New York candidate for Governor Carl Paladino, has a unique campaign platform. Housing welfare recipients and the unemployed in former prisons and giving them lectures on 'personal hygiene'. Candidate Paladino would also have these poor people employed in State sponsored occupations. Not a very humanitarian platform to run on....

Victorian England had them and they were called poorhouses. Rounding up all these poor people and institutionalizing them in Work Camps seems a little draconian. Being poor is bad enough, now you're in jail. Mr Paladino refers to these camps as 'dormitories'. A gilded cage is still a cage no matter the name.

Mr Paladino is obviously a Republican and he mirrors the agenda of the Republican Party. The Party slogan is simple, "Just Say No" to everything.

There is no such thing as bad publicity in politics. Come up with a thoroughly disgusting plan to handle the economy and somewhere there is a lug nut who will vote for you.

Politics used to be an honourable profession, or so I've heard. What happened? Talking smack, actually talking bizarre smack about your opponent, or the President, gets even the most obscure politician in the headlines.

Voters have short memories and the name will stick, not the reason why they remember them.

Getting caught up in the fervor of the moment, President Obama declared his solidarity with Muslims to a Muslim audience. Did this make him a Muslim? Not at all, no more than President Kennedy's famous 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech made him a German. Obama said he admires Islam, which is a religion. Not a bad thing actually.

President Obama made the speech with the point being, that he can relate to them and he supports them. This was Obama's "Ich bin ein Muslim speech" and shouldn't be taken literally.

Politicians are a chameleon-like bunch when giving speeches, the speech is tailor made to the audience at hand. President Kennedy could just as well given an NAACP speech in Montgomery, Alabama and declared "Ich bin ein Negro", to the audience.

It would have been in English of course, but then again I'm getting carried away with the moment.

I'm not a religious person, thank God, and I don't understand the misplaced anger at Muslims here. 68% of Americans are opposed to a Muslim Community Center not far from Ground Zero. A mosque is strictly a religious structure and even the most moderate Muslim wouldn't put a basketball court in it, which this one has.

This same percentage supports Freedom of Religion, which is a Right under The Constitution. You can't have it both ways. Republicans are staunch supporters of The Constitution and so far have proposed forty two amendments to it.

The Constitution isn't a salad bar where you can pick and choose what you like.

Muslims are an easy target. How do you defend your entire religion based on the actions of a radical minority? Obviously you can't. Anti-Islamic fervor and actions are sprouting up like mushrooms across the States. Today it's a Muslim Centre in Manhattan, tomorrow it's a community Mosque in Peorria, Illinois.

Martin Niemöller, a German Pastor in the Resistance put it best.

"In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me." I admire President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg for speaking out, someone should...

Across the Pond