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New Jersey stuff: On Friday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pressed the SEND button with an e-mail alert headed: Lautenberg up 11 points in head-to-head. The Democratic poll said Lautenberg was leading 44-33.
First of all, it is interesting that the Dems trumpeted a poll showing their guy with only 44 percent of the vote. Second of all a mere three days later, the NJ Bergen Record newspaper released a non-partisan poll which showed Lautenberg with only a six point lead 46-40.
Either Republican candidate Doug Forrester is gaining on Lautenberg at the rate of 1.6 points per day (meaning Forrester will win by 48 percentage points or 74-26 on election day, which is not likely even here in Mullingsland, where everything is rose-colored), or the DSCC poll was so much horse hockey.
According to the analysis Forrester's support among independents dropped dramatically when given the choice of Lautenberg instead of Torricelli, but it is also true that independents may not have been paying as much attention to the race as the party faithful on both sides so, as the poll indicates, they are more familiar with Lautenberg's stands on the issues than Forrester's.
This is fixable.
Tom Daschle stuff: Daschle was on Tim Russert's Meet the Press on Sunday and did not have his best-ever appearance.
First he did everything but wave a white flag in surrender over the Iraq Resolution. Having been abandoned by Dick Gephardt in the House and by Joe Lieberman in the Senate, Daschle found himself aligned with Al Gore which was not where he wanted to be.
Earlier this week Daschle went to the floor of the Senate and demanded an apology from President Bush for comments Bush never made regarding the Homeland Security bill.
Russert played the actual tape of Bush's remarks in which the President never singled out Democrats and, in fact, said that both Democrats and Republicans were working hard and that "this is not a partisan issue; it's an American issue."
Daschle was reduced to mumbling about how everyone knew what the President meant, and how it was code, and ... and ... uh. Where's that flag again?
Smelly stuff: Remember that World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last month when the US of A was not just the worst polluter on the planet but, in some minds, the ONLY polluter on the planet. Remember all that?
Well, the very same United Nations came out with a report the other day which, according to the BBC website, stated:
The coasts of southern Asia face a greater threat than anywhere else in the world from the discharge of untreated sewage, the United Nations says.
It found a similar though smaller risk in eastern Asia and the north-west Pacific.
Elsewhere, the coasts of west and central Africa are very badly polluted. The sewage is a threat to humans, marine wildlife and habitats, and fisheries.
You didn't see this report on the front page of yesterday's New York Times? Hmm. Imagine that.
Wait. One of the hallmarks of industrialization is improved sanitation - with the possible exception of Paris. The UN press release even says, at one point: "[I]n some places wastewater treatment systems, mirroring those in place in Europe and the United States, might be needed."
Is it possible that the UN has finally found something the United States is doing correctly?
Nah. Whoever wrote that press release, I guarantee, has already been reassigned to "UNWETT" the United Nations Wastewater Effluent Testing Team.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: The analysis of the New Jersey situation from the Bergen Record; the UN report on coastal pollution; and a reprise of last year's very amusing Travelogue on getting my Virginia Car Tax sticker for the Mullmobile.
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