Illinois leadership

This is not meant as a crack on my friends in Chicago. As many of you know, I love visiting Chi-town and enjoy the culture, restaurants, and bars of the area. I'm not a big fan of the general attitude of the citizens there that it's the center of the universe, but I also have that dislike of citizens of LA and NYC as well, since they all seem to have that same general misconception.

However, it's nice to see that during this summer, the time that Barack Obama has been an Illinois Senator, more people have been murdered in Chicago than died in a war zone, Iraq.

Yes, I can hear you now "well, that can't be blamed on Obama", and normally I'd agree with you. US Senators really don't have any sort of influence on the local politics of a state, despite the fact that they really SHOULD. This sort of thing is where Governors and Mayors are held responsible, not US Senators. Governors and Mayors like, oh, say.....Sarah Palin. They're the folks who get grief when crime is up and the economy is down, not the US Senators, especially since those schmucks only face re-election once every 6 years, so they often miss the cycles of economics. Let's face it, in Michigan, during the last 30 years we've had the Carl Levin as our senator and has he ONCE been held responsible for the piss poor economy in the state? Not once, which explains why he's STILL in the Senate.

So when folks say that Obama has more experience because he has been a federal government official versus a local official, they have no idea what the hell they're talking about. And Obama's claim that he has more executive experience because he's running his campaign is ridiculously circuitous logic. He doesn't RUN his campaign anyway, his campaign manager and all his handlers do. Is he now taking credit for the decisions made by his campaign managers? Of course candidates take credit for things that others do, but to say that he's "running" his campaign and that gives him executive experience that qualifies him for the office he's campaigning for is just ridiculous.