Condi Rice said, in May, 2002:

I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.

Well, guess what: they were warned, specifically, about terrorists plotting to fly airplanes into buildings:

In 1998, US agencies discovered that "a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center" - but did little about it, the 30-page report [on intelligence failures in Sept. 11th] says.

That's a report from the BBC on an inquiry led by Eleanor Hill into intelligence failures leading up to Sept. 11th -- strangely, google news turns up nothing on the report, and on the inquiry, only a subpoena tiff with the FAA...

Ooops: Forgot to say that I got this via The Agonist bulletin boards...

Yankee fandom defined:

You see, the Yanks are the one place in my life that I get to be a winner. I'm a Democrat, and a New Deal, big-gummint labor Democrat at that -- meaning that I'm a shrinking minority in a minority party. I'm a unionist in an era when labor is on its heels. I'm from a dying rust belt town with a permanently mediocre hockey team and -- in the Bills -- one of the most tragic teams in American sports. (Four Super Bowl losses. IN A ROW.) The soccer team that I love is in a seemingly inexorable slide toward oblivion. So when the Yanks win World Series after World Series, even though it doesn't mean nearly as much to me as even a Bills divisional playoff win, I cherish the feeling of winning. It's a silly way to get validation, but sports are like that.

Red Sox fans, by contrast, understand that suffering brings the discipline required to be a winner in real life...

More: Call it superstition, but I sensed trouble when Red Sox radio announcer Jerry Trupiano starting talking prematurely about having seen Roger Clemens's last pitches in the major leagues. Remember, Pedro, thou art mortal...

Last thoughts: Some people will say that this game was lost on one bad decision. I count at least three: the decision to send Pedro out in the eighth (which was comprehensible), the decision to leave him in after he allowed a baserunner (which was clearly wrong), and the decision to leave him in after he allowed a run (which was bizarre). At any of these points, the set-up aces, who had been ready to go throughout the inning and had been superb throughout the playoffs could have mopped up easily. Instead, the manager asked Pedro whether he wanted to stay in, even though Pedro acknowledged in post-game interview that he would never, under any circumstances, ask to be taken out of a game -- it's a point of honor. It's the manager's responsibility to know the players...

Quoth Lt. Gen. "Jerry" Boykin, now heading our military anti-terror efforts:

Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.

Hear o Rotary Club, there is no g-d but Rehnquist, and Scalia is his prophet.

Boykin has many other interesting things to say, but he may hold back on saying them; he says "I don’t want to come across as a right-wing radical." Indeed. Most of them don't.

via Atrios

Wondering why you and people around you seem to be worse off than the Federal government seems to think you are? Well, here's part of the reason:

The Census Bureau used the wrong marginal tax rates to calculate after-tax income data for 2001. As a result, the 2002 poverty report released a week ago contains numerous errors in its year-to-year comparisons. In particular, several measurements showed no change in median household income, when in fact there were significant declines. Other figures indicate that child poverty rates remained stable, when they actually may have risen.

The goof was discovered by our very own local alternative rag, but has since been confirmed by the Census bureau...

And now, a headline from Noo Yawk:

Wells Channels Babe Ruth to Keep Curse Alive

Strangely, the doom-and-gloom talk that I hear around Boston has more to do with Nomar's hitting slump than anything else. Why is it that the people who spend the most time talking about this supposed curse on a Boston team seem to always be New Yorkers?

Update: Nomar goes 4 for 5, including a triple, and the agony of Steve Gisselbrecht continues for at least one more game...

Further update: Well, after the outcome of NLCS game seven, it seems the Cubs fans now have their own Bucky F---ing Dent -- and one of their own, to boot. It might not be the most popular thing to say in Chicago right now, but the Cubs pitching staff also had something to do with the outcome...

An actual headline from today's Boston Globe:

To escape stress, troops in field tune in the Sox

Just what the troops need -- another exercise in futility...

Dubya's crew hasn't done as much to create American jobs as one might have hoped, but an elder statesmen of the Reagan revolution has a bold plan to change that: Ed Meese plans to create many, many new American jobs in prison. In prison, it seems, employers don't have to contend with the main disadvantage of hiring in America -- high labor costs -- since it is legal to pay prisoners third world wages. You might wonder how this improves the lives of anyone who's out of prison, but if you do, you're missing the point. It's good for business!

via Atrios...

It seems that American soldiers are now bulldozing the orchards around Iraqi villages which they deem insufficiently cooperative.

"Strategic hamlets", anyone?

via Billmon...

More: Remember the Taliban? They'rree baaaack...

Shorter Tom Friedman: A near-term transfer of sovereignty in Iraq to the Iraqis will not miraculously solve all our problems at once. Clearly, then, it would be a dumb move and should not be discussed any further. To bolster my argument, here are some irrelevant feel-good anecdotes from Centcom.

And now... tales of poor little rich kids, and, well... other stuff.

Forbes recently had a story on an "executive coach" named Keith Raniere who sounds a bit more like the leader of a cult, and not just according to Forbes. There's an elaborate system of ranks for clients of his organization, denoted by various color sashes, with Raniere at the top, called "Vanguard". By most accounts, the teachings have as much to do with ethics as business per se -- "Vanguard identified the concept of giving and taking with integrity" -- though it's an ethical creed well outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, in which helping those who need it is seen as a kind of sin. (The details are a closely held secret; if the world could see Raniere's ethics, then even the chumps might start behaving ethically, and then where would we be?) Sessions are intense, deeply personal, leave some clients cutting ties to their family, and have left some former clients in therapy. Raniere's ideas will supposedly change the course of future history. There is talk of miracle cures for conditions like diabetes. Clients are heavily encouraged to enlist new recruits. And, oh yeah, the guy at the head of the organization, "Vanguard", had an apparent multi-level marketing scam as his last major project.

What struck me most in reading through this was the end of the article, quoting Seagram heiress Sara Bronfman:

"I don't know how much you know about my family," Sara Bronfman says, admiring the silky cloth around her chest, "but, coming from a family where I've never had to earn anything before in my life, [it] was a very, very moving experience for me to be awarded this yellow sash. It was the first thing that I had earned on just my merits."

If what she really wants out of life is some token of achievement, no matter what, which was clearly and unambiguously earned on her own merits, surely one of her many luxurious abodes is within hailing distance of a half-decent chess club...

For more on how it is indeed possible to be too rich, see Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson, who now finds himself being assailed as a traitor to his class for making a movie documenting the lives of his fellow swells. Most of them apparently come off as OK kids with unusual problems. But not all -- the worst of the lot bragged about going to class at Brown only eight times his entire freshman year, secure in the knowledge that family money made him untouchable. Belatedly realizing that he came off as a bit of a jerk, this particular young genius compounded the damage with a lawsuit trying to suppress the footage -- which, of course, wound up on film. On HBO, Oct. 27...