Sarah Palin, I hope you've eaten your Cheerio's and added a bit of Popeye's Spinach by Thursday night's debate!! Will even Cheerio's and Spinach save Palin?

McCain was testily defending her today...Toot-Toot-Tootin' Palin's horn! The Republicans are flooding her with information, will it drown her, politically?

I'm looking forward to the Thursday night debate with both fear and trembling, sprinkled with a dash of interest. I hate to see anyone suffer, but suffer we all will. It's so hard to see someone meltdown before your eyes. I get miffed, because her melting causes my melting and its' just a big mess.

Either way it doesn't look like anyone's going to be comfortable. Where O Where Has Palin Gone? I feel like she's missing, even when she's in front of us.

Like the Zombie's song, She's Not There...

"Well no one told me about her the way she lied

Well no one told me about her how many people cried

But it's too late to say you're sorry

How would I know why should I care

Please don't bother tryin' to find her

She's not there

Well let me tell you 'bout the way she looked

The way she'd act and the colour of her hair

Her voice was soft and cool

Her eyes were clear and bright

But she's not there

Well no one told me about her, what could I do

Well no one told me about her, though they all knew

But it's too late to say you're sorry

How would I know, why should I care

Please don't bother tryin' to find her

She's not there"

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This debate will either put her on the map, or erase her. Reality is a painful state of mind, no matter the age. When I was a young girl, visiting my aunt and uncle's farm, I would spend time many evenings making mud pies. Real ones. I'd tote water and stir the dirt, forming "pretty patties," and my uncle would indulge me by eating them.

He ate hundreds I thought, until one evening, I found them.

There they were, in little piles, on the ground. He had slyly slipped them through a small gap of the porch where he sat, shoving them to the ground when I wasn't looking. They had dried into pitiful, hard, ugly round rocks.

I was crushed. He didn't like my mud pies, and the game was over. Reality crashed into my silliness, my eyes were now wide open, seeing parts of the world as it really was: with No Santa Claus, No Tooth Fairy, No Easter Bunny, and No Mud Pie Eater.

What was a 7 year old girl, to do?

Palin is just learning her lessons, late. She could have and should have blinked. But, no, even though she found out that no one was eating her mud pies, she has continued to make them. I'm shocked, stunned, yet moved to compassion. Still, I write about her...her sad efforts to be in the know, though pathetic, deserve to be countered.

I'm not without heart.

Yet, can we afford to, because we have heart, not state the obvious and just let her have the job 'cuz she's so darn "cute?"

Our recent economic woes, let alone the shape we are in with Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, China, North Korea, Russia, the new Georgia most of us had not focused on, all say, even scream a loud resounding "NO!"

We can not afford the education of Sarah Palin. We do not have time, this is not a practice for a powder puff football game.

We have problems. and Sarah Palin has become one of them. Poor thing.

I'm thinking she can't replace the "deer in the headlight" look of the past several weeks with even a solid debate. No matter how many newspapers she's read....but couldn't name, she has no world "view."

How can she erase her less than intelligent, completely "I don't know and haven't looked it up since I've been nominated" answers in her Couric interviews.

I'm not sure she wanted this fame. I surely wouldn't.

It's soon down to the finish line. For better or for worse, it is what it is, in for a dime, in for a penny, in for a pinch in for a pound, what other little saying fits this lady??

Maybe Willie Nelson's "Turn Out The Lights, The Party's over."