Well done psychopath-junkie and crypto-Nazi Soros! And to the many toadies in his feudal retinue of course.

Of all America's talented black leaders, including senators, the oligarchs who own Dem rubbish like Pelosi and Frank (Soros and Rohatyn mainly) had to back a megalomaniacal newbie. You should be asking yourselves why.

*I am
looking forward to sailing around the world in my yacht.*

Well keith, I wish you good luck in your sailing ventures and
I also hope that you show better judgement onboard your yacht,
then you have on OLO. Remember, if you get it wrong on your
yacht, it might just be glug glug and you might not just be
able to shrug it off.

As to my effect on the US elections, you are quite correct, I
did not vote. As I have yet to see where any single vote swung
the elections, I guess my effect is no more or less then most
Americans. I've certainly spent the last two years or so, encouraging
my American friends to vote for Obama, as I felt that he had talent.

How Obama will affect me personally, I have not even considered and
don't intend to. What he can do for global peace, stability etc, is
far more important. People skills can stop wars and they matter
greatly. Intellect helps, two qualities that George and Dick
clearly lacked and its cost America and the world bigtime.

Quite frankly keith, I have long ago accepted that if/when Yabby
falls off the proverbial perch, the world will keep spinning and not
much will change. Don't kid yourself about your own self importance,
apart from what it means for you personally. But that is the little
picture, not the big picture.

Oh dear Yabby.

Fall from your perch... haha from your sad sack tone I always sensed you were a galah.

Thanks for the confirmation.

Courage, experience, planning and thorough preparation are far more important in this world than mere verbage and empty self-assurance. The former qualities are absense in Obama and the latter short-comings abundant.

How's you job security and retirement plans? cos he's going to affect them.

I beg to differ Kieth. Verbiage and self-assurance are powerful tools in the right hands, and Obama is a fine orator if ever I've seen one. It is this which can enthuse the audience, make an impact, create a lasting memory - and make others willing to listen.

For example our Kev's fine with plain public speaking but he hardly captures the imagination.

As for the courage and planning bit, he's president-elect ain't he?

bennie: "Kev" and "plain public speaking"? Surely you jest: whatever qualities we may identify in the milky bar kid, a gift for plain English is not one of them. Like most in his circle, Kev speaks in neo-lib bureaucratic buzzwords, cliched phrases, and lots of them.

keith: spot on about Obama's "verbiage and self-assurance". I find it shocking to keep hearing these contrived notions about Obama's supposed oratory skill when he is clearly such a mediocre and dull-witted public speaker (check the astonishing, flatulent TV debates, for example). He is even so lacklustre on the basics of body language and prosody/intonation, but he does seem to enjoy the limelight and attention so much, if not also the very sound of his own voice. Not leadership material, but good dictator stock. And please, no more pointless comparisons with the white mediocrities Bush, McCain, etc. Hilary was and remains the most important comparison here: she won the popular democrat vote, has far more leadership ability (talent, brains and, most importantly, guts) but was white-anted by the briberies and threats against party delegates - including an actual assassination of one democrat delegate.

In a very real sense, Obama and his colleagues have already affected "job security and retirement plans" for so many of us by promising some excursion into hyperinflation and vaporized public and superannuation purses. From the very start, Obama backed Paulson's. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Obama was so quick on that because his main sponsor is Soros, and Soros all but prescribed the bail outs as governments' "no choice" response in his 1987 book "Alchemy of Finance'.

The gush over Obama all reminds me of the silly tribalist euphoria among feminists when Thatcher became PM. The difference is the ever-present, creepy sub-text of racism, so evident by its over-compensation in the muffling of dissent and critical thinking. It's disgusting that the media, party and NGO lemmings keep invoking this dangerously superficial and divisive issue, implying that serious critics of Obama must have some problem with his ethnicity/skin color, etc.

*Courage, experience, planning and thorough preparation are far more important in this world*

Err, we've just had a half white man, with no traditional
establishment family etc, run what is being described as the
best, most well organised political campaign in US history.

Clearly the qualities that you list, are exactly what is required
to pull that one off. He simply ran rings around your McCain :)

But I guess the truth has been revealed. You are concerned that
Obama could cost you money. Nobody, but nobody has been able to
run the US economy into a ditch and leave the country broke, as
your friends George and Dick! Its costing trillions, including
you.

As a matter of interest, I am in the fortunate position of being
able to do the things I want to do in life, rather then the things I have to do. Not many are as fortunate.