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Your brain clock is a cluster of brain cells in the hypothalamus that determines your sleep-wake time and is regulated by light and darkness, explains Delwyn Bartlett, a sleep psychologist with the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. Here’s how to keep it on track:

* Wake up at the same time every morning, even on weekends. This is more important than going to bed at the same time every night. “Waking up at the same time cues your brain to release sleep-wake hormones at the right time,” she says.

* Get the light right. Melatonin, the sleep hormone that gets your brain ready for sleep, needs diminishing levels of light to help it kick in. Bright light - or staring at your laptop - can delay its effects. Keep lights in the bedroom low before you go to sleep. Have curtains that let you wake up to morning light.

* Check your blankets. To feel sleepy, your body temperature needs to fall. An overheated bedroom or an electric blanket turned up too high can make it hard to sleep. But a warm bath an hour before bed can help your temperature fall. The warm water artificially raises your temperature, which then has to come down once you’re out of the bath.

* Think about what you drink and eat before bed. Drinks containing caffeine - coffee, tea, cocoa and cola - can keep you awake. Although caffeine’s stimulant effect is strongest in the first hour or so after taking it, it can still be in your system eight hours later. While alcohol helps you doze off quickly, drinking too much too close to bedtime can backfire. One drink might be OK but too much can fragment your sleep because of falling blood-alcohol levels that can wake you up later in the night.

* Eat earlier rather than later. Have dinner at 9pm and your body will still be digesting it when you’re in bed - and keeping you awake. As for a good bedtime snack, aim for something easy to digest that includes carbohydrates - warm milk or soy milk, wholegrain toast or a banana.

* Create a sound barrier. Earplugs can help, as can white noise, which means using sounds such as a fan to mask more disturbing noises. The fan can help cool you down if you overheat.

* Get regular exercise - being physically active can help you get a better night’s sleep. But not too close to bedtime - exercise can perk you up and make it hard to nod off.

* Have a snoring refuge. I’d never suggest couples sleep in separate rooms but having a spare room to retreat to occasionally when your sleep is broken because he’s snoring or you’re overheating - or both - can really help.

What about pills to help you nod off?

On prescription

Prescription drugs, such as benzodiazepines, have their place for the occasional sleepless night, to help you cope with jet lag or for short-term help with grief. But taking them continuously for more than two weeks can make you develop a tolerance to them so they don’t work as well.

Over the counter

Valerian is a common ingredient in herbal sleep remedies but studies of its effectiveness are mixed. An Ayurvedic herb, withania somnifera, has a traditional use as a sleep-inducer but, as with other traditional herbs, it often pays to get a therapeutic dose prescribed by a good herbalist rather than to self-prescribe. Other over-the-counter remedies are based on sedating antihistamines - prolonged use isn’t recommended as they can make you drowsy during the day.

source article: theage.com.au

  

BERLIN (Dow Jones)–German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday efforts to rescue the banking sector, hit hard by the financial crisis, have worked out.

“We fundamentally succeeded in rescuing banks,” Merkel said at a conference organized by the Initiative New Social Market Economy, or INSM.

However, she added that there still needs to be a “timely sensible” restructuring of the country’s state-owned Landesbanken.

“We are still working on this problem,” Merkel said. “The Landesbanken must restructure.”

The chancellor also said the Basel II rules, which govern the amount of capital banks need to hold against potential market losses, must be changed to avoid any negative impact on economic growth.

Merkel said she doesn’t expect domestic demand to replace exports as the main driver of Germany’s economy.

The chancellor also sharply criticized the recent liquidity policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, calling for a return to what she called “sensibility.”

She said the independence of the European Central Bank “must be retained and things which other central banks are doing, must be reduced.”

“I regard with great skepticism whatever powers for example the Fed has and also the Bank of England,” Merkel said. “We must together return to an independent central bank policy and to a policy of reason, otherwise we will be in exactly the same situation in 10 years time.”

She added that an international financial market regulatory framework is needed.

-By Andrea Thomas, Dow Jones Newswires; +49-(0)30-2888-4126; andrea.thomas@dowjones.com

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Gastritis is a proverbial medical problem. Gastritis is characterized by inflammation of the lining of your stomach. Gastritis can be caused by many factors, including infection, harm, certain drugs, and disorders of the immune system. Certain diseases, such as pernicious anemia, autoimmune disorders, and confirmed bile reflux, can cause gastritis as well. In some cases, gastritis can lead to ulcers and an increased risk of desire cancer. The most common symptoms are abdominal upset or pain. Other symptoms are belching, abdominal bloating, nausea, and vomiting or a emotion of fullness or of burning in the upper abdomen.

