Somali pirates want $15 million for Saudi ship
Monday, November 24 10:15 am
Abdi Sheikh
Print Story
Somali pirates holding a Saudi supertanker after the largest hijacking in maritime history have reduced their ransom demand to $15 million (10 million pounds), an Islamist leader and regional maritime group both said on Monday. Skip related content
Related photos / videos Turkish frigate Gokova escorts MV As Salaam Enlarge photo The November 15 capture of the Sirius Star -- with $100 million of oil and 25 crew members from Britain, Poland, Croatia, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines -- has focussed world attention on rampant piracy off the failed Horn of Africa state.
Scores of attacks this year have brought millions of dollars of ransom payments, hiked up shipping insurance costs, sent foreign naval patrols rushing to the area, and left about a dozen boats with more than 200 hostages still in pirate hands.
The gang had originally been quoted as wanting $25 million to release the Sirius Star, which was captured far from Somali waters about 450 nautical miles southeast of Kenya.
But Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Isse Adow, whose men are in the Haradheere area where the ship is being held offshore, said the demand went down. "Middlemen have given a $15 million ransom figure for the Saudi ship. That is the issue now," he said.
Residents say pirates have taken the ship further out to about 100 km (62 miles) off the coast of central Somalia after Islamist militia poured into the town in search of the pirates.
Adow, who represents the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), says his men are out to confront the pirates and free the Saudi Arabian Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) because it is a "Muslim" ship. But residents say other Islamist militia want a cut of any ransom payment.
FOREIGN WARSHIPS
Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of Mombasa-based East Africa Seafarers Programme, said his sources were confirming a reduced $15 million demand. "The ship has moved into deeper waters, but it cannot go too far because of patrols," he said.
More than a dozen foreign warships are in the area, though analysts say the range Somali pirates operate in are too vast to ever properly control.
The capture of the Sirius Star has stirred up the small dusty harbour of Haradheere into a frenzy of activity, witnesses say, with armed men riding back and forth on cars all over town.
The Islamists, who have been fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies for two years, denounce piracy in public. But analysts say some factions are taking a share of spoils and using pirates to enable weapons deliveries by sea.
Senior Somali officials are also on the take from piracy, diplomats in the region say. The government denies that.
"We are against this act and we shall hunt the ship wherever it sails, and free it," Islamist spokesman Adow said.
Piracy has flourished off Somalia thanks to chaos onshore.
The nation of 9 million people has suffered perpetual civil conflict since 1991 when warlords toppled a dictator.
Neighbour Ethiopia, which has several thousand soldiers in Somalia backing up the weak, Western-backed government, said the international naval response would not solve piracy long-term.
"The rich nations dispatching warships into the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to protect their cargo from pirates may achieve initial success," Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told state TV.
"But to believe that the growing piracy will end without tackling the 18-year-old crisis inside Somalia is futile."
The minister said Ethiopia would withdraw troops from Somalia unless leaders there could bring stability.
"There is no reason for our troops to stand guard to protect residential areas of Somali leaders who continue feuding while their country is being destroyed," he said. Seyoum said African nations contributing to a 3,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission may also withdraw if the Ethiopians go.
AU officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by David Clarke and Matthew Jones)
Monday, November 24, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The J. Crew Catalog Destroyed My Spirit
culturebox
The J. Crew Catalog Destroyed My Spirit
Why mailmen give up.
By Paul Collins
Posted Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008, at 6:59 AM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a discovery worthy of a murder mystery: In a parking lot in the mountains outside Santa Cruz, Calif., a truck is found abandoned, the keys still hanging in the door. Inside the police find … a note? A body?
Not quite. Try 13,000 pieces of undelivered mail.
