This piece was originally written with a European audience in mind, though I modified that slightly for Daily Kos. But it's still in the right place here.

Daily Kos reminds me why I got off Usenet, frankly. Big sea. A constant stream of diaries, most of them seem to be repeating campaign spin from one candidate or the other. With predictable comments. I imagine that it is especially crazy due to the election season.

Still, I appreciate that a number of people liked reading the piece.

In review this morning, I find one directly addressing the prompt: US militarization of Africa, justified by Clinton doctrine as distinct from BHO "exemplarism" (what a novel turn of phrase that is! Not) or JRE "MICtourism" (for want of a slogan -bwah!- to describe his Kemp-Biden-Herzliya orientation to containing nukes; Do you wonder where NATO fits in the "Marshall Corp"?).

I recommended nanne's article here because I expected thoughtful responses insofar as any one is capable of differentiating the POTUS candidates'strategic methods and conceiving of political priorities within the EU. That's a stretch for the average American who is as mystified by back-packing Europe one summer as s/he was once charmed by GWB's inexplicable ability to miss such an "experience."

I believe my prediction is vindicated.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

To me Obama is like an empty screen or a Rohrschach inkplot - you can project whatever you want, whatever you hope for on him. And my guess is, it will be a rude awakening for those people if he becomes president, because even if he should be a much better president, than my feelings indicate, he will not be able to fullfil these undefined projections on him.

Like so many times before, I really hope to be proven wrong - it would be even a great joy to be proven wrong for a change.

I'm well aware of the rhetorical debt BHO owes that creature -- that economic "beacon of opportunity," preemptive doctrine, NIE applications, affordable housing?, energy policy!-- since '06. When I was still commenting at dKos, comparisons were rejected out of hand. BTW, the most peculiar remark in my mind, at any rate, was BHO explicit statement that he agreed with GWB on maximum sentencing.

The perversion of due process in GWB's wake cannot be understated. Most recently I indulged in a lop-sided discursion on creeping unitary theory, specifically the putative adjudicative function of "my"(BHO's phrase) DoJ. And as it happened one week later, Charlie Savage (Boston Globe) filed a survey of leading candidates of both parties. I lurked dkos, seeking coherence on the subject and finding none.

Doubtless the expectations of the American voter, irrespective of race or blog activity, are so low as to be immeasurable. High paradox on the campaign trail of "change," no? I am discomfitted by the notion that the myth of a classless society is at last affixed to personal finance.

Relating Obama to Sarko now is a demographic wonder, a wholy intellectual digression perhaps. All that I'm able to express here is that I was much impressed by Sarkozy's ability to split the left by generation, using "reform" as an axe, serated by promises of marginal "opportunities" for the youth vote. Then, again, I am not as intimately familiar with his rhetoric as I am his um stature.

Suffice to say, should BHO win the office, I look forward to warm coordination between him and the leader of the francophone universe in devising solution to um shared unemployment problems.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.