The  2008 Context:

China 3,897,000 sq mi    US 3,022,000 sq mi
China has no oil. The US intends to have all the oil. Solomon, where are you?
The stable limit of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 380 ppm. Germany has reduced emissions. The US has not. China is increasing its emissions. Meanwhile the stable limit has been reached and the world drives on the brink.
The US corporation-police complex is arming with an array of new crowd control weapons. Prison incarceration is at world record heights. The Democratic convention is putting in place special measures to detain protestors. American flags are being printed on solid surfaces and embroidered into our clothing. Is the flag fireproof now?
Breast cancer strikes most US families yet the only countermeasure is mammogram/surgery/chemo. There is no concerted effort on cause and prevention. Does it occur to anyone that industry is profiting by pressing upon us poisons in food, poisons in clothing, poisons in packaging, poisons in personal care?
Car culture has become a threat that has been created mostly by us. To an American a car is hiserher birthright and passion. As Patsy Cline sings to the boy who asks how much do you love me:

      I love you honey, I love your money

      I love your automobile

      I love you baby, I don't mean maybe

      You're the sweetest thing on wheels

      I love your kisses, I wouldn't miss it

      No matter how I feel

      I love you honey, I love your money

      Most of all I love your automobile

But the end of the road has been reached. And the end of the runway too. All aboard, folks, kiddies, we’re going for a ride on the choo-choo.
The US military has tapped out its supply of patriotism, been corrupted by its civilian management, been misused, and betrayed. If it continues to be used to carry out US designs on oil producing countries it will become totally mercenary.
Healthcare is for profit not for care and will remain so as long as corporations provide it. Michael Moore’s movie Sicko has evidently entertained HMO executives for they are in excellent spirits. Washington State has a single-payer initiative: anybody seen a trace of it in this election?
Food production in the US is subsidized by the health and welfare of Mexican immigrants. Eight have died of heatstroke so far this summer. Most of what we eat is carried on wheels fueled by oil. The world oil economy is about to collapse. Which candidate will buck agri-corporations?

Questions and  Opinion:

Is it irony, or what, that as ballot cheating increases the worth of the result decreases? Point being that the next president, so hotly chosen, will have made a Faustian bargain with hiserher backers. (You did not know that Hillary has a plan to take the superdelegates into the back room smoke?)

The question of the century: Who or what is running the US government?

Is the two-party system working? You bet it is. It was designed to enthrall the unwashed.
Whether or not the US gets serious on solar and wind depends on a congress financed by big oil.  Really?

Which is the  more serious economic threat, the mortgage crisis or China calling in its loans?

Given that the reason the US is putting military bases in Asia is to secure US oil supply, is Obama any more likely than McCain to call off the occupation of Iraq?

Why is the US threatening Iran and stirring up trouble in the Republic of Georgia?

Prima Facie: Is the presidential election a valid democratic process, or a quadrennial  passion play?

The Iranians can be compared with the Turks as someone you do not want to be mad at you.

Are baby boomers complicit in trashing the cradle of civilization? Those two rivers, y’know.

If “you get what you pay for”, then the next president must be the second coming.

If the moonshiners in Washington put any more acreage into ethanol production, then lookout, sanity.