Blood in your vomit or dark stools may be a signal of hemorrhage in the abdomen. The almost sizeable danger element for gastritis is transmission with H. pylori bacteria. Though it’s thought to happen in half the reality’s populace, H. pylori transmission is almost popular in developing countries. Most folk have no signs or symptoms of H. pylori infection. If you regularly go aspirin to veto an eye blast or shot, you’re at danger of developing gastritis. Older adults have an increased danger of gastritis because the abdomen lining tends to slim with age. Cocaine can devastation your stomach, leading to bleeding and gastritis.

In the United States, blacks, Indians and Hispanics are more workable to get gastritis associated with H. pylori transmission than are folk of new races. Treatment of gastritis depends on the particular fitting and may include lifestyle changes, medications or, in uncommon cases, operation to handle a fundamental disease or circumstance. H2 blockers are normally more operative than antacids in relieving symptoms, and many folk discover them far more accessible. Proton pump inhibitors are prescribed. Antacids or a GI cocktail may be toughened therapeutically for symptoms. Antacids counteract abdomen acid and can offer quick pain alleviation.

Gastritis Treatment and Fending Tips

1. Aerobic exercise that increases your breathing.

2. Antacids neutralize stomach acid and can support fast pain relief.

3. Maintaining a healthy weight can often help prevent or reduce these symptoms.

4. Proton cross-examine inhibitors reduce acid by blocking the action of tiny pumps.

5. NSAIDs such as ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) or naproxen (Naprosyn) also recommeded.

6. Acid blockers medication, such as cimetidine, ranitidine, nizatidine or famotidine may propound.

7. Stress increases your danger of eye blast and shot, dampens your exempt structure then handle it.

  

Telling about Seychelles, involuntarily you get off on language of the tourist prospectuses advertising this or that heavenly spot: it is dazzling the white beaches washed by tender waves in which motley small fishes lap; the violent thickets overflowed with paradise birds; the hospitable natives incessantly dancing something incendiary …

All it, certainly, is presented and on Seychelles - granite-coral archipelago in Indian ocean at southeast coast of Africa. Also it is presented, maybe, even more magnificently, than on the next Maldives or, say, on the far Bahamas and the Bermudas. Seychelles - absolutely especial place, unique not only the flora and fauna, but also an unimaginable civilized-cultural cocktail and surprising harmony between the nature and the person.

Seychelles cocktail
I can not be kept from a number of comparisons with located in the same region Maldive Islands. So, on Seychelles tourists appear at once in a thick of the good-natured and affable Seychelles people. On Maldives the local population is not less affable and good-natured, only here tourists rather seldom adjoin to it. The matter is that the Maldivian authorities develop mass foreign tourism within the limits of officially proclaimed policy of "prevention of the cultural conflict". What can be "the cultural conflict"? And such: Maldives - the country Muslim, norms of Islam, as it is known, are no means always combined with free customs of foreign tourists. Therefore, to avoid misunderstanding, the Maldivian government has allocated for tourists about 100 desert islands and has constructed there everything that is necessary for smart rest. As a result tourists can relax as want, without disturbing and without shocking local population which in these original tourist "reservations" is few (except for the limited contingent of the housekeeping staff).

On Seychelles "the cultural conflict" cannot be by definition. After all the Seychelles people are a fruit of surprising synthesis of various races and blood - Arabs, Portugueses, the French and British colonists, Africans-bows,  Indians, Malayans, Chineses. On Seychelles any ethnic combinations in which result there were Creole people of archipelago were possible. Here there are Creoles of the French origin, Creoles of the British roots, Creoles of the Chinese and Indian blood, and also mulatto and malabar Creoles - all of them are united by Creole language (on the basis of French), strong feeling of a national generality and Catholic religion. Over 90 % of the population profess Christianity, in overwhelming majority Catholicism, presence of Anglican church is appreciable, other Protestant currents are presented also. Moslems, hinduists and Buddhists too are, but in obvious minority. Besides Creole state languages are still English and French. Clearly that such ethnocultural ????? has initially predetermined the raised tolerance to the most scandalous displays from outside visitors.

