that is all it is.

I sense things will go well with Obama, if he continues to reach out to the Clinton folks. It's not enough for Hillary to do it.

From where I sit, Obama differs from Hillary on many points. Her take on the Iraq War is one such difference, health care is another. These aren't trivial distinctions. We're no longer in a position to afford a soft cushion of social support services. We can't even afford to do a proper job with Katrina: it's still a mess down there. Education's failing. A growing rind of frostbitten flesh is forming on the body politic: the hard-core unemployed and unemployable. The prisons are full to bursting. Emergency rooms are closing down. We're just going to have to accept many of these things. We had a pretty good run from the fifties through to the middle nineties, but the signs were all there. Other more eager nations, populated by savers, not spenders are already eating our lunch.

Neither Obama nor Clinton will be able to keep their promises without raising taxes. Already other nations have a lower corporate taxation structure than we do: these corporations are leaving.

An architect friend of mine one remarked on the State of Illinois building in downtown Chicago: "it will make a magnificent ruin". I look at the Mercantile Exchange and say the same thing.

Friend of mine needs to lose A Lot of weight, forty kilos at least. He's got symptoms of incipient diabetes. So I told him, go to the doctor, get your body mass index calculated, get a plan worked out with him, start keeping a journal of what you eat... did he do it? No, I come back from the movies (Prince Caspian) to find an email from him, about how he's gonna lose weight with wu-yi tea. Yeah, buddy. Lay off the cold bottles of brew-yi, then let's talk.

Romans used to have an image of manliness Agricola the Farmer, rough, tough man of the soil. The more effete they became, the more they bragged about their manliness, right up until Alaric the Goth arrived at the gates of Rome and all the brave men with titles like Honorius had fled away.

Why should I hold out any hope for the politicians to change the fundamentals of American's decline? We want results, but we don't want to pay for them. When the politicians fail us, as they always do, then we'll blame them. Wu-yi tea and vitamin water and low-fat chocolate and health care for all, including the epidemic of diabetes caused by overeating. You can always pick the Americans out in the crowd: they're the fat ones. America needs to go on a goddamn diet and start saving: night is coming and we're up to our ears in obligations and debt, addicted to oil and cheap labor.

But America won't do any of these things, and Obama for all his flowery speeches can't make America over again. He'll try, but when his hopeful promises can't be fulfilled, when the creditor nations finally cut us loose, write us off and foreclose on us, we'll become another Spain. Spain had a good run while the gold and silver were flowing out of the New World, and America had a good run while the petroleum kept flowing to fuel our obese cars.

The real reforms can only be effected by Congress and the markets. We need to see ourselves as we are seen: fat spendthrifts who live far beyond our means. Maybe some day, when the whole rotten superstructure has collapsed, we can start again, humbler, wiser, building on a sounder foundation.

I do. They're not happy. Haven't talked to any of them in the last few days, but they disapprove of Obama on principle. They don't think he's a realist. One has taken to calling him Chocolate Jesus. Not a harbinger of good things to come.

The Obama-Clinton split points out the deep divisions between the Democratic Party. The only thing which unites them is their dislike of McCain and the Republicans.

Nominal Conservatives are similarly divided along Libertarian and what I would call Burke-ian / WFBuckley Conservatism.

Why, given the ugly rhetoric from both sides of the Democratic split, would the Democrats unite around Obama, as far-left as any politician in this era? O do not say Change, for these changes horrify some constituencies. He will no more Unite than did another Uniter Not Divider, our current bedraggled president. Obama has united many disparate elements within the Democratic Party, and I do intend to vote for him, but I'm not entirely happy with him as our candidate.

Nor am I a complete cynic about politicians. Politicians are attracted to power for many reasons, many quite admirable. Power can be used effectively, in the right hands, must be used. Power can be squandered or simply go unused. We must not condemn politicians, but if Congress' poll numbers are indicative of the Zeitgeist, Americans are deeply resentful of that body. They like their own Congress-critter, but as a species, once elected, they serve their own interests and not ours.

. . .once it was obvious he couldn't finish in the money. Oh well, off to twenty years of lots and lots of sex for the big guy.

Da'Tara certainly blew away what was left of the field--that'll make his owners some money they probably weren't expecting.