Do we have the second American civil war? Will some states want to secede from the Unitedness of it all? Will Bush hang in there for an extended second term 'in the national interest'? Will Mugabe ask for asylum?

Add to these nice concerns the impact of the recession-which-isnt-really-here-yet but will bite in the fall and the inevitable global tensions of a turbulent Beijing Olympics and you'd reckon on the message for 2009 being a right royal state of disunion. Get into gold or cash. Soonest. . . read more

So why does Hillary persist? Because she hasn't abandoned her aspiration for the White House. Not in 2008, but for 2012. Here's the perverse logic at work. If Obama defeats McCain in November, it will take an act of treachery beyond anything even the Clintons have ever conjured from their grimoire of political demonology for Hillary to challenge him in 2012. She will be 69 in 2016, almost ready to move into one of the Beverly Nursing Homes, owned by a company she once represented as a corporate lawyer, aggressively protecting the bottom line against such extravagances as healthy meals, clean sheets and proper medical care for the elderly.

Hillary Clinton is the prisoner of an unimpeachable mathematics. So she makes the most of a remorseless situation by doing what the Clintons do best: commit political fratricide. Quite literally, in this case, by knocking off a brother. In order to realize her vaulting ambition, Hillary must mortally wound Obama as candidate in the fall race against John McCain so that she can run against McCain in 2012. [More] . . read more

What do Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain have to say about our current reality of financial crisis and recession, and the generation-long stagnation in average living standards that has preceded the crisis of the moment? There aren't significant distinctions between Obama and Clinton in terms of their campaign platforms, while both Democratic contenders share huge differences with McCain. But the most important question is not where these candidates stand during the campaign; it's what they would actually do while in office. And this is more a matter of political power - which social groups can exert pressure within a new administration - than of economic philosophy...

A new Democratic administration may well offer possibilities for a dramatic shift in U.S. economic policy, even if some of the same old Bill Clinton crowd is brought back in as advisors. But if such a major policy shift does occur, it will not be primarily because a Democrat-either Hillary Clinton or Obama-will be sitting in the White House. It will rather be because the people who put one of them there will have gathered sufficient political strength to make them stick to their campaign promises. [More] . . read more

Senator John McCain is a poster boy for the pathologies of the military brat. Born in the Panama Canal Zone, he attended twenty schools in his nomadic childhood. "The place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi," is how he shuts up critics of his carpetbagging, but he is making their point: Senator McCain's loyalty is not to any particular American place but rather to a bureaucratic institution (the military) and an abstraction (the American Empire)...

The Democrats are no more connected to particular places than is McCain. Hillary Clinton's rootlessness became a national joke in her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign to represent New York, a state in which she had never lived. Wearing a Yankees cap was about as far as she went to assert her ersatz New Yorkness. Barack Obama, lauded as the "world candidate," was born in Hawaii, a state that is only in the union because of its military significance. Raised also in Indonesia and at various times resident in Los Angeles, New York City, and finally Chicago, Obama is a "cosmopolitan"...

Why does this matter? What's wrong with electing competent but rootless people to public office? Because just as one cannot love the "human race" before one loves particular human beings, neither can one love "the world" unless he first achieves a deep understanding of his own little piece of that world. [More] . . read more

I DON'T WANT A PRESIDENT THAT THE REPUBLICANS LIKE. I don't want to make nice with them, as Obama always says. I want to have them tried for war crimes and put in jail for subverting democracy and the Constitution. Obama's wife built her fortune evicting poor people from their homes if they couldn't pay their inflated hospital bills. And he had the nerve to say about Edwards "do we want another trial lawyer in the White House?"

Obama has been absent for more votes in the Senate than present and when he is there, he usually votes "present"; not for or against. He will not make a real stand on anything. He uses the world "change" like Rudi Giuliani used 9/11. What change? What will he change? Let's see some concrete substance, not just catch phrases, sound bites. Saying the word change a lot does not make it happen. What's the change? No more Bush? McCain will beat him and it will be the end of America. I think it already is. What's next? Dancing with the Stars or American Idol? You would think America would have learned where smugness and arrogance leads. He has no humility. He is cocky and brash. He is the perfect president for the dumbed down Americans that love him, but he will lose. The media has been pushing for him from day one, because they are told to by their bosses Murdoch, etc. Why? Why does the media love Obama? Because he can't beat a Republican thug. [More Doglove]  . . read more

At the Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten, Obama extracted Old Glory from the burn-pile and gave Brand America a desperately needed shot of adrenaline. 200,000 ecstatic Germans jammed the streets in what turned out to be the political shindig of the year. Many of them were waving American flags and chanting, "Obama, Obama, Obama". It was like Jack Kennedy had risen from his moldy sepulcher and made his way across the pond for one last rousing ovation. Obama has the very same affect on crowds. Its a gift and he knows how to use it to great advantage...

What can we say about Obama's oratory skills that hasn't already been said? He is one of those unique characters who knows how to tap into the collective psyche and put them under his spell. He is the closest thing to a Pied Piper we've seen in the last half century. Whatever one thinks of his politics, his speeches are a welcome reprieve from the simian blabbering of President Dimwit. [More] . . read more

A depressingly large number of Americans... across the land from Maine to California, fall into this willfully stupid category. They are content to get their information from television programs that offer no facts — just propaganda and ratings-boosting rants. They don’t read newspapers. They reject facts that conflict with their prejudices. They’ll believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. They’ll believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. They’ll believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago. They’ll believe the moon landings were faked in a Hollywood studio.

Certainly one cohort of voters that is keeping the leaky Clinton dirigible airborne is women, particularly older women, for whom her candidacy is a feminist milestone. That is understandable. But the other cohort, which Clinton has referred to as “hard working, white Americans” and as “whites who had not completed college,” is hardly something she or any candidate should be bragging about. And yet that is what she is doing: bragging that she’s got a lock on the stupid, racist white vote. She should be leaving that for John McCain. [More] . . read more