The recent discovery in Bonny Doon, Calif., of a former mail carrier's old stash was not exactly unprecedented. There's also the recent arrest of a Detroit postal carrier who squirreled away 9,000 pieces of mail into a storage locker, a work dodge worthy of a Seinfeld plot. A week earlier, a postman was nailed for hoarding 27,000 letters in Leeds, England; the week before that revealed a postal hoarder with 20,000 letters in Frankfurt, Germany. ("[He] didn't deliver mail addressed to himself either," a police statement dryly noted.) And all of them were dwarfed by the North Carolina postman who admitted in August to filling his garage and burying in his backyard nearly a tractor trailer's worth of undelivered junk mail.
But the hoarding and abandonment of mail is a phenomenon that extends at least back to 1874, when Providence, R.I., postman Benjamin Salisbury was caught throwing mail into the ocean "to avoid the trouble of delivery." Some things don't change much; a Long Island postman used the same MO in 1954, when he blamed a bum leg from the war for forcing him to dump his mail off a local pier. The scheme kind of worked … until the tide came in.
In 2006, the last year the U.S. Postal Service released figures, there were 515 arrests and 466 convictions for "internal theft." That figure includes abandonment and hoarding cases, where the motive has remained constant since the days of penny postage: A worker gets overwhelmed or simply disinclined to finish his route. "It's not a huge issue," Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Office of the Inspector General told me. "We work on referrals."
And there's the rub: For a referral to happen, first someone has to notice.
The deliveries affected are often what the U.S. Postal Service now terms "standard mail"—and what the rest of us call "junk." With the railroad-driven growth in catalogs, postal abandonment stories were already common by the 1880s. The New York Times complained of mailmen burning their bundles and in 1883 ran the immortal headline "To Deliver His Letters Some Time" after the discovery of a mailman's old stash in the basement of an Upper East Side saloon.
For a mail-sack slacker, there's a dark allure to hoarding junk. Think about it: If someone's first-class mail with paychecks or credit card bills doesn't show up, they're liable to complain. But if the umpteenth Eddie Bauer catalog doesn't arrive, well … who's gonna notice?
So, who does notice? The discovery of hoards follows some common narratives: They've been caught by meter readers, by housesitters feeding a rabbit for a vacationing postman, and by state troopers making traffic stops. A number of "dead-letter cars"—old clunkers filled up like a junk-mail piñatas—have been discovered by mechanics and used-car dealers. And a number of cases are broken after the stashed mail catches fire: In 1974, back-to-back cases a week apart yielded 1,200 sacks of mail in a Louisville, Ky., attic and another tractor-trailer load in a burning attic in suburban Connecticut.
Discovery becomes more likely in cases where a rogue carrier indiscriminately tosses both first-class mail and junk. In 1978, the postmaster of Roxbury, Conn., was retired after postal inspectors in a late-night raid found letters in the central office's trash cans. Among the locals, both Arthur Miller and William Styron were missing mail. "I have had over the years a large amount of mail for a well-known writer—I guess that's the term," Styron mused afterwards to the New York Times. "And in the last year and a half I've been saying to myself, 'Well, is my stock declining?' "
All these cases, however, bow before the Chicago mail scandals of 1994. Ranked dead last among cities in postal customer satisfaction, that year Chicago found itself on the receiving end of hoard stories seemingly every week. Letters burning under a railway viaduct, letters rotting under a porch, letters stuffed into a dumpster: The stuff was even found hiding at the post office itself. The post office, indeed, was as much a problem as the individual carriers: "Complaint lines might ring as often as 85 times without being answered. …" noted reporter Charles Nicodemus. "Mammoth mounds of undelivered mail were found at several stations—including one pile 800 feet long, nearly the length of three football fields."
It seemed an almost inevitable coda when, five years later, a final Chicago stash caught fire in a home and took down its mailman with it.
