By STAR PARKER, Scripps Howard News Service

Who would have ever thought, when we were dozing off in the middle of John McCain's presidential campaign, that he'd reel in Sarah Barracuda and change the game overnight?"Barracuda," of course, was what they called Gov, Sarah Palin when she was a star point guard on her high school basketball team.

Despite the careful choreography and showmanship, the Democratic Convention concluded with little in the way of news or surprises.

Certainly we've not heard the last about the John Edwards scandal. Despite the former presidential candidate's public statements of remorse, there remains far too much that doesn't add up.

A key feature of the housing bill that President Bush just signed into law was the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.These are the two taxpayer backed "Government Sponsored Enterprises" that own or guarantee almost half of all mortgages in the country.

The headline on the website of German magazine Der Spiegel about Barack Obama's speech in Berlin: "Huge Crowds Left with Mixed Feelings."Two hundred thousand turned out for the speech, but CNN's Candy Crowley reported an "absence of euphoria" at the event.

For the first time since the "don't ask, don't tell" law was enacted in 1993 by President Clinton, the House Armed Services Committee has scheduled hearings to review it. The law disqualifies gays from serving in the military.

Are we undergoing some kind of sea change of attitudes in America today?Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne reflects such sentiment -- perhaps I should say wishful thinking -- by those on the left that indeed we are. He says capitalism is having a "reality check."

John McCain is trailing Barack Obama by 30 percentage points in support from Hispanic voters, according to this week's polling from Gallup. Even among Hispanics that self-identify as conservatives, McCain and Obama are even.

The message of my last book, "White Ghetto", is that the social chaos in inner city black communities is symptomatic of the cultural pathology gripping the nation as a whole.

Energy is too important to be left to businessmen and markets, right? We need people who we really can trust to get things under control.Like politicians.I'm looking at Carpe Diem, the blog of Dr Mark J. Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. He compares prices of gasoline from 1919 to today against price changes of a first class postage stamp.