The ABC’s Foreign Correspondent recently had an article about the McCain Campaign in the United States. One republican described the two candidates thus:

McCain in a centerist and Obama is from the far left.

It was seemed such a surprising thing to say, but was said in such a matter of fact way. It is probably a sincerely held belief and tells us so much about aspects of the US political belief system.

From an Australian perspective, Barack Obama is a moderate centerist. His policies are entirely moderate and sensible and certainly within the mainstream of the centre-left, and the centre-right in Australia.

This was evident when Barack did his recent world tour and he got on famously with such right-wing representatives as David Cameron in the UK and Nicolas Sarkozy in France.

There are real debates within the US on developing a national health care system, something that exists as a given in other developed countries.

The US ‘left’ with the likes of Barack Obama are in the mainstream of world politics, both of the centre-left and the centre-right. It would appear that on a global scale that the right in the US is on the far right of global politics. With a militarist approach of declaring a ‘war on terrorism’, invading multiple countries (and talk of invading another – Iran), ignoring the Geneva Convention with Guantanamo Bay, cutting social spending (‘reforming social security’), opposing gay rights, women’s right to choose, opposition to environmental protection, their policies would place them in the ‘loony right in other countries’.

So the Arizonian supporter of McCain had it wrong, he should have said ‘Obama is a centerist and McCain is from the far right’.

Note: Google and the Apple Dictionary tell me that the correct spelling is ‘centrist’, but I find that awkward, and will stick with ‘centerist’ which seems more sensible to me (the funny spelling seems to do with its origination from the French ‘centriste’, so not only did the French give us the political Right and Left, they gave us the Centre as well!

The New York Times recently printed an article reviewing a number of American chain restaurants, including the Outback Steakhouse (apparently in some way related to Australia), Olive Grove and TGI Fridays (which I believe we also have in Australia). It is an interesting enough review, although a few bloggerscriticise it, quite unfairly I think, for being elitist.

These type of restaurants also exist in Australia and they always struck me as over-priced and under-quality. You can get much better food a local restaurants for less money. I don’t think it is elitist per se to crticise these chain restaurants; I am not sure why people to go to them, but it is not because they are too poor to go anywhere else.

Anyway, the confusing thing in the article is that they only ever seem to order an ‘appetizer’ and an entree. This I found confusing, firstly that the restaurants would have ‘appetizers’ (I always understood to be a small bite size piece of food severed before the entree), and secondly that the reviewer would not have a main course. Then of course I realised that the American usage of entree must be different.

The American Dictionary.com defines entree as:

1.        a dish served as the main course of a meal.
2.        Older Use. a dish served at dinner between the principal courses.
3.        the privilege of entering; access.
4.        a means of obtaining entry: His friendship with an actor’s son was his entree into the theatrical world.
5.        the act of entering; entrance.

So the Americans refer to the main as an entree, although acknowledging that it once had a different (and in my view, more proper) meaning.

Another one for Language Log.

Update: as per the comment below I have touched up the post.

In many ways the US is a country of innovation and progress but in many ways it also deeply conservative (of a kind). There are many aspects of the US society/economy that most of the world have moved from, and yet the US still keeps (guns, for example). In a sereis of posts I am going to start with a simple one: pennies.

Monetary reform seems to be somewhat routine for most nations. In Australia we have gone through a number of reforms in the last few decades: the replacement of the one and two dollar notes with coins, the abolition of one and two cent coins, the transfer to polymer rather than paper notes.

Other countries, most notably the EU have also gone through currency reform of one kind or another. In the US however, change to the currency seem to be difficult to implement. While the US one dollar coin has been introduced, it has been impossible to get rid of the one dollar note (and the notes are all still the one colour – very twentieth century).

As inflation erodes the value of a currency the lower denomination units become less useful and it becomes more appropriate to abolish them. Pennies are practically useless in the US, vending machines do not accept them, they are not used for trade except for exchange when you buy a product for $X.99, and yet it still hangs around. This one sided transaction means that while coins come out of the mint and into the money system, they never make their way in the opposite direction, so the US seems to have periodic penny shortages.

According to Wikipedia attempts have been made to abolish the coin but have not made it through the Congress. The quirky nature of the congressional system may be some influence, but the bigger factor seems to be an innate conservatism (see here).