To be fair, the problem is not peculiar to the United States. Postal hoards turn up everywhere from Norway to Malaysia, where a postal worker caught hoarding 21,255 letters complained, "Why should I deliver the letters when I am being paid less than 500 Ringgit?" He might have taken a lesson from Italy, which gamed the practice to squeeze some money out of it: In 1974, the Poste Italiane was caught selling new mail to paper-pulp plants for $14 a ton. "Most of the mail has now been turned into cheap cardboard suitcases," the Times of London reported. Shamed by the resulting outcry, the postal service then resorted to stuffing letters into unofficial "ghost trains" that circled the country without any destination.
True to form, though, the most spectacularly eccentric cases come from Britain, where in 2004 one Staffordshire carrier achieved a monumental stash of 130,000 pieces of mail. Far from simply being too tired to carry their mail, British carriers have given excuses ranging from low blood sugar to the post-traumatic stress of having served in Northern Ireland. Most memorably, last year a cross-dressing carrier in Leeds took revenge on local yobs by tossing their mail after they made fun of her newly acquired lipstick and heels.
But when one hears of a Yorkshire postman who filled every room of his house with 35,000 undelivered letters, it's hard not to find a more universal parable of the overwhelming reach of modern communication and consumerism. The carrier, Rodger Parkinson, seemed almost relieved that his mail stash was discovered.
"I'm glad in a way," he told his judge. "It needs sorting."
Paul Collins teaches writing at Portland State University. He is the author of the forthcoming The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2204823/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The J. Crew Catalog Destroyed My Spirit
Why mailmen give up.
By Paul Collins
Posted Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008, at 6:59 AM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a discovery worthy of a murder mystery: In a parking lot in the mountains outside Santa Cruz, Calif., a truck is found abandoned, the keys still hanging in the door. Inside the police find … a note? A body?
Not quite. Try 13,000 pieces of undelivered mail.
The recent discovery in Bonny Doon, Calif., of a former mail carrier's old stash was not exactly unprecedented. There's also the recent arrest of a Detroit postal carrier who squirreled away 9,000 pieces of mail into a storage locker, a work dodge worthy of a Seinfeld plot. A week earlier, a postman was nailed for hoarding 27,000 letters in Leeds, England; the week before that revealed a postal hoarder with 20,000 letters in Frankfurt, Germany. ("[He] didn't deliver mail addressed to himself either," a police statement dryly noted.) And all of them were dwarfed by the North Carolina postman who admitted in August to filling his garage and burying in his backyard nearly a tractor trailer's worth of undelivered junk mail.
But the hoarding and abandonment of mail is a phenomenon that extends at least back to 1874, when Providence, R.I., postman Benjamin Salisbury was caught throwing mail into the ocean "to avoid the trouble of delivery." Some things don't change much; a Long Island postman used the same MO in 1954, when he blamed a bum leg from the war for forcing him to dump his mail off a local pier. The scheme kind of worked … until the tide came in.
In 2006, the last year the U.S. Postal Service released figures, there were 515 arrests and 466 convictions for "internal theft." That figure includes abandonment and hoarding cases, where the motive has remained constant since the days of penny postage: A worker gets overwhelmed or simply disinclined to finish his route. "It's not a huge issue," Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Office of the Inspector General told me. "We work on referrals."
And there's the rub: For a referral to happen, first someone has to notice.
The deliveries affected are often what the U.S. Postal Service now terms "standard mail"—and what the rest of us call "junk." With the railroad-driven growth in catalogs, postal abandonment stories were already common by the 1880s. The New York Times complained of mailmen burning their bundles and in 1883 ran the immortal headline "To Deliver His Letters Some Time" after the discovery of a mailman's old stash in the basement of an Upper East Side saloon.
For a mail-sack slacker, there's a dark allure to hoarding junk. Think about it: If someone's first-class mail with paychecks or credit card bills doesn't show up, they're liable to complain. But if the umpteenth Eddie Bauer catalog doesn't arrive, well … who's gonna notice?
