Poll Shows Skepticism in U.S. Over Peace in Mideast

By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN C. THEE

blurb: "Majorities doubt there will be peace between Israel and its neighbors, or that troops will be able to leave Iraq soon."

Complete Results (pdf) | Graphic (A video with Jim Rutenberg is also available on site.)

They have links up to their two-part Oct. 2002 report on Hezbollah:

"A Reporter at Large: IN THE PARTY OF GOD"

By Jeffrey Goldberg:

I-"The Meeting. Are terrorists in Lebanon preparing for a larger war?" Oct. 21, 2002 issue.

II-"Hezbollah sets up operations in South America and the United States." Oct. 28, 2002 issue.

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Unrelated recommendations:

I know there are others here who are interested in the "meta" of communities on the internet. The current July 31, 2006 issue has a pretty good thought-provoking piece on wikipedia:

KNOW IT ALL: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?

by STACY SCHIFF, Issue of 2006-07-31

and for those who subscribe to the dead tree version, don't miss Lee Anderson's "Letter from Cuba: Castro’s Last Battle. Can the revolution outlive its leader?" Not available on line, but highly recommended.

By Brian Skoloff, A.P. via Seattle Post Intelligence July 26, 2006, 7:42 p.m. PT:

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on Wednesday called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an "anti-Semite" for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel.

Al-Maliki has condemned Israel's offensive, prompting several Democrats to boycott his address to a joint meeting of Congress and others to criticize him. Dean's comments were the strongest to date.

"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."

On Tuesday, leading Senate Democrats said in a sharply worded letter....

No Pats on the Back From France’s No. 2

By KATRIN BENNHOLD

PARIS, July 23 — Nicolas Sarkozy, who is No. 2 in the French government, has become its No. 1 critic in a new best seller in which he promises to break with “the way we have been doing politics for years.”....

He demands a radical overhaul of France’s social welfare model, which President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin have staunchly defended, and he sharply criticizes them....

With approval ratings for Mr. Chirac and Mr. de Villepin among the lowest ever in the Fifth Republic, dissociating himself from the government may have become a matter of political life or death for Mr. Sarkozy, who is now widely described as the sole Gaullist candidate for president in 2007....

Long neck and neck in the polls with Ségolène Royal, the leading Socialist contender, Mr. Sarkozy edged ahead of her in the latest TNS Sofres survey, which was published Wednesday in Le Figaro....

Fun at least for those, like me, who like a little antedote to, or wake up out of, the echo chamber now and then:

Manic Progressives

Published: July 23, 2006

Excerpts:

To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke overestimating the self-absorption of the Democratic Party. Of late, authors like Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (“Crashing the Gate”), Peter Beinart (“The Good Fight”) and Joe Klein (“Politics Lost”), as well as magazine essayists like Michael Tomasky and Paul Starr in The American Prospect, have offered magic formulas to turn Democratic dross into electoral gold. Add to the list the odd couple of David Sirota, a Montana-based blogger with a take-no-prisoners mind-set, and George Lakoff, a Berkeley linguist with a grab-no-readers prose style....

....Perhaps it’s unavoidable when a blogger tries to write at length, but the verbal mannerisms that may seem like an invigorating shot of espresso on a brief daily basis become a bathtub of stale Nescafé when stretched out to more than 300 pages. The clichéd revolutionary language (political TV programs offer “a flood of Orwellian messages from the Establishment that deny the existence of our very own beliefs”), the wafer-thin allusions to popular culture (a single paragraph includes references to Rocky Balboa’s trainer, Luke Skywalker’s light saber and Superman’s Fortress of Solitude) and the childish taunts (Tom DeLay is “slime”; Mickey Kantor, who served as Bill Clinton’s trade representative, is a “hack”) quickly become oppressive.

Unlike blogs, books need editors, but there is no evidence in “Hostile Takeover” that Sirota has ever met one. Despite his creditable analysis, the end product too often reads like the work of a high school newspaper editor going through his Marxist or logical positivist phase: to the author it speaks of revolution; to the reader it resonates immaturity.

Immaturity is not one of George Lakoff’s problems....

While Sirota apparently never met an editor, Lakoff seems never to have met an actual conservative. His failure to paint his opponents as anything but the most risible of cartoons stems from a larger incapacity (one shared by Sirota): a refusal to believe that the other side might be making its case in good faith. Caricaturing your opponent’s stances is an easy way to win an argument, I guess, but it’s not going to sway many readers — or win many elections.