THE PRICE OF WINNING THE EAST GOES UP:

David Price is one of several reasons that the Rays are going to be even better over the next five years or so than they were this year. The best team in baseball is going to basically just be a contest between the Sox and Rays for awhile. With Josh Beckett hurt that was the Rays in '08. Well done.

MORE:
Sox overachieve in season of bumps: World Series berth just out of reach despite much adversity (Mark Remme, 10/19/08, MLB.com)

Truth be told, Boston didn't win 95 games in the regular season and force a Game 7 in the American League Championship Series the easy way. The Red Sox endured, clawed and battled their way to within one game of reaching another World Series on Sunday, then fell short with a 3-1 loss to the Rays at Tropicana Field. [...]

But look no further than the team's performance in the ALCS as an indication of how tough the Red Sox were. Trailing, 7-0, in the seventh inning of Game 5 -- and behind, 3-1, in a best-of-seven series -- the Red Sox rallied for an 8-7 win, then took Game 6 in St. Petersburg to force their third ALCS Game 7 in five seasons -- all of which included Boston late-series rallies.

Yet another miracle comeback -- the same type the Sox became known for throughout the decade -- was there for the taking.

They just fell a little short.

There were obvious inconsistencies throughout -- compare the Red Sox's 21-29 road record at the All-Star break to their 36-11 home mark. Boston won 13 in a row at home from May 2-June 5 but lost 12 of 17 on the road in that same span. The Red Sox rallied to finish the season just four games under .500 on the road.

"You can't help but be proud of the way they've gone about it from Day 1 of Spring Training," Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein said in early September. "With a lot of little hurdles and moments of adversity that have crept up, they just keep grinding through it."

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BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS TO POLISH THE UNICORN'S HORN:

'Mystery' man lends support to Obama (KENNETH P. VOGEL, 10/19/08, Politico)

He's the star of bulletins chronicling Barack Obama's movements, one of only a few nonrelatives to consistently get time with the Democratic candidate for president and a trusted confidant who has shared some of the most pivotal moments of Obama's career with him.

Yet journalists who have followed Obama's campaign for the better part of two years don't know what he looks like, staffers who have logged countless hours traveling with Team Obama didn't even know he works for the campaign and there's never been a story in a major media outlet about him.

He is Michael Signator, an aide and buddy of the man who — according to polls — stands a better-than-50-50 shot of becoming the next president of the United States of America.

Technically, Signator's job is to provide "supplemental security support" for Obama's presidential campaign and also to coordinate the Obama family's personal and campaign schedules, according to Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.

A police officer in a suburban Chicago town, Signator met Obama while volunteering for his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, which eventually hired him as Obama's driver.

For security reasons , Obama's presidential campaign refuses to reveal the details of Signator's role, but LaBolt said it brings Signator into frequent, close contact with the Obamas. [...]

Reached by telephone, he declined to comment on his relationship with Obama and his family, and asked how Politico obtained his telephone number. He directed inquiries to the Obama campaign press office and explained, "I can't do any type of interview at all. I apologize. I'm sorry, and please just disregard this phone number, because I can't take any calls."

The campaign press staff — which at first denied that Signator worked for the campaign, then discouraged Politico from writing about him — declined to set up an interview.

That leaves public records and the protective pool reports — written by journalists tapped from the traveling press contingent to follow Obama during all non-campaign-related activities and report back to their colleagues on the typically mundane details — to piece together a picture of Signator and his place in Obama World.

Back in 1985, I was the Reagan Republican body man for the Atari Democrat (remember that term?) candidate for governor of NJ. The job is a peculiar combination of dogsbody, protector, and whatever else the politician in question chooses to make it. Our campaign had a shoestring budget so I was basically a traveling advance man, press liaison, weekend driver and security, etc. The main qualification for the job though is that the body himself and his spouse like and trust you, so I don't blame this guy for being so reticent.

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A MAN AND HIS LAWN:

Obama's Carbon Ultimatum: The coming offer you won't be able to refuse. (Wall Street Journal, 10/20/08)

Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

Well, well. For years, Democrats -- including Senator Obama -- have been howling about the "politicization" of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.

The EPA hasn't made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn't exactly say it'd collectivize the farms -- but pretty close, down to the "grass clippings." The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of "lawn and garden equipment" as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.

These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It's like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife.

Coming for the lawn mowers would make the assault weapon ban look like a Democrat masterstroke.

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YOU CAN'T CUT RATES FAST ENOUGH:

Commodities tumble on recession fears (Subodh Varma, 10/20/08, TNN)

As the dark clouds of an economic slowdown gather over the world, prices of most primary commodities are sliding worldwide. Only a few months ago, prices of many key commodities, like food grains, crude oil and metals had reached dizzy heights. Now, they are in free fall.

Wheat had touched $481.5 per metric tonne (pmt) in March, while rice zoomed to $772 pmt in May this year. These were all-time highs, causing riots to break out in over three dozen countries and a global uproar. At the end of the first week of October, wheat prices had tumbled by nearly two-thirds to $272 pmt, while rice prices nearly halved to $412 pmt, according to the latest data released by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. Other agricultural commodities too have seen a slump. Soybean prices have dropped from a peak of $586 pmt in July to $371 pmt and palm oil from $1249 pmt in March to $885 pmt.

