Free Republic

When Gerard Baker a year ago wrote in the Times of London that Barack Obama had "Ventured Forth to Bring Light to the World," it was widely acknowledged to be a clever satire, but this past week we have broken new ground in divinity politics. Forget the comparisons to our Slain Prince (John F. Kennedy), to our Good Father (Franklin D. Roosevelt), and even to Abraham Lincoln, the closest thing to a martyred saint that Americans have in our secular lexicon. These are mere mortals. According to those who should know--Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and Evan Thomas of the New...

It's funny how the harder you look at something, the harder it can be to understand it. I can't recall a US presidential election that has attracted more attention. But neither can there have been a time when the world has watched what goes on in America with the nonplussed, horrified incomprehension it has now. Travelling in Britain this week, I've been asked repeatedly by close followers of US politics if it can really be true that Barack Obama might not win. Thoughtful people cannot get their head around the idea that Mr Obama, exciting new pilot of change, supported...

“What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?” “One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy. “The other kills her own food.” Now we know, thanks to her triumphant debut at the Republican convention on Wednesday, that Mrs Palin not only slaughters her prey. She impales its head on a stick and parades it around for her followers to jeer at. For half an hour she eviscerated Mr Obama in that hall and did it all without dropping her sweet schoolmarm smile, as if she were handing out chocolates at the end...

Her thrilling convention speech showed that the Governor of Alaska is a force to reckoned with. But she might be more than that The best line I heard about Sarah Palin during the frenzied orgy of chauvinist condescension and gutter-crawling journalistic intrusion that greeted her nomination for vice-president a week ago came from a correspondent who knows a thing or two about Alaska. “What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?” “One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy. “The other kills her own food.” Now we know, thanks to her triumphant...

September is the cruellest month Gerard Baker: American View For financial markets, if not for poets, September is the cruellest month. It may only be curious coincidence, but the durability and reliability of the September Curse is striking. Since 1929, US stock prices have declined in September on average by more than in any other month - down by 1.2 per cent, compared with a gain of 0.6 per cent for all months of the year. And, in case you were wondering, that's not because the average of all those 80 Septembers has been driven lower by one or two...

Executive experience Obama: Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of his campaign staff and a vast crowd of traveling journalists Palin:Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of 500,000 people in her state, and that impact crucial issues of national economic interest such as the supply and cost of energy to the United States.

There's trouble in paradise. Cancel the coronation. Send back the commemorative medals. Put those “Yes We Can” T-shirts up on eBay. Keep the Change. Barack Obama's historic procession to the American presidency has been rudely interrupted. The global healing he promised is in jeopardy. If you're prone to emotional breakdown, you might want to take a seat before I say this. He might not win. How can it be, you ask? Didn't we see him just last month speaking to 200,000 adoring Germans in Berlin? Didn't he get the red carpet treatment in France - France of all places? Doesn't...

There's trouble in paradise. Cancel the coronation. Send back the commemorative medals. Put those “Yes We Can” T-shirts up on eBay. Keep the Change. Barack Obama's historic procession to the American presidency has been rudely interrupted. The global healing he promised is in jeopardy. If you're prone to emotional breakdown, you might want to take a seat before I say this. He might not win. How can it be, you ask? Didn't we see him just last month speaking to 200,000 adoring Germans in Berlin? Didn't he get the red carpet treatment in France - France of all places?

From The TimesAugust 15, 2008 Georgia: Europe wins a gold medal for defeatism Sarkozy's ‘peace in our time' deal is a reminder of what could happen if the EU wins more clout Gerard Baker To some, China's muscular domination of the Olympic medal table is a powerful allegory of the shifting balance of global power. A far better and more literal testimony to the collapse of the West may be seen in the distinctly weak-kneed response to Russian aggression in Georgia by what is still amusingly called the transatlantic alliance. Once again, the Europeans, and their friends in the pusillanimous...

Gerard Baker reads his 'He He ventured forth to bring light to the world' Video at link

FNC on July 25 featured Times of London's Gerard Baker reading aloud his hilarious column, “He ventured forth to bring light to the world,” which recounted Obama's life story as if told through a gospel in the Bible.

America’s prejudices are a barrier to Middle East peace The blowtorch of media scrutiny is steadily taking layers of gaudy paint off the happy caravan that is Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. … -snip- Of much more interest is the flak that the Democratic senator is taking for some remarks he made about the Middle East. Hillary Clinton, his main opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination in next year’s election, has seized upon them as proof that the senator cannot be trusted with US national security nor as a true friend of Israel. What exactly, was the young senator’s offence? Did...

When President Bush shocked supporters and opponents alike a month ago by nominating Harriet Miers, his White House Counsel, to the vacancy on the Supreme Court, an intriguing conspiracy theory did the rounds in Washington. Ms Miers, so self-evidently unqualified for a seat on the nation’s highest court, was a kind of stalking horse, the theory went. The real Bush plan, masterminded no doubt by his Machiavellian amanuensis Karl Rove, was to put an extreme conservative jurist on the court, someone who would vote to overturn abortion rights, outlaw affirmative action and break down the barriers between Church and State....

On Sunday night, at precisely the moment the French were angrily delivering their resounding “non” to Europe’s would-be nation-builders, I happened to be in Istanbul, in the genial company of a transatlantic crew of foreign-policy thinkers. As the boat on which we were having dinner bobbed gently up the busy Bosphorus, it struck me that this was not a bad place from which to contemplate the latest European crisis. The waters that mark the very end of Europe provide a useful historical context in which to consider, what is for some, the End of Europe. Out here, beyond the lights...