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....<span lang="EN">"whose tastefully restored Victorian house,
built by a banker in the days when banks were solid, stands on a busy corner in
Moscow's idyllic middle-class suburbs." To paraphrase BC, "Moscow got suburbs?" I always thought Joel was the closest thing to a Moscow suburb, at least until the tavern closed. Carl Westberg Jr.</span><br><br><hr id="stopSpelling">From: donaldrose@cpcinternet.com<br>To: sslund_2007@verizon.net; ophite@gmail.com; sunilramalingam@hotmail.com<br>Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:33:21 -0800<br>CC: vision2020@moscow.com<br>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Latest Recruiting Tool (was RE: The 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht!)<br><br>
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<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Thanks, Saundra for sharing this article with V2020. Why
is it that the majority of visitors to Nuisance Andrews or other Kirk enterprises
take such apparent joy in belittling or publishing sneering articles about
community? </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Rose Huskey </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<div>
<div style="border-style: solid none none; border-color: rgb(181, 196, 223) -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color; border-width: 1pt medium medium; padding: 3pt 0in 0in;">
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';">From:</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';">
vision2020-bounces@moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com] <b>On
Behalf Of </b>Saundra Lund<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:50 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> 'Andreas Schou'; 'Sunil Ramalingam'<br>
<b>Cc:</b> 'vision 2020'<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Vision2020] Latest Recruiting Tool (was RE: The 70th
anniversary of Kristallnacht!)</span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Andreas
wrote:</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">“</span>Isn't
it interesting that someone totally unaffiliated with Christ Church would
return to smear the Church's least-favorite ex-member?”<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"></span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Maybe
the point was to distract us – have you seen Christ Church’s latest
recruiting tool? Between this and the shameful incident at Farmer’s
Market, they seem to have a lot they hope we won’t notice . . . </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Not
surprisingly, the author of the moronic article in the sad rag clearly missed
the sentiments of those in Latah County since Obama not only captured the
majority vote here, but he also performed respectably out in the county.
And, it’s telling that Hichens seems to have had his head in the sand to
know only about the Palin effigy hanging but to be completely ignorant the Obama
effigy incidents, and to be completely clueless that he was in the heart of an
area where anti-democracy and anti-free speech cowards were stealing Obama
campaign signs by the truckload from the yard of supporters.</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Ah,
well, no one ever accused Peter Hithcens, who was here to speak at NSA, of
being the sharpest knife in the drawer </span><span style="font-family: Wingdings; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">J</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Nonetheless,
the article is definitely worth the read to see what locals had to say –
I certainly learned some things!</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082308/PETER-HITCHENS-The-Zombie-Third-World-Marxist---How-American-West-views-presidential-race.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082308/PETER-HITCHENS-The-Zombie-Third-World-Marxist---How-American-West-views-presidential-race.html</a></span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">OR</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/6yuxea">http://tinyurl.com/6yuxea</a></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-size: 24pt;" lang="EN">PETER HITCHENS: The Zombie and the Third-World
Marxist ... How the American West views the presidential race</span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">From <span style="color: navy;">PETER HITCHENS</span> in Moscow, Idaho<br>
Last updated at 10:11 PM on 01st November 2008</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">They tell me that about one person in 50 on the streets of Moscow,
Idaho, is legally carrying a concealed pistol. A lot more have them in their
cars. I rather approve of this, though I don't think I'll join in. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Many of those packing heat are women combining a hard, practical
feminism with a conservative view of the right to bear arms. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">The important thing is that you don't know who is armed and who isn't,
and nor do potential rapists and muggers. I am sure this arrangement improves
everyone's manners no end. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">It is certainly a very polite place and shoot-outs here are a good deal
rarer than they are in gun-controlled London or Manchester.</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><img id="EC_Picture_x0020_7" src="http://mail.live.com/mail/SafeRedirect.aspx?hm__tg=http://64.4.38.249/att/GetAttachment.aspx&hm__qs=file%3df25ec64e-452a-4e40-abe6-4d1fed4fa777.jpg%26ct%3daW1hZ2UvanBlZw_3d_3d%26name%3daW1hZ2UwMDEuanBn%26inline%3d1%26rfc%3d0%26empty%3dFalse%26imgsrc%3dcid%253aimage001.jpg%254001C944A9.7C703520&oneredir=1&ip=10.6.1.87&d=d2521&mf=0&a=01_04638e1bd41339b2a3ce9289fcdb1d3b670da8b015f3dcba27372dea77b007a0" alt="Peter Hitchens in a gun shop in Moscow, Idaho" border="0" width="468" height="437"><span lang="EN"></span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN">Armed with