According to the latest FAO estimates, the main reason behind this dramatic across-the-board decline is record harvests in most crops.

The Malthusians are always with us and always wrong.

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"THE MOST SERIOUS CHALLENGE TODAY":

Beyond the Nation State: A review of The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation, by Strobe Talbott and Democracy Without Borders?: Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy, by Marc. F. Plattner (John Fonte, July 28, 2008, Claremont Review of Books)

Talbott goes very wrong in his understanding of the relationship between the Enlightenment and America's founding. Like many on the Left and some on the center-Right (e.g., Robert Kagan), he describes a philosophically monolithic Enlightenment with the American Republic and the French Republic as its progeny. He acknowledges that these republics developed differently, but he views their "philosophical parentage" as the same. He fails to recognize the division within the Enlightenment from which the two revolutions and regimes derived their fundamentally different characters.

The French Revolution (like Marxism, as Lenin recognized) was a child of the utopian radical wing of the Enlightenment typified by Condorcet, who believed in a malleable human nature and the perfectibility of man, and promoted a historicist vision of the inevitable march of progress. John Adams directly challenged Condorcet's views in the late 1780s; the American Revolution and our entire constitutional order were heirs to the non-utopian Enlightenment (mostly Anglo-Scottish, but including continental moderates like Montesquieu). The very serious conflict within Western democracy today between the constitutional state and global governance is at one level a continuation of the argument within the Enlightenment between its moderate and utopian wings. Talbott does not understand this.

In Democracy Without Borders? Marc Plattner highlights the inherent tensions between the transnational worldview promoted by Talbott (and influential Western elites), and democratic self-government itself. Plattner, a former student of Allan Bloom, is a vice-president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and co-editor of its Journal of Democracy. Whereas Talbott posits global governance as the ultimate political good, Plattner champions liberal democracy and the democratic nation-state. To the title question, Democracy Without Borders? Plattner answers no: "We cannot enjoy liberal democracy outside the framework of the nation-state."

Plattner's book is an insightful reflection on liberalism, the democratic nation-state, and the European Union in relation to global democracy. Talbott talks of "shared" or "pooled" sovereignty without directly addressing the core problem of who is ultimately accountable to the citizens of a democracy. Plattner, by contrast, argues that "If there is no clear locus or demarcation of sovereignty, it is hard to see how the people can be sovereign." [...]

Though he provides a clear antidote to the writings of Strobe Talbott and other transnationalists, ultimately Plattner blinks. The global governance movement is the most serious challenge today to constitutional democracy and its only compatible home, the sovereign democratic nation-state. It is no less a challenge because it is Western, internal, "soft," and indirect, rather than Eastern, external, hard, and direct. Global governance in general and the European Union in particular represent a conscious ideological rival to American constitutional democracy, because the E.U. is both a post-democratic and a post-liberal project. Under E.U. rules, legislation begins in the European Commission (the bureaucracy), not the European Parliament, which has only limited authority. About 70% of Britain's laws today come from the European Commission, not from that "mother of parliaments" the British House of Commons—so much for representative democracy. Moreover, based on the U.N. Convention on Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the E.U. is promoting gender proportionalism in parliamentary and local elections across Europe, recommending a certain percentage of seats reserved for women. This is not liberalism but classic corporatism, in which representation is based on the ascribed group to which one belongs. To make matters worse, E.U. institutions restrict free speech by outlawing "hate speech" in ways that would be inconceivable to Americans with our First Amendment guarantees.

This is not to suggest that we abandon Europe, but it is to argue that we support those forces in the E.U. who are seeking to repatriate sovereign powers back to the democratic nation-states.

You can see why we consider ourselves so fortunate to include essays by both Mr. Fonte and Mr. Plattner in our book:

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"CONFINEMENT AND LIBERTY":

Finding God in Ordinary Life: The great filmmaker Robert Bresson sought to depict truth and goodness in a world where "things are going very badly." (Eric David, 09/16/08, Christianity Today)

In seeking to portray that "heart of the heart," Bresson once said, "I want to make people who see the film feel the presence of God in ordinary life."

In his 70s, Bresson published a series of Ecclesiastes-like
observations on filmmaking, titled Notes sur le Cinématographe (Notes
on Cinematography) that is revered to this day as one of the best
manuals on filmmaking by one of the masters.

Bresson has influenced filmmakers as diverse as Kieslowski, Malle,
Fassbinder, Bertolucci, Mann, Siegel, Jarmusch and even, to some
extent, Scorsese, who observed: "Bresson focuses on the moments that happen between the ones that appear in most other movies." The
filmmaker and critic Francois Truffaut had to disavow his early
opinion that Bresson's ascetic aesthetic would not catch on. Agnieska
Holland said, "For me, Bresson is one of the giants of the last fifty
years of cinema. Maybe the giant."

"Where have all the great ones gone?" Andrei Tarkovsky asked in his diary. "Where are Rossellini, Cocteau, Renoir, Vigo? The great—who are poor in spirit? Where has poetry gone? Money, money, money and fear … Fellini is afraid, Antonioni is afraid … The only one who is afraid of nothing is Bresson."

