Note that Hildebeast said in her news conference that "Afghanistan is a success story so far".

Stephanie and the Dream Team are not going to like hearing that!

That's not moonbat solidarity!

Both Tiger Woods and Hale Barry (sp?) had both white and black parents. Yet they both are referred to as African-American.

Al Sharpton, regardless of colour, is nothing more than a nutcase.

Personally speaking, my father is of Ukrainian decent, my mother French. If Dad were to call Mom a "frog" he could potentially face the wrath of a human rights tribunal (should Mom feel so inclined to get back at the old fart). Because I'm a "half breed" I can call myself a frog or a garlic snapper and get away with it. Kinda like the boyz from the 'hood who call each other the "n" word.

Know what I sayin' Holmes?

Perception is often more real than fact. Unfortunately, Obama might have a legit shot at the big house running under the banner of the new ordinary guy. Maybe he should ask cretien for a copy of his red book.

A fawning press and Oprah.

There is no doubt that Obama has the best intentions and probably has geat ideas as well as strict ideals.

What everyone has to realize is that the Office of the President of the United States is an institution. Like any institution it will not be molded or bent to please the wishes of one person who has won the contest to be the caretaker for 4 years.

Any candidate, Democrat or Republican who believes they can force their personal will on this institution is extremely deluded. The Office of the President of the United States has a life of its own and the elected individual had better sit down, shut the hell up and hang on for the ride.

All the power rests with the bureaucrats and the party men/women pulling the strings.

Hildebeast knows this.....Obama better get educated real fast.

If the political Gods are smiling, it won't matter anyway, as John McCain will eat them both for breakfast.

But it's interesting; it seems that the left, in both Canada and the US, (and elsewhere?) is having trouble coming up with leadership candidates.

The left candidates, if they have any experience, seem to be problematic based on a history of manipulation, corruption in their past, and a focus primarily on rhetoric in their ideas. The left is forced to move into either using The Old Guys (eg, Stephane Dion) who bring the history of the past and their empty rhetoric with them, or, move into politically inexperienced candidates who bring only the rhetoric.

We saw that in Canada. Rae brought the history of the Ontario NDP, plus his ties with the Liberal BackRoom Boys. And the rhetoric.

Ignatieff brought only the rhetoric - but a history of living in the USA, the symbol of All That Is Bad for the Liberal Party.

Others were straight from the history and rhetoric, such as Volpe, Brison.

Others were 'new', such as Kennedy, Findlay.

What did the Liberals do? They couldn't pick Rae because although it would define them as Essentially NDP and they might get NDP votes, it would be trouble in Ontario. They couldn't pick Ignatieff because of his Symbolic Ties with the Devil.
Volpe, Brison ..were tainted by various history.
They refused to pick someone entirely new.

That left them only with Dion, whose ties with the History were, although strong, were more easily whitewashed.

But - they are having to do a huge MakeOver Job on Dion, and, I think, they are realizing that it's quite the job they have dealt themselves. They have to surround him with Handlers to translate, and to prevent him, in his arrogance, from insulting any and all.

His ideas are old, old - you can read the same rhetoric in his 2000 -2004 speeches. It's all the same. And, he's still locked into the old Liberal centralist ideology, the focus on Quebec as the centre of attention, the focus on the West as merely the Bank.

And, he's intellectually an armchair theorist, dealing only in rhetoric and unable to work within practical, applied reality. That's why he moves so quickly into the emotional romantic verbiage, the grandiose ideas that 'Canada has always been the leader in the industrial revolution' (???oh really? What did we invent?)....

What the global networked political and economic reality requires now - is not armchair philosophers, but pragmatic, practical realists. This individual understands 'la longue duree'...the long view of reality, which attempts to realistically 'fix things' step by step by step rather than within grandiose authoritarian schemes.

OMG!! That SO rocks that you included his middle name!!

Hussein!! LOL!!

Very classy.

Sorry to throw a wet blanket on the usual Canuck Kommentary here, but presidential politics are exclusively about....CHARACTER.

Not socially liberal fiscally cnservative bullshit...just simly if the man is genuine, honest, values American principles, loves his family and wants ALL Americans to suceed, not just half.

Osama, er, Obama just don't cut it.

