Palin’s international connection

<a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_idlYwkc9AhE/SN7ETrdSsWI/AAAAAAAAEq0/_OPCWSmDY-4/s1600-h/palinsyrah.jpg”><img style=”float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_idlYwkc9AhE/SN7ETrdSsWI/AAAAAAAAEq0/_OPCWSmDY-4/s200/palinsyrah.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”"id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250850057922720098″ /></a>Her detractors say GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has no experience in international matters. One product from a boutique Chilean winery might be pointed to by her supporters as evidence of her international reach.

It’s called Palin Syrah.

The actual pronunciation is <span style=”font-style:italic;”>pah-leen</span>, referring to the ball in a Chilean-style hockey game.

We know such plays on names are all part of the ephemeral thing that is politics, and reading any significance into them is about as useful as, well, as putting lipstick on a pig, as some current poltical hacks would say.

Nevertheless, Fox News thought it important enough to have a reporter for its election news Web site check out the political and business implications of such a wine being available to American consumers.

The bottom line, says Fox, is that San Franciscans are so left-wing they hate anything remotely resembling a Republican in name, wine or anything else, so Palin Syrah is being shunned even though it sold well before anyone outside her state knew of Sarah Palin. And, meanwhile, in the Republican stronghold of Texas, the wine is selling like mad.

If you must read the whole story, just click <a href=”http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/24/palin-syrah-wine-drinkers-balk-at-a-chilean-wine-with-hints-of-alaska/”>here</a>.

My opponent is a #*+?%^# — every day

From the Associated Press:

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. – Recalling the nation’s unity in a time of peril seven years ago, presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama placed their partisan contest on hold Thursday and spoke as one in honoring of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama and McCain were making ground zero in New York their common ground, joining in homage to the dead from the fallen Twin Towers and the hijacked planes flown into them.

What a shame. Not that they claimed respect for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but that the so-called “attack ads” have been halted for a moment.

Why? Because such ads tell me, a voter, as much about the character and aims of the candidates who approve them as do position papers written for them by a gazillion aides.

When did the rough-and-tumble American political process become so politically correct that it became a no-no to say nasty things about the opposition? It has been part of our national tradition as long as we have been a nation. Don’t mess with a good thing.

What would Winston Churchill do?

Here’s an actual BBC video of Georgia President Saakashvili conferring with another world leader over Russia’s armed attacks on the small nation.

What do you get for the man who has everything?

News Item: Former South African President Nelson Mandela has been taken off the U.S. terror watch list. President George W. Bush signed a bill removing him and other members of the African National Congress from the list that has kept them from entering the U.S., except to visit the United Nations complex, without special dispensation from the U.S. Secretary of State.

This from a government that allowed suspected and known terrorists into the country for years and, for all we know in this era of keeping as much as possible secret from the public, still does.

It all came about when Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) was designated as a terrorist organization by South Africa’s old apartheid regime back in 1960.

Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for working against the policy of racial terrorism, became his nation’s first post-apartheid president but the U.S. inexplicably kept the ANC on its terror watch list.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called the restrictions a “rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela.”

Bush’s action is a nice birthday present for Mandela who will turn 90 this month.

Knocking ‘em back with Hillary

If Hillary Rodham Clinton makes it to the White House, we know one thing that will be on the daily agenda: The return of the cocktail hour.

The current top resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue doesn’t drink anymore, and there have been other teetotalers in the White House. But many of our presidents were known for their cocktail preferences. George Washington ran his own distillery. John Adams started his day with hard cider. Thomas Jefferson even introduced the presidential cocktail party.

In later years, Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly mixed up a martini — the real kind, with gin — to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition. John F. Kennedy regularly served daiquiris aboard the presidential yacht. Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon both enjoyed drinking Scotch.

Now we have Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely contenders for the office in November, each of whom has the occasional drink. But Clinton makes no bones about enjoying her drinks more than they do, and likes them neat, as this photo — one of a series taken aboard her plane by the Associated Press and made available here in slideshow format — shows after a campaign stop in South Dakota this week.

Clinton also made news a few weeks ago when she had a shot of whiskey and a beer with some members of the public during a campaign stop in Indiana, but this is the first time she let her hair down with reporters. This time, she showed the good sense to avoid the Canadian whiskey she had in Indiana and enjoyed a shot of Maker’s Mark bourbon from Kentucky, US of A.

