When I wote this 18 months ago I little thought that it would lead me to breakfast in Chicago this morning. Later today I am going downtown to meet up with C4Pers and finally put some faces to names I only know from the comments section. According to the US media (and many UK drones) I will be mixing up with characters straight out of Lil Abner but somehow I have my doubts about that…

It’s good to be back in America after ten years though I doubt this time I will meet Bo Diddley in a lift. Some things don’t change, though – I had to tell the cabbie how to get to my overnight hotel from O’Hare and US customs still seemed obsessed with the risk of me bringing in apples but this time the lines were better managed and the officers slightly more cheerful than in the nineties.

BTW 1 – if anyone wants a nice, clean but not wallet busting hotel as a base for exploring Chicago then the Quality Inn O’Hare would be an excellent choice. It has a good restaurant and a lively bar – and the desk clerk not only recognised me as an inter-galactic hero but is also a Chelsea fan….(that’s real football, of course…lol..)

BTW2 – now wouldn’t it be good to see a certain person as President representing the US  here in 2015…..

So off now to the city centre clutching my UK passport and wearing my Remembrance Day poppy…

From remarks contained in a preview of Gov Palin’s reference to Quantitative Easing obtained by  NRO the lady seems a tad underwhelmed by the Federal Reserve’s proposal to buy billions of dollars worth of US government securities with money it has created ex nihilo (as a Roman might say) or, as Palin expresses it, “out of thin air”

The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.
And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?

Naturally several of the comments were disparaging – the idea that some housewife from Wasilla (interesting how this has been airbrushed out of the narrative) should criticise Ben Bernanke over quantitative easing aroused peals of merriment in some quarters.

I doubt seriously Palin even knows what the Fed is. Someone had to have written this speech for her.
…….
Okay, so Sarah Palin is “challenging” Bernanke’s decisions. I’m sure that’s really got him rethinking everything: “Well, if Sarah Palin says I’m taking the wrong tact here, by golly I’d better reconsider!”

Oh yes – let’s have a great laugh at Sarah Palin’s lack of enthusiasm for Bernanke’s policy. And while were at it let’s poke fun at Federal board member Kevin Warsh, and World Bank president Robert Zoellick…..and the chief of Brazil’s Central Bank…

As for the Germans – this guy is a real barrel of laughs

“A policy error,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann from Commerzbank. The wording of the Fed statement is “potentially dangerous” because it leaves the door open to a further flood of Treasury purchases if unemployment stays high. “It is a bottomless pit,” he said.

Palin, Zoellick, Warsh, the Germans, Brits, Chinese, Brazilians…..what the hell do they know about money……

Of course there is an element of snark in this BBC piece on the latest Palin video but there is also a reluctant admission

It is one minute and nine seconds of pure advertising genius – a dazzling calling card from the woman who, most now agree, wants to be president.

The writer, Paul Adams, is naturally sniffy about the imagery, calling it “political bromide”. That had me laughing into my morning cuppa as I recalled the hours of relentless left/liberal twaddle pumped out by the beeb, not to mention those 2008 Obama hopey/changey speeches (available in a discount bin near you…)

You know that within what would be described as the “brain” of Adams the BBC chip is frantically signalling the official media elite line on Palin – irrelevant, ignorant, shallow – and the stock phrases come out

“an apparent rainbow coalition of candidates favoured by Ms Palin” (she’s really a racist)
“a populist jab at Washington politics.” (she’s appealing to the great unwashed of America)
“a shameless reference to the most famous three words ever uttered by the man who once made everyone feel good, Ronald Reagan.” (she’ll milk anything to make a point)

But the chip is sometimes suppressed by vestiges of his pre-programmed mind

We’re going to get back to the time-tested truths that made this country great,” she says.
These, Sarah Palin seems to be saying, are my people. My coalition. Not just the honest, hard-working, flag-waving Americans seen throughout, but the candidates just elected to office on a wave of Tea Party fervour – and all those pictured celebrating on election night.
The true brilliance, apart from the sheer speed with which the piece was put together, lies in an apparent rainbow coalition of candidates favoured by Ms Palin – Latinos, Marco Rubio in Florida and Susana Martinez in New Mexico; African Americans, Allen West in Florida and Tim Scott in South Carolina and an Indian American, Nikki Hayley in South Carolina.
It’s a collection of faces clearly designed to puncture the Tea Party’s images as solidly white.

In actual fact I think that Adams has been embedded with the MK II PDS chip now emanating from Washington and obviously delivered to the comrades at the BBC. For the MSM she remains, of course, essentially vapid, ignorant and devoid of ideas but she is no longer stupid. If you read between the lines of the Adams article the message coming out is that she is cunning – or, as Blackadder once said “As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University”

They still want to bring her down but time has taught them to extremely wary of her which, in a way, is a mark of respect for her power.

