Is Africa a country, asks shopaholic with a temper

WASHINGTON — Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has returned home to a snowy Alaska pursued by claims that she did not know Africa was a continent.

An adviser cited by Fox News said the Alaska Governor was confused about Africa’s status and asked if “South Africa was part of the country”.

In the wake of electoral defeat, aides to Republican presidential candidate John McCain reeled off examples of how the Alaska Governor’s ignorance, temper and shopaholic behaviour caused a civil war within the campaign.

It also emerged the 44-year-old could not name the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) even though there are only three — the US, Canada and Mexico — and the agreement had come up in the campaign.

Many in her party are dreading the prospect of a future bid for the Republican nomination by the Alaska Governor. As Mrs Palin landed at Anchorage airport on Wednesday, she was greeted by scores of supporters, who chanted “2012! 2012!”. Asked if she might run for president in the next election, she said: “We’ll see what happens then.”

Campaign aides have also revealed that by the end of the campaign, Mrs Palin and Mr McCain were speaking only occasionally.

Further details have also emerged about the US$150,000 ($224,000) spent on her wardrobe.

According to aides, Mr McCain’s handlers expected Mrs Palin to spend a maximum US$25,000 on a hair stylist and half a dozen outfits for the Republican convention and beyond.

Instead, she purchased many more, and splashed out on jewellery and clothes for her family from designer stores. Most of the purchases were on a wealthy donor’s credit card, who was shocked to get the bill, while Mrs Palin also demanded to use junior aides’ cards.

A McCain source told Newsweek that the spending was “tens of thousands” over US$150,000 and angrily described it as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast”, referring to Mrs Palin’s home town and what quickly turned into her favourite shop.

– The Daily Telegraph

The stain of colour

So it seems, following the historical election of an African-American into the White House, this is the next thing on everyone’s mind…

Catholics ready for black pope?

ROME – THE Roman Catholic Church is ready for a black pope, the former head of the US bishops conference told an Italian newspaper after Tuesday’s election of the first African-American president in the United States.

‘If (Barack) Obama at the White House is like the first man on the moon, the same thing can certainly happen for the throne of Peter (the papacy),’ Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Daniel Gregory told the daily La Stampa in an interview published on Thursday.

Mr Obama’s election ‘is a great step for humanity, a sign that in the United States the issue of race and the problem of discrimination have been overcome,’ said Mr Gregory, who is himself black.

Mr Gregory, who hails from Obama’s home city of Chicago, became the first African American to head the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, a post he held from 2001 to 2004, when he became archbishop of Atlanta, Georgia.

‘The Church has also made impressive advances,’ he said, noting the increasingly ‘international and cosmopolitan’ nature of the Vatican hierarchy, the Curia.

The election of a black pope ‘is certainly possible,’ said Mr Gregory, 60.

‘Thanks to the wisdom of the cardinals, that could happen at the next conclave’ after the death of Pope Benedict XVI, he said.

During the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict, one of the College of Cardinals’ 16 Africans, Francis Arinze of Nigeria, was considered ‘papabile’, or a potential successor to the late John Paul II.

Mr Arinze has headed the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship since 2002, and was a top adviser to the Polish pope. — AFP

And quite surely, the same line of questioning will extend to all other mantle of authority and power in the weeks to come.

Although obviously aware that he stands as the first black man to be nominated for the presidency, Obama has never played the race card throughout this entire election period (one can of course always argue that it would be to his disadvantage to do so). 
And that’s one aspect I greatly admire and respect about his campaign.

Stripped of everything else, I think every man has the common sense to deduce that competency, substance and strength of character are logically the only qualities that matter in the evaluation of a candidate. It is just whether or not he chooses to listen to that rational voice.