"The Seychelles mash" has generated amazing culture, syncretic, but at the same time is unique original lines of many civilizations very unlike against each other combining in. For an illustration it is possible to result Alec Voga’s magnificent statement about Seychelles women: "In Seychelles women enough French to have a good figure, English to differ good manners, Asian to be exotic, and African to conceal in itself charm of savageries".

And what miracle - Seychelles music! It combines, apparently, incongruous - music of slaveholders and music of slaves. The French minuets and kontrdances co-exist with mad African rhythms of dance "a ditch sega"  which dance under palm trees by the light of a fire. In violent drumbeat the jingling of an iron triangle, string search of a guitar and rhythmical sounds from stirring of the drawn coconuts with rattling grains inside is intertwined.

The Seychelles kitchen which has incorporated components of the most various culinary cultures (French, English, Indian, Chinese), but "welded" them in own way is not less wonderful. A basis of Seychelles viands - rice and seafood which prepare with spices, vegetables and fruit. (Here one bananas over 15 kinds, and still a mango, kiwi, nuts, avocado, citron.) the most popular dish - fish with rice (pwason ek diri), but tourists, certainly, foods involve much more exotic: soup from an octopus, a breadfruit tree fruit, shatiny from a shark or a stewed banana. Submit even a ragout from a bat, but it for fans of a gastronomic extreme. Among local drinks are well-known dite zitronel - tincture of lemon mint, "kalu" - the fermented coconut juice reminding young wine, "bakka" - fermented juice of a sugar cane, local beer "Sejrbju". Excellent wines from the republic of South Africa - the main trading partner of the island state are popular also.

  

Easy Jet is predicting that airlines will see a fall in demand of between two and four per cent this winter.

The low-cost carrier said it expects its annual pre-tax profit to fall by ten per cent to £110 million as a consequence of the gloomy outlook.

Strong growth in total revenue per seat that had been witnessed over the summer will reportedly tail off due to the economic downturn.

The carrier’s stock has lost more than 40 per cent of its value so far this year and had already committed to reining in some services in order to cope with heightened operating costs.

Those difficulties have been marginally offset by the recent fall in oil prices - down from a July peak of $147 to just $95 per barrel - but analysts insist the situation remains volatile.

Numis Securities wrote a research note warning that easyJet’s prediction may be understating the problem.

Assessing the industry situation in general, it voiced concern about the winter trading outlook “as pressures on the consumer accumulate and the outlook for employment in the UK deteriorates”.

Earlier this week, BA chief executive Willie Walsh warned the airline industry is going through its worst-ever crisis.

1. finance for any of your needs

  

Los Angeles, California, USA, The John Anson Ford Theatres

SEPTEMBER 2009
Culture Shock Los Angeles Dance Troupe (Fri. September 4, 2009)
Xpress Ur Self: Communication in a Hip-Hop Generation
Performance piece using hip-hop and street dance styles, visual images, music, and
spoken word.

Encuentro Jaranero de California (Sat. September 5, 2009)
Second Annual Noche Veracruzana
A music performance featuring the Son Jarocho and Huasteco traditions of Veracruz,
Mexico.

Angel City Jazz Festival* (Sun. September 6 - 7, 2009)
Angel City Jazz Festival
A Labor Day jazz festival featuring master classes and seminars during the day and
presenting a variety of cutting-edge jazz musicians in the evening.

TDRZ Productions, Inc.* (Sat. September 19, 2009)
Aloha Summer Celebration 2009
An evening showcasing the music and dance of Hawaii and other Polynesian/South
Pacific Island cultures.

Celtic Arts Center (Sun. September 20, 2009)
Celtic Arts Center Concert
Sixth annual program of traditional and contemporary Celtic music, song, and dance.