Here’s a video of her Indiana outing:

Low times in the Highlands

ABERDEENSHIRE, Scotland — Here I am, traveling in the Highlands of Scotland, where life seems to move at a snail’s pace, history is apparent all around you, and the place looks rock solid.

Literally, since nearly every structure is made of granite blocks or stone and their longevity morphs from one century to the next with little apparent difference.

Yet all the newspapers are dwelling heavily on only three topics:

1. How silly British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is being made to look because of a tell-all book from ex-PM Tony Blair’s oputspoken wife, Cherie, who (shock and awe!) doesn’t care for Gordon.

2. How rocky the financial situation is “north of the border,” which means Scotland itself where housing prices are skyrocketing, inflation is rising at a faster rate (3.5%) than anywhere else in the United Kingdom (which includes England, Wales and Northern Ireland), and unemployment is on the rise.

3. How bad the alcohol abuse is getting, a particular problem in a country where more than 40,000 people out of a total population of barely 5 million rely on the whisky industry for jobs — and that is not including people in the retail business of selling the stuff.

Some of the solutions that are being suggested from various corners are as hysterical as the incessant reporting on them, except for the Gordon Brown thing which is great theater for the masses who love seeing the balloons of the high and mighty pricked sharply.

For the alcohol problem, the suggestions range from raising the drinking age beyond 21 to raising prices (even though Scotch whisky costs much more in Scotland than it does abroad, due to the regressive taxing policies) or even making public intoxication a higher crime.

As to the financial situation, the ideas range from strict price controls to more restrictive bank loan policies (they have the same problem with sub-prime mortgages we in the U.S. have), although no one wants to officially put forth a comprehensive plan for fear of commiting political suicide.

Oh, there has been one other item in the news. The idea of Scottish independence.

Of course, that one has been rattling around since the 18th Century, when the anti-English rebellion in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie fizzled out after a hideous defeat at Culloden on April 16, 1746. A battle that lasted less than an hour killed 1,500 Highlanders vs. a mere 50 or so English regulars. It effectively broke the back of the Jacobite movement, leading to the banning of such ethnic staples as the playing of the bagpipes and the wearing of the kilts and tartans.

Now there are calls from Sean Connery from the comfort of his homes abroad and other nationalists still residing in Scotland to push forward with a vote on splitting off from the U.K.

As an outsider, I have perhaps a more measured reaction to the idea than someone who is emotionally invested. I think it’s ridiculous. Given all the hoo-haw of financial woes and a bleak outlook for years to come, the last thing that would be needed is trying to establish a truly independent country.

Evidence? Take Scotland’s currency. The Scottish pound is issued by the government, but it also is issued by two different banks. Money from all three sources can be spent anywhere in Scotland, but only those issued by the government are worth anything outside the borders. If they can’t get their act together on a simplified, unified currency recognized worldwide, imagine the problems of being a soveriegn nation with financial woes trying to be trusted financially in a global economy.

Picture, picture on the wall

According to today’s Drudge Report: 

With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama.

The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya. The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.

“Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?” questioned one campaign staffer, in an e-mail obtained by The Drudge Report.

In December, the campaign asked one of its volunteer county coordinators in Iowa to step down after the person forwarded an e-mail falsely stating that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe quickly accused the Clinton campaign Monday of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” for circulating the snap.

Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed.”

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While I have no positive feelings about either candidate, I do find it interesting that this photo …  

 

would be perceived as something that potential voters could construe as scary any more than I would find the same thing to be true of these photos taken while “going native” on tour.

What I would be afraid of if I were on the Clinton team is if anyone started sending around candid photos of her everyday antics on the campaign trail, say like these.

    

Considering the R word

One by one, they’re falling by the wayside.

As the writers union strike drags on, the backlog of completed scripts for most of television’s sit-coms and dramas keeps drying up and the schedule is plunged into an endless loop of re-runs.

For some people, re-runs are a good thing. That’s why there is TVLand, the cable channel that sucks its life blood from re-broadcasting very old series ’round the clock. But, for most people not afflicted by terminal sentimentality, new material is a must. In fact, the majority of them feel as if a chunk has been ripped from their very souls these days.

There is, of course, this controversial thing called reading that might substitute quite nicely for sitting there and having people beam their words into your brain pan.

Not only does it make you get involved in the medium, it gives you the opportunity to pause to think about what you’re consuming, prompts curiosity, allows you to set your consumption schedule, gives you a chance to share an activity with the kids or grandkids … Heck, you can even swat a spider with a book if you’re in a murderous rage when one comes skittering along. Try that with your average TV set.

