Perhaps it's the lack of a Catalan side to support that causes even the most nationalist of Catalans to put divisions aside. Was this an interesting glance at the mechanics of perceived division?

It's been said of the nationalist leaders of Catalunya and Spain's other regions armed with claims to autonomy, that they're out of touch with the woof and warp of mainstream society.

John McCain is out of touch with the American public.

At a time when nearly 60% of Americans use text messaging, how does the McCain campaign not have a text message element? His competitors, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton sure seem to be more in touch with the American public, especially younger adults who must find the McCain campaign to be so yesterday.

The American antiques history of song and expression to signify an era is well established. From Yankee Doodle Dandy, to John Brown's Body, It's a Long Way to Tipperarry, Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime, Hey Hey the Gang's all Here, When Johnnie Comes Marching Home Again, Hurrah, Hurrah, the phrase reminds of the times. After listening to Knock, Knock Knocking on Heaven's Door, one is reminded of the folly of the decade and more of the Vietnam War, the change for better and worse brought on by the resulting youth revolt.

America evolved out of the natural expression of European, mostly English, explorers, pirates and adventurers who sailed along the Atlantic coast of America in the 1500's. It was there and then that Sir Walter Raleigh claimed and named Virginia and picked expansive Chesapeake Bay to house, as it now does a great naval armada with it's capital city nearby, naval officers training nearby at Annapolis, Washington, D.

American antiques heroic figures stand out in our hearts and minds: from brave Pochantas befriending a foe, a Benjamin Franklin making a hurried sea voyage to try to fend off a revolution over taxes as Post master General of British North America (Canada and the 13 Colonies), a recurring American antiques battle whether over tea then, or oil benefits now; the fight goes on.

When presidential candidates are asked why they are running they invariably say something like "I'm bursting with so much love for this great country and its people that running for President is the only patriotic thing to do". These candidates are also quick to assure us that they do not simply love our country in the abstract, they love each and every one of us personally.

Bolivia has been a landlocked nation since 1879, when it lost its coastal department of Litoral to Chile in the War of the Pacific. Bolivia's government remains heavily dependent on foreign assistance to finance development-projects. Bolivia is a member of the Andean Community and enjoys nominally free trade with other member countries (Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela).

Bahraini liberals have responded to the growing power of religious parties by organizing themselves to campaign through civil society in order to defend basic personal freedoms from being legislated away. Bahrain is a generally flat and arid archipelago, consisting of a low desert plain rising gently to a low central escarpment, in the Persian Gulf, east of Saudi Arabia.

This surely cannot be a good time for any new bod in government to try and prove himself? A recession is threatening the world over and all leaders are being held responsible but take a closer look. This has to be one of the hardest jobs on earth and we all need to remember that, although the buck stops firmly with the leaders, they are only human and we all need to do our bit.

Humor isn't a word usually associated with politics, but it's there. Abraham Lincoln, one of our most admired politicians, was good at turning insults into smiles. When Stephen Douglas called him two-faced during one of their debates, Lincoln replied, "I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?"

Winston Churchill, prime minister of England, frequently used humor to his advantage, as well as to get the advantage over his opponents.

It was a masterful campaign right through to Texas. Just before Texas Obama admitted they had let up for a few days and could have perhaps won or closed the gap with a stronger finish.

This was to my recollection the first time Obama admitted his campaign had made a mistake. Up to that point it was by most accounts a masterful campaign; in fact, an almost perfect campaign.

We Americans are a selfish bunch often becoming "patriotic" only when it helps our pocketbook.

Our vote has become a self interest vote which is part of democracy's strength and also part of its weakness. The poor vote one way and the rich another; the poor vote hoping to get a free piece and the rich vote to keep all of their pieces and not have to share any.

By now you have to have been pulling a Castaway number to have not heard of Operation Chaos. For those aspiring Robinson Crusoe's among you, Op. Chaos is a brilliant creation of Rush Limbaugh. What he has done is to give all those Conservatives who have missed out on voting against John McCain a new voting life by way of switching parties and becoming "Shadow Democrats" for the remaining DNC primaries.

How true that a picture is worth ten thousand words. The new color world map by the Royal Netherlands Geographic Institute show the CO2,that is cancer causing carbon coal particles into the troposphere-the air we breath, are most vastly concentrated in east China. These most noxious emissions show as red hot on the clean air map. Next most poisonous air is yellow on the map, down to gray, light blue, and the only clear blue sky on earth is shown dark blue, as in most of Canada and the Sahara desert.

To walk in the filthy air on the streets of Beijing today seems like a walk into hell. Yet, to be in a shop of Chinese antiques is as to cause you to walk quietly, in serene admiration of such elegance, from so far away, and created so long before it was known in the west. From Roman times, it was known that Rome's eastern city of Damascus was actually on the western edge of a silk route to the vast Orient, beyond mighty mountains.

Healthy lifestyles on earth, worst of all in modern coastal China, seems to be getting beyond the capability of many corners of our good mother earth. Most recent digital images in geographical magazines show the red hot zones on earth, that is the most blazingly polluted. China is by far the most polluted country on earth. In contrast, the air of India is still cleaner that the air of Europe or America east of the Mississippi.

In February 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered human body tissue recovery and distribution company Biomedical Tissue Services, Ltd. to cease manufacturing human body tissue. The report was the culmination of a years-long investigation into ethical and health violations in the recovery of human body tissue to be used in transplants, skin grafts and other medical procedures.

Diamonds do really make the world go round, as the old saying says. When on a construction site all is on pause until the man with the diamond drill bit saws through that steel beam or whatever, nothing is going anywhere. This amazing creation from the furnaces of hell inside earth, or the lightning strikes of a benevolent and loving God. We prefer that last part much better.

Chinese antiques wise minds are beyond us, and China, in that while we land men on the moon and may discover cures for cancers as quickly as we make wars; we cannot naturally take a lump of coal and make it into a same sized diamond. Take China, which today has overtaken America as the greatest polluter on earth. So, we know, it is for us to excel in every other natural way we can such as dig it up and burn it clean, as that technology is out there, and is being worked out.

From Chinese antiques history, the way we speak of carbon depends on which kind we relate to best. Marco Polo did not drag sacks of coal back from China, rather diamonds and gemstones. This was Chinese carbon that had risen above it's station, as my English cousin Sir Frawncis would say, and blossomed into diamonds that enlighten our hearts. Amazing, versatile diamonds which can also on a drill bit, cut through everything else on a construction site.