John McCain's Palin: A Collage of Perspectives

The Republican Perspective

Colin Powell, President Bush’s former Secretary of State, said that her unreadiness to be president was a significant factor in his endorsement of the Democrat last week. Ken Adelman, a Republican hawk and former close friend of Dick Cheney who has become disillusioned with the Bush Administration, is backing Mr Obama. He said that the choice of Mrs Palin had made him switch sides.

The Ethical Perspective Part 1

The Governor of Alaska spoke hours before giving a sworn deposition in the Troopergate inquiry in a hotel in St Louis, Missouri, as a second investigation opened into whether she abused her office by trying to have a state policeman fired to settle a personal score. A first report issued earlier this month concluded that she violated ethics laws in attempts to get her former brother-in-law sacked.

The Voter Perspective

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll on Wednesday asked voters what concerns them about the Republican ticket, and Mrs Palin was the No 1 worry for them; 47 per cent had a negative impression of her, while only 38 per cent saw her in a positive light. Her inexperience and faltering responses to foreign policy questions has also helped to erase the “Palin bounce” that boosted the ticket in the fortnight after she was chosen: 55 per cent now think that she is unqualified to be president, a troublesome number given Mr McCain’s age.


The Ethical Perspective Part 2

Meanwhile a Republican election worker who claimed that a black man had carved a “B” into her cheek after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car has confessed that she invented the story. Mrs Palin telephoned Ashley Todd, 20, a white college student from Texas, expressing her concern. Last night Pittsburgh police arrested and charged the woman with making a false report.

The Venezuelan Perspective

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a confused "beauty queen". "I saw the vice presidential candidate, there she was talking about 'the dictator Hugo Chavez.' The poor thing, you just feel sorry for her," he said during a televised broadcast. "She's a beauty queen that they've pulled out to be a figurehead. We need to say as Christ did: Forgive her, she knows not what she's saying," he said.

The Ethical Perspective Part 3

New reports of Palin's misspending government funds for personal financial benefit emerged from an Associated Press investigation this week. Palin charged taxpayers over $20,000 to pay for her daughters to travel with her to events to which they were not invited, including 64 one-way and 12 round-trip tickets, as well as the girls' own expensive hotel rooms. In all, previous reports have estimated Palin charged taxpayers more than $43,000 in travel expenses for family members.
If that weren't enough, it seems Palin lied on official reimbursement forms, saying the girls were invited when, according to organizers of the events, they were not. But it doesn't stop there. Apparently, after she was tapped as Sen. John McCain's running mate, Palin went back and amended the expense reports with language to make the travel sound like official business, as is necessary for reimbursement under Alaska state law.

The United States as a Union Perspective

The Alaska Independence Party calls itself the third largest organization in the United States. Its platform calls for the defense of "states rights," to "seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution." Basically, the AIP wants a vote on secession. The AIP says that Gov. Sarah Palin used to be a member of the party. Earlier this year, Palin recorded a welcoming address to the AIP's convention. At the AIP's meeting, the AIP's vice chairman, Dexter Carter, extols Gov. Palin's virtues. He went on to recall Palin's service as a member of the party.

The Ethical Perspective Part 4

Gov. Sarah Palin is campaigning as a budget watchdog eager to shave frivolous government spending. That image took a hit Tuesday when The Washington Post reported the governor charges the state for travel expenses while living at her Wasilla home, and the Palin camp defended her conservative credentials. The newspaper reported that Palin billed the state for meal money while spending more than 300 nights at her Valley home during her first 19 months in office. The money is supposed to be used for when an official travels on state business, not for a commute from an Anchorage office to a home in Wasilla.

The Cosmetic/Hairstylist/Garment Industry Perspective

After Sarah Palin came under scrutiny for her wardrobe expenses, new details have emerged, which show that US Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign paid 3 makeup artists a total of $52,000 over 6 weeks.

It also emerged that the highest-paid McCain staff member for the first two weeks of this month was Mrs Palin’s make-up artist. Amy Strozzi, who once did make-up work on the television show So You Think You Can Dance?, received $22,800 for that fortnight, more than the candidate’s chief foreign policy adviser.

Palin's traveling hair stylist Angela Lew, the fourth highest paid individual during that time, was paid $10,000 over two weeks in October for what the campaign called "communications consulting."

Palin has come under scrutiny this week when it was disclosed the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on her wardrobe at high-end department stores like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. Palin argued the clothes were bought for the Republican National Convention. Read more!

Karma bites O.J. Simpson in the Ass

Instant karmas gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin at fools like me
Who in the hell do you think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

John Lennon, "Instant Karma"

Karma is one of the Eastern World's mystic concepts that is most known in the Western World. Karma is defined by Wikipedia as the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called samsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies. Sir Issac Newton demonstrated the concept through his Third Law of Motion which states "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". It has been encorporated into American idiom through the saying "What goes around comes around". Saint Paul spoke of it to the Galatians: "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap". Boy George sang of it in "Karma Chameleon", David Bowie in "Karma Man", Alicia Keys in "Karma".

If anyone looked at the AP Newswire Service from October 4, 2008 they would find a fine example of "Karma in Action" through the following:

Thirteen years to the day after being acquitted of killing his wife and her friend in Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.