So, who does notice? The discovery of hoards follows some common narratives: They've been caught by meter readers, by housesitters feeding a rabbit for a vacationing postman, and by state troopers making traffic stops. A number of "dead-letter cars"—old clunkers filled up like a junk-mail piñatas—have been discovered by mechanics and used-car dealers. And a number of cases are broken after the stashed mail catches fire: In 1974, back-to-back cases a week apart yielded 1,200 sacks of mail in a Louisville, Ky., attic and another tractor-trailer load in a burning attic in suburban Connecticut.
Discovery becomes more likely in cases where a rogue carrier indiscriminately tosses both first-class mail and junk. In 1978, the postmaster of Roxbury, Conn., was retired after postal inspectors in a late-night raid found letters in the central office's trash cans. Among the locals, both Arthur Miller and William Styron were missing mail. "I have had over the years a large amount of mail for a well-known writer—I guess that's the term," Styron mused afterwards to the New York Times. "And in the last year and a half I've been saying to myself, 'Well, is my stock declining?' "
All these cases, however, bow before the Chicago mail scandals of 1994. Ranked dead last among cities in postal customer satisfaction, that year Chicago found itself on the receiving end of hoard stories seemingly every week. Letters burning under a railway viaduct, letters rotting under a porch, letters stuffed into a dumpster: The stuff was even found hiding at the post office itself. The post office, indeed, was as much a problem as the individual carriers: "Complaint lines might ring as often as 85 times without being answered. …" noted reporter Charles Nicodemus. "Mammoth mounds of undelivered mail were found at several stations—including one pile 800 feet long, nearly the length of three football fields."
It seemed an almost inevitable coda when, five years later, a final Chicago stash caught fire in a home and took down its mailman with it.
To be fair, the problem is not peculiar to the United States. Postal hoards turn up everywhere from Norway to Malaysia, where a postal worker caught hoarding 21,255 letters complained, "Why should I deliver the letters when I am being paid less than 500 Ringgit?" He might have taken a lesson from Italy, which gamed the practice to squeeze some money out of it: In 1974, the Poste Italiane was caught selling new mail to paper-pulp plants for $14 a ton. "Most of the mail has now been turned into cheap cardboard suitcases," the Times of London reported. Shamed by the resulting outcry, the postal service then resorted to stuffing letters into unofficial "ghost trains" that circled the country without any destination.
True to form, though, the most spectacularly eccentric cases come from Britain, where in 2004 one Staffordshire carrier achieved a monumental stash of 130,000 pieces of mail. Far from simply being too tired to carry their mail, British carriers have given excuses ranging from low blood sugar to the post-traumatic stress of having served in Northern Ireland. Most memorably, last year a cross-dressing carrier in Leeds took revenge on local yobs by tossing their mail after they made fun of her newly acquired lipstick and heels.
But when one hears of a Yorkshire postman who filled every room of his house with 35,000 undelivered letters, it's hard not to find a more universal parable of the overwhelming reach of modern communication and consumerism. The carrier, Rodger Parkinson, seemed almost relieved that his mail stash was discovered.
"I'm glad in a way," he told his judge. "It needs sorting."
Paul Collins teaches writing at Portland State University. He is the author of the forthcoming The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2204823/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
India 'sinks Somali pirate ship'
An Indian navy warship has destroyed a suspected Somali pirate vessel after it came under attack in the Gulf of Aden.
The INS Tabar sunk the pirate "mother ship" after it failed to stop for investigation and opened fire instead, an Indian navy statement said.
There has been a surge in piracy incidents off the coast of Somalia.
The latest attack came days after the Saudi-owned Sirius Star supertanker and its 25 crew were seized by pirates and anchored point off the Somali coast.
Vela International, operators of the Sirius Star, told the BBC no demands had yet been received from the pirates. The company also said all the crew were safe.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
Indian Navy spokesman, Commander Nirad Sinha, describes the attack The biggest tanker ever hijacked, Sirius Star is carrying a cargo of two million barrels of oil - a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output - worth more than $100m (£67m).
