 or 30 or 40 years to invest, using the power of compound interest to yield returns exponentially higher than the maximum 1.5 percent you can expect from the government.

There's no period in the history of the stock market — including the crash of 1929, the stagflation of the 1970s, the crash of 1989 and the tech bubble burst of the early 2000s — in which a worker who'd been investing for 30 years or more wouldn't have still received a far better return than what he got from Social Security, even if he retired the day after a historic Wall Street dive.

Social Security faces an unfunded liability of $4 trillion over the next 75 years. USA Today reported in May that the combined federal liability for Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs for everyone currently eligible is more than $57 trillion, or $500,000 for every household in the country. And, of course, Congress can raid the Social Security "trust fund" at will.

You think the stock market is risky? The federal government currently has obligations it will never be able to keep. And none of this accounts for trillion-dollar bank bailouts, inevitable wars or the new entitlements promised by the current candidates for present and future occupants of the White House. At 33, I don't expect to get a dime from Social Security. If you're younger than I am, you shouldn't, either.

Americans have not had a serious philosophical debate about the future of their country since the "Contract with America" in 1994. It is time to have one again.

Europe is flirting with regulating individual "responsibility" for climate change, i.e. heavyset people pay more for their airline tickets because their "carbon footprint" is invariably higher. Is this something we want to consider? Allowing the government to determine how much "energy" we use - light bulbs, lawnmowers, jet skis - and regulate our usage by enforcing laws from Washington?

Do we want to forfeit our territorial sovereignty with porous borders? Government programs are going bankrupt or will go bankrupt. Are we to include non-citizens into the bargain, further decimating the ability of these programs to survive? Will we require and enforce assimilation standards, or allow the decay of our standard definition of "citizenship," allowing ethnic enclaves to prop up across the country? Will our future immigrants come to learn what it means to be American or will Americans come to learn what it means to be an unassimilated immigrant?

How much do we care about sovereignty as a whole? Will we submit to global institutions like the International Criminal Court, allowing foreign judges to sentence our own countrymen to jail for their perceived improprieties?

Will concerns over the climate become its own dogmatic theology, forcing a blind adherence to future climate change "protocols" like Kyoto without requisite scientific inquiry?

We already give $21 billion to the U.N. for "end poverty" programs, the world's most generous donation. The Millennium Project wants $845 billion by 2015. Do we agree with Sen. Obama and support the Global Poverty Act, which would hand over a large chunk of our GDP not directly to emerging economies like the Marshall Plan, but to UN bureaucrats who will in turn pass it off to the African dictators to "diversify" the "humanitarian aid" - ergo, more arms and ammunition for the despots themselves? Is this the best way to handle foreign aid?

What are we to do when a similar Wall Street crisis emerges? Blame the bogeyman "corporate greed," or the political strong-arming and forcing of private institutions to bend to the demands of up-for-election politicians? In the future, will our politicians and leftist lobbyists continue to promise housing to those who could not afford it? Or will they have the backbone to tell these customers their house mortgage loan-taking threatens the entire country, and to rent an apartment until they could afford otherwise?

These and more are some of the questions Americans must ask themselves, not only before the election in November, but after. These are the long-term problems that this country will face within the next 10 to 20 years. How did we get here? Was the problem government or a lack thereof? Will the solution be more government, more regulation, more taxes, and more business adherence to politicians - or less?

McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by The New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist.

This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.

Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once.

Russia to Europe: Let’s have an anti-US alliance

Troopergate: Less than critics wanted, but still trouble

The investigation started at the request of another Republican — Sarah Palin.  The allegations of a “partisan witch hunt” began when the legislative master of the investigation, Democratic state Senator Hollis French, started promising an “October Surprise” and embarrassment for John McCain before one witness had even been deposed.  French further clouded the investigation by interfering with subpoenas, blocking one for a witness to a meeting in which all other attendees had been subpoenaed … and that witness had run the meeting, and was also Palin’s chief of staff.  There is plenty of evidence that French wanted a partisan outcome and not justice.

But still, if Todd Palin was bullying people to fire a non-political appointee for personal reasons, using the implied authority of his wife, and Sarah Palin knew about it and didn’t stop it, that would be a breach of ethics.  Most people would agree that a police officer who drank alcohol in his patrol car, tasered his 10-year-old stepson, and threatened to murder his estranged wife’s father should not be working in law enforcement.  All of those allegations were confirmed by Alaska in an investigation.  However, the job of trooper is not a political appointment, and if Todd Palin acted in a manner reported by this investigation, it would be improper and subject to some sort of censure from the Legislature.

That brings us to the main point of this exercise.  It will produce no certainty whatsoever, thanks to the Legislative Council’s inaction in the face of Hollis French’s efforts to turn this investigation into a present for Barack Obama.  The LC should have bounced both French and Branchflower after the “October Surprise” comment and replaced them with people of less partisan temperament.  Instead, we have a report that both clears the Governor and indicts her spouse in a contradictory, confusing judgment that appears to have been looking for some self-justification for all of the time and money spent on it.

