Once upon a time, in a gentler age, the International Herald Tribune published its late sports editor Dick Roraback’s ode to baseball’s opening day each year.
Under the fold, a little bit of nostalgia, The Crack of the Bat:

Read more… or Read more right [...]

National Gonzo Press Club Vows To Carry On Hunter S. Thompson’s Work
Even gonzo journalists who have disagreed with Thompson in the past, such as award-winning New York Times columnist Heck Murdo, count him as a freak comrade. “We did have sharp differences in opinion,” Murdo said. “He thought Richard Nixon should have had his intestines [...]

Like most other bloggers, there’s really not much one can say about the Asian earthquake that’s not already echoing through the heads of our readers. The latest estimate I’ve heard is of at least 57,000 people dead, a number that’s getting too large to contemplate.
It may not feel like much, but we can all do [...]

I suppose Yasir Arafat’s death and the reaction on “the Palestinian street” will give rise to a few discussions about the concept of political “irrelevance”. Benny Morris starts.
Writing in the New York Times, the recently turned hawkish Israeli historian and author of “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem“, is already missing the man, in [...]

Certainly, I would have preferred John Kerry as President, but, quite frankly, I believe his concession is better than a lenghty recount and a mud fight in the courts. I’m sure there were irrgularities. But not to the extent that they would make a difference given the results we now know. I suppose the Democrats [...]

Link.

Excerpt from Kevin Drum’s 2003 interview with Paul Krugman.
Train wreck is a way overused metaphor, but we’re headed for some kind of collision, and there are three things that can happen. Just by the arithmetic, you can either have big tax increases, roll back the whole Bush program plus some; or you can sharply [...]

James Carville just called the election for the President because of pessimistic Democrats on the ground in Ohio. This may be a little premature. But even though, I think it is fair to say that President Bush did fare better - certainly in the popular vote - than expected by many who bet on a [...]

While we are waiting, why not have a look at some quotes from the WorldPressReview about the world’s fears regarding an American election disaster. Robert Leicht said in Die Zeit -
“Let there be no misunderstanding: America is truly a free country and, for Germany in particular, a role model of democracy. … For that very [...]

The margin of litigation grows by the hour. It is leaflets like the one below from Ohio that make me rather certain that the US elections will not be over when the polls close tonight.

Read more… or Read more right here… »
[...]