I can picture it now....Obama loses to say, Mitt Romney and the libs cry RACIST!

What about Derek Jeter?

"Obama and the melting pot"
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/008664.html

Mark
Ottawa

Doug, my belief is that Americans are not ready to vote for a black president, nor for a woman.

The libs will cry "racist!"?

I don't suppose that you are, though.

"Osama, er, Obama, whoops, tee hee"

Idiot.

One has to wonder about "pretty-boy" Obama. I have yet to hear anything insightful or intelligent from him. What does he stand for? What is his platform?

His 2 years of experience in the Senate where he was insignificant, and a few years in local politics where he again was insignificant, does not make a Commander-in-Chief.

I further distrust a presidential candidate who will only appear on Democrat-friendly TV networks because they allow Obama to vet/write the questions.

Obama refuses to appear on any Fox network (despite numerous invitations) evening talk show because the interviews are not tightly choreographed. Obama apparently cannot be trusted to 'opine' without first memorizing the questions and his answers.

Obama is jut another pretty face with little substance.

Obama went to a Muslim school for 2 years then a catholic school for 2 years that could mean a fatwa on him if he is now a catholic infidel.

Obama threatened a liberal NY Times columnist a few months back because she said something about his big ears in her column. No matter what color his skin it is very thin.

Obama has a really big problem.
He smokes.
Yes...he smokes TOBACCO. Like in cigarettes.
Heavens!!!
No way the lefties are going to nominate someone with such a self-destructive habit.
A little more digging and they'll probably find he consumes trans-fats too...that would be the "last" straw.

Doug, my belief is that Americans are not ready to vote for a black president, nor for a woman.

I'm not so sure about that.

Here's one American that would vote for both - Condi Rice. I'm not alone.

It'd be interesting to see how Republicans would spin Obama's lack of experience after the eight year tenure of George W. Bush.

By 2008 Obama will have been a United States Senator for 3 years, and prior to that, he was a State Senator for 8.

Prior to becoming President, Bush had been Governor of Texas for 5 years, having spent the years before running oil companies paid for with other people's money, and being part-owner of the Texas Rangers (just long enough to trade Sammy Sosa).

So Republicans will be in a bind it seems to me. Either they claim that experience or lack thereof does not necessarily translate into the success or failure of a Presidency, or they admit that electing an inexperienced person President can lead to an unmitigated disaster. I'd love to see which they'd choose.

I agree entirely that Obama's lack of experience may be a big problem for him. How ironic is it that this is exasterbated by the fact that Americans have just experienced the total disaster of the last time they gave someone with no real experience a shot?

I agree with penny. Here we have the democrats asking the public if they want an black president then they got Obama. A woman? Here's Hillary. I'd love to see the GOP trump them and say they have a two-fer. I'm sure they'd find a way to spin that Condi is both a racist and anti-female.

Sounds like Crab-Ass admires the CHARACTER of Osama bin Laden.

That was the entire point of stating "Osama, er Obama" OSAMA has a deplorable character, and so does OBAMA. They are one in the same, different outward appearance is all. The American voting public will see through that (You cannot).

YOU, on the other hand have no brain OR character, you see any observation opposed to your own as racist. YOU are a mental loser.

ET asks “But it's interesting; it seems that the left, in both Canada and the US, (and elsewhere?) is having trouble coming up with leadership candidates.”

I think the reason the GOP can come up with front-runners who have a lot of depth such as:

McCain, Giuliani, Mitt Romney and perhaps soon to be announced Bloomfield, the Mayor of NY …

…is because the right is less interventionist in the economy. The left wants to run everything. In Canada they even want to raise our kids with nationalized Day Care. The agenda of the left is enormous.

Corporations have enough difficulty finding the best brains in the country to run our companies. And companies are very very focused, unlike government. Being a government leader is a much harder job than being a CEO in business.

But at least conservatives are prepared to let go of trying to run our lives and not create more Crown Corporations and social programs ; so conservatives can be more focused.

I’m amazed at what a PM is supposed to know about. The “scary” thing is that they don’t know. Some try to fake it; that’s why Paul Martin looked like a deer in the headlights

Lord Kitchener's Own - American's tend to elect governors - Reagan, Carter, Clinton, Bush - over Washington insiders in congress. That's a fact. Fresh faces and fresh ideas count, plus, governors are in the executive branch on a smaller scale and their executive skills can be evaluated easily. You don't know what you are talking about, By the way, Bush was a very popular and skilled Texas governor.

