This first post to the Threemonkeysonline blog, which aims to give writers based in Ireland, Italy, and Spain a platform for their opinions, miscellaneous musings, and favourite links, is concerned with events unfolding in New York as it becomes increasingly apparent that President Bush has a good chance of staying in the White House after next January. (Honestly, if someone gave you a 100 euros tomorrow to bet on the outcome, who would you back?) To continue the betting conceit, the usually insufferably smug Timothy Garton Ash is pretty much on the money when he remarks in The Guardian that those hoping for a Kerry victory “…feel like a punter whose life savings have been invested in a bet on a single boxer in a single bout. All we can do is cheer our lungs out from the ringside.” Unfortunately, Kerry doesn’t strike me as the Rocky Balboa type.I think the only thing that might swing the election in the Democrats favour is that Bush is such a polarising figure that even the “secret Republicans” might find it hard to cast a ballot for him. In the nineteen-eighties there were plenty of people in the US and Britain who said the right things about social justice and inequality, but once they were alone in the polling booth they guiltily put a tick beside the names of Reagan and Thatcher’s MPs. They wanted someone “responsible” in charge. Yet Bush evokes such visceral dislike in those with even a vague left-of-centre viewpoint that it makes secret hypocrisy on election day less likely.Do the words “clutching” and “straws” come to mind?