words: Peter Hitchens on a visit to a Moscow gun store</span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">As America approaches her most momentous presidential election for
decades, I am in the True (but not specially Wild) West, the top left-hand
corner of the United States, a hard-core Republican state that most visitors
only fly over. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">They think it's dull. How wrong they are. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">This extraordinary, divided little city, enfolded in low, fertile
hills, is America in miniature - split down the middle, Left versus Right,
Christian versus secular, gun-owner versus gun-hater, abortion advocate versus
big-family home-schooling Bible-walloper, cyclist versus gas-guzzler, Obama
versus McCain - and some interesting stations both in between and beyond. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Some local liberals fear that a powerful Calvinist Church plans to turn
Moscow into America's version of Iran's Holy City of Qom. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">All around, in the farm and logging countryside, self-sufficient,
taciturn men in pick-up trucks would rather have a head-on collision with a
freight train than vote for Barack Obama. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Out in the forests and the fields of wheat, peas and lentils, Democrats
are so rare they ought to be a protected species. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">In Moscow - which is actually named after Moscow, Pennsylvania, not the
one in Russia - there is at least a more or less evenly matched argument. But
it is mostly a dialogue of the deaf. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">The great Obama cult that has engulfed the Left is a sinister mystery
to the other side. The Left regard their devout neighbours as glowering,
fanatical ayatollahs. Yet they pass each other daily in the street, share the
city council and, when the liberals aren't boycotting the conservatives, buy
from each other's stores. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Well, up to a point. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">From the well-stocked firearm shop on the Pullman Road, which sells
everything you might need for hunting elk, felling burglars or discouraging
rapists, it is a surprisingly short distance to the excellent French restaurant
on Main Street, which confusingly just happens to be run by an Evangelical
Christian pastor and superb cook. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">The two businesses share few clients. Rigs with gun racks tend not to
be clustered here but near the burger and Mexican joints further out. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">On a rise overlooking the city stands this Moscow's Kremlin, the almost
wholly Left-liberal University of Idaho, a tree-girt fortress of Obama-worship
and political correctness. You can be pretty sure that nobody up there is
carrying anything deadlier than a Marxist theory. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">This institution's advertising slogan used to be: 'You can go anywhere
from here.' Which is quite funny because the student who went furthest from
here was Sarah Palin, the Lipsticked Pitbull herself. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">And the university, which you might think would rejoice in this
success, is rather quiet and shifty about her. I asked to interview the
university president about his distinguished journalism-school graduate and he
was politely unavailable.</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><img id="EC_Picture_x0020_8" src="http://mail.live.com/mail/SafeRedirect.aspx?hm__tg=http://64.4.38.249/att/GetAttachment.aspx&hm__qs=file%3daa1be76a-3182-44c4-83fb-b88e34cf1483.jpg%26ct%3daW1hZ2UvanBlZw_3d_3d%26name%3daW1hZ2UwMDIuanBn%26inline%3d1%26rfc%3d0%26empty%3dFalse%26imgsrc%3dcid%253aimage002.jpg%254001C944A9.7C703520&oneredir=1&ip=10.6.1.87&d=d2521&mf=0&a=01_04638e1bd41339b2a3ce9289fcdb1d3b670da8b015f3dcba27372dea77b007a0" alt="Barack Obama" border="0" width="224" height="385"><img id="EC_Picture_x0020_9" src="http://mail.live.com/mail/SafeRedirect.aspx?hm__tg=http://64.4.38.249/att/GetAttachment.aspx&hm__qs=file%3d2d58b34e-ab53-4875-81f1-3f1ebc15e28a.jpg%26ct%3daW1hZ2UvanBlZw_3d_3d%26name%3daW1hZ2UwMDMuanBn%26inline%3d1%26rfc%3d0%26empty%3dFalse%26imgsrc%3dcid%253aimage003.jpg%254001C944A9.7C703520&oneredir=1&ip=10.6.1.87&d=d2521&mf=0&a=01_04638e1bd41339b2a3ce9289fcdb1d3b670da8b015f3dcba27372dea77b007a0" alt="John McCain" border="0" width="224" height="385"></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Battle lines: Obama and
McCain polarise opinion to a degree that is extraordinary even for America</span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But one student paraded through town last week with a placard declaring
'Sarah Palin, embarrassing Idaho University since 1987', which I suspect is a
more candid expression of what the liberal professors think. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Roy Atwood, once a senior lecturer at the university, recently defected
to take charge of the rival, highly conservative New St Andrew's College. He
says: 'My guess is that the university is deeply embarrassed, even though she
is the most important person ever to have emerged from there.' </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">As it happens, Roy Atwood is also the only person in Moscow who can
even faintly recall the future Sarah Barracuda when she was plain Sarah Heath -
