Maybe I should call it “Poll of The Month”

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Because that’s how long this one was up… my bad.  Busy with life.  Book deal.  Traveling.  Etc.

If the damn media still worked, which insider would have already Deep Throated the Bush White House?
National Security Advisor Richard Clarke
712   36.7%
 
Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill
156   8%
 
Ambassador Joe Wilson
114   5.9%
 
Mining engineer Jack Spedaro
110   5.7%
 
U.S. Army General Eric Shinseki
108   5.6%
 
USAF Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski
107   5.5%
 
Army Spc. Joseph Darby
106   5.5%
 
FBI Chief Division Counsel Coleen Rowley
106   5.5%
 
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds
106   5.5%
 
CIA Bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer
105   5.4%
 
Medicare actuary Richard Foster
105   5.4%
 
Secretary of the Army Thomas White
105   5.4%
 

If you’re curious who these people are, those names are all active links, incidentally.  Although now we learn that Karl Rove himself may be the guy who manages to undo this White House.  If only.

New poll at upper left.

St. Petersburg, Russia

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Holy crap, I’m actually in St. Petersburg.  It’s all Russian and stuff.

Spent the morning walking the banks of the Neva and blowing my mind at the Church Of Our Savior On Spilled Blood, which is less a house of worship than a ten-story walk-in mosaic artwork designed as if Willie Wonka had just gotten an everlasting gobstopper from the Virgin Mary.

Up there with the Hagia Sophia for supercool ex-cathedrals.

Limited time as always on this trip, unfortunately.  Will have to do massive catchup later if possible.  But this is my impression so far of the new Russia:

I am certain my room is bugged.  But only to see if I’m using the minibar.

Friday pudublogging: sometimes deer forget where they live, too edition

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Ever been out running around late with friends, maybe during your college years, and you realize you’re not quite sure where you are, and so you dive into a brightly-lit convenience store for a few minutes, just to get your bearings?

Apparently this happens to tiny deer as well.  Footage even made the news here (although I had to crib this from an American web page).

Cute is apparently an international language…

Where else can investing $1 get you $1000?

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Online access remains limited.  Saw this, however, in the international print edition of the USA Today, elaborating precisely the problem with the entire American political system (to wit: that its financing system remains corrupt to the core, and virtually every aspect of public policy is now on sale to the highest bidder):

Contributors to GOP reap big post-election victories

Less than six months into a new term for President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, some of their heaviest donors are scoring victories on the legislative and regulatory fronts.

From rewrites of the laws concerning bankruptcy and class-action lawsuits to relief for oil, timber, and tobacco interests, the GOP’s business supporters who gave millions of dollars last year are reaping decisions worth billions from a Congress with more Republicans.

The best-case annual return on invested capital within a particularly robust business: maybe forty percent.

The best-case annual return on invested capital when buying political influence: maybe a thousand percent.

You can see where the whole American system might be headed long-term very quickly.

On a related note:

One of the arguments you hear against sending aid to the poorest African nations is that many of their governments are notoriously corrupt kleptocracies.

The near-immediate response which seems to be commonly made by supporters of such aid across Europe: the American government’s a kleptocracy, too, but that doesn’t stop us dealing with them.

Whether that’s a fair comment or not you can judge for yourself.  But I’ve now heard it made twice, in two different countries.  And neither interviewer flinched.