Although he rejected the label, Bresson was in many respects a Jansenist, an ascetic strain of Catholicism, similar to Calvinism in its focus on predestination and the un-deservedness of grace. Ironically, Bresson wrote, but never filmed, a life of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits—the Jansenists' theological arch-enemies. "In La Vie de Saint Ignace, which I came close to filming a long time ago, there is an idea of predestination," he told an interviewer shortly before his death. "Ignatius Loyola turns up by accident, does not achieve much himself, but finds the right people to surround himself with and founds the Jesuit order." The film was dropped by the studio in favor of adapting Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest.

In the mid 1960s, Dino de Laurentiis planned a series of films based
on the Bible, featuring top directors of the day, including Huston,
Visconti, Welles and Fellini. When Bresson, slated to direct Genesis,
told de Laurentiis that he planned to film it in Hebrew and Aramaic,
and wouldn't show any animals on Noah's Ark, only their footprints in
the sand, he was fired. Huston took over and The Bible: In The
Beginning, was released, but did not perform well enough to justify
the other directors helming their respective films. Bresson yearned to
film Genesis the rest of his life, but it never came to pass.

Though he stopped going to mass later in life, Bresson pointed to
numinous experiences in his past as proof of God's existence. But he
was no evangelist, whether his films depicted religious figures or
not.

In her famous essay "Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson,"
Susan Sontag said, "Bresson is interested in the forms of spiritual
action—in the physics, as it were, rather than in the psychology, of
souls… . Bresson's Catholicism is a language for rendering a certain
vision of human action, rather than a 'position' that is stated."

Bresson's 40-year career resulted in 13 films, and his life spanned
nearly the entire 20th century (1901-1999). He trained as an artist
before switching to writing, and then directing his only comedy, a
short, Les Affaires Publiques (1934). After a stint as a German POW
during World War II, his films turned more somber. Sontag noted that
all of Bresson's films have the theme of "confinement and liberty."

A Man Escaped is especially good.

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UNIVERSALISM VS IDENTITY:

Why do nations exist? (Spengler, 7/29/08, Asia Times)

"Sovereignty" arose as an apology for papal absolutism, but it became flesh as the expression of the national will of the European nations in rebellion against Christian universalism.

[Jean Bethke] Elshtain tells the story of bad theology and its later manifestation in political thought that justifies the untrammeled power of the sovereign nation by reference to the capricious power of an absolutely transcendent God. Her antagonists include the medieval nominalists who preached God's unrestricted sovereignty, and their progeny in political philosophy: Jean Bodin, the 16th-century apologist for French absolutism; Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century theorist of the absolutist state; and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the inventor of the malignant idea of "national will".

Of these, Rousseau's influence upon 19th-century European nationalism was the most direct, and surely the most pernicious. Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy called him a precursor of Hitler. Elshtain highlights a side of Rousseau of which I was not aware:

There is an interesting wrinkle given our current preoccupations ... and that is Rousseau's encomiums on behalf of the "wise system of Mohammed" whose "very sound views" tied together religion and the political system, "completely uniting" it. So what Christianity weakens, Islam strengthens, and Rousseau supports this "wise system" by contrast to "Christian division".

Rousseau’s demand that every individual submit to the "general will" and become an "indivisible part of the whole" revives pagan integralism against Christianity. I reviewed this issue in a recent essay for First Things (October 2007)'

If we follow Augustine, however, the history of Europe's political failures is not only the history of misguided ideas, but of misplaced love. The nations of Europe rebelled against their foster-mother the Church, and abjured their loyalty to the People of God, that is, the common Christian congregation to which all the tribes of Europe were converted. They loved their own ethnicity better, and thus became peoples who are not peoples, in Augustine's uncanny phrase.

To make sense of this we need to peer deeper into Europe's character. On this account, Cristaudo's slim volume provides balance to Elshtain's account. Cristaudo develops the ideas of Eugene Rosenstock-Hussy (1888-1973), one of the last universal minds of high German culture. A converted Jew, Rosenstock-Hussy collaborated with his cousin Franz Rosenzweig, although their view of the world is quite different. Underneath the surface of European civilization, Rosenstock-Hussy perceives ancient undercurrents that erode the seemingly stable ground.

It is encouraging that Rosenstock-Hussy, who is nearly forgotten in his adoptive American home, remains in the curriculum at the University of Hong Kong. Although I reject many of his conclusions, the great German scholar is an inexhaustible mine of insights in several fields of inquiry. Cristaudo's present book is dense - it reads less like narrative than lecture notes - and saturates the reader with German cultural references that I find less distracting than Elsthain's folksy citation of rock-band lyrics. He has published creditable work on Franz Rosenzweig, and - full disclosure - cited this writer's study of Rosenzweig's analysis of Islam.

"There is something about our species," Cristaudo writes, "that cannot simply let the past be. Perhaps it is the resilience of whatever it is that has been divinised that haunts the solitude of the self." The struggle for Europe's soul lies between idolatry and divine love. Of the latter, Cristaudo's exemplars are the anti-Hitler conspirators Dietrich Bonhoffer and Helmut von Moltke. Between Nazism and these Christian martyrs there lay

the opposition between loves, between one who saw the sacrificial nature of love as divine, and who willingly went under for that, and those poor souls serving a phantastic beloved who could only deliver mass death, who could only promise a world worthy of life by killing ... the difference between divine love and idolatry.