Obama's being in Congress isn't an asset given that pattern. We know his voting pattern, so he can't fudge on much. His paltry Senate record is just that and gets him no points. He's a media creation. They are shallow. He is shallow. His face will be gone from the airwaves in due time.

Bush had been Governor of Texas for 5 years, having spent the years before running oil companies paid for with other people's money

Come again? Oil companies aren't funded by taxpayers. Like every corporate executive under the sun, you earn your salary making a profit for the company or you get fired.

ET asks “But it's interesting; it seems that the left, in both Canada and the US, (and elsewhere?) is having trouble coming up with leadership candidates.”

That is one of the silliest things ET has written which says a lot.

How many even ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party? None of them then, including the winner Stephen Harper, had anywhere near the stature of most of the Liberal candidates. Where were the conservative candidates? You had a former MP turned pundit with no governing exerience, an heiress with no real governing experience and a former provincial cabinet minister who had just lost an election and a provincial leadership race.

By contrast, here was a broken party, having just lost the election and they had too many candidates, frankly. A former provincial premier. A world reknown intellectual. Several former cabinet ministers. A very popular (in his own province) provincial cabinet minister. Were they great leaders or B team? Definitely debatable, but hardly had a hard time drawing candidates.

In the US too. You and I may not think any of the Democrat candidates in 2004 were all that great, but they certainly had national stature and prominence and experience, certainly moreso than the Canadian conservative equivalent and at least as much as the Republicans. A former governor, a longstanding senator with much prior state experience before that, the former House majority leader for years on end, a four star general, etc. etc. Doesn't seem like they had that hard a time drawing candidates either. In 2000, they arguably had a much stronger list than the Republicans, in terms of experience and profile.

Here we are in almost 2 years from the selection, and the news gossips already talking about half a dozen or so candidates, but because only 3 have formally announced they are seriously thinking about it (only one has formally launched his campaign I think), the liberals are having problems drawing candidates????

ET, do you think about or even look at what you are writing?

baffled - I know you are baffled, but, that's your problem.

Read what nomdenet says - a CEO of a company has to make decisions that work - and very few CEOs are willing to move out of such a pragmatic domain into a domain filled with activists, with people driven by personal power agendas, with rhetoric rather than factual basis for decision-making. That's why you'll get few wanting to be leader of the Republicans or Conservatives.

I repeat my points and disagree with your view of the candidates. I don't see any of them as having 'stature'. Ignatieff may be a world class scholar - and I like his books; that doesn't mean that he can move out of the seminar room into the role of leader of a country. Rae had baggage from his disastrous tenure in Ontario - and his links to the PowerCorp gang. Volpe? Are you serious? Brison, the calendar boy? Kennedy? Findlay? None of them were anything beyond rhetoric. And, in my view, Dion is a complete disaster.

I maintain my point - the left operates heavily around rhetoric, utopianism and generalization. It operates around emotion rather than realism. This makes it easy to get lots of candidates but none of them are leadership material.

A leader of a country has to move out of the rhetoric, out of the utopianism and into realism. He has to establish programs that operate in a step by step manner; you can't over turn a structure like a lightswitch; and he has to work towards long term goals and agendas.

I didn't say that the left has a problem drawing candidates; I said that they have a problem drawing leadership candidates. None of the left in Canada are leaders - leaders in the sense of having an ability to be realists rather than utopian Cloud Dwellers.

It was the same thing in the last presidential election - with Kerry, an ultimate non-realist, fictional character, Dean and etc. Americans wanted a realist - and Bush is exactly that.

I wondered whether it was me, or I had my facts wrong. I'm glad someonelse has asked that question: What experience does he have? Not even been a governor and only just elected.

He's hoping to run on the race card. How about if the MSM gushed over a half-white running for president?

Just Baffled, as usual, by your logic ET, as well as by the fact that someone can drink that much Kool-aid and not suffer from an overdose.

Leaders is entirely a subjective thing. Bob Rae, whom I despise, I concede has demonstrable leadership qualities. While a disaster as premier, he has been called upon by all three parties post premiership to head up committees, hearings, etc. Just one example.

