Tales from the Trail

Hillary Clinton stopped on Bill Clinton Boulevard to view one of Kosovo’s main attractions: the Bill Clinton Statue.

Clinton, on her first visit to Kosovo as secretary of state, on Wednesday received a rapturous welcome from the crowd waving U.S. flags and cheering on the Clinton Brand, which many Kosovars see as key to their country’s independence.

Clinton stopped and looked up at Bill — now 12 feet high and a shimmering gold — and expressed her satisfaction with the likeness.

She then plunged into the crowd, or at least as far as security would allow, pressing the flesh campaign-style and expressing her delight at being back in Kosovo as an independent country.

“I’m so glad to be back after 10 years, it’s wonderful,” Clinton said as reporters and officials scrambled around, the careful choreography of the motorcade thrown topsy-turvy by the unscheduled stop.

Vice President Joe Biden, in the doghouse for saying he would advise his family against flying or taking the subway because of the new flu strain, will be taking a trip to Europe in a couple weeks — but then again he probably doesn’t have to worry too much since he has his own plane.

Biden drew widespread scorn from the travel industry and pretty much everyone else for saying on NBC’s “Today Show” that he would “tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” he said, adding that the problem was that “when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft.”

The White House had to clarify his comments, advising Americans that they really only needed to avoid unnecessary travel to and from Mexico and that they should stay home if they were not feeling well. 

Nobel peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari is a former Finnish president but, after looking at President Barack Obama’s speech in Turkey, he said: “I nearly felt it’s good to be an American.”

Speaking after lunch at the National Press Club in Washington, the 71-year-old winner of the 2008 prize was asked on Tuesday to assess the U.S. leader’s call for peace and dialogue with Islam.

“I must say that I’m proud as a transatlanticist and democrat to see that sort of speech is made,” he told reporters.

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush may be deeply unpopular at home and reviled abroad but in some places people, apparently, are sorry to see him go.

The BBC reports  that Dubya has approval ratings of around 80 percent in Africa where his administration increased aid funding and raised the alarm over the Darfur crisis. In fact, children born in the Sudanese region are routinely named George Bush, the BBC reports. And in Kosovo a main street was named after him to thank him for supporting Kosovo’s independence.

Israelis will miss Bush too. Bush has been a staunch supporter of Israel and some analysts believe Israel’s current offensive in Gaza was timed to coincide with the final days of his administration because the Jewish state knew it could count on his support. ”Israel is probably the only place on earth where Bush can still get a standing ovation,” Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution told the BBC.