Sarah Palin is ready to be President

In my opinion she is more qualified than Obama or Biden, and on the evidence of tonight's ABC interview she's also ready to go head-to-head with Charles Gibson. Palin handled the portion of the interviewed that aired tonight well enough that the only glove laid on her occurred during a hit-piece ABC aired before the interview.

The hit-piece was a compendium of various meaningless or trivial anti-Palin talking points -- she attended four colleges, she received reimbursement from the state for her expenses, etc.

Has ABC done this sort of thing to Obama and Biden? For example, has it reported that around the time Palin was attending her various colleges Biden was engaging in plagiarism? Has ABC reported that Biden was near the bottom of his class at Syracuse law school but pretended otherwise? Not to my knowledge.

The hit-piece did mention that Palin's approval rating in Alaska is 80 percent. But ABC never provided a clue as to why that's the case. Doing so would have required it to say something positive about Palin. ABC did present one woman who said Palin "is as honest as the day is long" (this is particularly big praise in Alaska). But that was only by way of trying to show how people who like and respect her are undecided (as this woman, at least, was) about whether to support the Republican ticket.

As for the interview, it consisted mostly of Gibson reading a talking point in the form of a question, Palin responding with her talking point (but with excellent demeanor), and Gibson moving on to his next point.

The one place where Gibson pressed Palin was on the economy. He demanded to hear three things she would do to help our "very sick" economy. After talking around the question for a short while, Palin said (1) reduce taxes, (3) reduce spending, and (3) provide better oversight over agencies. When pressed on the second and third points (which tended to merge), Palin basically argued against wasteful spending by government departments. As economic cures go, this is pretty lame, but not much more so than Obama's claim during his speech in Denver that he would pay for his spending programs by curbing waste and abuse.

The bottom line, I think, is that Palin was able to stay on the campaign's reformist message while providing a passable answer to Gibson's question. Whether she knows much about economics (McCain once said he would be looking for economic expertise in a vice president) is another matter.

My favorite part of the interview concerned the Bridge To Nowhere. Undaunted by the MSM's narrative, Palin raised the subject and touted her role. Naturally, Gibson pounced. Stating that Palin once supported the bridge and changed her stance only after the Bridge had become an embarrassment, Gibson asked Palin whether she wanted to "revise and extend" her remarks. Palin was having none of it. She noted, correctly, that it was the state's (i.e., her) decision not to use federal money to build the bridge, and that the state quite properly kept the money to use for more worhwhile infrastructure.

Gibson asked Palin a series of questions on social issues. Palin stuck to her right-wing guns, but perhaps minimized the fall-out by being so pleasant about it. She insisted that her views were personal and would not necessarily be reflected in a McCain administration, inasmuch as McCain does not agree with some of them. She also declined to speculate about the origins of homosexuality, and instead expressed respect for diversity.

The final question was whether Palin thinks it's sexist to question whether she can be the vice president while dealing with five children and a grandchild. Palin's answer was perfect -- she said she can handle the responsibilities of her family and her office just as other other top elected officials do, but she avoided directly addressing the "sexism" issue. For anyone with an open mind on this question, I think she scored big with this answer.

Overall, as one might expect, Palin handles questions about herself very well, quetions about her time as governor well, and questions about policy less well. But with her sunny, likeable demeanor, and the gender card so far working in her favor, "less well" might be good enough to get by until election day.

Brigitte Bardot Fined for Inciting Racial Hatred

French actress-turned-animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot (news) was convicted Thursday of inciting racial hatred and ordered to pay $6,000 -- the fourth such fine for the former sex symbol since 1997.

The Paris court sentenced Bardot, 69, for remarks in her book "A Scream in the Silence," an outspoken attack on gays, immigrants and the jobless that shocked France last year.

In the book, she laments the "Islamization of France" and the "underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam."

"Mme. Bardot presents Muslims as barbaric and cruel invaders, responsible for terrorist acts and eager to dominate the French to the extent of wanting to exterminate them," the court said.

France's 5-million-member Muslim community is the largest in Europe.

Bardot, who was not present for the verdict, denied the charges in a tearful court appearance last month, saying her book did not target Islam or people from North Africa.

She told the court France was going through a period of decadence and said she opposed interracial marriage.

"I was born in 1934, at that time interracial marriage wasn't approved of," she said.

"There are many new languages in the new Europe. Mediocrity is taking over from beauty and splendor. There are many people who are filthy, badly dressed and badly shaven."

In her book, she also attacks homosexuals as "fairground freaks," condemns the presence of women in government and denounces the "scandal of unemployment benefits."

Bardot's attacks on Muslims prompted anti-racism groups to launch legal proceedings against the former star, who turned her back on film after 46 films to concentrate on animal welfare.

Bardot, who in her 1960s heyday was the epitome of French feminine beauty, was fined $3,250 in January 1998 after being convicted of inciting racial hatred in comments about civilian massacres in Algeria.