he was her academic adviser. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He admits he cannot remember much. She showed few signs of what was to
come. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">'She was a cute little co-ed, a fresh-faced undergraduate student. She
was a typical conservative student at the university in those days,' says Roy. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">You might think that Mrs Palin is as beloved among Moscow conservatives
as she is loathed and despised among the Left-wingers. But it is not quite like
that. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">The town has its share of straight-down-the-line McCainites, believers
in lower taxes, military strength and even in George W. Bush, who would vote
Republican even if the skies fell. And the skies are creaking, if not actually
falling. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Many people here are deeply worried about retirement. Americans live
closer to hard financial reality than we do in Britain. They know they must
provide for themselves. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">They save, invest and hope this will keep them in old age. But the Wall
Street collapse has devastated their funds, visibly, immediately and painfully.
</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><b><span lang="EN">For men such as Walter Steed, an Idaho delegate to the Republican
convention, the thing is to overcome their doubts and sorrows about the Bush
years, from Baghdad to the bank crisis. </span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><b><span lang="EN">He admits to disappointment with John McCain: 'I wonder if he has the
fire in him.' </span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><b><span lang="EN">But that doesn't matter when he is set against the alternative. 'I
really don't want Obama elected. I think he is scary,' Mr Steed says, citing
the many mysteries and vagueness about Obama's past. </span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><b><span lang="EN">He also made the only reference to race I heard from any Obama
opponent. But it was aimed at Mrs Obama, who famously said she had not been
proud of her country until her husband was successful in politics. </span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><b><span lang="EN">Mr Steed said, in words that made me sit bolt-upright: 'His wife is a
very angry black woman.'</span></b><span lang="EN"> </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">You have to wonder how many conservative whites fear in their hearts
that an Obama presidency might be a sort of racial reckoning, despite Obama's
carefully groomed image as a man at ease with himself and above that sort of
thing. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">America remains a country divided by an unofficial but potent
apartheid, even 40 years after the civil-rights marches. Racial division, fear,
mistrust, resentment and unresolved injustice are in the bones of this country.
</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><img id="EC_Picture_x0020_10" src="http://mail.live.com/mail/SafeRedirect.aspx?hm__tg=http://64.4.38.249/att/GetAttachment.aspx&hm__qs=file%3d4af6a36c-1cf1-4b68-b3fb-ca878cdc1bec.jpg%26ct%3daW1hZ2UvanBlZw_3d_3d%26name%3daW1hZ2UwMDQuanBn%26inline%3d1%26rfc%3d0%26empty%3dFalse%26imgsrc%3dcid%253aimage004.jpg%254001C944A9.7C703520&oneredir=1&ip=10.6.1.87&d=d2521&mf=0&a=01_04638e1bd41339b2a3ce9289fcdb1d3b670da8b015f3dcba27372dea77b007a0" alt="Nels Reese in his garden in Moscow, Idaho with his Obama posters" border="0" width="468" height="286"><span lang="EN"></span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN">Nels Reece's
placards supporting Barack Obama</span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Mr Steed is really an old-fashioned businessman-Republican. He is
suspicious of the moral campaigns about such things as abortion (a scourge that
has touched his own extended family). That is why he is reasonably content with
McCain, who has never really got on with the Moral Majority. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But then, the Moral Majority don't get on with him. The Christian
conservatives have begun to feel more than a little used by the Republican
Party, which woos them like mad at election time and then spits on them from a
great height once it is in power. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">I was shocked when a respectable, conservative, professional woman
suddenly snapped out the cruel, dismissive words 'John McCain is a zombie' in
what had until then been a light-hearted chat about politics. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Some of the churchgoers here will vote for McCain only because he has
picked Palin, whom they regard as more or less one of them. But others won't. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">John Harrell, a computer expert who describes himself as a 'Biblical
Conservative', thinks the Republican Party has betrayed and ignored the
country's Christian constitution and is inviting divine wrath by doing so. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">I was reminded when talking to him that most of England's fierce
revolutionary Protestants emigrated to America centuries ago, which is why this
sort of language seems strange to us, though Oliver Cromwell would have found
it quite familiar. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Mr Harrell was militantly scornful of the Evangelical worshippers who
continue to vote for McCain because of Sarah Palin, dismissing them as
'Evanjellyfish' and their churches as 'Girly Man Churches'. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">I had a similar message from Larry Cernik, a builder and small farmer
with a majestic set of whiskers, who is one of Moscow's concealed gun carriers.
