The World is Talking. Global Politics

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Colorado shows Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) leading Bob Schaffer (R) by 9 points, 47% to 38%. 

After a year of polling that showed a very close race, this is the fourth poll in a row that has shown Udall with at least a 9 point lead.

Minnesota's Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) -- "rumored to be high on John McCain's short list for vice president -- says he hasn't been asked for 'any documents' by the campaign of the presumed Republican nominee," according to the Wall Street Journal.

Gian Carlo Orbezo of Peru Politico [es] writes about Augusto B. Leguia, president of Peru from 1919 to 1930 and his sad end as a dictator, and the relationship to Alberto Fujimori who is now facing trials of his own.

Buxi from Fool's mountain translates a news story from China Youth Daily on how Chinese officials get online and engage netizens.

"Despite broad, longstanding dissatisfaction with the war, just 50% of Americans prefer Obama's plan to withdraw most U.S. forces within 16 months of taking office. Essentially as many, 49%, side with McCain's position -- setting no timetable and letting events dictate when troops are withdrawn," according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.

"McCain's competitiveness on Iraq runs counter to broader views on the war, which more closely align with Obama's."

"Things have deteriorated to the point where staffers at People are mystified by the inanity of the political press corps."--Bob Somerby, Daily Howler "Let's just say we're taking a flying fuck at a rolling donut," Marlon Brando philosphized in Last Tango in Paris, an apt description of Maureen Dowd's modus operandi as the Rona Barrett of the Beltway.

A new Public Policy Polling survey shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain, 47% to 43%, mainly on the strength of the Hispanic vote.

The state has a small black population, and McCain leads 46% to 45% among white voters. Obama's 58% to 34% lead among the state's growing Hispanic population gives him the advantage overall.

Political Insider: Colorado could swing Democratic.

John Heilemann says Sen. John McCain campaign seems to be using Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign playbook.

"In presidential races, personnel and mechanics matter, but only on the margins. Yet in ways large and small, strategic and tactical, temperamental and attitudinal, the McCain campaign strikes me as having been cut from the same cloth as Hillary Clinton's. Same story with the candidates themselves, in particular when it comes to their jaundiced perceptions of their rival. For supporters of Barack Obama, this might seem cheery news, since those perceptions led Clinton time and again to misplay her hand. But general elections are very different from primaries -- and there are reasons to worry that Clintonianism, taken to its logical (and gruesome) extreme, may serve McCain better than it did the real McCoy."

Sen. Barack Obama "is off to a more aggressive campaign in Iowa" than Sen. John McCain, "despite the Republican having clinched the nomination three months earlier than his rival," the Des Moines Register reports.

"Obama has 15 campaign offices open and staffed in Iowa, while McCain is still plotting where to locate about half as many."

"Though Obama campaign officials declined to disclose their hiring plans, they said its safe to say their 2-to-1 edge in local headquarters is a sign Obama's staff will outnumber McCain's team, which could reach 20 by this fall."

I feel sorry for anyone staring mortality in the immediate face after the flood of lyrical obituaries of former Fox News host and White House press secretary Tony Snow this weekend, which carried the cathedral-bell echo of those for William F. Buckley a few months ago. Such ardent testimonials set an impossibly high luminous bar of grace under pressure and gallant deportment for any current or future cancer patient and terminally ill person. Henceforth it will be considered "bad form" for any misfortunate individual or accident victim to contemplate their near death with anything less than radiant optimism, joy, good humor, stoic strength, generous consideration of others, an uncomplaining nature, and religious serenity. Regret, remorse, bitterness, pain, fear, crankiness, recrimination, and despair will be deemed selfish and immature, the night nurse or family member silhouetted in the doorway chiding the patient dwelling in negativity, "Why can't you be like Tony Snow, chipper to the last?" Raging against the dying of the light will be regarded as spiritual blockage, sulky resistance to receiving the final boarding pass. Not everybody possesses nobility of spirit, and shouldn't be expected to provide a shining example to others and keep up a brave front painted with a smile. As Seymour Krim wrote in "Notes Toward My Death," reprinted in What's This Cat's Story?: ...I don't think I'll die a "natural" death because I'm not sure there are any left. Any unwilled human death today is unnatural. We find the idea unacceptable compared to the amount we give to stay alive from Monday to Monday. All that energy and foxiness spent for nothing? Death is too simplistic to be natural anymore. Even a long illness, in that favorite veiled phrase of the Times obituary page, is no longer a natural death to our minds. It is a wrong death. Too many possible outs come to the imagination of even the dying person to make him go philosophically into that dark night. I maintain that every death today is violent... Krim's viewpoint may not be univeral but it's as legitimate as the sun-dappled, rose-petaled sentiments strewn in the path Tony Snow left behind...