What "leadership" qualities did Harper demonstrably have when he stopped being a professional pundit (good political and leadership experience there) and became a politician again? Comparing the crop of Conservative candidates to the crop of Liberal candidates makes the Liberals look a lot better than were. Harper has shown that, despite appearances, he actually is an uber leader, but the topic is candidates here.

As for business executives, Bush was to his companies little more than what Belinda was. He did not earn his way up. Powerful people built his resume up so he could run for office. eg. he was loaned the funds to purchase his interest in the Texas Rangers by a group of friend of dad's, then sold it a short few years later to that group at a huge gain, a staggering return of something like 1,500% in two years or so... for a baseball team.

And in addition you want us to believe that Bush didn't have a personal power agenda or win the presidency using rhetoric.

I didn't really like Dean or Wesley Clark or the head of the Democratic House, but they were leaders.

And look at the full range of candidates considering: Governor Vilsack, Clark again, VP Gore, Governor Bill Richardson...

Again, just because you don't like them, doesn't mean they aren't leaders, ET.

You really should try some other form of liquid in your diet.

baffled- first, don't use ad hominem tactics. Don't resort to name-calling; it's juvenile. Stick to the issues.

I find that a frequent tactic of someone whose argument is weak - they move into ad hominem. Don't.

You may define the candidates as 'leaders' but I don't. I disagree that leadership is a subjective thing - by which I assume you mean it rests within the perception rather than reality. I disagree.

Again, leadership requieres realism rather than rhetoric; it requires the ability to work in a pragmatic, step by step manner towards viable goals.

I disagree that Rae has leadership qualities; his actions were disastrous, based around a utopianism that is not feasible in real life.

Bush was considered an excellent governor - and not a utopian. I don't see the point of your other list. My point remains - the left seems to focus on utopian idealists who, by my definition, cannot be leaders because they lack the essential quality of realism.

Chris Rock on white people trying really hard to be politically correct by supporting candidates of colour; apologies for language but it needs to be said:

"Whenever Colin Powell is on the news, white people give him the same compliments: 'How do you feel about Colin Powell?', 'He speaks so well! He's so well spoken. I mean he really speaks so well!' Like that's a compliment, sh*t. 'He speaks so well' is not a compliment, okay? 'He speaks so well' is some sh*t you say about retarded people that can talk. What do you mean he speaks so well? He's a fuc*ing educated man! How the fu*k you expect him to sound, you dirty motherfuc*er? 'He speaks so well.' What are you talking about? What voice were you expecting to come out of his mouth? 'Imma drop me a bomb today', 'I be Pwez o dent!'.""

Looks like Baffled was wrong... and ET was way wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_and_potential_2008_United_States_presidential_election_Democratic_candidates

There are already 5 official candidates, including one former governor; one announced candidate (senior Senator Joe Biden); and that doesn't even include Obama or Clinton.

Obama has charisma and a way with words and a willingness to embrace his faith in public, and nothing much else. He'll get great attention, he'll even get some big name endorsements... and then he'll drop out of the race after Iowa or New Hampshire with the raising-the-profile-for-next-time exercise having been completed by that point.

Personally, I have a gut instinct to prefer business executives as leaders, but I have to admit that usually they are not successes. Running a government is not like running a business and I'm not aware of any successful cross-overs, including Paul Martin and George Bush (if you want to call him a true business executive). John Tory beware.

Ted
Cerberus

Shorter Ted: "He (Obama) speaks so well! He's so well spoken!"

Right on cue, my special Liberal friend! LOL!

ET you make a general statement that liberals have a hard time attracting leadership candidates.

That means two things: the liberals don't have many and that by contrast the conservatives do.

I give you a long list of leadership candidates. So you redefine the question as being leadership candidates who have leadership abilities. So I give you a long list of Democratic and Liberal candidates who have demonstrable leadership abilities, even if they were bad or you didn't like them. So you try to redefine the very term leadership (since when is having ideals or dreams a counter-criteria for leadership? I didn't like most of what Trudeau did but no one would ever question that he was a leader and an effective leader, same with Lenin for that matter). So there is still that long list of Democratic governors and former generals who have every bit of demonstrable leadership qualities even when you narrow the original question further and further.