Idolatry in the form of ethnic self-adoration never waned among the European peoples, despite their centuries of Christian tutelage. Was it coincidence that the political backing for Luther’s schism came from Saxony, seven centuries after Charlemagne killed the Saxons or converted them at sword-point? Christian universal empire broke up into the nation states whose sovereignty was affirmed at the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, dictated by France to the decimated German states.

Some aspects of Cristaudo's (and Rosenstock-Hussy's) theology disturb me. They ferret out the sources of evil in Europe's sad history, in the form of national idolatry and its undead gods. But Cristaudo seems to believe that the worst forms of evil fit into a grand plan of necessity. He writes, for example,

Evil teaches us what we must never repeat unless we want to reap the same consequences. Evil forces us to bond when we steadfastly refuse to take more benign paths of cooperation. It forces the love that we refused to give freely …for example, nothing has contributed more to expanding consciousness about the moral intolerableness of racism than the evils of Nazism. Only when humanity saw its evils did it seriously confront the link between its thoughtless everyday cruelties, envy and bigotries.

That sounds a bit like Voltaire's Dr Pangloss, who assured Candide that without all the unspeakable tortures he had suffered, he would not now be eating strawberries. In his broad and erudite vision of Western culture, Cristaudo wants to see an ultimate purpose for everything, even the ugliest consequences of evil choices. I cannot agree. It is dangerous to arrogate unto ourselves the capacity to detect the traces of Providence in history. We have faith that they are there, but we dare not sit in judgment of Providence without reducing God to an immanent principle of history, rather than the personal God of the Bible. Sometimes Mephistopheles is right: what arises well may be worthy of its own destruction, and to be past sometimes is as good as never having been at all.

The peoples of Europe failed, not only their political theorists. A new people had to come into existence with the founding of America before limited constitutional government could be created. Aquinas conceived of a Christian empire whose citizenship transcended ethnicity, continuing the original design of the Church fathers. The disintegration of this design required a fresh start, in the formation of the first non-ethnic nation in Western history, the United States.

Elsthain, like Novak and some other researchers, traces American constitutional government back to Aquinas' concept of natural law. The transmission of ideas from Aquinas to the American Founders is a tricky matter, which I will let the specialists debate. A simpler thought is that a people capable of governing itself was one in which Christianity had changed every individual, (in Augustine's words) "so that, as the individual just man, so also the community and people of the just, live by faith, which works by love, that love whereby man loves God as He ought to be loved, and his neighbor as himself". America selected its citizens out from among the nations to form a new people uniquely capable of self-government.

As much fun as it is to fret about Barack Obama's supposed socialism, the real danger in our politics in the moment is that his candidacy is a function of identity politics at a time the Right is truckling with nativism. Those, on the pagan Left and nationalist Right, who adhere to these Darwinistic atavisms, correctly perceive the universalist Christianity of folks like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin as a threat, which is why they hate these essentially decent people with such seeming disproportion. The "peoples who are not peoples" recognize that they are at war with the people who love God.

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WHO?:

Biden’s medical history not scrutinized (ANDY BARR, 10/18/08, Politico)

While John McCain’s past battles with skin cancer have received a great deal of scrutiny, Joe Biden’s near-fatal aneurysms in 1988 have yet to come under the spotlight. [...]

Biden, now 67 years old, has yet to release his medical history, of which the aneurysms are one of the few known episodes.

Not that a bout of ill health wouldn't be tragic or that we don't all care about the Senator as a man, but who would care if he left the ticket or eventually the office? He has no constituency.

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ALONG THE AXIS:

India, Japan to sign security pact during PM's visit (Indrani Bagchi, 10/20/08, TNN)

The standalone security cooperation agreement comes after several years of sustained work by both sides, which now needs to be ramped up to a different level. The last joint statement between Shinzo Abe and Manmohan Singh had a big chunk devoted to security and strategic cooperation, but a standalone agreement, sources said, would make it easier for both militaries to work together on the ground, in terms of exercises, ship visits and joint patrolling of the seas.

The political significance of the security agreement will not be missed in many parts of the world, not least of which will be Beijing, where Singh will be headed after he's done in Tokyo.

Japan needs Indian cooperation to provide cover for its oil-laden ships on the Straits of Malacca and Hormuz. India, which might be looking at transporting oil from Sakhalin, needs Japanese cover (although thus far, India has been selling its share of the oil and bringing in the proceeds). Second, Japanese ships providing support to its self-defence forces in Afghanistan need "friendly" docks in India for repairs or for just a breather.

Third, India is looking to buy some critical defence technologies and equipment from Japan at better rates — as Japanese equipment is cutting-edge, it's also very expensive. For Japan, once the government works through its constitutional constraints, India is a market that Tokyo would like to explore.

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HE'S NEVER SEEMED COMFORTABLE WITH THE GOP ON CULTURAL ISSUES...:

A friendly nod from a familiar face (Michael Tomasky, 10/19/08, The Guardian)

Pssst. The truth is, among people who are most likely to be ardent supporters of Barack Obama, Colin Powell would not win any popularity polls.

Even factoring in today's endorsement of Obama, he will long be best-remembered by American liberals for his now-infamous presentation to the UN on Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction and for not going public with what everyone assumes were his serious reservations about the war in Iraq to begin with.

But he did manage to make up for some of it today.

