For today’s edition, we planned to write about the debate between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin, the candidates for vice president. It was the first and only time the two would debate prior to the November election. In fact, although Biden called Palin to congratulate her when she was nominated by John McCain, it was the first time the two met.

But while researching various polls on the nation’s reaction, we came across a story from CNN that demonstrates not just today’s attitudes in America, but the extent of fear about tomorrow.

The report was about 90-year-old Addie Polk of Akron, Ohio. Just last Friday, her name was mentioned on the House floor by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, as he spoke during debate on the latest version of the bailout — now being called a rescue — bill. “This bill fails to address the fact that millions of homeowners are facing foreclosure,” he said. “This bill will take care of Wall Street, and the market may go up for a few days, but democracy is going downhill.

“This bill does nothing for the Addie Polks of the world.”

Two days prior to the speech, as sheriff’s deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home, Addie Polk shot herself at least twice. The deputies and her neighbor, after hearing the shots, gained entrance from a second-story window, CNN reports.

Four years ago, Polk took out a 30-year mortgage (she was 86 at the time) from Countrywide Home Loan in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Over the next two years, she occasionally missed payments on the 101-year-old home. Last year, Fannie Mae assumed the mortgage and foreclosed. CNN reports that deputies tried to serve the foreclosure more than 30 times before that fateful Wednesday. She would not respond when they knocked, but they left the notices. Each time they would come with another, the previous notice had been removed from the door.

For a lender to offer a 30-year loan to an 86-year-old seems as if they were betting the property wouldn’t stay in her hands, that foreclosure, either upon nonpayment or the borrower’s death, would be the end result.

But Polk didn’t die. At last report, she was in a local hospital. The city is trying to find a way to help her and others like her, elderly residents on fixed incomes who were so fearful of losing their homes, they responded to seemingly sympathetic lenders.

There are certain responsibilities a borrower has when seeking a loan. Not to borrow more than they can comfortably repay. Not to be talked into a larger loan with the lender’s assurances that they will be able to repay it, despite that little voice inside that asks, “But how?” Not to blithely think “Everything will be alright somehow,” despite the odds that it won’t, not really, not at all.

But any lender who would assume an 86-year-old woman on a limited and fixed income was capable of fulfilling an obligation for a 30-year mortgage is — dare we say it? — nutty as Miss Addie’s Christmas fruitcake.

And then some. Like the theory of planned obsolescence, there was method to this madness: to get yet another piece of property that meant nothing to anyone — except Addie Polk.

Akron is working on a plan to aid people whose homes have been foreclosed. Officials will help her once it is determined she is well enough to be released from the hospital.

But what about the other Addie Polks out there?