Analysts say the pattern of other hijackings suggests a ransom request is likely to follow. Given the value of the tanker and its cargo, that is expected to be a sizeable demand.
Two of the captive crew are British. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said the Royal Navy was co-ordinating the European response to the incident.
"The problem of piracy around Somalia is a grave danger to the stability in the region," he told the BBC.
Somalia has not had a functioning national government since 1991 and has suffered continuing civil strife.
Explosions
India is among several countries already patrolling the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes which connects the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
SOMALIA PIRACY
The Indian navy said the Tabar spotted the pirate vessel while patrolling 285 nautical miles (528km) south-west of Salalah in Oman on Tuesday evening.
The navy said the pirates on board were armed with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers.
When it demanded the vessel stop for investigation, the pirate ship responded by threatening to "blow up the naval warship if it closed on her", the statement said.
Pirates then fired on the Tabar, and the Indians say they retaliated and that there was an explosion on the pirate vessel, which sank.
"Fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored in the vessel," the Indian navy said.
Some of the pirates tried to escape on two speedboats. The Indian sailors gave chase but one boat was later found abandoned, while a second boat escaped.
The Tabar has been patrolling the Gulf of Aden since 23 October, and has escorted 35 ships safely through the "pirate-infested waters", the statement said.
Last week, helicopter-borne Indian marine commandos stopped pirates from boarding and hijacking an Indian merchant vessel.
Ransoms
On Tuesday, a cargo ship and a fishing vessel became the latest to join more than 90 vessels attacked by the pirates this year.
THE SIRIUS STAR
Carrying 2m barrels of oil
Biggest vessel to be hijacked
The first vessel, a 25-crew cargo vessel transporting wheat to Iran, was attacked in the Gulf of Aden, while contact was lost with the crew of 12 on the fishing boat.
Piracy off the coast of East Africa and the Gulf of Aden - an area of more than 1m sq miles (2.6m sq km) - is estimated to have cost up to $30m in ransoms this year, a UK think tank has said.
The hijackings account for one-third of all global piracy incidents this year and the situation is getting out of control, according to the International Maritime Board.
The pirates who seized the Sirius Star are a sophisticated group with contacts in Dubai and neighbouring countries, says the BBC Somali Service's Yusuf Garaad.
Much of their ransom money from previous hijackings has been used to buy new boats and weapons as well as develop a network across the Horn of Africa, he adds.
Shipping companies are now weighing up the risks of using the short-cut route to Europe via the Suez canal.
However, travelling around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope would add several weeks to average journey times and substantially increase the cost of goods for consumers.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7736885.stm
Published: 2008/11/19 10:13:38 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
An Indian navy warship has destroyed a suspected Somali pirate vessel after it came under attack in the Gulf of Aden.
The INS Tabar sunk the pirate "mother ship" after it failed to stop for investigation and opened fire instead, an Indian navy statement said.
There has been a surge in piracy incidents off the coast of Somalia.
The latest attack came days after the Saudi-owned Sirius Star supertanker and its 25 crew were seized by pirates and anchored point off the Somali coast.
Vela International, operators of the Sirius Star, told the BBC no demands had yet been received from the pirates. The company also said all the crew were safe.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
Indian Navy spokesman, Commander Nirad Sinha, describes the attack The biggest tanker ever hijacked, Sirius Star is carrying a cargo of two million barrels of oil - a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output - worth more than $100m (£67m).
Analysts say the pattern of other hijackings suggests a ransom request is likely to follow. Given the value of the tanker and its cargo, that is expected to be a sizeable demand.
Two of the captive crew are British. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said the Royal Navy was co-ordinating the European response to the incident.
"The problem of piracy around Somalia is a grave danger to the stability in the region," he told the BBC.
Somalia has not had a functioning national government since 1991 and has suffered continuing civil strife.
