It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if Obama\u2019s support for the Islamic Centre and Mosque near Ground\u00a0Zero costs him the next election. I\u2019m\u00a0on holiday right now in California, which, despite its tendancy to elect Republican governors, is in tone and culture one of the more liberal centres of the US. Purely on the basis of the conversations I\u2019ve had so far, there\u2019s no doubt as to the discomfort the whole issue has caused.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nobody I have spoken to is in favour of the project (which\u00a0is done and dusted and set to go ahead). My totally unscientific sample has ranged from the VP of a big entertainment company in LA\u00a0through to an aircraft mechanic from Phoenix. I imagine most of them are Democrats, or at least\u00a0originally enthusiasts\u00a0for Obama. Without question there is a sense of disappointment in the President, and a bewilderment that he should have got this so badly wrong, in stating a high-minded legal principle in a condescending manner, while totally ignoring the widespread visceral sense that there is just something wrong about this. Economic circumstances might be dire but, to adapt Clinton\u2019s old line, it\u2019s the culture, stupid. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oh and what about awareness of us? Well, everybody seemed to know that Queen Elizabeth (as they call her here) recently spoke at the UN. Her name comes up a fair amount. Nobody, however,\u00a0has heard of Cameron, or even that there was an election here. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m currently in the desert, Palm Springs to be precise, with temperatures set to reach 116 by Wednesday. I\u2019ll post the occasional piece, at those\u00a0times when it gets too hot even for mad dogs and Englishmen.<\/p>\n
<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n No related posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It wouldn’t surprise me if Obama’s support for the Islamic Centre and Mosque near Ground Zero costs him the next election. I’m on holiday right now in California, which, despite its tendancy to elect Republican governors, is in tone and culture one of the more liberal centres of the US. Purely on the basis of the conversations I’ve had so far, there’s no doubt as to the discomfort the whole issue has caused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h3>\n