The Naked Emperior, as seen from elsewhere

This week’s visit to Beijing’s People’s Daily (as you recall, my theory once was that I would try to provide at least a weekly visit to the two other metropoles– Eastasia and Eurasia — I blog regularly from New York, the financial heart of Oceania, so that one is covered) covers roughly the same subject as yesterday’s visit to Pravda.
In this case, the PRC’s house organ tells us that the President’s unilateral strategy as applied to Iraq violated UN protocols and rules, and indeed, as UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan said recently, violated international law. Further, Bush’s constant references to the value of freedom and democracy in Iraq are belied by just how out of control and violent the place actually is.
Well, duh. I’ve been on this since well before the freaking war began.
O.K., here’s the thing. We are now 37 days from the election (I know this because we are 35 days from Halloween, and the Marine Corps Marathon which I’ll be running with Jim Henley; jogger blogger below.) It has only been days since John Kerry decided to stop talking about our last Vietnam and start talking about our current Vietnam.
Is it too little too late?
The talking dog’s current working theory is that everyone already made up their mind on the President a long time ago, and the only thing left is relative enthusiasm of who can get their side to the polls and in the right states, puts us at a severe advantage Bush. I don’t regard any individual poll as particularly valuable, but looking at the polls cumulatively, Democrats should (seriously) be panicking right now, and re-doubling efforts not only to win the White House, but to try to pick up House and Senate seats (just… in… case), because Bush has somehow (thanks to Kerry’s pathetic Vietnam based campaign, until just a few days ago) obtained the momentum right now. Frankly, my brethren left wing bloggers are fond of telling us about “internals” and “trends” and “approval ratings”. Forget it: I look at the trends, and they are going Bush. The rest of the world knows that he is a stupid dumbass blowhard who is undermining international as well as American security, but the American people (more accurately, exactly half of the American people) feels differently.
The debates can change things a bit– though I expect the brilliant free-wheeling Kerry, pitted against the “resolved” (meaning he memorizes shit, and answers every question with one of his 4 or 5 talking points, regardless of what the question was) Bush, will likely be (perceived as) a draw. As in 2000, the vice-presidential debate is probably the ballgame. As the Unseen Editor colorfully put it: Edwards must rip a new hole in Cheney. If he does not, or worst of all, somehow falls into a love-fest like the loathsome Joe Lieberman (Edwards won’t do that… really), then its advantage Bush-Cheney, with no time to recover.
This one will be a barnburner. Better than this morning’s jogger blogger, your talking dog finishing the 18-mile “ING New York Marathon Tune-Up” in a disappointing 3 hours 31 minutes; particularly disappointing as (just as in the Bronx Half Marathon) I sustained a ten minute mile for the first ten miles or so. Well, we’ll keep training, and plodding on. Which is a hell of a lot less than the Kerry and Edwards campaign had better be doing now. John, John: its time to start kicking ass and taking names.