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An Amusing E-mail A guy who was offering to build a loft for my apartment blamed the high price of wood on Bush, which I'm sure Bush is responsible for considering America's rebuilding Iraq, for which the Iraquis may or may not be grateful. Here's my response, unedited:

Riding highConfidence is soaring, but are we over the 'Wall of Worry' By Shawn Langlois, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 7:28 PM ET Nov. 7, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - U.S. investors suddenly seem to be seized by an unbearable lightness of being. Judging from soaring investor-confidence levels, they've chosen to ignore the types of concerns that a year ago fed grave fear -- and sent the U.S. stock market to its post-2000 low. Wall Street is plumbing new depths of corruption with the mutual fund scandals. Polls show President Bush possibly losing re-election. U.S. soldiers are being killed on a daily...

In a recent newspaper profile, CNN anchor Aaron Brown is captured trying to be witty as he cobbles together his "Newsnight" show. He asks his co-workers, "So what the hell are we going to sell here?" There’s an easy answer if you watch television: failure. For most of the post-war period, the networks have sold us failure. The details change here and there, but the pitch remains the same. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Failure to work with do-nothings at the UN. Failure to restore water and electricity supplies even as saboteurs seek to undo every good deed....

<p>By design or circumstance, the Democrats are in danger of becoming the pessimistic party, counting primarily on bad news to fuel their case against President Bush's re-election in 2004.</p> <p>The danger of such a strategy was evidenced this week. As U.S. troops killed two sons of Saddam Hussein — by all accounts masterminds of a vicious, repressive regime — presidential contender Dick Gephardt was in San Francisco blasting the Bush administration.</p>

Less than a week before Saddam Hussein lost his very big bronze head in a square in midtown Baghdad, to the cheers of Iraqis and Americans alike, the Independent's favorite anti-American reporter Robert Fisk was envisioning a very different picture. For Bob, the pathway to Iraq's capital was "a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks and trucks hidden in palm groves." "Anyone," intoned Fisk in that special way he has, "who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad," where "black-uniformed men of the Saddam Fedayeen with...

Why aren't there more Byrd dogs? The nattering nabobs of negativism are back - and making up for lost time. The national press corps, Clinton's lap dogs for eight years, have all of a sudden decided to be watchdogs again - and their incessant barking just won't stop. While Clinton's irresponsible and incoherent foreign policy decisions drew scarcely a yip from the "mainstream" press, every Bush move provokes a chorus of warning howls. There's a good deal of inconsistency here - and more than a little hypocrisy. Did Washington reporters ever demand that Clinton "make the case" for his war...

<p>WASHINGTON(AP) - Bill Simon, the Republican nominee for governor of California, is finding no shortage of critics within his own party.</p> <p>On Thursday, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, singled out Simon's bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Gray Davis as the party's worst campaign anywhere.</p>