</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He said he was tired of Republican duplicity and excuse-making. Yet he
loathes Barack Obama, saying: 'He has the politics of a Third-World Marxist.' </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">While he personally sees McCain as a hopeless compromiser, he admits
that many others like him have been charmed back into voting Republican by
Palin. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He says: 'Conservative Republicans will come home to the Republican
Party because of her. If McCain wins it will be because conservative Christians
think there's nowhere else to go, and Obama is so bad that they will take
McCain over Obama, and that will largely be thanks to Sarah Palin.' </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">This is presumably what McCain intended when he chose the governor of
Alaska as his running mate. Such voters, themselves uninterested in policy
detail or foreign affairs, are unmoved by Palin's embarrassing performance in
searching interviews or the revelations about her costly wardrobe. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">She is one of them and the liberal East Coast media have it in for her,
which is a big point in her favour. They quite reasonably point out that while
Palin is subjected to fearsome microscopic scrutiny, Obama is almost completely
unknown. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">And, as I find out, he is specially unknown by his own supporters.
These are in general nice, civilised, organic, free-range people who speak in a
political language much more like Britain's.</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><img id="EC_Picture_x0020_11" src="http://mail.live.com/mail/SafeRedirect.aspx?hm__tg=http://64.4.38.249/att/GetAttachment.aspx&hm__qs=file%3dfc5ff062-14a4-4dbc-8ae9-47aa670bb777.jpg%26ct%3daW1hZ2UvanBlZw_3d_3d%26name%3daW1hZ2UwMDUuanBn%26inline%3d1%26rfc%3d0%26empty%3dFalse%26imgsrc%3dcid%253aimage005.jpg%254001C944A9.7C703520&oneredir=1&ip=10.6.1.87&d=d2521&mf=0&a=01_04638e1bd41339b2a3ce9289fcdb1d3b670da8b015f3dcba27372dea77b007a0" alt="Sarah Palin in her dorm room at the University of Idaho" border="0" width="467" height="388"><span lang="EN"></span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN">Sarah Palin in
her dorm room at the University of Idaho, where students and staff now seem
embarrassed to have any connection with her</span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">One such is Nels Reece, whose tastefully restored Victorian house,
built by a banker in the days when banks were solid, stands on a busy corner in
Moscow's idyllic middle-class suburbs. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Mr Reece, a courtly retired academic-with a Colonel Sanders moustache
and Danish ancestry, has Moscow's biggest concentration of posters backing
Obama sprouting on his front lawn. He usually displays a good crop of placards
at election times but admits that he has never put up so many before. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He estimates that 5,000 people - a quarter of the city's population -
drive or ride bikes past his house every day and the Obama campaign is
specially grateful for his support. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Long ago he voted for the foredoomed, far-out Republican Barry
Goldwater (who campaigned on the slogan 'In your heart, you know he's right' -
to which his opponents countered 'In your guts, you know he's nuts'). </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But not now. Changed by many travels abroad, he regards Idaho as 'an
outback place' and is dismissive about 'Joe Six-Pack', the mythical,
beer-guzzling voter Sarah Palin seeks to win over. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Interestingly, the smallest and poorest house in this district (does Mr
Six-Pack live there?) is the only one to display a McCain poster, alongside a
placard urging 'God Bless Our Troops'. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">In Moscow, the Democrats are emphatically the party of the well-off and
the Republicans the party of the poor. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Mr Reece's language about Obama is almost religious. He uses words such
as 'visionary' and 'inspiration'. He also says, rather frankly, that Obama is
'not too black'. But he knows little about him. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He has never heard of Tony Rezko, the Chicago businessman recently
convicted of fraud and corruption, who seems to have helped Obama buy his
house, and whom Obama lobbied for. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He has also never heard of John Stroger, a dreary business-as-usual
Chicago machine politician whom Obama backed against a reform candidate, rather
undermining his claim to be the apostle of change, and to be much of a
visionary. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But he has heard of David Axelrod, the ruthless propaganda wizard,
fixer and spin doctor who has been on hand during many of Obama's successes. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">This knowledge puts him ahead of another deeply civilised Obama fan,
Tom Lamar, a liberal member of the City Council and head of a not-for-profit
environmental institute. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He hasn't heard of any of these unattractive and unvisionary figures in
Obama's past and present. But despite being so weakly informed about his hero, he
is an unshiftable supporter. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">When I put it to him that Obama has been handled softly by the American
media, Mr Lamar responded: 'I haven't really noticed any free pass. I don't
feel that he is untested and unexamined.' </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">He even suggested that Obama had been treated worse than he would have
been if he had been white. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But he was stuck for an answer when I pointed out that an effigy of
Sarah Palin, complete with glasses, red dress and beehive hair, had been
suspended by the neck from a noose in a Hollywood street as part of a
Hallowe'en display. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Police have described this as a legitimate expression of opinion.
