I am so eternally skeptical of Barack Obama's attainments and so insistent on the subject, that there are people that think I favor John McCain. This is not so.... I am just horrified by the choice. I really am. I felt and still feel that the only major American politician with the vision, bandwidth and experience necessary to bring the USA through the next eight years is and was that boring, old, Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore. In short, I haven't got a dog in this fight.

As to McCain. I think John McCain is a very good senator and should stay in the senate... I'm not sure that Obama is that good a senator because he hasn't been there (or anywhere else) long enough to really tell, so I think he should stay there as well... at least long enough to find out. And as someone who grew up in that state, I would have loved to have seen Barack Obama run for President after eight years as governor of Illinois. Lately most of the governors of Illinois go to jail... If Obama could have run a tight ship in Springfield without getting covered with dung, I would be sure that he could handle the viper's nest that is and always has been, the White House.

I do think it is unfair to say that McCain is Bush... I don't think anybody could equal Bush's insane and destructive incompetence. If Bush has become the measuring stick, probably Joe the plumber could do the job as well as anyone.

I remember once many years ago sitting on the terrace of a bar overlooking the rugged coast of Spain. I was nursing a drink and watching the tiny cars miles away as they zipped around the hairpin turns on the cliffhanging coastal highway... the others at the table were engrossed in conversation with their backs to the sea and I was the only one watching the distant road. My attention was drawn to a small Mini Cooper that was coming down the mountain way too fast... my friends were all looking in my direction and talking as the tiny car, miles away, crashed through a guard rail and hurtled some 500 feet into the Mediterranean... I was the only one who saw them die... all my friends suddenly were staring at me as I vomited all over the table. I feel a bit like that now.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

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Let me say before I go any farther, that I don't think either candidate for the president of the United States this year is very well qualified for the job or has much relevant experience for it.

In my opinion the US Senate gives practically no training relevant to commanding and controlling an immense organization. In the US system the legislative and executive branches are separated and demand different skill sets. Clinton and Reagan were governors and had spent a long time learning those skills. "Bush was a governor too", you say.  Yes he was, however, in my opinion, Bush is totally insane, which is an insuperable handicap for a manager.

What follows is only a short discussion about what experience might be good for. This seems necessary, as I have found quite a few supporters of Barack Obama that maintain that experience is irrelevant or even a handicap. "Look how experienced Dick Cheney is!" they say. Look indeed. Cheney is extremely successful... if getting exactly what you want most of the time is any definition of success. Cheney is a perfect example of a subordinate that follows his own agenda in detriment of what is supposed to be the organization's "mission statement".

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Let me say before I go any farther, that I don't think either candidate for the president of the United States this year is very well qualified for the job or has much relevant experience for it.

In my opinion the US Senate gives practically no training relevant to commanding and controlling an immense organization. In the US system the legislative and executive branches are separated and demand different skill sets. Clinton and Reagan were governors and had spent a long time learning those skills. "Bush was a governor too", you say.  Yes he was, however, in my opinion, Bush is totally insane, which is an insuperable handicap for a manager.

What follows is only a short discussion about what experience might be good for. This seems necessary, as I have found quite a few supporters of Barack Obama that maintain that experience is irrelevant or even a handicap. "Look how experienced Dick Cheney is!" they say. Look indeed. Cheney is extremely successful... if getting exactly what you want most of the time is any definition of success. Cheney is a perfect example of a subordinate that follows his own agenda in detriment of what is supposed to be the organization's "mission statement".

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Like to take a break from rolling around in "the mud and the blood and the beer"?  A friend in Florida sent me this wonderfully creative video of our election process. Click on this link...

and

Enjoy!!!

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

"Virtually everyone who knows him recognizes that he plays his cards close to the vest, so that you can make your case to him without knowing whether it has registered."
The Obama I (Don't) Know - Richard A. Epstein

Barack Obama is, as of today, probably going to be the next president of the United States. Some wonder if he has enough experience for the job, while others say that no previous experience prepares a person for being president of the United States.

However, the experience that the rest of us have of that person may prepare us for their presidency.

A good example might be Bill Clinton.

As governor of Arkansas Clinton evidenced many of the traits that he would later show as president: a fine grasp of policy and all its details, an emphasis on economic performance, a preternatural connection with voter sentiment and priapsis; they all were there. It was very easy to have a clear idea of who Bill Clinton the person was.

Even George W. Bush shouldn't have been that much of a surprise: he was a ne'er do well, drunken, foul ball and fuck up most of his life, he seemed to have reformed as governor of Texas, but except for going back to the the booze, all he did was revert to type under the pressure of the presidency.

This brings us to Barack Obama.

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Senator Barack Obama will suspend his campaigning for more than 36 hours this week to visit his grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who is gravely ill in Hawaii. Mrs. Dunham, 85, all but raised Mr. Obama during his teenage years in Hawaii, and he has spoken of her often on the campaign trail. New York Times

'Le bon Dieu est dans le detail' Gustave Flaubert
'Get there fustest with the mostest' Nathaniel Bedford Forrest

As any Indian scout in an old Hollywood western would tell you, small things: a broken twig, a startled bird or a dog that doesn't bark, can have great significance.

Just as a small child knows that daddy sleeping on the sofa is filled with unknown portent, those who wish to analyze current events should never neglect the small but significant detail.

For example: when Rodrigo Rato suddenly left his job as head of the International Monetary Fund on June 28 2007 to return to Madrid because, "my family circumstances and responsibilities, particularly with regard to the education of my children, are the reason for relinquishing earlier than expected my responsibilities at the Fund", it was a clear signal, for anyone sensitive to these small details, that the world financial system was about to implode... If you had sold all your shares on that news item and bought treasury bills and gold,  today you would be laughing at the crisis, picking up bargains, and all your friends would consider you a financial wizard.

In the same vein, Senator Obama's suspending his campaign to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii is a sure sign that the  Republicans are going to open the Reverend Wright can of worms in the next few days.

What Obama does with all this is to hit the news cycle first with a huge human interest story that will remind the voters that Obama was raised by a nice old white lady from Kansas, ergo he is not really that "different". In the next few days TV viewers will be treated to endless "profiles" of Madelyn Dunham.

At the risk of sounding too cynical; if Mrs. Dunham chose this weekend to pass on, thus offering the candidate and his wife the opportunity of weeping copiously at her graveside, this might offset some of the damage that ten days of Jeremiah Wright's God damning America in an endless loop will surely produce.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

I am getting the feeling that the Republicans are going to pull out the stops in the last few days of the campaign, mostly Reverend Wright stuff and so forth, so that it is all fresh when the voters go into the booth. It will be interesting to see if the Reverend himself cooperates with this effort.
To be effective it would have to explode with a new theme every day in the last ten days. I think it was a mistake to accuse McCain of racism before he really let go with both hands, because you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb

Many (most?) people think that George W. Bush is stupid. I don't.

On the contrary, I think that he is highly intelligent, but I also think that he is seriously insane.

I wont indulge in psychobabble trying to diagnose his disease: crazy is as crazy does.

It is his intelligence that makes his particular insanity so perverse. If he were stupid, his insanity would have come to little, we would never even have heard of him. It is the rest of us that are stupid... certainly not Bush.

George W. Bush is an alcoholic who has cold turkeyed the booze and then taken the implicit self destructiveness and self hatred of alcoholism and channeled and projected it universally. Few leaders in history, drunk or sober, have had such a canvas of destruction to paint upon as he has.

Considering the power he has had and how crazily destructive he is, we have come off lightly. He hasn't used the atomic bomb... yet.

A dramatically abridged list of the damage he has done to himself, the environment and humanity follows:

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