In Ancient Rome there was a poem about a dog who found two bones...

There really isn't, when you look at this dispassionately, much in the way of differences between the two leading candidates for the president of the United States this year, the Republican Mitt Romney and the Democrat Barack Obama. Both of them are technocrats. Both of them realise that getting control of health care is essential if domestic spending is to be gotten control of. Romney is, after all, the father and mother of Obamacare. Both of them exhibit few differences when it comes to foreign policy. Both of them are cheerleaders for capitalism. Welcome to political cartel land.

There are, of course, also differences between the two candidates for president. Romney is more a politician than Obama. I don't, by the way, find that particularly praiseworthy. Obama paid more in taxes percentage wise than Romney. I do find that praiseworthy. Obama is less loose with the truth than Romney. I find Obama's greater honesty praiseworthy. Obama seems to be more minority friendly than Romney. I find that praiseworthy. Obama is more likely to see corporations and investment banks as a threat to freedom than Romney. I find that praiseworthy. Romney is more religious than Obama worshiping, as he does, at the altar of the great god Baal Mammon. I don't find this arrested development syndrome particularly praiseworthy. Romney is more willing to hyperraise the offence budget than Obama and seems to be stuck in a mental time warp that dates to circa 1950 or 1980. I don't find this ideological blast from the Cold War past particularly praiseworthy. I really don't want to do the time warp again. Romney has a tendency to whitewash and romanticise the Israelis more than Obama. I don't find this ideologically driven blindness particularly praiseworthy. And then there is the big difference between the two, the big difference that I think is the real reason for the abject hatred so many have for Obama in the US today; Obama is Black. Such racism I do not find praiseworthy whatsoever. But I do understand it. Today's Republicans are, after all, the latter day heirs of Jim Crow Democrats, Dixiecrats.