The 61-year-old former football star was convicted of all 12 counts late Friday after jurors deliberated for more than 13 hours. He released a heavy sigh as the charges were read and was immediately taken into custody.

Simpson, who went from American sports idol to celebrity-in-exile after his murder acquittal, could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Read more!

Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2008

Moscow is the world’s most expensive city for expatriates for the third consecutive year, according to the latest Cost of Living Survey from Mercer. Tokyo is in second position climbing two places since last year, whereas London drops one place to rank third. Oslo climbs six places to 4th place and is followed by Seoul in 5th. Asunción in Paraguay is the least expensive city in the ranking for the sixth year running. Dublin remains the world's 16th most expensive city and Europe's 8th most expensive.

Mercer’s survey covers 143 cities across six continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. It is the world’s most comprehensive cost of living survey and is used to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees.

Buenos Aires ranked as the 138th cheapest city for expats in the world (with only 5 cities coming in as cheaper than here).

source
source Read more!

Argentina's Uncertain Economic Future

El Presidenta is going to have several problems to deal with moving forwards. Obviously a lack on industrialization in this country is going to continue to plague the country but unfortunately the problems confronting Argentina are far more serious than that.

The government is spending up its foreign reserves at an alarming rate to keep the peso artificially low. They are having a bit of a reprieve currently since the dollar is weak, but they are still spending a fortune to keep it as high as it is here. Looking at this in the long term, internationally the dollar has depreciated by more than 40% since 2001. Here in Argentina an increase of 300% was realized.

La Nacion recently talked about the lack of investor confidence and the necessity to continue this pattern of purchasing dollars to devaluate the peso: "The loss of confidence has been enormous; the loss of banking deposits and the increased purchases of dollars shows the authorities’ limitations, and in any case the odds increase of Argentina selling reserves to make the dollar go down because they cannot do anything else”, according to another businessman.

Then you have to consider Argentina’s decision to limit its food commodity exports on items such as meat, wheat, corn and the like. The intended result was the containment of internal inflation, yet Argentina now has an inflationary problem far worse than they had two years ago. This situation in turn has been exacerbated by the fact that they no longer have the export revenues they once did due to this policy.

Investments have all but dried up in the country and recently it was given the investment grade of a country “not to be trusted”. According to La Nación: “The uncertainty with respect to the evolution of this situation in Argentine has affected businessmen at the highest levels. `Curiously, nobody in the highest levels of government seems to know what will happen in next the 12 hours', says an executive that used to have good rapport with the administration of the Kirchners”.

And to top all of that off, the country actively engages in publishing false statistics regarding the state of the economy and inflation in particular. This in turn has deteriorated investor confidence to the point that virtually no one wants to invest any money here.

So what does the government intend to do? The Economist noted that rather than moving to correct the problems, the Kirchners have simply “whitewashed the effects of inflation” by canceling the publication of official poverty statistics. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit has also observed that Cristina has continued her husband’s “commitment to a weak currency policy... and to heterodox measures such as price caps, cross-subsidies and export taxes”. On June 10th Argentina updated the method by which it determines its Consumer Price Index. According to this new system every time a product’s price rises too sharply, it will simply be removed from the index on the theory that consumers will switch to other goods after being deterred by the new cost.

Energy is going to be one of the largest issues plaguing Argentine stability. Nestor put a freeze on prices about six years ago in an attempt to level inflation in other areas he could not control. This prize freeze has had two long term effects:

• The industry has pretty much halted research & development and the expansion of facilities and services;
• Investment, particularly foreign, has dried up in that sector.

Next we have issues regarding the petroleum industry. The penguins have been actively controlling internal prices. Why? Again, they are trying to artificially manipulate inflation in the country by putting price caps on items they can control hoping that once the overall cost of living is averaged out inflation will remain at a manageable level. Of course this is not working out as well as hoped.

At the heart of this matter is the fact that the price for a barrel of oil is around U$S40 dollars internally while imported oil is going for nearly U$S 140. The only solution to this situation seems to be either raising the internal price of oil to match that of international rates or to raise taxes so that the government can subsidize the oil industry.

La Nación recently noted: “In Buenos Aires Province the situation has been repeated in several locations. In Bolívar, a town of 30,000 inhabitants 300 kilometers from Capital Federal, there are 12 service stations that have not sold any gasoline or diesel since last Sunday. In La Plata, as much as 90% of the service stations were out of fuel as of yesterday. Meanwhile, Mar del Plata is also experiencing fuel shortages. In San Juan the fuel shortage worsened with gas rising to about 30 pesos. Recently in San Salvador, a municipality of Jujuy, a state of emergency was declared regarding transportation services due to a lack of diesel. In Mendoza diesel is selling at the price of 30 to 50 pesos, and Tucuman is experiencing long lines in stations in the capital to purchase fuel, fuel that many stations no longer have. In many of the interior zones such as Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero and Chaco more than 50 percent of the stations are shut down”.

The interesting thing is that at a time of international food shortages and increasing prices, Argentina is potentially in the best economic situation it has found itself in for decades. Yet the political climate here is such that it is very probable that Argentina could find itself continuing its cycle of “boom or bust”.

I certainly hope not. Read more!