Strange conduct indeed for people who claim to see a Palin candidacy as a surefire conduit towards Obama’s re-election…..

US TV network CBS has an affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska – KTVA. Naturally KTVA is reporting the forthcoming election for one of Alaska’s two Senate seats. The Republican candidate is Joe Miller who is backed by the Tea Party movement.

It appears that the following conversation between two KTVA reporters was inadvertently left on the phone of a member of Joe Miller’s staff after a reporter from the station had been speaking to him. The reporter obviously forgot to disconnect from the Miller operative’s phone.

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…
[Laughter]
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…
MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.
[Laughter]
MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’
FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.
[Laughter]
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.

KTVA have not denied that this conversation was between two of their reporters but claim that it has been taken out of context and that they were merely discussing possible scenarios of what might happen at the Joe Miller rally.

Established US media hacks appear to have taken the KTVA statement at face value but the perception that this is yet another example of left wing media bias is beginning to gain traction particularly as Drudge has picked it up.

Have yet to find anything about this at the BBC…but then I expect there would never ever be a conversation like this at the Beeb which is always an exemplar of even handed political and cultural neutrality……

The UK spectator’s Coffee House blog sometimes comments about US politics from a supposedly right wing perspective but when I say that it generally references Brooks, Frum, Sullivan and Douthat probably guess the nature of it’s conservatism can easily be guessed.

Hence over the last two years the contributors have either ignored Sarah Palin or treated her with disdain. Similarly the well educated young chaps at the Coffee House completely ignored the town halls and other meetings that saw the birth of the Tea Party movement in 2009. Only in recent months, when GOP primary contests began to get under way did the movement become a topic of interest.

Now suddenly Palin appears at Coffee House as a person who could have a strong chance of getting the GOP nomination for 2012 – and regular readers must become puzzled for had not The Coffee House consistently dismissed her as an ignorant, uneducated irrelevance whose five minutes of fame fizzled out in November 2008 and totally evaporated a few months later when she resigned as Governor of Alaska?

Never fear for they have her measure. In a recent post resident superbrain Peter Hoskin gets us all the right stuff directly from the horse’s mouth – The New York Magazine (the natural home of all unbiased news and views on Palin) where John Heilemann wrote a strange article about Bloomberg running as a third party candidate, splitting the liberal/left vote with Obama and letting Palin win the White house.

Naturally this made Hoskin totally orgasmic because, like Heilemann and other pundits they are still hooked on meaningless favourability polls two years out of an election.

Two points to note. Heilemann is a liberal who thinks Obama has not been liberal enough. Secondly his claim to be a pundit whose words should be regarded with awe need to be taken with a pinch of salt because, in September, he poured scorn on Sharron Angle’s chances of beating Reid in Nevada, calling her a “nuthouse resident”…..mmmmm…checked the current polls yet, Mr H?

But then only someone like Hoskin at the Coffee house would assume that an article in The New York  Magazine would be a worthwhile gauge of anything Palin. But then I guess they would prefer something that reinforced their own prejudices rather than “Five Myths about Sarah Palin” by Matthew Continetti in The Washington Post ….I wonder why?

Jeremy Warner at the UK Telegraph has never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman  – “Nobel prizewinner and NYT columnist” (love how Warner makes that read as a put down…) but Obama’s pet economist has taken a step too far.

Not content with being the patron saint of the Pelosi/Reid/Obama deficit he has now turned his gimlet eye eastwards across the ocean and reeled back in horror at our coalition governments deficit reduction plan.

premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it

In fact Chancellor Osborne’s plan turned out to be a little less draconian than expected. Nevertheless over the next five years government departments have been told to reduce spending by 19% and a fair number of public sector jobs will be axed. The aim is fairly simple

To eliminate the structural deficit by balancing the cyclically-adjusted current budget over five years, by 2015-16. The coalition government have set a target of national debt falling as a proportion of national income by that same year – but will aim to do this one year earlier, by 2014-15.

As Warner points out Krugman is correct when he reminds us that in historical terms our UK public debt is not at a historical high. What he fails to reveal, however, is that those highs have almost always been at times of intense military struggle – the Napoleonic wars, the Boer war and, of course, the two world wars.