Explosions
India is among several countries already patrolling the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes which connects the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
SOMALIA PIRACY
The Indian navy said the Tabar spotted the pirate vessel while patrolling 285 nautical miles (528km) south-west of Salalah in Oman on Tuesday evening.
The navy said the pirates on board were armed with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers.
When it demanded the vessel stop for investigation, the pirate ship responded by threatening to "blow up the naval warship if it closed on her", the statement said.
Pirates then fired on the Tabar, and the Indians say they retaliated and that there was an explosion on the pirate vessel, which sank.
"Fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored in the vessel," the Indian navy said.
Some of the pirates tried to escape on two speedboats. The Indian sailors gave chase but one boat was later found abandoned, while a second boat escaped.
The Tabar has been patrolling the Gulf of Aden since 23 October, and has escorted 35 ships safely through the "pirate-infested waters", the statement said.
Last week, helicopter-borne Indian marine commandos stopped pirates from boarding and hijacking an Indian merchant vessel.
Ransoms
On Tuesday, a cargo ship and a fishing vessel became the latest to join more than 90 vessels attacked by the pirates this year.
THE SIRIUS STAR
Carrying 2m barrels of oil
Biggest vessel to be hijacked
The first vessel, a 25-crew cargo vessel transporting wheat to Iran, was attacked in the Gulf of Aden, while contact was lost with the crew of 12 on the fishing boat.
Piracy off the coast of East Africa and the Gulf of Aden - an area of more than 1m sq miles (2.6m sq km) - is estimated to have cost up to $30m in ransoms this year, a UK think tank has said.
The hijackings account for one-third of all global piracy incidents this year and the situation is getting out of control, according to the International Maritime Board.
The pirates who seized the Sirius Star are a sophisticated group with contacts in Dubai and neighbouring countries, says the BBC Somali Service's Yusuf Garaad.
Much of their ransom money from previous hijackings has been used to buy new boats and weapons as well as develop a network across the Horn of Africa, he adds.
Shipping companies are now weighing up the risks of using the short-cut route to Europe via the Suez canal.
However, travelling around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope would add several weeks to average journey times and substantially increase the cost of goods for consumers.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7736885.stm
Published: 2008/11/19 10:13:38 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Sheepish, Proud or Set to Flip a Coin, They’re Still Undecided
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 2, 2008
Sheepish, Proud or Set to Flip a Coin, They’re Still Undecided
By MARK LEIBOVICH
WASHINGTON — Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have stood (or sat) for 36 debates, endured thousands of interviews, and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertisements and the better part of two years trying to convince voters that they are worthy of the presidency, or at least a vote.
But with only days left until Election Day, a small cluster of holdouts — 4 percent, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll — are still wrestling with the “Who are you voting for?” question.
Which raises a follow-up: What is up with these people?
“I do not like being an ‘undecided,’ ” said a sheepish Doug Finke, a 66-year-old executive at an international relocation service in Louisville, Ky. “Last time at this point, I definitely was decided. Not this time. I find it unnerving.”
Mr. Finke, a Republican, voted twice for George W. Bush. He describes himself as an economic conservative and said he had been “very impressed” with Senator John McCain. It sure sounds as if Mr. Finke is leaning toward Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican, right?
Not so fast.
“I’m socially more liberal,” Mr. Finke said. “I think Obama is bright and has been very steady in this campaign.” He added that it would be “very exciting for the United States to elect a black president.” Besides, he does not think Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, would be ready to step into the top job if something happened to Mr. McCain (who, Mr. Finke pointed out, “is pretty old”).
Where does this leave Mr. Finke? “I plan on doing a lot of reading this weekend,” he said.
If the country is divided between red and blue, Mr. Finke resides in a gray state, along with a proud — or embarrassed — corps of undecideds. They are a shrinking cohort of confused, procrastinating, indifferent or just plain indecisive consumers of democracy.
Mr. Finke lives in a red state, Kentucky, with his wife, Shelley, who is also a gray state citizen. She works out of their home, where she helps manage her husband’s second career as a jazz trombonist.
