It's baffling, in a sense, how any political candidate can justify either the need, or the cost, of buying a full half hour on four of the five major American networks, plus simulcasts on several Spanish speaking stations.. for a political campaign message..
How such blatant waste of funds is not what the American public needs to see.. If, through media coverage and public appearances, and the scheduled televised debates, a platform cannot be explained clearly enough, then one would think judgements could be made through consideration of the degree of obfuscation, or candour, expressed in that explanation..
How many public charities, or community projects, could have been boosted by the donation of those funds.. And how much more impact would the publicity of such donations..of campaign funds.. have had on the public..
On 'Joe the plumber'..
Makes one wonder where priorities lie..
And begs the question 'is the Presidency something which can be bought..?'

And as the Pound Sterling slides to a 30 year low against the American dollar.. and the American Fed dropping interest rates to 1% with some saying further cuts might be expected..
We seem to be seeing a global move towards Keynsian economics..
Gordon, who said some 10 years ago that .."no responsible government should ever consider unrestrained borrowing to spend it's way out of a recession..", is getting closer and closer to the point wherein the Exchequer is going to follow countries the likes of Hungary in applying to the IMF for maintenance loans.
Some analysts are saying this 'downturn'.. soon to be a formal 'recession'.. could take a full two years to resolve.
Perhaps a tad optimistic. One would think that with the catastrophic damage our personal and corporate and governmental overspending over this past decade or so, a timeframe of four years would be closer to the mark..
And that depends entirely on what steps our respective global governments are willing to take, to recover the billions of £s spent on the recent bailouts.. and the billions more promised to small business through the loosening of borrowing restrictions at their banks..
That, by the by, is a move small business is still waiting to see..
However.. the fact remains that we have effectively.. all of us that is.. bought what amounts to 60% of our GNP is debt. Or, to be precise, our governments have bought these debts for us.
So.. as we watch the average price of housing falling..some 15% last quarter alone.. we may well think we have something to celebrate. But..what we are seeing is the falling value of the equity we hold on a good portion of the monies the banks have had pumped into their coffers to maintain liquidity..
That's our money disappearing.
And when the government allows us a tax cut which puts just a tad more disposable income in our current accounts.. something has to be cut from public services.
We've forgotten so much..
We've been seduced into abandoning the ethics that used to be a staple of our last stable economy.. those being 'don't buy what you can't pay cash for..' and 'there's no such thing as a free lunch..'
Perhaps.. as this is primarily meant to represent one man's view of contemporary society to be read by the sons of my sons.. we will manage to pull through, again..
That we will manage to defer the consiquences of our financial.. ecological.. political idiocy unto our grandchildren..
Be that the case.. apologies.