Perhaps. Yet it is quite clear that if anyone hanged Obama in effigy,
especially in the Lynching Belt of the Deep South, it would ignite a huge explosion
of rage, and not be treated as 'legitimate'. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Mr Lamar retorted that McCain and Palin had wrongly whipped up mistrust
of Obama at their rallies. But these were not racist attacks. In fact, they
have centred largely on Obama's connection with former terrorist William Ayers
- a connection first publicised by me in The Mail on Sunday in February, and
mostly ignored by the pro-Obama American media for months afterwards. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Mr Lamar compared the atmosphere surrounding Obama with the fervent
passion that gathered around John Kennedy in 1960. Many do. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><img id="EC_Picture_x0020_12" src="http://mail.live.com/mail/SafeRedirect.aspx?hm__tg=http://64.4.38.249/att/GetAttachment.aspx&hm__qs=file%3d364c376c-d35f-4eda-b45e-bb93c560e59a.jpg%26ct%3daW1hZ2UvanBlZw_3d_3d%26name%3daW1hZ2UwMDYuanBn%26inline%3d1%26rfc%3d0%26empty%3dFalse%26imgsrc%3dcid%253aimage006.jpg%254001C944A9.7C703520&oneredir=1&ip=10.6.1.87&d=d2521&mf=0&a=01_04638e1bd41339b2a3ce9289fcdb1d3b670da8b015f3dcba27372dea77b007a0" alt="A sign outside one of the gun shops in Moscow, Idaho" border="0" width="468" height="359"><span lang="EN"></span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN">Call to arms: A
sign outside one of the town's gun shops </span></b></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But that, too, ended in a hundred different types of disillusion. It
would have done even if Kennedy had not had a furtive and sexually greedy
private life, if he had not had so many disreputable associates, if he hadn't
bungled an invasion of Cuba or stumbled into the missile crisis that nearly
killed everyone. No human could have borne the load of hope laid on Kennedy's
shoulders. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Nor can Obama bear the burden placed on him by the swooning multitudes
who chant 'Yes, we can' and prate meaninglessly about 'change'. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">It is odd that politicians who have so little real power to alter or
control events are so keen to promise change. Change of a bad kind is coming
unstoppably anyway, as the United States reluctantly accustoms itself to its
diminished status after Iraq, and its humiliating position as a debtor nation
in hock to China. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">As I write this, all polling suggests that Obama will win this
election. It could be wrong. I have seen many Democrats mistakenly declared
winners by America's Left-wing media (and their equivalents in Britain). </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">But I suspect that this time the polls are right. If they are, I think
it will be mainly because so many Americans are aching to feel good about
themselves after years of being despised for the Iraq War and the Bush follies.
</span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">They have seen in Obama's sonorous but deeply phoney rhetoric a
snake-oil cure for their sickness of heart. Against all evidence and
experience, they want this cure to work. So they are passionately uninterested
in - and often hostile to - anyone who delves into Obama's real past. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">On Tuesday we shall see a festival of self-deception, which will last
for as long as it takes for this curious mass delusion to come into cold
contact with the real world. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN">Then there will be disappointment as vast as the hope that bred it, and
yet another great bruising blow to the whole idea of government for, of and by
the people. </span></p>
<p class="EC_MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
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