So now it’s a few days before elections and we get a freak hurricane in NYC which has pretty much shut down the city for a week. Before the storm, you saw all these people rushing home with pizzas. That’s life in the Big City.
This month Jeremy “bought” flowers for his mom for the first time. Said he wanted to show her he loved her and to give her something other than candy. Elizabeth has noticed that there is another family living on the other side of her bedroom wall. We are moving into the growing up stages of things including consequences and responsibilities. Jeremy has also had lots of melt downs but we are trying to get past them. His funniest was at a shoe store when I promised him light up shoes if he was good for a week. NOW, he insisted, and proceeded to bite the shoes, throw shoes around the store and hope that if he went bonkers enough I would be so ashamed in front of all these people to give into his demands. But we instead sat outside on the street and talked about the idea that now he has to deserve and earn things and not just get them, and it went OK. Elizabeth was given Kitchen Duty this week for the first time and told us after washing dishes that “her back hurt.” So does mine when I do dishes.
So I guess everyone wants me to say what I think will happen. Remember earlier in the spring I wrote about a flight to Houston sitting with a reporter from the Financial Times of London who said that he had been sitting in Tennessee for a week with a bunch of people who told him that they would never vote for a Mormon. Well, last week I was in Tennessee with Karen at a hideaway known as Blackberry Farm (details below) and we were sitting at a dinner party of sorts with some very religious southerners. I asked this very proper southern lady seated to my left if people in her home state of Alabama were still not going to vote for a Mormon. She said to me “people are changing their minds and they are going to vote for Romney. Including a lot of people who voted for Obama 4 years ago.” If this lady is correct, Romney has a real chance to win. My gut feeling is that people are going to go into the voting booth and decide that Romney has a better chance of working with the Congress to effect change and that Obama will not succeed in doing this. I wrote a while ago that it will be a last minute choice by a lot of people. I don’t know that Romney has proven his case that he has a plan to fix the economy, but Obama just hasn’t excited the electorate, the results are just not there, and Romney has sketched himself out as a reasonable alternative. It just might work. Right now I would place Romney’s odds of winning at 60%. I even went out and bought my uncle a “birthday card” to send him on Obama’s last day in office assuming he will lose. If he wins, then I wasted $2.95 at a Target store in Knoxville, Tennessee. The common wisdom here is that Obama will win; Bloomberg in NY endorsed him today and the Republican governor of New Jersey appeared with him — obviously wanting to cover their butts in case he wins because they need government money and because it’s obvious that Obama is going to win in NY anyway. If Romney wins, they’ll just kiss and make up with him later.
Frankly, I did vote for one of them absentee but I am not particularly passionate over who wins. Romney might seemingly lower taxes for now but then if he lowers the rates but cuts out the deductions, a later Democratic Congress will just raise the rates and the deductions will be gone. That’s what happened in 1986. Obama threatens taxes but the Republicans block them in Congress. On foreign policy, Obama doesn’t scare me and Romney is a big unknown. It might be good, it might not. I hope God has a vote in this election and I’ll go with whatever He decides and just hope that whatever happens is for the best.
Another thing to remember about all these polls. I was watching Jay Leno’s late night show and they went out on the street and asked people what they thought about the First Ladies Debate. Of course there wasn’t any such debate, but that didn’t stop a whole bunch of people from having an opinion about it, including all sorts of made up stories to back up their opinions based on their visual observations of having “seen” the debate. So remember that people will say anything to a pollster.
I recently read a report that says Bush Jr. didn’t strike Iran 4 years ago because he was convinced by intelligence that it would simply assure their eventual nuclearability. Robert Gates said the same thing on 4 October. I think that is the assessment of intelligence agencies. Question is whether Israel buys it. I think it is fair to assume that Bibi Netanyahu will be re-elected in January and that the world will be dealing with him much longer than it will be dealing with many others in that region. Here’s an important fact: You recently read that Qatar’s emir visited Gaza and it was a “big deal” for Gaza being visited by a head of state for the first time. The emir cancelled a scheduled open-air address in a stadium that could hold tens of thousands after only a few hundred people showed up. Hamas security guards had their guns pointed at the few people who had come to see the emir. Most Gazans expect the Qatari’s money to go straight into the pockets of the Hamas leadership. This description comes from this week’s Economist.
