She's as full of wind as a corn eatin' horse! (Wink-Wink!)

I watched the debate. Our governor did better than I expected meaning, as Celtic Diva said, she "didn't have a seizure on stage." I am not as embarrassed for her as I was a week ago, but now I feel insulted. She's so perky and she uses words and phrases that she tries to make sound like she's one of us. She's like a second grade teacher who has to play down to the lowest denominator in the class. Every time she speaks, I brace myself for hearing her say: maverick, Washington outsider, maverick, darn, maverick, special needs, maverick, Main Street, maverick-maverick-maverick, Wasilla, maverick, oil companies, maverick, you betcha, maverick, heckeva, maverick and Joe Six-Pack. Oh-- her use of maverick has me wanting to mute her out. Did I say that she says maverick as much as she can? She doesn't speak like a professional! She drops the endings to her words more often than the French do! (In French, the last letter or two in most words are not enunciated.) Oh, and she says "maverick" all the frakking time!

S'palin should have been a theater major which is her True Calling. The past week she has been a dope and then what has been annoying me about her in the past month was endearing 2 years ago. I don't speak like she does on stage-- where does she get off saying that she wants hockey moms and Joe Six Packs to band together? When I helped (minor) on her gub campaign, the constant in the emails was "grassroots." She is the princess of catch phrases, but I didn't notice it back then. She was going for Frank Murkowski's job and he was kind of a jerk so she seemed approachable and friendly.

This annoyed me the most: Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You referenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future." That is my ex husband telling me that I shouldn't base his future behavior on his past. VERY annoying. (Later I would give him a second chance in trusting him and he'd say to me, "You knew I did that!" If you think someone is a snake, GTF away from them.) She should have said in her down-home talk, "I aint no baby Bush seed, Joe! Now lookie here, we're different, an' I'm gonna learn you a lesson!" and then explained why.

Do she and McCain sit with advisers and come up with phrases and Joe Six Pack and Judy Soccer Mom will repeat to one another? Will it work? When I studied commercial art, it was annoying to write commercials that average people would repeat to one another, but that was how we got the best bang for the proverbial buck. One of the best ways to advertise to women in the eighties was to have two women talking on the phone. They weren't college professors. They were. . . THE MRS JOE SIX PACKS! I admit that I wrote a few of those. It was not thrilling to hear them on the air.

Joe Biden was decent, but I expected him to be-- I liked that he recognized that McCain was the one to beat, and that he kept Mrs. Palin on the run with what she knew of his policies and he then slammed them. I like that he was a widower-- I don't like that he had been a widower, but I admire that he dealt with it successfully, but I don't think that he gets enough press on this. Why does a woman who has a son with special needs and more help than you can ever imagine get sympathy, while a man who saw his wife and daughter die in a tragic car accident hardly get press on it? His kids were older and I think that he probably struggled as much as any single parent of either gender.

The thing is, Ms. Palin is appealing to the common person and people who want to feel like they are downtrodden. Are there enough smart people out there to identify more with Joe Biden? It's a boon to McCain-Palin that Sarah is being mimicked by Tina Fey and that we joke about her phrases and comments. It's free publicity. No one is quoting Joe Biden or Barack Obama and I think that this could hurt the Democratic party if people are as dumb as the Republicans think they are. I will support the Republicans if they win, but I am not impressed with them and 4 years of winks and evasion does not inspire me. I am terrified of having a Democratic House, Senate and Executive Branch, just as I would be if it was all Republican. McCain-Palin make it hard for me to like them enough to vote for them. I am a hockey mom, but I don't want to band together with Joe Six Pack: I want to band together with the wisest leader.