...but in switching parties to endorse a guy who's only distinguishable from John Kerry and Al Gore by his ethnicity -- and lack of military service -- how can this not be seen as a function of identity politics?

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GAME FOUR:

Anand,Viswanathan - Kramnik,Vladimir (FIDE World Chess Championship, 10.01.2009)

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IN IRAN, POLITICS DOESN'T STOP AT THE SHORELINE:

Tehran mayor seeks better dialogue (Kyodo News, 10/20/08)

Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, widely seen as a possible contender in Iran's presidential election next year, said Sunday in Tokyo that his nation must make more efforts to foster mutual trust with the international community, including through "better" dialogue with the world.

Qalibaf expressed dissatisfaction with current Iranian foreign policy, saying, "We should show clearly, through the IAEA, that we are developing nuclear programs within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."

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NOTHING BETTER DEMONSTRATES CONSERVATIVE DERANGEMENT SYNDROME...:

Palin Draws Big Ratings for 'Saturday Night Live' (DAVID BAUDER, October 19, 2008, The Associated Press)

The entertainment summit of the season — Sarah Palin and her impersonator, Tina Fey — earned "Saturday Night Live" its best ratings in 14 years.

...than their insistence that Ms Palin is a drag on the Party even as she racks up ratings like this and posts the 2nd most watched debate in US history, ahead of The One and behind only the lone Reagan/Carter tilt just before the '80 election.

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8600 BILLION MORE REASONS TO PITY THE FLATLANDERS:

How many leaves change color in NH? 608 billion (AP, 10/19/08)

The U.S. Forest Service says one-sixth of the state's forest land is taken up by sugar maple, yellow birch and beech trees, which means 666 million colorful trees. Those trees amount to 1.9 million tons of "foliar biomass," or in other words, leaves.

Assuming the average tree has 800 leaves, each weighing a tenth of an ounce, that's 608 billion leaves.

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THE CHICKEN COUNTER:

Rays’ Evan Longoria a real devil (Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, October 19, 2008, The Boston Herald)

During a champagne-soaked time at District after Game 4, the Rays’ hot corner man was suffering from a sorry case of premature celebration.

Seems that after the Rays humiliated the Sox for the second night in a row, Evan was yelling to anyone who would listen: “It’s over now, Boston!”

Of course, at the time, it soooo wasn’t.

And upon exiting the rockin’ club with a star-struck blonde, a spywitness swears that Longoria poured himself into the back seat of a Boston Police cruiser and said to the cop: “To my hotel!”

Boston’s Finest, as you can imagine, told Evan and his companion - in the most colorful language possible - to remove themselves immediately from his cruiser. So they did.

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THEY CAN EITHER PLAN IT OR SUFFER IT BUT THEY CAN'T AVOID IT:

China will be a democracy by 2020, says senior party figure (Malcolm Moore, 15 Oct 2008, Daily Telegraph)

Zhou Tianyong, an adviser to the Communist Party's Central Committee and one of its most liberal voices, told the Daily Telegraph that "by 2020, China will basically finish its political and institutional reforms".

He added: "We have a 12-year plan to establish a democratic platform. There will be public democratic involvement at all government levels."

Mr Zhou also predicted "extensive public participation in policy-making, such as drawing up new legislation".

Mr Zhou is deputy head of research at the Central Party School, the most important institution for training senior leaders. President Hu Jintao is among its former directors.

After two weeks of heightened tension between China and Taiwan because of a £3.5 billion American arms sale to the island, Mr Zhou said the transition to democracy was "essential for relations with Taiwan and a possible peaceful reunification".

The End of History isn't actually optional.

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THE LATEST RIGHTWING FANTASY...:

Obama's lead slips to 3 points (Andrew Quinn, 10/19/08, Reuters)

Pollster John Zogby said the numbers were good news for McCain, and probably reflected a bump following his appearance in the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday.

"For the first time in the polling McCain is up above 45 percent. There is no question something has happened," Zogby said.

He said the Arizona senator appeared to have solidified his support with the Republican base -- where 9 out of 10 voters now back him -- and was also gaining ground among the independents who may play a decisive role in the November 4 election.

Obama's lead among independent voters dropped to 8 points on Sunday from 16 points a day earlier.

...is that the media is trying to portray the race as over n order to dispirit the GOP. The reality is that it can only serve to concentrate voter attention on the prospect of a Democrat President, which serves Maverick well.

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WHILE THERE'S NO REASON THE FED SHOULD ACT SMARTER THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN INSTITUTION...:

OPEC left to its own devices: Hedge fund redemptions lay bare the role in oil speculation (MarketWatch, 10/17/08)

Gone is the steady drone of peak-oil forecasts. Gone is the fear that we are in the pockets of "folks that don't like us very much." Prices are down at the pump, and talk radio has moved on, feasting now on banks, bailouts and rampant greed and corruption on Wall Street.

As the industrial world withdraws into a recessionary shell, it takes oil demand with it. China and India's insatiable thirst for oil looks meager now as factory output slows to a trickle.

But there's also been a rush of roving capital out of the market. According to the latest data from Hedge Fund Research, third-quarter hedge fund redemptions hit a record-high $210 billion, spearheading an exodus wealth that burst one of the biggest commodities bubbles of all time.

It's no coincidence that oil prices plunged in tandem with these record withdrawals, exposing for all to see just how much of the summer's oil-price spike was driven by speculators.

