What Does Matter:

It matters that the United States finally accepted as an equal a Dark Skinned Man and most appropriately as an Endowment received a Nobel Peace Prize for doing so .

American voters are angry and they will gladly extract vengeance on incumbent politicians who support Wall Street over Main Street. Obama has got the message loud and clear.

The republican candidate marketed himself as a reincarnation of John F Kennedy in TV ads, with a JFK image and speech morphing into an image and speech finished by Scott, a different kind of Republican, a transformational, up and coming leader. Will he dissappoint? Of course, because bold visions cannot be delivered by the current broken federal and state institutions.

What kind of republican is the new man? The small 'l' liberal kind. The kind that would strip naked for a centrefold, support pro-choice, back gay civil unions, a handsome guy who is straight talking, actively involved in local issues and a candidate who was immersed in extensive face to face campaigning in his own vehicle.

But that said, the USA is in a sad and sorry state of demise. Powerful vested interests just got the green light from the ultra-conservative Supreme Court to engage in unrestrained money politics under the banner of free speech. Candidates accepting financial backing from greedy self serving lobbyists will have a massive campaigning advantage over politican cleanskins.

Add to the mix, the ramped up stalling of all important reform legislation and we should see the debt laden, once mighty United States sink into a quagmire that only another people power revolution will be able to put right. Can Obama address the massive dissillusionment with the institutions of power in the United States? His second term depends on a reconnection with and mobilisation of his support base.

Both the Democrats and republicans are owned by Wall St and the big Banks.Nothing will change unless the people decide to act.

Given the circumstances, I feel Obama has performed particularily well.

The problem is that people thought his administration would be completely different, this naivity in the face of an unchanged political structure in which he has to work, means that he gets a poor review in spite of having done more than most, for decades.

Well Shadow Minister,what about Obama's new presidential edict,Preventative Dentention.Even if you are suspected of being a terrorist,you can be incarcerated indefinitely on the mere suspicion of perpetrating a crime,with no legal council.Obama is a puppet of the Corporate ruling class and nothing you say will change that reality.

Isn't the real problem that both major parties in America currently follow the dictum enunciated by George Bush that "The American standard of living is not negotiable". The rebuff suffered by Obama in Massachusetts would have been the same if a republican had been president, as neither party can deliver. What is needed there, as it is needed here, is a leader brave enough to announce that the living standard must be reduced across that board, and that the best method would be to increase greatly the tax on petrol. This tax could then be used to reduce government debt, not to finance more spending.

Instead of a FDR like fireside chat to the American people along these lines, what we are now likely to see is the worst possible outcome for the whole western world - a lame duck president for the next three years, with Sarah Palin being elected in 2012. If this eventuates she is at least likely oversee a withdrawal by America to her borders, default in some form or other on her unpayable foreign debt, and a general rejection of foreign entanglements along the lines followed after World War I.

The most interesting question for Australia if this occurs would be whether we ended up inside or outside the new borders. Considering the vast amount of secret installations in the Northern Territory, and the occasional need for America to send a drone or a nuclear weapon into the outside world, I am inclined to think we would be inside the border.

Should be an interesting decade.