Palin runs almost zero risk of any sort of rebuke on the basis of this report in Alaska, but the election may be a different matter.  The phrase “abuse of power” resonates with voters, even when it’s applied to the candidate’s spouse.  Had the report come out two months ago, when no one paid any attention, it would probably be a nothingburger.  Now, with three weeks left in the campaign, it’s going to dent the reform message of John McCain, which was the main reason he asked Palin to be his running mate.  It won’t convince current supporters to reject McCain, but it will make it a little more difficult to convince undecideds.

History is important to study... if you can trust the national media to not withhold key information they don't want you to see or twist daily news to fit their agenda.

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In the last 40 years, there have been nine major surveys of editors and reporters who work for national media. The most they ever voted Republican in a national election was 14%; the more common range has been 4% to 7%.

This is one reason why no matter who wins a political debate, the media almost en masse repeatedly tell you their man won. And most voters who don't pay close attention will believe them. It's called coordinated propaganda.

What were the most consistently repeated and strongly asserted slogans you've heard over the last few years? "We're losing in Iraq . . . we must get out . . . it's costing us $10 billion a month we could use here at home . . . we're not any safer . . . the surge won't work."

Well, the surge in Iraq has worked, we are winning decisively and, as a result, now have a new democracy and strong ally in the Mideast. Meanwhile, seven years have passed since 9/11, and we still haven't had another major terrorist attack on our soil.

Yet the media give no credit at all to President Bush, the only president to do something about the terrorist attacks that we had suffered repeatedly beginning in 1992.

With the economy slowing and a weak financial market created solely by our subprime mortgage mess, what do we keep hearing now from the media in hopes the majority will believe it and vote accordingly? "The mess is caused by eight years of failed Bush economic policies, including the tax cuts for the rich that should be rescinded."

A few more facts:

• April 2001: The Bush administration's fiscal budget stated that the size of Fannie and Freddie was "potential problem because financial trouble of a large Government-Sponsored Enterprise could cause repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity."

• May 2002: The Office of Management and Budget wanted disclosure and governance principles in Bush's 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie and Freddie.

• February 2003: A federal housing oversight report warned that unexpected problems at Fannie Mae could immediately spread into financial sectors.

• September 2003: Treasury Secretary John Snow, in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, recommended that Congress enact legislation to create new agency to regulate and supervise financial activities of housing-related government entities to set prudent and appropriate minimum capital requirements.

Rep. Frank, the committee's ranking member, strongly disagreed, saying: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis . . . . The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we'll see in terms of affordable housing."

• February 2004: The president's new budget again highlighted risks of the explosive growth of these government enterprises and the then-low levels of required capital. It also called for the creation of a world class regulator. The administration determined that housing regulators of government agencies lacked the power and stature to meet their responsibilities and should be replaced with a strong new third regulator.

• February 2004: Greg Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, cautioned Congress against taking the strength of financial markets for granted. He too called for reducing the risk by ensuring that housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator.

• April 2004: Rep. Frank ignored warnings, accusing the administration of creating an "artificial issue." "People pay their mortgages," he told a group of mortgage bankers. "I don't think we are in any remote danger here. This focus on receivership, I think, is intended to create fears that aren't there."

From 2004 to 2008 the Bush administration made 12 more attempts to get Congress to pass legislation to have safer, sounder regulatory oversight of Fannie and Freddie and capital rules. You can see them for yourself on the White House Web site. But here are a couple of examples that show how Democrats resisted:

• July 2005: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected legislation on reforming Fannie and Freddie. "While I favor improving oversight by our federal housing regulators to ensure safety and soundness, we cannot pass legislation that would limit Americans from owning homes and harm our economy in the process," he said.

• August 2007: Sen. Dodd, another Democrat, ignored President Bush's emphatic calls for Congress to pass Fannie and Freddie reform legislation and called for him to immediately reconsider his ill-advised position.

Democrats have become a far-left propaganda party with the lowest-ranked Congress in history. For six years, they have consistently refused to rein in the monumentally risky subprime loans that Clinton Democrats gave birth to.

Yet, voters are blaming Republicans for this crisis and seem to think that a newcomer they know little about, despite his questionable past associates and mentors, can bring us more huge programs. These include one that would socialize the health care system at a time when government-run systems in Canada and Britain are lower in quality and nearly bankrupt.

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Barack Obama's supporters often try to sidestep questions about his character and judgment by saying that we should stick to what they arbitrarily...

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But Sen. Obama's record on specific issues is as bad as his record of repeatedly allying himself over the years with people who make no attempt to hide their hatred of America.

Among the so-called "real issues" are earmarks for senators' pet projects, like the "bridge to nowhere." These are among the most indefensible parts of the inbred Washington political culture, which Obama has so often claimed to be against, as part of his promise of "change" to "clean up the mess in Washington."

Barack Obama's track record on "real issues" is no better than his track record on issues of character and judgment. The media's track record of conveying the facts to the public is a travesty of their claims about "the public's right to know."

If John McCain had made half as many gaffes as Barack Obama — "all 57 states," for example — they would be picturing him as senile. Meanwhile, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran supplying its terrorist surrogates with nukes does not interest the media nearly as much as scoring "gotchas" against Sarah Palin.

Troopergate probe: Palin abused power but had the right to fire Monegan