There is actually a lot going on in the world these days. Lebanon is a tinderbox waiting to ignite and Syria is an unfortunate mess. Turkey will not go to war against Syria unless the US or Europe backs it, and they won’t. Egyptians will fight among themselves over their constitution. The US will pull out of Afghanistan but it won’t be pretty. China’s new leader is an enigma and the rest of the world will simply avoid getting too entangled in that country, just as in Russia. To some extent, the world is on hold for the US elections hoping that it will matter. But it really won’t. Romney or Obama will pretty much do the same thing. The housing market is about to improve because there are too many kids still living with their parents that want to move out and will as soon as they can get themselves a job. I think that stock markets will do well in 2013.
During the month of October I traveled to California to see what’s new, not having been in San Francisco since the late 90’s. For a business trip, the Mandarin Oriental in San Francisco has beautiful views in the city’s business district (get a bridge to bridge room) and the city is pretty enjoyable to visit. The Ritz Carlton is on a big hill in the middle of nowhere and the Four Seasons is totally corporate I’m told. The Embarcadero is upscale; Fisherman’s Wharf is pretty corny. They’ve fixed up some things; the Water Bar is a great fish place near the Bay Bridge near the Embarcadero. With kids in tow look at the Hyatt Regency at the Embarcadero and get on the club floor. It took me an hour to walk from Fisherman’s Wharf back to the hotel along the waterfront and the weather when I visited was gorgeous. I then drove 3 hours to Big Sur (an hour south of Monterey) to Post Ranch Inn, which is a gorgeous hideaway. Get a upper Pacific cottage overlooking the sea. The restaurant has beautiful views and at night you see tons of stars and they had an astronomer with a telescope there. There are hammocks and infiniti pools and this beautiful structure called the Birds Nest which is a little climb-up treehouse overlooking a pond with a beautiful view of the mountains. That is a great spot to go with your special someone and I’d go back there just to sit in the birds nest again. Food is great; there is a spa and the climate when I was there was the best it could be. It’s a bit dark and quiet at night and there are no TV’s in the rooms (but satellite radio with a thousand stations). This is one of the best hideaways in the US. A 30 minute flight from Monterey airport takes you to Los Angeles. The Bel-Air hotel underwent major renovation; I never saw the old hotel so I can’t compare it but I have always liked the Beverly Hills Hotel. It’s a close call between the two properties. The Premiere Canyon Suites have nice views, terrace with private swimming pool, and the rooms are large and cheerful and airy. The property is lush with landscaping and pleasant. The spa and food are all excellent. The gym was very small and a silly place for them to skimp. Virgin America’s Upper Class product in the US is pricey and in my opinion not worth it. There is also no airport club at JFK for morning flights or LAX (although LAX is soon to open). But Priority Pass with Amex gives you the Oasis Club at JFK”s Terminal 4 (near the gates) which is a fantastic airport club. But you can get a very interesting person sitting next to you to meet and that can make the whole ticket worthwhile. My opinion is that the best bang for your buck is the Extra Leg Room Seats on JetBlue.
Karen and I went to Blackberry Farm about 30 minutes drive from Knoxville, Tennessee. You can fly there nonstop from New York once or twice a day or connect rather often through other cities. It is one of the most gorgeous hideaways in the southeast US just near the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. You can drive through the park or nearby roads such as the Foothills Parkway; the hotel lets you borrow Lexus cars and we had a ball driving around with a convertible with the top down. The hotel also gives you a golf buggy to get to the Singing Brook Cottages which is the section where we stayed. The hotel has over 4,000 acres and views all the way to the mountain ranges. We were there at peak foliage and it was gorgeous. We took hikes in the woods, went horseback riding, used the spa, and ate 3 really good meals a day on their meal plan. Lunch on the terrace overlooking the estate and the mountains is just beautiful. They had a family style dinner on a porch with a beautiful lakeside view and it was there that I had the political conversation that gave me the first inkling that momentum was moving toward Romney. They have a kids camp with a very exciting schedule and the best time to go with kids is late May or early June. If you’re into clay pigeon shooting and fly-fishing this place is also known for that. The food there is a big draw; we liked some stuff more than others and it is a bit of a challenge to stay clear of the meat and shellfish items but the staff was very accommodating to us and although we wound up eating several things more times than we wanted to we were happy campers. I’m just trying to decide if this is a place to return with kids ages 6-8 or just keep it an adults-only secret. For most of the year, it is an adult-only place.
This I am off to Israel and Spain and for Thanksgiving we are expecting to be in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. Will revert after I’ve considered the elections.