...cranking rates to fight non-existent inflation for the third time in a quarter century was particularly dumb.

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VISITING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:

A fumble on the beach has given freedom a dirty name (Minette Marrin, 10/19/08, Times of London)

‘Why don’t we do it in the road?” That was the question posed by the Beatles in 1968 in the song of that name. [...]

Now, 40 years on, we have a couple of well-to-do British expatriates in Dubai shamelessly and drunkenly doing it on the beach. Thou hast conquered, / O pale Liverpudlian. Last week Michelle Palmer, 36, from Rutland, and Vince Acors, 34, of Bromley, southeast London, were sentenced to three months in prison in Dubai for having sex outside marriage on a public beach and offending public decency. They were also fined about £200 and will be deported when they have served their sentences. They were lucky: their punishment could have been much worse.

I have absolutely no sympathy for them but I do think that given the permissive culture of the country in which they grew up – they were born only a few years after 1968 – it is understandable, if depressing, that they themselves didn’t see much wrong with their behaviour.

From their perspective it is apparently quite normal for two strangers to meet at a hotel brunch, drink themselves silly and proceed to perform sex acts on each other in public. It is normal to insult a policeman who has the effrontery to caution them, regardless of the law, and to carry on. That is what Britons do at home and abroad. They belch, vomit, copulate, litter and barge their way through public spaces, dressed like hookers and louts, defying the police without shame or modesty. British expatriates are some of the worst: overpaid, oversexed and all over the place.

Palmer and Acors are appealing against their convictions. Yet by Palmer’s own admission, she was drunk and they were kissing and cuddling. “We didn’t have sex together,” she insisted. “I was lying on top of him.” This is rather to miss the point.

No one cares much whether DNA evidence proves that there was no exchange of bodily fluids. What went on was an affront to the standards and laws of Dubai, which all expatriates are well aware of. If you don’t like the law or the culture of another country, you should stay away. If you go there anyway, you should keep your views to yourself and when in Rome behave as the Romans.

That is not only common sense and a way of staying out of nasty foreign jails. It is more importantly an ancient moral obligation, which all healthy cultures have observed. As a guest, you must respect your host and his feelings. Everyone knows that Muslim cultures believe strongly in modesty and privacy; it is simply rude to go about half-naked or drunk and snogging and shagging in public in an Islamic country, an insult to the host culture as well as a disgrace to our own. I can’t help secretly sympathising with the senior prosecutor in Dubai who said he wished the couple had been given a longer sentence.

Is it surprising that so many Muslims around the world despise us for our decadence when we express our sympathy with British men and women who behave like this? There is something clearly despicable in the permissiveness and hyper-sexualisation of western culture; the result is broken families, unwanted children, sexual diseases and a state of agitation which drives the young into chaos and crime.

The lash would be preferable, were it not likely they'd enjoy it.

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JUST BECAUSE YOU MISUNDERSTOOD JAPAN THEN IS NO REASON TO MISAPPREHEND AMERICA NOW:

Life After the Bubble: How Japan Lost a Decade (JIM IMPOCO, 10/19/08, NY Times)

The notion of Japan as a threat, a ninja-like adversary along the lines that Michael Crichton described in “Rising Sun,” suddenly seemed silly. No one worries much about Japan taking over the world today. [...]

Still, America lacks several advantages Japan had as it grappled with the aftermath of its burst bubbles. The most obvious one is that Japan began its Lost Decade as the world’s largest creditor nation, and it still is. By contrast, America is now, as it was then, the world’s biggest debtor nation. Just to make the United States government run we need to borrow $2 billion a day from increasingly nervous lenders overseas, including the Japanese.

For the moment, it is in the best interest of America’s creditors to keep the spigot open, but when and if that changes, watch out. Some estimates have the federal deficit weighing in at over $750 billion next year.

That’s not the biggest ever as a percentage of total economic output, but it’s up there; and it’s not clear how that number is going to get smaller any time soon. What’s more, whereas America has a negative savings rate and its citizens are neck-deep in debt, the Japanese have remained fanatical savers, frugal to a fault.

That’s why when people ask me now if we are turning Japanese, I no longer tell them: “No Way!” Now I tell them: “If we are lucky.”

The notion of Japan as a threat was inane at the time, for all the reasons that comparing it to America now is ignorant.

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• THE WEATHER IS HERE (via Glenn Dryfoos):

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TALENT SPOTTING:

The Insiders: How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin (Jane Mayer, 10/27/08, The New Yorker)

In February, 2007, Adam Brickley gave himself a mission: he began searching for a running mate for McCain who could halt the momentum of the Democrats. Brickley, a self-described “obsessive” political junkie who recently graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, told me that he began by “randomly searching Wikipedia and election sites for Republican women.” Though he generally opposes affirmative action, gender drove his choice. “People were talking about Hillary at the time,” he recalled. Brickley said that he “puzzled over every Republican female politician I knew.” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas, “waffled on social issues”; Senator Olympia Snowe, of Maine, was too moderate. He was running out of options, he recalled, when he said to himself, “What about that lady who just got elected in Alaska?” Online research revealed that she had a strong grassroots following; as Brickley put it, “I hate to use the words ‘cult of personality,’ but she reminded me of Obama.”

