Some cold blasts from North Star

But since the happy days when Sarah Palin was introduced at the Republican convention, dressed in the first pieces of the $150,000 wardrobe she had acquired, clouds have been gathering to obscure the Northern Star.

First came news of her life as Governor of Alaska when she charged per diem traveling expenses while still at home, then an unflattering inquiry report about her husband using the Governor’s office to try to get the ex-spouse of Palin’s sister, fired from his job as a cop. The local police chief, who refused to co-operate was fired.

Then there were those TV interviews before she was locked up on a country estate and re-programmed by her handlers. (Shades of “1984” and “Clockwork Orange”). When politicians can’t name a newspaper or magazine they read, that’s a problem.

All of this went largely unnoticed by “the base”, but some party intellectuals began to distance themselves from the campaign, and questioned Senator John McCain’s judgment in choosing Palin as his running mate. But the base continued to turn out in droves to yell louder for the homespun gal, who flung mud at Obama, and introduced “Liberal”, the mark of Cain into her attacks. ?Liberal” quickly became “Socialist”, and how the base trembled and roared.

But thinking Republicans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, arch conservative David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of evil” for President George W. Bush, a granddaughter of President Eisenhower, and children of former Republican senators, all flocked to the airwaves to let the world know that the party they knew, and had fought for, was going to hell in a basket.

Now the latest revelations about her travels with her children, and altered expense reports, coupled with the $150,000 shopping sprees to re-polish her homespun image, have even more thinking Republican’s questioning McCain’s judgment, and that of her handlers.

But for the base it’s all the fault of the “Liberal” media. After all so many of them have come out and endorsed Obama.

And the latest polls show that in spite of the Palin-energized base, the House will be occupied by the country’s first black president.

For the thinking Republicans (that’s not an oxymoron, I have met some) it’s going to be a long wintry 5 years, as they reflect on that cold blast from Alaska.

PARKING WOES. The National Hospital has added a large new car park, but with no effect on the illegal parking on the adjacent streets. Cars still block spots reserved for ambulances, hide the entrance from Calle 39 to Avenida Cuba, and blatantly hide the fire hydrant and the crossing for pedestrians and wheelchairs.

As part of a program to ease the traffic flow on our ever more congested streets, we desperately need more public parking lots. A multi-storied lot in the Marbella pink-turning-to-red entertainment district would be a boon. But parking lots with no enforcement of on-street laws governing illegal parking are a waste of money, as the National Hospital must be discovering. If the Transit Police can’t do their job, and rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix the city streets, maybe it’s time to give the concession to one of those niceky uniformed security companies. $