Do poll results hurt Pataki?
New York voters apparently think Gov. George Pataki belongs somewhere other than the governor's mansion in Albany. His job-approval rating has sunk to the lowest of his 10-year tenure, according to a poll released last week by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The governor's job approval rating was at 34 percent — the first time it has dipped below 40 percent. Only 22 percent of urban upstate voters approve of his job as governor; 33 percent of upstate voters overall.
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The poll is bad news for Pataki if he seeks a fourth, four-year term next year.
The good news? If the state's two other key politicians — Democratic leader of the state Legislature and speaker Sheldon Silver and the Republican leader of the state Senate Joseph Bruno — get equally low poll results maybe they'll join Pataki in the “political outhouse.” Of course, that would still leave New York with decisions being made by three men in a room.
North Korea says it has nukes, wants to keep 'em
North Korea announced for the first time last week it has nuclear weapons and indicated it will not be giving them up anytime soon, saying the bombs are protection against an increasingly hostile United States.
The communist state's statement dramatically raised the stakes in the 2-year-old nuclear confrontation.
“We … have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North),” said the North Korean Foreign Ministry in a statement.
In response, the White House is expected to announce plans to invade Iran.
Warning Iran over nukes, Rice sings a familiar tune
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put Iran and Europe on notice last week that their negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program cannot go on forever.
Nearing the end of a fence- mending tour of European allies, Rice said the United States had set no deadline on the Iran talks, but she also said the Bush administration had not changed its view that the United Nations should step in to get tougher on Iran.
Does this sound a lot like the opening rounds of the “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” hysteria from a couple of years back?
Bush's $2.5 trillion budget calls for domestic cuts
President Bush presented his $2.57 trillion federal budget last week. It aims to cut or eliminate as many as 150 federal programs and will reduce funding for state and local homeland security grants, job training and several education programs. The White House issued 233 pages of documents giving specifics on how Bush would meet his goal of limiting the growth of discretionary spending for fiscal 2006 to 2.1 percent — less than the rate of inflation.
What we wonder is: Who's going to pay for the upcoming invasion of Iran?
U.S.-picked candidate takes third in Iraqi election results
The list of candidates representing Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims won the most votes in the nation's Jan. 30 election, followed by the Kurds and then Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's list, Iraqi election officials announced this week.
The Shiite-dominated ticket received more than 4 million votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast. A Kurdish alliance was second with 2.175 million votes, or 26 percent, and Allawi's list was third with about 1.168 million, or 13.8 percent.
And the unofficial State Department response to their handpicked candidate Allawi coming in third: Oh, Shiite!
Horse lover Prince Charles to marry Parker Bowles
Prince Charles, heir to the British throne and well-known equestrian, announced last week that he will marry his divorced longtime companion, Camilla Parker Bowles, in April, putting an official seal on a long romance that Princess Diana blamed for the breakdown of her marriage to Charles.
The Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles will marry on Friday, April 8, at Windsor Castle, according to Charles' representatives.
And of course Prince Charles isn't marrying Parker Bowles because he's tired of mistaking her for one of his four-legged rides.
Compiled by Mike Johansson, who has fun reading the Democrat and Chronicle .