Star Entertainment & Education Group (Sat. September 26, 2009)
Fiesta Mexicana VII—Sones, Bailes y Cantares
Seventh annual variety show featuring the rich diversity of folkloric music and dance
from Mexico.

source:

  

DETROIT - Their young legs fresh and their confidence rising over 60 minutes, even with star center Sidney Crosby sidelined nearly two periods with a knee injury, the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup last night with a 2-1 victory over the defending champion Red Wings in a fast-paced and dramatic Game 7 to order viagra on line Backed by only 18 shots, two of them potted by pesky forward Maxime Talbot in the middle period, the Penguins won the Cup for the first time since the days when Mario Lemieux, now the club’s owner, marched them to championships in 1991 and ‘92. The Red Wings, their game as dull as their legs, didn’t keep pace through two periods and then fell short of salvaging a repeat amid a frantic third period in which Jonathan Ericsson cut the lead to 2-1 with 6:07 remaining. Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 23 of 24 shots, including a last one at his doorstep by Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom with two seconds remaining. With 2:14 to go, Fleury was bailed out when Niklas Kronwall’s 35-foot wrister pinged off the crossbar. Evgeni Malkin, the league’s leading scorer during the regular season, was voted the Conn Smythe winner as the postseason’s MVP. The Penguins, who ditched their coach, Michel Therrien, in favor of rookie bench boss Dan Bylsma with 25 games left in the regular season, are the champs. The Wings, now undoubtedly in for a makeover, couldn’t clinch what would have been their fifth Cup in 12 seasons.

Read more: Emperor Penguins on the World summed events weblog

  

Hot days!

How nice it is to be suntanned, dynamic and free to do everything we want! For most of us summer is the time when we can approach this dream. We use every possibility to lie in the sun and to strengthen our immune system. If our ?northern sun? isn’t enough for us, if it can’t pamper us with hot days we decide to have a trip to warm beaches — we hope that there we’ll manage to reach our fiery red friend and we’ll let it gild our white sun wishful bodies.

As compared to everyday life sunbathing presupposes a long stay in the sun and ultra-violet rays impact. The first circumstance attracts our attention to the amount and to the quality of liquid we drink. During this period you should drink water, and the amounts should be much bigger than usually. There is no other liquid that participates in water-salt exchange. If a drink has some color and taste, we initiate the mechanism of digestion. This means that we don’t drink juices, tonics, etc ? we eat them. And only pure water can compensate the loss of moisture that occurs through our skin when we thoroughly sunbathe. 2—3 liters of good water (non-chlorinated, fresh and without gas) is a necessary minimum. You may drink more, but never less. And remember: there is no better way of cleaning your organism! It’s also useful to take 2—3 grains of salt and suck them after having a glass of water. Then the water will get some time to stay in the organism and to ?fill with water? your skin, hair, nails, joints and other tissues where metabolism process passes slowly. It provides your organism with formation of melanin pigment (which gives your skin a golden-brown shadow) and strengthens your immune system. But at the same time it provokes the formation of free radicals. These substances damage ?Healthy? molecules and turn them into ?aggressors?, that continue the damaging action and affect the work of ferments, hormones and other members of metabolism. Damaged proteins are alien to our body. they bring to strained work of immune system and to overloads of excretive systems (first of all of kidneys and liver). So, if you decide to spend all day in the sun you have to try and save your organism from any other processed that overload the defensive and excretive functions of your organism.

So:

• Try to eat only natural healthy products. Avoid any kind of food chemistry. If you sunbathe exclude tonics, fizzy drinks, tinned food, ketchup, mayonnaise, chewing gum from your ration. Forget about desserts that contain any kind of conservatives (color, taste, stabilizers, etc). All this can be called harmful food. Give preference to water, fruits, use vegetable oils, lemon and grape juice with your salads.
• The main load for metabolic and excretive functions of an organism are animal proteins. While sunbathing you should limit the consumption of animal proteins. I during your holiday you want to follow the rules of healthy nutrition, eat meat or fish once a day and only in the evening. In summer eat more fish and sea-food than meat. As a garnish take green salad rather than spaghetti, rice or potatoes. Cottage cheese, all other kinds of cheese, yogurt and eggs are preferable to be eaten in the morning. A breakfast containing sour milk products shouldn’t be more often than twice or thrice a week, and have egg-breakfast only once a week. It’s especially useful to have fasting days once or twice a week ? on such days you may have only vegetables, fruits, nuts and cereals. Healthy nutrition will help you avoid weight gaining during your holiday.
• In summer your organism uses less power on warming than in winter. Therefore our main food in summer are fresh vegetables and fruits, whereas during the rest of the year we recommend having long-term carbohydrates (cereals and bread) in the first part of the day (for breakfast or for lunch). An ideal breakfast would be salad with a small loaf of bread, and for your midday meal choose some potatoes, rice or pasta with steamed, grilled or fresh vegetables. For your snack have some fruit with nuts. Try not to have fruits after 18.00 pm ? if you don’t follow this recommendation, they will provoke fermentation in your stomach and your favorite dress will fit you badly in the evening… By the way, swelling stomach means that there is a disbalance of stomach flora. Treating such problems is necessary and usually very long. The dieticians of our Clinic know the best ways to cope with it.
• Avoid eating the same product every day. Only food diversification can provide with all needed nutrition elements and at the same time it won’t overload digestion and won’t cause trouble for cleaning your organism.
• Be careful with alcohol. Avoid them during the day and don’t drink much in the evening. We decided to give our organism a possibility to cope with the consequence of ?free-radical boom?, so let your liver and kidneys work for your health and beauty.