Reading enough might even help us in this godawful presidential race, if one can call something that has gone on for so long and has another 300 or so days to go a “race.” Instead of relying on TV sound bites, second-hand reports on who said what, and PR persons selling you versions of what the candidates stand for, reading might help you become an informed person who will cast an intelligent vote in November.

Then again, you might just read for fun. Nothing wrong with that. Ask the publishing houses that rely on such frills to make a living.

IF SHE HAD 2, SHE’D BE KING

Despite one campaign glitch after another (*), Hilary continues to insist she wants to become our nation’s second President Clinton.

A noble ambition. She’s swayed some former detractors to her side in her first and only try at handling an elected position, that of junior senator from New York, where in her brief tenure term she’s built up a respectable if not sparkling record.

It is difficult, however, to forget that the first opportunity she had to do anything on a national scale her overriding instinct was to avoid public scrutiny and do things behind closed doors.

If you suffer from American Short-Term Memory Loss, which is pandemic in this country, let me refresh you.

When the original and only President Clinton let the missus head a move to work up a federal health care plan shortly after he first took office, she immediately broke a batch of rules and regulations about little things such as public disclosure, Freedom of Information Law requirements and the like. And, we never did get a workable plan.

And that was without being elected to office. Imagine the temptations she’d have to wrestle with if she actually returned to the White House with a voter mandate.

When William Jefferson Clinton was running for president the first time around, Hillary Rodham Clinton promised voters they’d be getting two for the price of one if they voted for her husband since she’d be working with him.

The same quantitative promise could be made this time as well, except that for a change we’d all really know what we’d be getting. Scary.

* Campaign funding from questionable sources now on the lam from authorities; waffling on Iraq policy; calling for a $5,000 gift to every child born in America, then backtracking when she couldn’t figure out where the money would come from; etc.

DRIVE THAT STEAMROLLER, ELIOT

Few topics have more quickly polarized the community of New York officialdom — and unofficialdom, for that matter — than freshman-year Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to reward scofflaws with driver’s licenses.

More than a dozen county clerks, representative of those offices that dispense the majority of licenses in New York, met this week in Albany to demand a full explanation of the reason behind the governor’s desire to allow illegal aliens to get legal licenses from the state.

Let’s review. In Eliot Spitzer’s world, if you (1.) thumb your nose at U.S. immigration law rather than going through the process to which literally millions of people — probably your ancestors and mine — submitted, then (2.) New York will grant you legitimacy and a license to operate a vehicle anywhere in the U.S., and (3.) no move will be made to penalize you for willfully breaking the law.

This from a law-and-order type who preached strict adherence to the law during his time as state attorney general.

Spitzer, whose family crest is a steamroller crushing any opposition to anything he likes, is sending a dangerous message. In effect, he’s saying that people whose first act in the U.S. is to break the law are every bit as worthy of licensing privileges as those who are law-abiding, legal residents — born, naturalized or government authorized.

Frank Merola, the Rensselaer County clerk, was one of the first to stand up to the Spitzer dictum, and good for him. When a Spitzer representative sent to meet with the clerks in Albany failed to provide more than happy talk and political pap in response to questions from these elected officials, Merola walked out on the session. Again, good for him.

No matter one’s party affiliation, Spitzer’s push to make other elected officials do something of, to put it charitably, questionable legality is the height of arrogance. Their resistance to it is the height of responsible action.

IT’S AN OBAMA-NATION

“No politician on the national scene has currently captured the public’s imagination like Barack Obama. … Generally considered to be the first black candidate with a legitimate chance to win the presidency, he enjoys a unique place in history. That means our readers will have more interest in his early campaign than in others.”

That, in a cracked nutshell, is the logic of one columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for his colleagues’ decision to make a front page story out of the freshman Illinois senator’s visit to the Ohio city.

Nothing happened, He just showed up, a year and a half before voters go to the polls to pick him or some other candidate as our next president.

Speaking from the vantagepoint of someone who spent more than four decades in daily newspaper journalism, I respectfully must point out that no politician on the national scene has currently captured the news media’s imagination like Barack Obama. His suitability for the Democratic presidential nomination was first suggested in the media, then latched onto by the media, then shoved down the collective throats of viewers and readers of the media, then reported back as public interest in the man.