“I tend to be a procrastinator,” said Ms. Finke, 44, who said she operated best with deadlines.
She voted for Mr. Bush twice and describes herself as “a conservative person at heart.” At the beginning of the campaign, she was suspicious of Mr. Obama “because of the whole Hollywood thing,” but she has since warmed to him.
“My opinion of Obama has definitely risen during this campaign,” Ms. Finke said. “And my opinion of McCain has fallen.”
So it sure sounds as if Ms. Finke is moving toward Mr. Obama, the Illinois Democrat, right?
Not so fast.
“I’d say I’m leaning towards McCain,” she said. “For as awful as things are with this Republican administration, there’s something about the whole conservative thing that appeals to me.” Put her down as “leaning McCain” then.
“But maybe I’ll vote for Obama,” she said. “How many days are left?”
Two, as of Sunday. While many people in this campaign-saturated country are relieved that the election will soon be over, some of the undecideds figure, What’s the rush?
“I might flip a coin,” said Vasilios Gerovasiliou, 64, of Concordville, Pa. His two grown sons — like him, veterinarians — are split along party lines. His wife, Helen, said she was “disgusted with both sides.”
Mr. Gerovasiliou, who emigrated from Greece 35 years ago, said there were things he liked about both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama. But he also believes that “neither of the candidates always speaks the truth” and that “none of them will be able to do all of the things they are promising.”
Mr. Gerovasiliou supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, loved Bill Clinton and pretty much vowed to support anyone not named Barack Obama after he defeated Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
But the Clintons’ endorsement of Mr. Obama went a long way. “Time healed things,” Mr. Gerovasiliou said. Plus, he likes Mr. Obama’s running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of neighboring Delaware, who is “friends with a lot of the Greeks around here” and patronizes the local Greek diners. He likes Mr. McCain, too, however. He admires his service, patriotism, and grit, and also likes that Ms. Palin comes from a small town, just as he did from one in Greece.
Would he really flip a coin? No, he would not. “I will just have to make a decision,” Mr. Gerovasiliou said. By the end of a 15-minute phone interview, he sounded a little closer to making one. “I think I am leaning a little bit to someone now,” he said.
And that would be?
“Biden.”
Talking does not necessarily bring undecideds closer to deciding. “The more I chat, the more confused I get,” said Laura Wolpo, a Brooklyn native who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. She was fresh from a golf outing that was filled with political conversation and left her head spinning. “People get so wacky about this stuff,” she said.
Ms. Wolpo, 76, has usually picked a candidate by the end of the conventions. That was the Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.
Mr. Obama? “I have great misgivings,” she said.
“We are of the Jewish faith,” she said, “and I don’t really know his stance on the Middle East and Israel.” She also worries about his “share the wealth ideas” and says that Michelle Obama comes on a little too strong. (“And someone should teach her how to dress, too.”)
Mr. McCain? “I like the man,” she said. “I have a great deal of respect for him.”
But she has problems with him, too, some big ones. First, she is a strong believer in abortion rights (which Mr. McCain is not.) “The government does not belong in our bedroom,” she said. And then there is Ms. Palin.
“Oh, my God,” Ms. Wolpo said. “Some of what she says is very stupid.”
Ms. Wolpo vows to vote Tuesday. She raises the possibility of a “toss of the coin,” but then rejects the notion.
When pressed, Ms. Wolpo said there was probably a 60 percent chance she would support Mr. McCain. She does not buy the Obama campaign argument that Mr. McCain is just like Mr. Bush. “McCain knows in his heart that Bush is a loser,” she said.
Either way, Ms. Wolpo said her decision did not keep her awake at night. “I have enough to worry about,” she said, explaining that her youngest son, who is in his 40s, suffered a stroke last spring. He has good days and bad days, she said, and that puts everything else in perspective.
“This other thing is just an election,” she said.
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