Brickley registered a Web site—palinforvp.blogspot.com—which began getting attention in the conservative blogosphere. In the month before Palin was picked by McCain, Brickley said, his Web site was receiving about three thousand hits a day. Support for Palin had spread from one right-of-center Internet site to the next. First, the popular conservative blogger InstaPundit mentioned Brickley’s campaign. Then a site called the American Scene said that Palin was “very appealing”; another, Stop the A.C.L.U., described her as “a great choice.” The traditional conservative media soon got in on the act: The American Spectator embraced Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, praised her as “a babe.”

Brickley’s family, once evangelical Christians, now practice what he calls “Messianic Judaism.” They believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but they also observe the Jewish holidays and attend synagogue; as Brickley puts it, “Jesus was Jewish, so to be like Him you need to be Jewish, too.” Brickley said that “the hand of God” played a role in choosing Palin: “The longer I worked on it the less I felt I was driving it. Something else was at work.”

Brickley is an authentic heartland voice, but he is also the product of an effort by wealthy conservative organizations in Washington to train activists. He has attended several workshops sponsored by the Leadership Institute, a group based in the Washington area and founded in 1979 by the Christian conservative activist Morton Blackwell. “I’m building a movement,” Blackwell told me. Brickley also participated in a leadership summit held by Young America’s Foundation (motto: “The Conservative Movement Starts Here”) and was an intern at the Heritage Foundation. He currently lives in a dormitory, on Capitol Hill, run by the Heritage Foundation, and is an intern with townhall.com, a top conservative Web site.

While Brickley and others were spreading the word about Palin on the Internet, Palin was wooing a number of well-connected Washington conservative thinkers. In a stroke of luck, Palin did not have to go to the capital to meet these members of “the permanent political establishment”; they came to Alaska. Shortly after taking office, Palin received two memos from Paulette Simpson, the Alaska Federation of Republican Women leader, noting that two prominent conservative magazines—The Weekly Standard, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr.—were planning luxury cruises to Alaska in the summer of 2007, which would make stops in Juneau. Writers and editors from these publications had been enlisted to deliver lectures to politically minded vacationers. “The Governor was more than happy to meet these guys,” Joe Balash, a special staff assistant to Palin, recalled.

On June 18, 2007, the first group disembarked in Juneau from the Holland America Line’s M.S. Oosterdam, and went to the governor’s mansion, a white wooden Colonial house with six two-story columns, for lunch. The contingent featured three of The Weekly Standard ’s top writers: William Kristol, the magazine’s Washington-based editor, who is also an Op-Ed columnist for the Times and a regular commentator on “Fox News Sunday”; Fred Barnes, the magazine’s executive editor and the co-host of “The Beltway Boys,” a political talk show on Fox News; and Michael Gerson, the former chief speechwriter for President Bush and a Washington Post columnist.

By all accounts, the luncheon was a high-spirited, informal occasion. Kristol brought his wife and daughter; Gerson brought his wife and two children. Barnes, who brought his sister and his wife, sat on one side of Governor Palin, who presided at the head of the long table in the mansion’s formal dining room; the Kristols sat on the other. Gerson was at the opposite end, as was Palin’s chief of staff at the time, Mike Tibbles, who is now working for Senator Stevens’s reëlection campaign. The menu featured halibut cheeks—the choicest part of the fish. Before the meal, Palin delivered a lengthy grace. Simpson, who was at the luncheon, said, “I told a girlfriend afterwards, ‘That was some grace!’ It really set the tone.” Joe Balash, Palin’s assistant, who was also present, said, “There are not many politicians who will say grace with the conviction of faith she has. It’s a daily part of her life.”

Palin was joined by her lieutenant governor and by Alaska’s attorney general. Also present was a local woman involved in upholding the Juneau school system’s right to suspend a student who had displayed a satirical banner—“Bong Hits 4 Jesus”—across the street from his school. The student had sued the school district, on First Amendment grounds, and, at the time of the lunch, the case was before the Supreme Court. (The school district won.)

During the lunch, everyone was charmed when the Governor’s small daughter Piper popped in to inquire about dessert. Fred Barnes recalled being “struck by how smart Palin was, and how unusually confident. Maybe because she had been a beauty queen, and a star athlete, and succeeded at almost everything she had done.” It didn’t escape his notice, too, that she was “exceptionally pretty.”

According to a former Alaska official who attended the lunch, the visitors wanted to do something “touristy,” so a “flight-seeing” trip was arranged. Their destination was a gold mine in Berners Bay, some forty-five miles north of Juneau. For Palin and several staff members, the state leased two helicopters from a private company, Coastal, for two and a half hours, at a cost of four thousand dollars. (The pundits paid for their own aircraft.) Palin explained that environmentalists had invoked the Clean Water Act to oppose a plan by a mining company, Coeur Alaska, to dump waste from the extraction of gold into a pristine lake in the Tongass National Forest. Palin rejected the environmentalists’ claims. (The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Coeur Alaska, and the dispute is now before the Supreme Court.) Barnes was dazzled by Palin’s handling of the hundred or so mineworkers who gathered to meet the group. “She clearly was not intimidated by crowds—or men!” he said. “She’s got real star quality.”