But the other half of that coin is that the conservatives have these great leaders. The Conservative Party had 3 - yes only 3 - candidates try to become leader in the last campaign. The Ontario provincial PCs also had only three. Seems to me they are the ones having the hard time drawing leadership candidates. And of the federal three, what leadership skills and experience can you point to in Harper or Stronach, the #1 and #2 finishers?

In conclusion: you make a broad generalization because all things liberal to you are and must be bad. You get shown some facts so you change the question and ignore the answers. You get shown some more facts that obliterate your silly generalization. You have no facts to argue with, just your subjective point of view.

I'll stick to the issues. You, please stick to the facts.

There, demolished your "argument" without any ad hominems.

“None of them then, including the winner Stephen Harper, had anywhere near the stature of most of the Liberal candidates.”

Err how about Tony Clement versus college drop out Gerrard Kennedy or armchair Dion or Ontario’s fiscal disaster Rae?

Tony ran Health Care in Ontario. The largest budget in the country, Health is 45% of Ontario’s total budget covering 12.5 million people. It’s not a pretend budget like the Environment that Dion ran. Health actually employs people and delivers mission critical services. Contrast with Dion ... an academic theorist.

In the US, they’re all Senators. (Your mention of Gov Richardson does make sense, he’s another Governor like Bush, and Bush BTW got elected twice to run Texas, which has a bigger GDP than Canada). But I don’t think a Senator is nearly as good a background as being a Governor such as Mitt Romney or Mayors such as Giuliani and Bloomberg. . They actually run things, they don’t just debate theory like a Senator.

Again, the world has become incredibly connected both economically and in a military/defense sense because the Pacific and Atlantic no longer protect us. So the challenge to find political leadership becomes harder as in the case of Canada governments run 42% of the GDP. Plus we’re in a digital age not an agricultural age where politicians at least used to have experience down on the farm.

If our PM were a CEO then I think the board of directors would say … Harper you have to trim this entity down to a more focused “manageable” size.

Conservatives are inclined to do just that, Liberals are inclined to add even more programs, thus causing the liberal leadership search to be more difficult. Because the liberal selection process is more based on oratory skills versus the search for a conservative leader where we prefer analytical, decisiveness skills in the face of huge opposition because we want to adapt to the new reality not pretend it doesn’t exist.

Thus Dion’s lack of English oratory skills are going to become an increasingly obvious impediment to the Liberal game.

These leadership jobs are very hard to fill. More Canadians wil become grateful for a grounded, smart, realistic, bi-lingual leader like Harper. Finding a Harper for President in the USA is 10x's harder.

Why "The Economist" should always be taken with a kilo of salt--great writing, but...

"Warming to the one-candle man"
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8555553&fsrc=nwlptwfree

...he has followed his instincts rather than the opinion polls."

"How Green Was My Valley"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033729/

Mark
Ottawa

Baffled is an apt handle as I am at a loss to figure out how baffled defines "stature". If the truth be known, the Liberal leadership race looked like the D list. I mean do you really think that more is better? Then how do you explain the Paul Martin win over all the other candidates... err I mean Sheila?

Leadership and politicians are not necessarily on the same page. Without family money would Ted Kennedy still be around? John Kerry? If you want to get a real definition of leadership then, mr baffled, I suggest you ask someone you know in the military as to what it is.

Barak Hussein Obama is basically a senator because of a political fluke.

The junior senator from Illinois before him was Republican Patrick Fitzgerald. As it happened, Fitzgerald was a man with integrity in the middle of a Republican scandal. Regrettably, the Republican party in Illinois felt that the liabilities of backing him were too grave even though he had conducted himself honorably.

Barak Obama saw this as his opportunity. The Republican Party, now without a viable candidate, drug in Alan Keyes, an eloquent black conservative motivational speaker, who was not even from Illinois.

So Obama never actually ran against a viable candidate, and yet he did manage to pull off the election. So as you can see, he has a very shaky background as senator despite his capacity for artful rhetoric.

The American civil rights establishment does not like Senator Obama. He did not come up through the American civil rights political establishment, and Jesse and Al and the other gang-bangers are fully aware of his lack of bona fides, even if the unwashed masses just see a black face.

