US election diary

* Two special guests were conspicuous by their absence at the New York premiere of Oliver Stone's biopic about George Bush, entitled simply W. Both John McCain and Sarah Palin received a personal invitation to the red-carpet affair, after Stone heard they were staying at the Hilton across the street from the Ziegfeld Theatre. Their failure to attend (both went to a fundraiser) was "just fine", according to the left-leaning director. "I don't think Sarah would understand the picture anyway," Stone said. "It has a lot of complicated dialogue. George Bush is an intellectual compared to her." Previously, Stone has tried to describe his film as non-partisan. Whether anyone believed him or not, that claim is looking a little stretched now.

* Another day, another right-wing intellectual walks the gangplank from the good ship McCain. The Conservative author Christopher Buckley has parted company with the National Review magazine after deciding to publicly endorse Barack Obama. On Monday, Buckley, whose father William F Buckley founded the magazine, explained his conversion to Obama's cause in an article for the Daily Beast website. By the following night, his long-standing column had been axed. "I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded," he said. "But I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the Opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal." That's politics.

* She is certainly regal, but it would probably be stretching things to describe Sarah Palin as "posh". Strange, then, to discover that genealogists at Ancestry.com believe the Alaska governor is the 10th cousin of none other than the late Diana, Princess of Wales. She is also a ninth cousin, once removed, of Franklin D Roosevelt. Their common forefather is the Rev John Lothrop, who came to Massachusetts in 1634. It is not the first ancestral revelation to rock Washington this election year. The Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney recently discovered he is an eighth cousin of one Barack Obama.

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