WHAT HOCKEY STICK?

Suddenly, there’s a big hole in theories of global warming – and it all has to do with a non-existent hockey stick.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Neoconservatives used to give two cheers for capitalism; now four or five seem hardly sufficient. They once promoted a hard realism in foreign policy, to counteract the pacifist idealism they saw among Democrats in the Seventies; now they flirt with an eschatological faith in America’s mission civilisatrice, to be fulfilled by military means. They once offered a complex view of bourgeois culture in its relation to economic and political life; now they are in the grip of an apocalyptic vision of post-Sixties America that prevents them from contributing anything constructive to our culture. How these eschatological and apocalyptic ideas about America can exist in the same breast, without some effort at reconciliation, remains a mystery to every outsider who glances at a neoconservative magazine today. They appeal, though, to political Straussians, whose hearts beat arhythmically to both Sousa’s [Stars and Stripes Forever] and Wagner’s [Gotterdammerung].” – Mark Lilla, in the second of two brilliant essays in the New York Review of Books. Lilla is a big defender of Leo Strauss’ life and thought, which makes his critique of what has become of “Straussianism,” especially in its current Washington life-form, all the more damning.

GALLUP: No, I don’t believe it. A reader reminds me that on October 26, 2000, Gallup reported that Bush was ahead of Gore by 13 percent among likely voters. Gore, of course, was slightly ahead on election day. I do think, however, that Bush seems to be gaining slightly. He did better in the third debate – by seeming far more comfortable with himself – than some realized. And the Mary Cheney flap must help him.