Al and Jesse and the gang has all consecrated themselves to the holy grail of the Clinton establishment.

So the real question here (also on the right) is what candidate can get through the Democratic primary process. You know, everyone who gets a shot at the main election first has to have walked through the gauntlet of their own party here in the US. If I were Senator Obama, I would stay out of dark places and look over my shoulder, because the civil rights establishment will support Hillary. And the Clintons control the primary apparatus in the Democratic Party.

Besides, when you get down to it, the brother's just a pretty face with a gift for gab. And nothing in his pockets but loose change.

All our conservative candidates have to get through the Republican primaries, and the voters in those primaries will be concerned about candidates' position on the Second Amendment and right to life. Primary voters are a more conservative lot than the average Republican voter, and it don't matter how pretty you are if you can't win the primaries.

ET, you were down in Boston recently. What did you hear about Romney?

Leaders? You can be judged by the people you accept as your leaders.

If US Democrats choose Hillaries, Obamas, Edwards..... it's because that's what they are drawn to.......
Let the record of each speak:
Hillary : A proven liar and swindler who has demonstrated little grasp of anything except political rhetoric and lust for power.
Obama : A superficial new kid on the block with a winning smile and a natural talent for the "Shuck and Jive".
Edwards : Ditto except in a white-bread package.

Best potential candidate for 08 ... IMO Giuliani
who could win for the GOP no matter who the Dems put forward.

In reply to Greg in Dallas - sorry, when I was in Boston, besides family - I met with two colleagues in physics. No political talk, just information infrastructures.

baffled - nomdenet has made my points far more eloquently than I did. You have to, to be reasonable, read my full post and not take phrases out of context. When I spoke of leadership candidates it was clear that I mean viable leaders. I'm not saying anything as trivial as 'oh, they can get lots (number) of people to run'. I'm saying - they can't get viable candidates to run.

And then - I went on and listed the problems with the Canadian candidates for the Liberal leadership. So- don't conduct a debate by taking sentences out of context. And when you deal with issues, you must also deal with facts.

The left has a problem providing leaders; that's because the left is trapped within a framework of rhetoric and utopianism. Who are the best in rhetoric and utopianism? The charismatic, the slick and glib. In Canada, Trudeau was provided by the left; he has almost destroyed Canada. Same with Chretien.

Leadership in this modern world has to be pragmatic, realistic; it cannot be utopian; it cannot operate within rhetoric but must work with the complexities of short-term and long-term agendas; the complexities of local and non-local agendas; the complexities of a knowledgeable and ignorant electorate and the differing agendas of a large global economic network. I have yet to see a left leader capable of this.

ET said...

" ...(snip)...Leadership in this modern world has to be pragmatic, realistic; it cannot be utopian; it cannot operate within rhetoric but must work with the complexities of short-term and long-term agendas; the complexities of local and non-local agendas; the complexities of a knowledgeable and ignorant electorate and the differing agendas of a large global economic network."

Holy crap. Why don't you just say that you'd sooner eat worms than vote for anyone other than Stephen Harper and leave the rest to our fertile imaginations?

Would an ignorant electorate be the kind of electorate that, for example, wouldn't recognize that Harper in the space of two months did a genuinely comical about-face on climate change with no new scientific data to point to? Not counting polls as scientific data, I mean. John Baird went to Vancouver and reported back, "Sir, yes, a whole bunch of trees have fallen over. It's true there was a storm. And gosh, Ontario is still sort of warm. We'd better get cracking." After years of insisting that there is no conclusive data to go on (and that therefore status quo should not be disrupted), this is pure bulls**t. Would you disagree? I'd love to hear your take on this.

Of course, Stephane Dion suggesting that he would in fact be willing to give up his French citizenship if it were all that important to Canadians is a huge crime. Transparently power hungry. He'll say anything. Where does his loyalty really lie? I can't wait to hear what you have to say when he gets a haircut.

The Republicans have a knack for fronting up blithering senile idiots as their presidential candidates so its a little rich to be taking shots at Obama at this stage of the game.

Why are you all even discussing this? We've already had our first black president: Bill Clinton. (See: Toni Morrison.)

