Yeah, that's one of my biggest problems with a lot of Republicans, too-- it's not small government just because you're not spending the money on social initiatives if you're still spending the money. Most of the Democrats' social initiatives I go back and forth on, but since we've tried the privatized health care thing three different ways and it hasn't worked, and there are lots of countries with socialized health care models that do, I think that's our next best bet for getting it right. It works for most of Europe and Canada, so I think it's worth a try. There's some other stuff I would be happy to throw out, though.

And that's exactly how I feel about Huckabee, too, I really liked the way you said that.

I think it's different for Christians because we are the majority in this country. When you have people always saying "Islam" before "terrorism" when most people in this country don't even know anyone Muslim, it definitely causes people to cast aspersions on those people. And the idea that this is religious hatred and not political hatred is a major simplification of the issue. Osama bin Laden himself is not a Muslim extremist; he's just playing on people's religion to get them to sacrifice their lives, which is very sad. Muslims get their religion insulted every day, and while that happens to Christians, too, there are a lot more of us to stand up for each other.

I really would have liked them to give Palin more leeway with the speech-- parts of it just felt like canned campaign rhetoric and while I thought she delivered it well, it was just kinda boring. I think I would have liked it more if she'd done something a little different.