Journalists constantly complain that because of the racism of America Obama’s skin color may cost him up to 10% in the general election, but they neglect to mention that it probably earned him 20% in the Democratic primary as well as sparing him the trouble of actually having a platform, his past and outlook apparently being, like Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man, written in his skin. And while, if not touched by divine eloquence, he is at least capable of speaking fairly coherently, a skill not common, at least according to popular perception, in either the most famous public figures of his race or recent presidents, a lot of people are quite unduly, condescendingly, impressed by this, even if what he says generally reveals about as much as the misty veil of Utopia. For some clue as to what our future holds, then, maybe we should look to San Francisco, where the authorities are far too respectably economically liberal (in the European sense) to advocate anything so vulgar as the naked expropriation of private property–instead, by their mostly unconditional sanctioning of pandhandling, they just make it de facto illegal to prevent anyone on the streets from taking from the propertied what they like.