Al Sharpton isn't pleased at hearing Obama is the first African-American to run for president? How about Alan Keyes, Jesse Jackson, and Shirley Chisholm?

crabgrass - when you are dealing with an electorate caught in the grips of a religious fervour (the Kyoto Religion of global warming), and a government is dependent on that electorate, then, you have no choice but to cater to their whims - gently but not fully.

By the way, there's a nice article in Science, Dec 22 vol 314, on 'The heartbeat of the Oligocene Climate Systems', focusing on climate as almost organice - it has a 'pronounced 'heatbeat' in the global carbon cycle and periodicity of glaciations...in cycles of 405,000, 127,000 and 96,000 eccentricity cycles and 1.2 million obliquity cycles in periodically recurring glacial and carbon cycle events....[there's a] fundamental interaction of the carbon cycle, solar forcing and glacial events'.

Check it out. There's more to reality than human beings. The scientific data doesn't show that human beings are the sole and/or primary cause of 'global warming'. Or cooling. The climate is always changing and its causes are not singular, are not within the control of humans and are long term.

I just can not watch Jeri Ryan like I use to!!!

The whole Obama thing is because of the Borg!!!

Penny,

I didn't say Bush's oil companies were funded by TAXPAYER's money, I said they were funded by OTHER PEOPLE's money. Daddy and friends set Bush Jr. up in the oil industry, much to their inevitable chagrin when the companies went belly up.

And I certiainly don't disagree with other comments that Bush was a good Governor (never said he wasn't), he certainly was from all accounts. But he had about as much Foreign Affairs experience as me, and had travelled as widely as I have (which ain't much sadly) so his experience was equal to, if not less than Obama's. Senators do tend to have a tough time getting elected President, as opposed to Governors, that's a valid point. It also has nothing to do with Obama's level of experience though.

To paraphrase Kate and her supporters here: That uppity Obama just doesn't know his place.

But sometimes the Right is honest enough just to come out with it and forget coding. That's refreshing. Here's Kathy Shaidle:

I'll be repeating this a lot during the next few years, so get used to it: there is nothing "compelling" about a black man impregnating a white woman. In more than one Toronto neighbourhood, that's what they call "Saturday night." I guess this is a reference to Obama's mixed race background. Lots of comments about "white guilt," etc., too. I like this one: Black, stupid or both: that's your only excuse for getting excited about Barack Obama. Fascinating.

The guy wants to run for Prez. And who's racializing the whole thing? Why, the "colour-blind" Right. Hah.

Good point, Dawg (and welcome back), although Kathy is an outlier even among the racial right.

Incidentally, the Hillary Clinton Camp is drawing first blood in terms of attacking Obama's background:

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Obama_2.htm

She will probably get the pass for being in the Democrat camp, but this early attack is an unfortunate sign that the winner of the next campaign will be from the same pool of well-oiled elites that drive both the Republican and Democrat parties.

"Senators do tend to have a tough time getting elected President, as opposed to Governors, that's a valid point."

This is largely because senators have a voting record to defend and get picked apart, while governors don't. I don't see this really being a problem for Obama, considering he doesn't have much of a record to speak of anyway, at least definitely not like Kerry's twenty-something year voting record.

Leftie moonbats can run whomever they want--the Dems, Obama, Clinton, Edwards, the Libs, Dion, Trudeau (?), Ignatieff, etc.--because they know the MSM isn't going to look too deeply into these candidates' past lives, indiscretions, lack of experience or concrete performance, ideas, or amibitions the way the MSM examines conservative candidates, who every day will be under their magnifying glasses and used as target practice.

When the MSM acts as the official Opposition to the sitting government, as is happening in both the U.S. and Canada, journalists should have to seek election. (I'm only half kidding!)

The arrogance of left-of-centre journalists, which is about 95% of them, and the accompanying arrogance and entitlement of the lib/left politicians who count on either the MSM's fawning or looking the other way to court voters, has badly disfigured electoral integrity in both of our countries.

The media was never supposed to play such a central or pivotal role in the politics of our countries--but, of course, our founding fathers couldn't foresee the technological revolution of the late 20th century.

The American and Canadian electorates are being held hostage by extremely powerful media conglomerates, and unless more laypeople become aware of how they're being manipulated by these media barons and their worker ants, we're going to become no better than the Banana Republics we decry.