A little news from Boston: in the wake of the Red Sox victory over the Yankees, some of the local sportswriters are getting a little testy. Dan Shaughnessy, for instance, literally wrote the book "The Curse of the Bambino", and has been dining out on it since for literally decades. He was on local radio yesterday declaring angrily that the curse is not yet broken, and only a final world series victory will do anything to dispell it. The author of a book on the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry was on our NPR affiliate this morning saying even that wouldn't do it -- because the memory of all the earlier failures would still be there.

On a sadder note, as after the Superbowl, there were some rowdy "celebrations", particularly involving college students. But this time it was the police that got out of hand, killing an Emerson College junior with one of their "non-lethal" crowd-control weapons. Personally, I'd say approaching Kenmore Square in this situation makes about as much sense as approaching Mount Saint Helens while the lava dome keeps building up...

Stalin on baseball redux:

A one run playoff loss is a tragedy. An eleven run loss is a statistic.

As it happens, an irrelevant statistic.

More: For the non-sportsfans out there who may be wondering what the hell I'm talking about, Peter David explains certain recent events in verse.

You know the story: trying to attract employers, cities and even states throw immense amounts of money, in the form of tax incentives, to attract businesses looking for low-cost places to put a factory or something. Then a few years later, some other locality offers the same business an even better deal, the business moves again, its erstwhile employees are once again jobless, and local government is left holding the bag. Well, it happened to Galesburg, Illinois, when Maytag shut down a new factory, and D.A. Paul Mangieri knows just what to do about it: sue the bastards. There's just one problem:

There are six taxing entities that gave incentives to Maytag, and several have decided not to pursue the company, arguing that it sends the wrong message at a time the town is desperate to attract new jobs.

"When I first heard Paul Mangieri talk about suing Maytag, I cheered," Mr. Klinck, the car dealer, said. "But on further reflection, I thought this would negate our message."

Oh, well...

In the Times today, William Safire blasts the Kerry campaign for fearmongering. About Dubya's plans to change social security. About his mismanagement of the flu vaccine shortage. About Christopher Reeve.

As I sit here listening to a Bush radio ad -- a calm, logical, reasoned discussion of the "massive new government agencies" that will be created by Kerry's health plan, which will "make the government the final decision maker" about your health -- I have to agree. When Cheney says that electing Kerry will likely trigger new terrorist attacks, he's just stating the facts.

Via Swopa, two quotes without comment. First quote:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

-- Ron Susskind, quoting a Bush aide.

Second quote:

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. . . . Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

-- George Orwell, 1984

Shorter Daniel Drezner: The Bush crew has seriously botched foreign policy, and seems dangerously out of touch with reality. The Kerry crowd, on the other hand, are mediocrities and haven't always shown the best instincts; while it's not likely, it's possible that they could be as bad. That seems like it might be a better deal to me, but the certainty of knowing what you get with Bush is also a little tempting. So I'm still not really sure who I'm going to vote for...

And they say there's no good news ever from Iraq. This Newsday article refutes not one, but three separate lines from critics of the administration's efforts.

First, take the carping ninnies who say that we haven't got the troops to do the job right. They point out that nine tenths of our combat troops are in rotation in and out of Iraq, and it's reached the point that we're "eating our seed corn" by deploying training divisions. Well, tosh. Things are good. Things are so good that, pace Newsday, we've turned down a plan of a Muslim peacekeeping force. Obviously, this must be because we don't need the help.

This article refutes two other carping critiques. People say that Bush is a puppet of the Saudis. But this was their offer, and Bush turned it down, because the U.S. would not have had command authority over the troops. People also say that the Allawi government is just a puppet of ours. Not so. In fact, pace Newsday:

At one point, the Saudis proposed that Muslim forces be placed under the command of the Iraqi government. That idea won over Allawi, but not the United States. "The Americans wanted ultimate control, and that made it impossible to make this work," said [an] Iraqi official.

If Allawi were just a puppet, what difference would it make? [ed: well, with a significant force of his own, as opposed to the ragtag Iraqi defense forces, he might be tempted to cut the strings. charlie: this is my blog. who the heck is this "ed" guy?]

(via Crooked Timber)

Stalin on baseball:

A one run playoff loss is a tragedy. An eleven run loss is a statistic.

One of the standout pieces in the recent Gauguin show at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts wasn't by Gauguin. It was a colorful, contemporary reinterpretation of one of his masterpieces by the kids at Artists for Humanity. They're participating, as usual, in this weekend's Fort Point Open Studios. It's not just that compared to the relatively muted tones of the pro artists elsewhere, their work is a blast of color and pizazz -- though it is -- as that there is a level of emotion in the work that is hard to find elsewhere. Their new building is a bit far out on A street, in the industrial fringes of Southie (the South Boston Open Studios in a few weeks might be a better fit for them, come to think of it), but it's well worth the walk.

By the way, there's a new artists collective on the odd side of Summer Street which isn't on the official map, but has some really nice whimsical stuff. I particularly liked the relief sculptures of Windows dialog boxes -- you don't often see one of those with real beveled edges...

So what do you do when your Presidential candidate flipflops on whether Osama bin Laden has any importance to the "War on Terror", in front of a national audience, and worse, denies in the process earlier remarks which exist on videotape? You throw up a smokescreen -- taking some inoccuous remarks about the publicly acknowledged sexual orientation of the chair of your VP's campaign, and trying to blow them up into a violation of privacy. And you hope that the other guys will be too busy defending your transparently bogus accusation to properly exploit your guy's gaffe.

It's working.

Liberal blogs are abuzz with a Ron Suskind article in the New York Times which quotes a "senior Bush aide" as telling him that ...

...guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Well, guess what. In the campign, if they're able to pull stunts like this, then the Bush aide is right...