At the end of the nineteenth century Britain was still one of the world’s economic super powers. Germany and the USA were catching up fast but it is a mistake to assume that our economic decline was inevitable. However the burden of global war meant that victory was purchased at high cost

The big point missed by those who think elevated public debt doesn’t matter is that these periods of excessive debt utterly crippled the UK economy. Indeed, Britain’s decline through the twentieth century as an economic superpower directly correlates with increased indebtedness. Fighting wars is not good for economic health

Today’s massive public debt in both the UK and USA is not caused by excessive military spending. The current conflicts are marginal and, like Britain’s nineteenth century colonial wars, the costs recoverable once the issue is resolved. But if Iraq and Afghanistan were overnight to turn into models of peace and brotherly love the Krugman/Obama deficit would still be there, a baleful presence looming over American society – and for Warner that is indeed a chilling thought.

We cannot rely on demilitarisation to come to the rescue of the public finances, as it has in the past. Public debt is excessive for entirely different reasons – the excess in public spending is not on fighting wars but on treating ourselves – and unless America does something about it soon, the US will decline economically and geo-politically over the next fifty years as surely as Britain did in the last century.

Cameron, Osborne and even their Liberal Democrat coalition partners have grasped this cold hard fact and have bitten on the bullet. So indeed has Merkel and even Sarkozy.

Which leaves Krugman and his deficit denying pupils in Washington dancing America in the other direction looking for rainbows and unicorns.  But nothing will be found except the city in the valley of darkness and the gentle but inevitable disintegration of a once great nation.

And the grandchildren will be paying the price….

• Advice for UK Coalition on helping the poor – find out what Obama’s doing – then do the opposite…
• Maggie hopefully recovering…
• Meet the Deficit Denying Dinosaurs..
• BBC boss says left wing bias OK – but be discreet when you tweet..
• Ken Livingstone and the Islamic Republic in London’s East End…
• UK Teachers Union trying to undermine school reforms using intimidation by stealth..
• Obscene? £200,000 per week for doing this …
• Everyone wants an Essex girl….
• and FINALLY……UK politician’s wife and mistress argue over pussy…

Glancing through Sheya’s recent C4P open thread I clicked on his link to Dan Evon’s interview with Mark Burnett, Executive Producer of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” and one of the biggest names in TV in the US and UK . By the very nature of the project Burnett and his crew became very close to the governor and her family and Evon was interested to get a take on his experience.

Burnett was keen to work with Sarah Palin from the moment she burst onto the national political scene in August 2008 and, interestingly enough, he was just one of hundreds who had similar ambitions even after the election when she became, to so many “experts” from the left and the right, an irrelevancy who would soon melt back into the arctic tundra. Hard nosed media operatives like Burnett obviously had a better grasp of her impact on America than the Frums and Parkers chattering away at their Beltway cocktail parties.

It’s a short chat rather than a full length interview but out of it come some interesting snapshots of life with the Palins so it’s worth a read. But two quotes particularly struck home.

On Todd Palin

Todd is like Captain America. This guy, this guy is super tough. He can actually do it all.

On Sarah Palin

And Sarah, you know, she makes comments because she’s Sarah. As you saw in that first clip, she’s just Sarah

She’s just Sarah.

In that short sentence Burnett gets right to the heart of the Palin mystery – something that still puzzles the sophisticates at Tina Brown’s soirees. Palin’s appeal is as much chemistry as politics and it is not surprising that Burnett, of all people, should get it because he also is a bit of an outsider. He is no limp wristed, arty farty pseud out of an expensive private school and ivy league frat house going all radical chic with the boyz from the ‘hood. He is the real deal.

Burnett is a Brit from London’s East End whose parents moved to Dagenham to work in the Ford factory. When he was seventeen he joined the British army and then spent four years in the Parachute Regiment. The Paras are one of the UKs toughest military outfits and Burnett rose to be a section commander serving at the sharp end in Northern Ireland and the Falklands. In the early eighties he left the army and flew to America hoping to get some freelance military work. Instead he worked as a nanny (!), sold insurance, peddled T shirts and did credit card marketing, accumulating a fair amount of money on the way.

One day in 1991 he read about a French survival competition, entered it with some friends and, realising the potential ,pitched it to TV companies. The result – “Survivor”, one of the most successful franchises on television and just the first of many other popular programmes.

So when Burnett calls Todd Palin “Captain America” that is praise indeed. Burnett is the sort of man who could survive in the wilderness on a diet of nails and chunks of concrete so I would guess he slotted quite neatly into the Palin household.

Mark Burnett and the Palins – somewhere in a bar on Mount Olympus Jack London, John Buchan and Mark Twain are looking down and appreciating the moment over their glasses of heavenly whisky.

And Sarah? She’s just being…..Sarah….

