And all the things leading up to tonight's debate

...there's a couple of things I wanna go over.

• Since my post about Gov. Palin's selection to be McCain's veep, I have gone from underwhelmed by her choice to utterly horrified. Her Troopergate scandal has blown up with stonewalling, contempt for subpoenas, and outright lying. She compares so well now to the current Veep and his contempt for the rule of law. More shocking, she's supposed to have spent at least a week or two with high-level 'experienced' tutors covering need-to-know topics such as foreign policy, national and global economics, what have you. All that tutoring and she turns in three interviews in a row with Gibson, Hannity and Couric that progressively show WORSE performances than the last. And the polls are reflecting that: she's dropped from the high 60s approval to around the mid-40s. She's obviously wowed the GOP base, which helped McCain's convention bounce, but now she's killing him among the Indys and Undecideds who, you know, actually grade people by performance. From what I've seen of Palin's interviews... trust me, she makes Dan Quayle look like a MENSA member.
  
• I'm still upset with McCain, but this week just made things worse. His reactions to the Wall Street meltdown and to the Sh-tpile Bailout Sec. Paulson was trying to sell to Congress since last Friday have been haphazard and ill-informed to say the least. Then, Wednesday, McCain pulls a huge stunt (and it was a stunt) by 'suspending' his campaign so that he could go back to DC and make himself look important at the bailout deals the Congressional Ds and Rs were already close to completing. And what happens? He shows up, says little, and inside of 40 minutes the deals fell apart and everyone walked away pissed.
• AND McCAIN DOESN'T EVEN PULL OFF THE SUSPENDING BIT! He lies to David Letterman to cancel out his Wednesday night appearance by claiming he had to hurry right away to the airport and to DC: Letterman finds out McCain had sneaked off to interview with Couric instead (AND CAUGHT HIM LIVE ON CAMERA DOING IT! Watch the video up to 7:32 on the timer, you can tell how pissed off Dave is by then) All day Thursday, by the way, McCain was busy meeting people, pressing palms, working the fundraisers, what have you, up until the White House session to hammer out a deal that got squashed instead. And as part of the 'suspending' the campaign, he tried to worm his way out of tonight's scheduled debate, trying to move it back to the Oct. 5th date scheduled for the Veep debate (which was becoming more and more apparent to observers to be a looming disaster for Palin: rumors that McCain's maneuvering was really to cancel her debate altogether). The attempt to cancel the debate failed: now McCain looks more desperate and unwilling to face voters than ever before.

For myself, I'm not watching the debate. My mind's made up. I know you're not supposed to vote AGAINST people, you're supposed to vote FOR people. But let's be honest. There is right now so much I hate about McCain and what he's done to himself. There is so much I hate about the Republican Party. Whereas any qualms I have about Obama's lack of experience or the Democrats' tendencies to be just as hypocritical as the GOP pale by comparison.

One other thing: McCain, you really shouldn't have pissed off Letterman like that. He's got a history of carrying grudges. And his fans vote.