Shhh! Listen to the Quiet!
Monday, November 22, 1999
- On MSNBC this weekend I noted the irony of who had the better foreign policy week last week between George W and the Clintons.
- Bush gave a remarkable foreign policy address on Friday which showed a sophisticated path to America's role in the 21st century world, redefining the relationship between Russia and China; and the US as being competitors rather than strategic partners.
- This, on the heels of First-Lady-and-Less-Likely-Every-Day-U.S.-Senate-Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham getting embroiled in - and perhaps exacerbating - the stalled Middle East peace process.
- Meanwhile Bill Clinton had the worst arrival ceremony for a U.S. official visiting a foreign land since Vice President Richard Nixon's car got egged in Latin America.
- I also pointed out that for the latter half of the 20th Century five of the seven Presidents elected in their own right - Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton - had being senior executives as their principal skill. Only two - Kennedy and Nixon - were legislators.
- The number and significance of people urging Hillary to step aside as a candidate for Senate from New York continues to grow: Democratic NY City Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge said Hillary should step aside because, "She's not from the state, and she doesn't have this instinctive feeling for New Yorkers." Um, let � me � write� this� down� I believe we just may have the copy for the first commercial paid for by the New York State Republican Party.
- Last week I wrote that the battle between the White House and the Congress over a four-tenths-of-one-percent across-the-board spending cut came to $240 per year, or five dollars per week, for a family making $60,000 per year.
- One of my favorite Members of Congress (who gets Mullings delivered to his private e-mail address) wrote to remind me that total federal spending increased by five percent - not POINT-five-percent but five full percent. That means the mythical family about which I wrote will have received a pay raise of $2,857.14 - from $57,142.86 to get to $60,000 before they have to give back that $240. Still a good deal.
- I am in Pompano Beach, Florida (pronounced by many of the New Yorkers here: FLAH-vah-dah) for this Thanksgiving week. I bought Michael Crichton's new novel "Timeline" to read on the beach, but I fear this will have turned out to be a bad choice.
- On the very first page of the introduction there is a footnote regarding Dr. Richard Feynman. First, it's distressing to know I have purchased beach reading which includes an introduction. Second, the first page of the introduction includes footnotes. Third, the first footnote is a Richard Feynman reference which means I will have to pay attention to the text and move my lips as I read which will cut down severely - way severely - on my planned at-the-beach visual activities, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
- In Ron Brownstein's excellent analysis of the LA Times poll on Sunday he used the word "piquant" in a sentence, marking the first time that's been done by a political writer in North America since Benjamin Franklin used it to describe the women in France during his first visit to the Court of Louis XVI.
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