Further to my post yesterday about the rather odd political perambulations of the UK Telegraph, owned by the  Barclay Brothers, additional evidence of loosening screws at this ostensibly right wing newspaper can be found in the decision to provide a regular platform for Lindy West.
West is, apparently, the Film Editor at The Stranger described by the chaps at the Telegraph as “Seattle’s alternative newsweekly” – hands up those who are immediately thinking pretentious, self important, poseur, rich parents etc etc….

Want a flavour of The Stranger? Two articles will provide the encapsulated essence of it’s core values…..Stop The GOP and F### The South….job done, I fancy….
Add into the mix Ms West and there you have the ultimate Kos cocktail guaranteed to raise smiles at Styrofoam columns everywhere for she has planted her cultural flag squarely in the “conservatives are racist” camp by eviscerating the film “The Stoning of Soraya M”

The film, based on a best selling book written by Freidoune Sahebjam, a French-Iranian journalist , tells the story of a Muslim woman, living in an nameless Arab country whose husband concocts a tale of adultery which leads to her being stoned to death by a mob of villagers encouraged by the local mullah.

For one reviewer the film was beautifully constructed

There’s a lovely elegance to the sparse interiors of these pale-stone houses, painted in glorious shades of turquoise and mustard yellow, which somehow makes the subject matter even more ghastly. Sunflowers grow in the meadows; flocks of birds rise above the nightmare below

Not so for Lindy West

Now, I’m not sure if you know what it looks like when someone is stoned to death, but this movie will inform you: First they tie your hands behind your back. Then they bury you in the ground up to your waist. Then everyone you know (your dad, your kids, your husband, the mayor) throws rocks at your head until you are dead. The stoning scene is long, detailed, bloody, and unforgiving, recalling nothing so directly as The Passion of the Christ. And it’d be no surprise if the same Christian extremists who evangelised Passion attach to this one just as fiercely: it demonises an entire religious group while purporting a message of equality. Gross

So you see, folks it’s all those Christian extremists (clinging to their guns and religion) who are the real villains in this piece by daring..DARING…to use facts to criticise the cultural practice to be found in certain areas of the Muslim world. Stoning is nasty, wails Ms West but Christian extremists alluding to it are even nastier.

Would she say the same thing about “The Crucible” by the left’s favourite writer Arthur Miller where 17th century American Protestants hang (and in one case stone to death) fellow townspeople in a crusade against witchcraft? I wonder….

Why has is the Telegraph paying her thousands of dollars to pump out her meanderings? Who knows – but at least if you look at the comments on her post Telegraph readers are not impressed…indeed the prickly Lindy appears to be one of those pontificating lefties who love to dish it out but who are far less keen to ride the punches when they are thrown back at her.

“Oh, Telegraph commenters. You are like aliens to me.” she tweeted as she banked her five figure cheque from the Telegraph…

On the very day the liberal/left UK Guardian, to it’s credit, gave a platform to US right wing and pro Tea Party and pro Palin media star Tammy Bruce the so called conservative UK Telegraph gave the nod to their US based hack Alex Spillius to sneer at Palin for her Tweet mistake which she corrected ten minutes later. He then used this as a hook to question her suitability for office and linked this to so-called “gaffes” by Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell. The implication was that the two Tea Party endorsed GOP candidates, dubbed “Mama Grizzlies” by Palin, were just too dense for higher politics and such mistakes would not be made by the Republican “reliables” favoured by the Beltway strategists, consultants and lobbyists  who are messing their pants at the prospect of a new wave of deficit reducing, pork busting small government radicals ready and eager to clean up Washington.

Notice that the eagle eyed Spillius just missed out an an even bigger Palin gaffe that sent scores of liberal/left US tweeters howling with derision – the ‘Cudah’s cry to party like 1773 at a Tea Party/Angle rally in Nevada. They scoffed, Spillius-like, at her “ignorance” assuming she had meant to say 1776 (the year of the US Declaration of Independence)…what the missed, however, was that she was referencing, at a Tea Party rally, the year of the Boston Tea Party….1773.

The counter attack was withering – the best takedown was at the Perfunction Blog where lots of kind people noticed that the leading left wing blogger, Markos Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos had led and orchestrated the anti Palin sneers. Twitter has since been swamped by #KosHistoryQuiz where helpful hints were suggested to Markos as guidelines for his understanding of US history.

But nothing of this from Spillius.

It appears that the powers that be at the Telegraph look more towards David Brooks than Sarah Palin for their definition of “the Right Stuff” and Spillius is dancing to their tune. If so then then maybe of of the comments following the piece has possibly hit the nail on the head…

Question is more is Alex Spillius ready for prime time election reporting than are the prime time grizzlies ready for office.

C’mon, Alex! I usually give you a break but this oh-so-studied “bad cop’ routine is getting old. You no longer fool anybody. Well, at least you no longer fool me.