The transcript of the Democrat debate is up at CNN, here.

Barack Obama says that he wants to “heal America and repair the world.” One wonders what he will do for an encore and whether he will rest on the seventh day.

That's from Thomas Sowell's most recent piece at National Review. Mr. Sowell points out the dangers in attractive mantras like "change" and the unattractive results of some 20th Century change wrought by demagogues like Lenin, Hitler, Mao and the Ayatollah Khomeini who indeed brought change at the cost of millions of lives.

Charisma and character share the same first syllable, but they are so rarely found inhabiting the same identical space. People possessed of both qualities usually become living, self-sacrificing saints, not politicians.

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson has thrown in the sponge.

Click the image to see a larger photo taken by Aijaz Rahi in a Bangalore, India market place. It shows George W. Bush in a tank pursuing a fleeing Osama bin Laden. The battery operated toy is called Funny Path Car 9/11.

AP Photo