None of this would've happened if Bud Selig were alive!

Chuck Shephard's "News of the Weird" column that features in many alternative weeklies has a bit on the Minneapolis Police Swat team. To quote the entry from the Week of 24 August 2008:

"In a July ceremony, Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan honored SWAT officers for their bravery and professionalism during a December middle-of-the-night raid of a house that supposedly contained a gang's guns. However, it was the wrong house, and the bewildered, frightened resident started shooting back. Said Dolan, "The easy decision would have been to retreat (but the) team did not take the easy way out." The house got riddled with bullets, but no one was hit, and the chief later apologized but still felt that it was "a perfect example of a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, but did not because of the (team's) professionalism." [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis), 7-29-08]"

And none of this is new. Anyone from the Twin Cities who was active in the Honeywell Project protests dating back to the mid-80s will not be surprised by such tactics.

Just to second Mike-in-NM: This essay was especially refreshing after the intellectual dishonesty (or perhaps anti-intellectual honesty) of Camille Paglia's column.

However, I remain unconvinced that enough Americans will see through Palin. Her campaign appearances seem to play to the basest of fears, and the Republican party has won with that strategy often enough. I hope, however, that Mr. Keillor's optimism and faith in our fellow citizens is justified.

I live near Pittsburgh and frequently attend the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. John Adams is the PSO's "Composer of the Year" for the 2008-09 season. So far I've heard an excellent orchestra perform "A Short Ride in a Fast Machine" and "Slonimsky's Earbox." I'm already looking forward to January and March, when, among other things, Adams will conduct excerpts from Nixon in China and something I haven't heard at all, "The Dharma at Big Sur."

I was about to say how lucky we are in Pittsburgh, but really, Adams is pretty close to a national resource.

Since Stevens was in fact convicted, isn't it more accurate to refer to his "corruption" as opposed to his "alleged corruption"?

1) Expand major league baseball to 40 teams, 20 in the NL and 20 in the AL.

2) The top ten teams in each league are the NL Premier and the AL Premier. They play a 162 game schedule (ideally, no inter-league play). The two teams in first place of their league after 162 games meet in the World Series.

3) Teams placing 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, go into playoffs. The team that wins stays in the top league. The eliminated teams go into their league's respective second divisions.

4) For the Second Divsion, each team plays a 144 game schedule. At the end, the top two teams are promoted automatically. Teams in 3rd and 4th place will play off for the third promotion.

Next season: repeat. Under this format, we'll have post-season play-offs, and we'll have a regular season that actually means something.

A very good list. About the only real objection I have to it is that I don't have a book mentioned. But that's my fault for having written neither a novel or a work of non-fiction that was published this year, and certainly not Laura Miller's.

The best thing about the video: all the people in the background squirming when they realize how clueless she is. A lot of people were working hard to repress the cringes.

I just skimmed the letters after barely skimming the article, but my take on the thrust of the letters is that this guy is pissing everyone off and a lot of people wonder why Salon is printing the "work" of this ideological simulacrum who takes the name of a West Wing character rather than standing by his columns with his own name. Well, if you want him to go away (at least from the pages of Salon.com), ignore his essays. Seriously, it's not like the editors have found an innovative conservative who adds something to the national dialogue, they have a party hack who isn't worth reading. Consequently, stop reading him. Or at least stop responding and delivering further page hits for Salon's advertisers.

I was hoping it would tell us which former Bush Administration official has adopted the pen name "Glenallen Walken" and has been writing for Salon.

But on the bright side, the internet's short bus has already dropped off the likes of Glock45 and others, so there should be some funny stuff in the letters.

Seriously. And as a writer of narrative... my God. Her "prose style" make those guys who wrote the "Left Behind" books look like Nabokov.

Why aren't they happy? Why, obviously because this means that empathy is now mandated by the Guvment. Which of course means that, next, they'll all have to get gay married.

Dark times indeed for the paranoid right.

This time it's that the Nazi's were leftists.

The book I purchased yesterday from an independent bookstore did result in a dead tree or two, and some fossill fuel was expended in transforming the tree into paper, and then into a book, and then from the printer to the distribution center to the bookstore. But the book also gave people work -- loggers, people at the paper mill, men and women in the transportation industry, printers, the guy who owns the store, and so forth.

Furthermore, unlike the coal that powers the computer I'm using, the book is a renewable resource. This book is well made, and will outlast the trees that replace the trees from which it was made. Granted, not all books are well made, and certainly newsprint is a waste. But the book isn't yet inferior to the technology that's alleged to replace it.