Regarding interleague play, I don't hate it. But when I was growing up, it was soooo cool that we had a sport with two completely distinct leagues that sent their champions off to play one another. I think it is ever so sad that we have lost that. In fact, I DO hate that loss. I wish we could get it back, but it is too late to put that genie back in the bottle.

- Kevin Madigan

I love reading your long daily (approximately) posts over at Unclaimed Territory, but over here the style has been frequent and shorter posts. Is there any way you can emulate Tim while you're doing this guest gig?

The guys in this latest plot are NOT MIDDLE EASTERN. They are British citizens of Pakastani descent. PAKISTAN IS NOT IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

Now that I got that out of the way ... I came up with the perfect security solution today: everyone boards the plane empty handed and nude, after completing a complete body cavity search. They are then handcuffed behind their backs and leashes are placed on their necks, tethering them to their "seats". Only they aren't sitting, they are standing on grates. Why grates? So that the inevitable urine and feces drop through the floor to the sanitation system below. It will be uncomforatble and odiferous, and the wailing kids will be ear splitting, but by God we'll be safe! And ANYHTING that makes us safer is A_OK, right?

While I do not doubt that George Allen is an asshole and that "macaca" was probably a reference to skin color, when I read "Welcome to America", I did not immediately think Allen meant to imply the guy is not American. Considering the context, he meant that the location and the crowd were "America", whereas the young man is from the un-American "big city" and supports a candidate that is not sufficiently "American".

Are you all too young to remember the cold war response to criticism of the US government - "Go back to Russia!" - usually directed at people that were clearly American? It is a rhetorical device, not to be read literally.

I have lived in rural America, and I can tell you that the people I knew when I lived there would have taken it that way.

Furthermore, he picked on him because he works for his opponent, not because of his skin color. This is not the kind of thing we need to spend so much time on. It is kind of silly, actually. And certainly not worthy of the lead story.

"interesting rationalization, but wrong. Virginian's know the young man was born in Virginia, grew up in the suburbs, not the big city and is now going to college at UVA, a small college town. So that whole story you weave is wrong. Even Mr. Allen, who was not born in Virginia knows that Charlottesville is a small college town, since he went to the same college."

Really? At the time that it was said "Virginians" knew this? Even the ones in the room? Gimme a friggin' break people, it was an off the cuff (albeit stupid) remark that people are reading way too much into because they are so desparate to win.

And as for the guy that called me naive, please point out where I said that Allen isn't racist.

Learn to read and think, people.

After the fact, all Virginians knew all of this stuff. But do you honestly think that the audience knew all of these facts at the moment that Allen uttered his inanities? We have a moron making moronic jokes in a pubic setting. Yes, he most likely happens to hold the generic darker skinned person in lower esteem than the generic lighter skinned person, but he was trying to make sport of his oppoisition in front of his supporters. His choice of words was informed by his predjudices, but lets use common sense in trying to discern his motives.

Drop your partisan blinders and think, man.

By this logic, 9/11 and the "War on Terror" are regional concerns, too. The evildoers only want to hit high value targets, all of which are concentrated in a handful of the US' larger cities. The overwhelming majority Americans are safe from such attacks. It just so happens that some of those high value targets coincide with the workplaces of our "leaders".

Of course, when one looks at probabilities and does serious risk analysis, one finds that landfalling hurricanes are a much bigger threat to the country than terrorist attacks are - by an extremely large multiple.