By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers, Wednesday | April 6, 1994
JOHANNESBURG—The looming national election has laid a new carpet of fear across this already traumatized and hyper-vigilant society.
With three weeks to go, gun stores and food stores are running out of weapons and non-perishable food, and many whites are bailing out—for the duration of the campaign and its uncertain aftermath, if not for good.
“The whole country has gone mad,” said the owner of a gun store in the seemingly non-violent suburb of Birnam, as he busied himself with customers unhappy to learn that his stock of weapons was practically depleted.
“All I’ve got left are some old M-1 rifles,” he said, as he showed an elderly white man how to load a shotgun the man had brought to the store. “The demand has outstripped my supply. It’s the same all over.”
“I ask any of my colleagues to imagine that happening here in the United States. Rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada, into Buffalo New York. How would we as a country react?”
It is hard to believe that the Democratic Senate majority leader would parrot that ridiculous line.
But it is in all the “information” packages that the lobby is distributing, changed to reflect geography. In California, the question is what the people of Chula Vista, CA would do if they were being shelled from Tijuana, Mexico. In Burlington, Vermont, the missiles come from Montreal, Quebec. The info packets can apply the analogy to any two places located on an international border.
And the average Joe is supposed to ignore the huge difference in the two situations. The United States does not occupy Mexico or Canada, If we did, the missile attacks on Buffalo or Chula Vista or whatever might not be considered bolts out of the blue. Millions of Americans would demand that rather than bombing Ottawa or Mexico City, we consider ending our occupation of Canada/Mexico.
Our Government is finally admitting what seems to surprise only them, that we are in a recession and have been for some time. “Duh”?! The following is a re-posting of a previous entry on this blog originally dated July 11,2008. Read in today’s light it seems like a 1,000 years ago and a lot more unsettling . . .
I just got back from a trip to California, going from Mexico to San Francisco, and other than the shore line, it is one big brown state. And the smoke, when you see all that dry dessert grass on the mountains, you get an understanding of their fire risk and why that state won’t stop burning.
In Mexico I learned two things I didn’t know. First California was named by early Mexican natives and it means “hot oven” and second it is a statement of accepted fact there that the U.S. is in a recession. My personal, though admittedly limited, international focus group collection data revealed that our international neighbors throw the fact of our recession around pretty comfortably and seem unaware that our own administration states we aren’t in one.
(“Oh Amigo, tourism is down due to American recession”; “The artisans will barter as business is down due to the American recession”). Is it important what the rest of the world observes about our economic health? I think so.
I know all of us are holding our breath for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to wow America all over again during her vice-presidential debate with Delaware’s Sen. Joe Biden Thursday night.
One newspaper has called Mrs. Palin’s debating skills “formidable.” The New York Times says she’s a confident debater. In fact, the Obama campaign, calling her a “terrific debater,” is thinking of suspending the vice-presidential portion of the fall campaign.
I thought, maybe, we should imbibe a little her recent series of triumphant interviews with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric:
Couric: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?
Sarah Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to . . . cari . . . I don’t know, you know . . . reporters.
Couric: Mocked?
Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.
Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.
Palin: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there…
Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.
Ms. Couric then brought up the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, suggesting the money could be better spent by regular Americans. Mrs. Palin burst forth in incandescent rhetoric. Her answer was nothing short of historic in its scope and grasp of policy details, mastery of nuance:
COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
I take back everything I ever said about Gov.Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience. It turns out that Palin is, indeed, a world traveler.
We already knew that Palin visited Kuwait to visit members of the Alaska National Guard. We already knew that she visited Ireland on her way to Kuwait. (Okay, it wasn’t really a visit. It was more like a refueling stop.)