If you follow these simple recommendations, you will come back from your holiday not only with a beautiful color of your skin, but also full of energy to continue your work.

source: www.drvolkov.com

  

The newspaper industry is reeling and trying to adapt to an online future.

But The Daily Racing Form, the horse-racing tabloid with the familiar red, white and black logo, appears to have found a survival strategy: it feeds its readers a product with news, analysis and data, and sells them more and deeper analytic information from its Web site, drf.com.

“Initially, the Internet was a small part of the company, but now I’d say that it’s 10 to 20 percent,” said Steven Crist, The Form’s chairman and publisher. “We’re not going to be selling more hard-copy newspapers in five years. I think we’ll still be selling them, because there are still thousands of people who are tactile and sensual about their newsprint and Flair pens and marking up their Form. I don’t think we’re going digital any time soon.”

In a few years, he expects the digital side to account for at least one-third of revenue.

The Form’s business model is bucking two economic trends: it is a daily in the midst of a recession that has decimated advertising and some general-interest papers. And it is a niche paper that serves a sport with considerable problems, but one that comes alive to a general audience for Triple Crown events like Saturday’s Belmont Stakes.

Still, it is the industry’s only daily, with its competition largely from The BloodHorse and The Thoroughbred Times’s Web sites, and the industry’s central data source, Equibase. A formidable challenge seemed to come in 1991, when Robert Maxwell started The Racing Times, which Crist edited. But it lasted less than a year, and The Form acquired some of its assets to kill it.

“Oh, The Racing Form is the bible,” said William Nack, the former Sports Illustrated horse-racing writer and a biographer of Ruffian and Secretariat who grew up admiring The Form’s top columnist, Charlie Hatton. “You can’t be without it at the track.”

Crist said that The Form’s unusual economics helped it endure the recession. He said that fewer than 10 people had been laid off this year, on a staff of about 200.

“Newspapers for the most part get 95 percent of our revenue from advertising, and circulation is break even, at best,” Crist said Friday at Belmont Park. “We’re 90-percent-plus from circulation. So the advertising fall hasn’t hurt much. I’m not saying we don’t like or need advertising, but we’re the most expensive newspaper in the world, at $5 or $6, and that’s where our money comes from.”

Circulation averages nearly 33,000 daily, said Jim Kostas, The Form’s president and general manager. Less than 20 years ago, it was closer to 100,000.

“Although it suffers from some of the same issues newspapers do, the combination of its editorial content and data puts it on firmer ground,” said Charles Hayward, the president of the New York Racing Association and a former president of The Form. “It’s like combining The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.”

Although its circulation is modest, the $5 to $6 price tag, depending on the market, means revenue of at least $60 million from selling 39 regional editions of the paper at tracks (where The Form also publishes programs) and newsstands. Some days, just a few thousand copies are sold; on Triple Crown days, 350,000.

“Absolutely, we’re profitable,” Crist said. “It’s not even close. We turn over a lot of cash.” The Form is privately owned by a venture-capital firm, Arlington Capital Partners of Chevy Chase, Md., so there is no independent verification of Crist’s profitability claims.

But at least through its most recent sales, it has proved to be an increasingly valuable news-media property: in 1998, a group that included Crist acquired it for $44 million; six years later, the Wicks Group bought it for about $75 million. In 2007, before the recession struck, Arlington paid nearly $200 million as part of a strategy to sell premium sports data online.

“We know that that can’t go on forever,” Crist said of the rise in acquisition prices.

