Why Rudy Giuliani is the man to watch, and the man who will have my vote next year:

“You must govern in America now from a sense of perspective,” Giuliani said. “The president of the United States needs a sense of perspective. The perspective you need is that this is a very very strong country. We’re not in terrible, terrible trouble. Gosh, if we’re in terrible trouble the world is gone.

“But we are not a country moving in the wrong direction or sliding down hill. The truth is we are the strongest country on earth, the strongest military power without a rival, the strongest economy on earth. The strongest democracy on earth. You have more freedom than anyone has ever had. No one has ever had more freedom than Americans. This is the greatest country in the world and the greatest country the world has ever known. We must be proud of that. We must solve our problems based on our understanding strengths, not our weaknesses.”

This is the man who told a Saudi prince to take his $10 million check and shove it after blaming America’s “root causes” for 9/11.

Run, Rudy, run.

Actually, it’s my announcement that’s late, not SNN.

This week, Tom Paine returns as host, taking over for Brian while Brian attends a very big small thing. Very big, and very small. Yes. That’s all I can say for now.

My portion includes an interview with Gorilla Boy himself, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who I also call the modern-day Haman, for our Purim broadcast.

Hey, I’ve been busy all week. I haven’t had time to listen, either. Think I’ll do that right now.

When I see a poll that says anything anymore, the first thing I want to see are the questions and the actual resutls.

That BBC poll on the world, in which they declared that the world thinks badly of Israel and the United States, can be found in this PDF. It’s necessary to look at the poll, because the BBC studiously buried the statistic that 57% of Americans think the U.S. has a positive influence in the world in a separate article on the American responses. I smell a rat with a British accent.

For instance, here’s what they did to that very vital first question:

M1At. Please tell me if you think each of the following are having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world: ct) The United States

And here are the breakdowns:

Four percent of Americans think that the answer depends on circumstances, nine percent say neither, and one percent has no opinion. That makes a huge difference when you look again at the question. (And I just love how they had an average with and without the US added in; the percentage changed little due to, duh, the law of averages.)

It’s a cooked poll that really says nothing new. Even the BBC admits it.

In general, opinion seems to divide along the traditional fault lines of international politics.

Israel is viewed most negatively in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, although also in Europe.

Iran is viewed most positively in the Muslim world.

Japan is generally viewed positively, except in China and South Korea.

The EU similarly gets good marks, except most notably in Turkey, and also in parts of the Middle East.

So the point of putting out an article that says nothing new is…?

Wait. It bashes America and Israel. Of course it has a point.

I downloaded the full poll and methodology PDFs. More later.