A self-fulfilling prophecy. Sort of scary because, as I’ve noted before, although Obama’s charisma and the fact he’s a fresh face on a very tired national political scene are something to get excited about, his experience beyond the state legislature isn’t. It consists solely of one-third of one U.S. Senate term. That’s not a lot of training for what is arguably the most powerful position in the history of the world.

Where have you gone Tom Vilsack?

Well, now I have no idea how to feel about the race to succeed George W. in the White House.

Over the weekend one of the first candidates bailed out on America. Bye-bye, Tom Vilsack.

Come on, don’t give me that “Tom Who?” stuff. Surely everyone in the country thought the former governor of Iowa was a hot frontrunner. That’s why I’m sure you shared my sadness late Friday when Tom told a shocked nation there were too many people who also wanted to be president and he couldn’t raise enough money to stay competitive with them.

Some of his fellow Democrats who still are angling for the party’s nomination called Tom the Reluctant over the weekend, presumably to tell him how much they admired him. And, oh by the way, would he be kind enough to support them early next year when the Iowa caucuses are held to select a nominee?

Tom the Reluctant was the the first Democratic candidate to enter the 2008 race, but he stayed in only 84 days before crying poor.

“So much of this process now is about perception and money,” he said. “I came up against something for the first time in my life that hard work and effort couldn’t overcome. I just couldn’t work harder, couldn’t give it enough.”

Too bad. I was so looking forward to seeing some fresh faces from both major parties, criss-crossing America and debating, speechifying, cajoling and generally getting people excited about the presidential race, something we haven’t seen in several generations.

Instead, we’re now stuck with whoever piles up the most money getting the nominations, then spending their time in the White House doing favors for all those people who paid their way in. Same old same old.

Forget Barack Obama as a “fresh new face.” He’s far too fresh for me. This is a man who, charisma and annointment-by-media aside, has served on the national stage for precisely one-third of one term in the U.S. Senate. I may want someone who isn’t part of the disappointing pack, but I don’t want a complete novice leading the nation.

And forget Hillary Rodham Clinton. A little of her goes a long way, and a lot of her waffling on major issues will only help her go a little way.

So, as we plunge into this long, long presidential campaign in earnest without any idealistic candidates, look forward to snow jobs of all sorts. Tomorrow’s will probably be in the form of snow showers throughout the early morning and later afternoon, a high in the low 30s, and light, variable winds.

MOURNING IN AMERICA

It is tempting at the start of a new year to look ahead with enthusiasm. It is more realistic to temper that excitement with a cold splash of reality on the face.

In some places in America, it was, indeed, a new day. Not only did the calendar change, but newly-elected politicians were sworn into office, college football bowl games were played, seemingly ’round the clock, and revelers got an extra day off from work to recover from their Eve revels.

In Iraq, we are told, the death toll among American service personnel has hit 3,000.

The Great Bush Crusade claims victim after victim with little, if anything, to show for it but death, death and more death. In the grand scheme of warfare, 3,000 is a paltry number in the annals of world history. Obviously, though, if it is a wasted 3,000 lives — and there is precious little to support any contrary view — the number is staggering.

The debilitating aspect of this toll is that we have nothing but the end of George Bush’s term of office two years hence to show us light at the end of the tunnel. But we thought the same thing about a potential end to our escalating involvement in Vietnam and there was no sudden finish to that despite a change of administration.

POLITICS IS POLITICS

A funny thing happened on the way to the president’s office over the past few days.

• In Liberia, the first woman (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) elected head of an African nation was inaugurated in revolt-shredded Monrovia, the capital city, after the main thoroughfare had been spruced up to look different from the charred, garbage-cluttered streets around it.

• In Chile, the first woman (Michelle Bachelet, seen here) elected head of a South American nation gained office by collecting 46.5% of the popular vote in a runoff.

• In Finland, the incumbent female president (Tarja Halonen) failed to be reelected because she collected only 46.5% of the popular vote and now faces a runoff.

Gender, obviously, means very little when you get right down to the realities of nation leading. Polls are polled, promises are made, civil wars are overcome, people are elected, and “the first …” gets that label out of the way so observers can begin looking at more important things.

For Americans, actually paying attention to what is going on in countries other then the usual suspects — England, France, Japan, China and any place beginning with the letter I — rather than focusing on the gender of the people creating the news might be more instructive. In our own chunk of the world, Latin America is in the midst of gigantic political upheavals that the average American doesn’t know are going on even though they will wind up having effects on our food and oil supplies, as well as our own domestic safety.