The Internet strategy has been building for a decade and focuses on selling charts, past-performance data, handicapping reports and products like Andrew Beyer’s speed figures for a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. “We’re constantly playing with pricing plans,” Crist said.

Marc Attenberg, The Form’s vice president for Internet, said, “We benefit because people are willing to pay for our information.” Perhaps The Form’s model is one that newspapers should have heeded instead of offering free content. But The Form may be different because what it offers is highly specialized and geared to gamblers, not general-interest readers.

Attenberg hopes that the next evolution in The Form’s digital growth is the creation of mobile devices that can accommodate the intricacy and depth of performance charts.

“Eighty-five percent of people come to our site, print out what they want and take it to the track or to their living room,” he said. “Right now, our stuff just doesn’t work on a BlackBerry.”
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By Dan Balz

President Obama’s weekend of summitry in Latin America will be remembered most for his cordial encounter with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The images of that smiling handshake spoke vividly to the changes Obama is bringing to U.S. relations abroad.

The underlying question in all this is whether Obama’s approach means the United States will be dealing out of a position of strength or weakness as the new administration confronts problems ranging from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to Middle East peace to better relations in this hemisphere. Does Obama’s desire to deal more cordially with leaders who are hostile to the United States make him more or less likely to achieve the country’s strategic goals in tough negotiations?

The president was asked at the end of his trip to define an Obama doctrine in foreign policy. After his trips to Europe and Latin America and his meetings with many world leaders, how should Americans and the rest of the world interpret what sets his approach apart from other presidents?

Obama was understandably reluctant at this early stage in his president to offer a lengthy or overly precise answer. But what he said underscored that his early steps are very much in reaction to former president George W. Bush’s style of interacting with the world.

He said he believes the United States remains the most powerful nation in the world, but cannot solve problems by itself. That means listening as well as talking when working with other nations. He said the United States should stand for a universal set of values, live those values whenever possible — and acknowledge mistakes when they occur.

Obama defended his approach as an improvement on the past. He said he is prepared to jettison doctrines and practices that now seem outdated, or that failed to produce real results. But he said there were limits to what he can achieve.

“In Europe, people believe in our plan for Afghanistan, but their politics are still such that it’s hard for leaders to want to send more troops into Afghanistan,” he told reporters on Sunday. “That’s not going to change because I’m popular in Europe or leaders think that I’ve been respectful towards them. On the other hand, by having established those better relations, it means that among the population there’s more confidence that working with the United States is beneficial, and they are going to try to do more than they might otherwise have done.”

No one should be surprised that Obama has adopted this attitude in his first meetings with world leaders. To the extent that there is an Obama doctrine that describes his approach to the world, it was defined on July 23, 2007, during a Democratic debate in South Carolina.

Obama was asked an explicit question. Would he, in his first year as president, be willing to meet without preconditions with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. “I would,” he replied. “And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”

Obama was roundly criticized for that answer by his rivals for the Democratic nomination — and especially by now-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. He was also criticized by many foreign policy experts, who took his answer as a sign of political naiveté on the part of an inexperienced politician. Obama stood his ground, convinced that his critics were defending an old paradigm.

Over time, Obama equivocated on that answer but not apparently on his belief that a new approach could yield results that eluded the Bush administration. Having won the presidency, he has begun to act on that conviction.

He has signaled new openness toward diplomatic discussions with Iran. He said in Europe that the United States has not always lived up to its ideals. He has softened U.S. policy toward Cuba and, in return, Cuban President Raul Castro said last week everything was now on the table for talks. The weekend meetings brought him face to face not only with Venezuela’s Chavez but also Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

Obama was asked Sunday whether he was worried about being perceived back home as soft. “We had this debate throughout the campaign, and the whole notion was — is — that somehow if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments that had previously been hostile to us, that that somehow would be a sign of weakness. The American people didn’t buy it. And there’s a good reason the American people didn’t buy it — because it doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Shaking hands with Chavez does nothing to endanger U.S. strategic interests, he argued. Nor does having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.

Obama sees irrefutable logic in all this. “On this one, I think I’m right,” he said Sunday — the same posture he took when he was criticized during the campaign. But the opening rounds of his diplomatic outreach to the world provide no real answers to the bigger questions.

He benefits now from the backlash against Bush’s presidency. In time, his foreign policy will have to stand on its own record.

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