By the time the Weekly Standard pundits returned to the cruise ship, Paulette Simpson said, “they were very enamored of her.” In July, 2007, Barnes wrote the first major national article spotlighting Palin, titled “The Most Popular Governor,” for The Weekly Standard. Simpson said, “That first article was the result of having lunch.” Bitney agreed: “I don’t think she realized the significance until after it was all over. It got the ball rolling.”

The other journalists who met Palin offered similarly effusive praise: Michael Gerson called her “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” The most ardent promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

The theocons get it.

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CONFUSION TO THE ENEMY:

Oil-Fueled Nation Feels Pinch: As the Price of Crude Plunges, Venezuela Is Poised to Face a Lot of Pain (Juan Forero, 10/19/08, Washington Post)

The price of a barrel of oil has fallen from $147 in July to less than $70, and analysts say the drop is a blow to Chávez's free-spending administration, which depends on oil for 50 percent of government revenue and 95 percent of its export earnings. Other oil-producing countries, which like Venezuela ramped up spending as the price of oil rose to historic highs in recent years, also face serious economic problems, analysts say.

Robert Bottome, editor of Veneconomia, a Caracas business newsletter, said that if the price continues to fall, Chávez's populist government will face economic turmoil.

"The common perception is that the Venezuelan government goes bankrupt," he said, "that they cannot meet their obligations."

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GOVERNOR PALIN ON SNL:

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WHICH IS WHY GOD GAVE US RADIO:

True Colors (VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, 10/19/08, NY Times)

It can be emotionally overwhelming to see human flesh in high definition.

Consider Joe Biden. When he’s upset, he blanches slightly, particularly around his mouth. It seemed to happen this way, at least, during this year’s vice-presidential debate, as he was remembering not knowing in 1972 whether his sons would survive the car accident that killed his wife and daughter. On my HD television screen, a contrast formed between the patch of pallor by his mouth and the dark-honey hues of his chin, cheeks and forehead.

Had Biden accidentally rubbed off bronzer while the camera wasn’t looking? Or was his physical and emotional constitution simply defined, in part, by an idiosyncrasy of blood flow — a detail of Biden’s body to which millions of high-def viewers were suddenly privy?

There’s an excerpt from George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” currently posted on ads in some subway cars in New York; it perfectly expresses my squeamishness about perceiving the world too closely. “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,” Eliot wrote, “it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

If nothing else, perhaps fear of what HD shows will kill off the useless debates.

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WHICH TAKES "I" BEFORE "E" TO THE EXTREME:

Pasta's Dark Side: By toasting pasta before cooking it, you can add a lot of flavor. (ADAM RIED, October 19, 2008, Boston Globe)

Dried pasta is so simple, so perfect, that you wouldn't imagine much could be done to improve it. Yet in Spain, Mexico, the Middle East, and even parts of Italy, cooks toast dry pasta before cooking it in liquid to intensify its flavor, accentuating the taste of the grain from which it is made. [...]

SOPA SECA DE FIDEOS CON CHILI CHIPOTLE
SERVES 6

If need be, substitute Parmesan or Romano cheese for queso anejo.

5 large, ripe tomatoes (about 2 1/2 pounds), cored, halved, and seeded
1 large onion, cut into 4 or 6 wedges
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 chipotle chilies in adobo, or more, to taste
1 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves Salt
2 1/2 cups homemade or packaged low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
3/4 pound fideos, vermicelli, or angel hair pasta, toasted
1 pound fresh spinach or Swiss chard, stemmed and roughly chopped
3/4 cup grated queso anejo cheese, plus extra to pass at table
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish
1 medium avocado, peeled and sliced, for garnish
1 lime, cut into 6 wedges, for garnish

With an oven rack in the middle position, heat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a large (18 inch by 13 inch) rimmed baking sheet with parchment. On the lined sheet, toss 6 of the tomato halves, the onion wedges, and garlic cloves with 2 tablespoons of the oil to coat, then arrange cut sides down. Roast until tomato skins begin to shrivel and brown, about 35 minutes, then remove from oven and cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes. Remove the tomato skins, scrape the vegetables and juices into a food processor or blender, add the chipotle chilies, oregano, cloves, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Puree and set aside (you will have about 2 1/2 cups of puree).

In a large Dutch oven or soup pot set over medium-high heat, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil until shimmering. Add the tomato puree and cook until moisture evaporates and the mixture thickens and darkens, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, roughly chop the remaining tomatoes; add them, the broth, and another 1 teaspoon of salt to the pot and stir to mix, and bring to a strong simmer. Add the toasted pasta and cook, stirring frequently, until the pasta just starts to bend, about 3 minutes. Add the spinach or chard, stir to combine, reduce the heat to medium, cover pot, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the noodles are tender, about 6 minutes longer. Add the cheese, stir to combine, taste the dish and adjust seasoning with more salt, if desired. Serve at once, allowing diners to garnish their portions with extra cheese, cilantro, avocado slices, and lime.

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SO EASY EVEN THE PAKISTANIS CAN DO IT:

Pakistan Officials: Air Strikes Kill 30 Militants (AP, 10/19/08)

Pakistan killed 30 militants close to the Afghan border Sunday as America's top diplomat in the region visited for talks with government leaders, officials said. [...]

In the latest fighting close to the border, Pakistani fighter jets bombed insurgents, killing up to 20, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

The bombs hit an ammunition dump, causing extensive damage, he said.

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