Today, we are taking a break from politics as usual, and that's a good thing.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have called a truce in their increasingly nasty and bitter campaigns to honor the victims of the 9-11 terrorist attacks seven years ago (my, how time flies). They are both scheduled to address a forum on public service being held in New York City, which will be covered by the cable news networks.

It is appropriate that the campaigns call off their attack dogs on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Heck, this would have been a good idea anyway, even if 9-11 never happened. The campaign rhetoric has been at a boiling point. For instance, Obama had to defend himself against charges that he was using the phrase "lipstick on a pig" to insult McCain's running-mate Sarah Palin. I don't think it was sexist and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann pointed out that McCain used the same phrase to attack Hillary Clinton.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. Cast your vote for the most overused buzzword.

The housing bubble has hit close to home for me, literally. Someone has been trying to sell a house down the street from me for about five months. That's a sea change from two or three years ago when properties in my neighborhood seemed to get snapped up the minute someone slapped a for-sale sign on their lawns. Often we suburbanites would gasp in amazement at the prices that people got for homes similar to ours. Even with this market uncertainty, I bet I could get double the price I paid for my house -- which is hardly a McMansion -- if I wanted to sell. The flip side is that I would have to pay a high price for a new house. But even though I have seen the phenomena first hand, I hate the phrase "housing bubble." Much like Web 2.0, it has evolved this year into a vague buzzword that probably confuses most average investors. The National Association of Realtors argues that there's no bubble. "We've never seen a housing bubble, which -- if we compare to stock bubbles -- would be a prolonged double-digit collapse from unsustainable prices," said Walter Molony, an NAR spokesman, in an email interview. "What we have is a deflating balloon."

Economists including Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, disagree. Executives at Toll Brothers, Inc. (NYSE:TOL) and other home builders have spoken of a slowdown, even though they seem to be privately more optimistic, according to the AP. So what's going on? I wish I knew. There is no doubt that homes aren't fetching the prices that they did and that people like my neighbor are having more difficulty selling. Prices for existing homes fell at a record rate in October, their third straight monthly decline. I tried and failed to come up with a better catch phrase than housing bubble. "Those people had to be idiots to pay THAT much for THAT house" and "Do you believe how much our house is worth today?" just don't have the same ring to them.

Jonathan Berr is the editor of the blog http://www.desperateinvestors.com.