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<DIV><FONT size=2>What a sad commentary. Just the kind of publicity that
neither Moscow-Pullman, the UI, nor WSU needs. Good luck recruiting
quality students, athletes, faculty, and/or researchers if this article gets
much air or pops up in the early entries on Google searches.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>But the article certainly adds more graphic evidence to the
theory that crackpots attract other and more crackpots. The Curate of
Crackpotland (Wilson) without doubt has became the new Richard Butler of
Idaho.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>W.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=sslund_2007@verizon.net href="mailto:sslund_2007@verizon.net">Saundra
Lund</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=ophite@gmail.com
href="mailto:ophite@gmail.com">'Andreas Schou'</A> ; <A
title=sunilramalingam@hotmail.com
href="mailto:sunilramalingam@hotmail.com">'Sunil Ramalingam'</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">'vision 2020'</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:49
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Latest Recruiting
Tool (was RE: The 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht!)</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV class=Section1>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">Andreas
wrote:<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">“</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="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">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 . . . <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">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.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">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="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: Wingdings">J</SPAN><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">Nonetheless, the
article is definitely worth the read to see what locals had to say – I
certainly learned some things!<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=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><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">OR<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><A
href="http://tinyurl.com/6yuxea">http://tinyurl.com/6yuxea</A><o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><B><SPAN lang=EN
style="FONT-SIZE: 24pt">PETER HITCHENS: The Zombie and the Third-World Marxist
... How the American West views the presidential
race<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><IMG id=Picture_x0020_7 height=437
alt="Peter Hitchens in a gun shop in Moscow, Idaho"
src="cid:40D223B7771D4B519699835EA568BC74@LocalHost" width=468 border=0><SPAN
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><B><SPAN lang=EN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Armed with
words: Peter Hitchens on a visit to a Moscow gun
store<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN
lang=EN>They think it's dull. How wrong they are. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN
lang=EN>Well, up to a point. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><IMG id=Picture_x0020_8 height=385 alt="Barack Obama"
src="cid:6AC3DBCBFCAF4E309A245FAE264235A5@LocalHost" width=224 border=0><IMG
id=Picture_x0020_9 height=385 alt="John McCain"
src="cid:4987DE31B44144A4893A18355916EC97@LocalHost" width=224
border=0><o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><B><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Battle lines: Obama and
McCain polarise opinion to a degree that is extraordinary even for
America<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.'
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN lang=EN>He
admits he cannot remember much. She showed few signs of what was to come.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><B><SPAN
lang=EN>He admits to disappointment with John McCain: 'I wonder if he has the
fire in him.' <o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><IMG id=Picture_x0020_10 height=286
alt="Nels Reese in his garden in Moscow, Idaho with his Obama posters"
src="cid:D6E5A92EF0D44F419A563946395170EA@LocalHost" width=468 border=0><SPAN
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><B><SPAN lang=EN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Nels Reece's
placards supporting Barack Obama<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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'. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.'
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.'
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><IMG id=Picture_x0020_11 height=388
alt="Sarah Palin in her dorm room at the University of Idaho"
src="cid:36FCDF44E2D64654843EF25231A750E5@LocalHost" width=467 border=0><SPAN
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><B><SPAN lang=EN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Sarah Palin in
her dorm room at the University of Idaho, where students and staff now seem
embarrassed to have any connection with her<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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').
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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'. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN lang=EN>In
Moscow, the Democrats are emphatically the party of the well-off and the
Republicans the party of the poor. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.' <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN lang=EN>He
even suggested that Obama had been treated worse than he would have been if he
had been white. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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'. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN lang=EN>Mr
Lamar compared the atmosphere surrounding Obama with the fervent passion that
gathered around John Kennedy in 1960. Many do. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><IMG id=Picture_x0020_12 height=359
alt="A sign outside one of the gun shops in Moscow, Idaho"
src="cid:3E0E83C99F4042499B4620E46ACBC21D@LocalHost" width=468 border=0><SPAN
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNoSpacing><B><SPAN lang=EN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Call to arms: A
sign outside one of the town's gun shops <o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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'.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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). <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><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. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P></DIV>
<P>
<HR>
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