Polls and Bellwethers

Good Morning. A couple of new items today.

• The Pity of Polls: It could briefly be played up as a significant number, and the New York Times is certainly trying to headline it as such: 51 percent of Americans see no link between the terror war and the Iraq war. But it isn’t significant. It’s closer to pathetic, like taking heart from the fact that 51 percent of Americans don’t think the Apollo 11 Moon landing was staged, or that 30 percent don’t think angels exist. That 51 percent who see no link between Iraq and terror still means a proportion approaching half, half, still think there is a link. Why? Because the Bush administration's true war has been a triumph. See "How Bush Won His War and Defeated the Constitution."
  

• Bellwether Broil: As goes Ohio, so goes the nation. The 2004 election was pretty much stolen in Ohio. The 2006 mid-term election there has a Senate and governor's race portending plenty for the political futyre of the nation. Candide's Notebooks contributor Ohdave (that's Ohio Dave, by the way), previews what's at stake in "Ohio's 2006 Verdict on America."
  

• As always, Candide's Latest is a busy place--Iran's bait game, the continuing badgering of Judge Taylor's decision declaring Bush's domestic wiretapping illegal, and more.
  

Thanks for reading. Your participation in the comment section at the site is always appreciated. pt

America On Drugs

Good Morning. Several new items today, and the caffeine hasn't yet kicked in.

• David Murray, a drug policy analyst for the Bush administration, was asked recently about cocaine cultivation in Colombia, where the United States is fighting an expensive, low-grade war against coca growers since 2000. “This is a trade whose days are numbered,” Murray told The New York Times. The phrase rang of Vice President Dick Cheney’s evaluation of the Iraqi civil war in May 2005: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” Someone should find out what these Bush types are, if you will, smoking: Pierre's Tuesday column is an analysis of the American way of losing wars--the war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, on terror, on drugs--all of which ensure that, when admitting defeat is not an option, defeat becomes the only certainty. See America On Drugs...
  

• President Bush's news conference on Monday was a classic case of gunboat diplomacy gone stale on the shoals of electoral desperation. See the recap here...
  

• From Candide's Notebooks contributor William C. Hall, here's "A Short History of American Warfare."

As always, thanks for reading, and check the Notebooks' Front Page for the latest...pt

Lieberman, L'Immoraliste

Good Morning. A few new items to start the week.

• So his eminence Joe Lieberman declared on a Sunday morning chat show, without hint of having been drugged beforehand, that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld should resign. Of course it's Lieberman playing craven catch-up with the anti-war vote. But there's more to Lieberman as the country's chief immoralist. See Pierre's "Born-Again Prig: Lieberman, L'Immoraliste..."
  

• The Gunter Grass controversy produces two good fresh defenses of the magic mountaineer. Here's a piece by Daniel Kehlmann, "A Prisoner of the Nobel," and one by the great Peter Gay, "The Fictions of Gunter Grass..."
  

• Candide's Latest would have made Proust proud of late: Don't miss the weekend's version, which included a romp through South Korea's Love Land park (a pictorial experience you won't soon regret; the permalink is here, in case you read this beyond Monday). Also: Is the US military now an army of rapists? And a review of the latest blog recommendations in Monday Morning Bloggerback. All in Candide's Latest...

Thanks for reading.pt