Four months earlier, a court fined her for saying France was being overrun by sheep-slaughtering Muslims.

Debt of Honor

Debt of Honor: Called out of retirement to serve as National Security Advisor to the president, Jack Ryan, with the help of CIA officers John Clark and Domingo Chavez, must prepare the untested president to meet the challenges of a new world order. - Thrillers reviews: I've skipped around the Jack Ryan series of Clancy books -- skipping one or two, reading them out of order, etc. Debt of Honor was typical Clancy -- very heavy on the logistics and technical details of modern political and military conflict, light on character development. I guess there may be men like "Saint Jack" Ryan in political life, but sometimes you just want him to kick his dog or cuss someone out. Some may enjoy the financial details of this book, but I found myself skipping through large chunks of this one. The build up to the military conflict -- the real meat and gift of Clancy's writing -- seemed interminable. I just kept waiting for *something* to *happen.* I'll probably read Executive Decision just to find out what crisis Jack lands in as president of the US of A, but in the meantime, I hope Clancy comes out with another entry to the Op Center series of books Among other reasons, one thing that makes Tom Clancy stand out from most other authors is his ability to innovate. Plotlines that have rarely been explored before but are not only plausible but realistic. Due to mistreatment of the gas tanks in a popular Japanese car, a major safety defect causes a normal traffic accident to end the life of several Americans including one entire family. This starts a chain reaction that ultimately ends trade between the United States and Japan. The damage done to Japan's economy allows one businessman, Raizo Yamata to organize an attack on the United States' military and economy sparking an eventual war. In the middle of this mess, as you would have guessed, is the new National Security Advisor Jack Ryan.The action doesn't really get kickstarted until the fourth or fifth chapter and some of the middle chapters are chocked full of fluff. While this book could have probably been written in about 650 pages (rather than 990), the plot rings true and the cliffhanger ending will amaze you. Especially now..and remember that this book was written in 1997..pre-9/11. This book is very much worth your time, but only if you plan on reading the follow-up, Executive Orders, as soon as you finish the last page of Debt Of Honor. Buy them both at the same time because you will NOT want to wait! But still a great read. The book goes around a Japanese businessman with a lot of power and money. Now Jack comes back into the picture, two years off of retirement and now he is asked by President Durling to come back as his National Secutiry Advisor, Jack takes the offer and goes ahead with the plan. In Japan, businessmen who hate America for what it has done to their country rages them, and when a accident killing an American family thanks to their tires gives them more patrotic duty to their country, and the U.S. bans all of the tires made in Japan, so with this the businessmen decide to bring back imperilism by kidnapping the Prime Minister, and by ordering the invasion of American terrority in the Pacific gain by the U.S. in WW2. Now the U.S. is locked in a word battle with Japan with American citizens on these islands, they fear that they are in danger, and so comes in John and Ding Chavez, and they head to Japan and they attempt to rescue Koga from the men. So while the battle with Japan begins, Koga is rescued and he calls off the fighting with the U.S. Now as things start to cool down, back home Vice President Ed Kealthy is resigning the Vice Presidency because of a sex scandal some years ago, and President Durling ask Jack to hold the seat of Vice President for only a year until President Durling's term is up, Jack takes the offer since him and Jack are good friends dating back to the secret operations in Columbia to fight the drug lords for killing three American operatives. Back in Japan, Admiral Sato then flies a plane to America, while taking a break, he then stabs his co-pilot saying 'sorry my friend.' after stabbing him. No passengers are on board, and back in Washington Jack is beginning to be sworn in as Vice President with the Supreme Court, Congress is full, and everyone in the political game is there to see Jack take the oath. Now as Jack is sworn in, President Durling is talking to Congress while Sato dives a plane into the chambers of Congress. Killing all of Congress, the Supreme Court judges, the President and the first lady along with his secret service agents assigned to President Durling. Now through the wreckage, while being Vice President for only a couple of minutes, Jack is now President Of The United States of America, and he has a huge disaster on his hands with most of Congress dead, the Supreme Court dead, and the President dead leaving Jack Patrick Ryan the most powerful man in the world. This is definitely a GOOD book to read if you are a Clancy fan like myself. The book does talk a lot about the world financial market a lot, but hey this is Tom Clancy we are talking about, he has to know what he is talking about, and he is good at it. What made me think twice about this ending, the plane crashing into a building especially like the WTC, did Usama Bin Laden read Debt Of Honor, and got the idea of crashing a plane into a building like 9/11 and in Debt Of Honor? We dont know, but a damn good ending, and kind of sad when you think about it. Great book, not just about the plane crashing, the whole story altogether.

GVR

The client, which is in a technological services business, wishes to move the main operations of its business to Mexico to better facilitate its expansion into the international market. In addition to its business goals, it has stated two tax goals: (i) increase recognition of taxable income on the transfer of the business and (ii) defer recognition of the U.S. source income of the business after emigration until such funds are spemt.