Slump?

It’s the bottom of the eighth, and the Tigers are about to get swept by the White Sox unless they can pick up at least three runs in the ninth. That would put Chicago only five and a half games back, with plenty of time to keep moving up. I hope this isn’t the beginning of a collapse.

[A couple minutes later]

Dang, Chicago picked up another run before the end of the inning. Now Detroit needs four in the ninth to just stay alive. The way they’ve been batting lately, it doesn’t look good.

[A few minutes later]

Whoa! One out and two men on from consecutive singles, with the tying run on deck. Can they pull it out? Probably not, but it’s frustrating when they get your hopes up like this.

[Update]

Dang, two outs now, with two on first and second.

And there’s the third out.

They’re going to have to play better ball than that if they want to hang on to the division (and major league) lead.

Drugged By PC

Ari Shavit asks what happened to Israel, and answers:

Generally it is not right to conduct an in-depth investigation of a wartime failure during a war. However, at the end of the most embarrassing year of Israeli defense since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israeli government is not drawing conclusions. It is not reorganizing the system, there is no evidence of a real learning curve and it is not radiating a new ethos. On the contrary: It is adding another layer of folly onto a previous one. Its slowness to react is dangerous. Its caution is a recipe for disaster. Its attempt to prevent bloodshed is costing a great deal of bloodshed. So that now of all times, just when the forces are moving toward south Lebanon, there is no escaping the question of where we went wrong. It is so that Israel will be able to achieve a last-minute victory and so that the troops will be able to achieve their goals and so the soldiers will be able to return home safely, that we must ask already now: What happened to us? What the hell happened to us?

A simple thing happened: We were drugged by political correctness. The political correctness that has come to dominate Israeli discourse and Israeli awareness in the past generation was totally divorced from the Israeli situation. It did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an existential conflict. It did not have the tools to deal with a reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. That is why it focused entirely on the Palestinian issue. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest and perpetuating the instability.

I think that the Israeli left finally gets it. Sadly, there’s no sign that their compatriots in Europe, the US and Canada do. Whether or not Olmert survives this debacle will help tell the tale. Fortunately, the Lebanese cabinet is in disarray, and the attempted hudna is breaking down, so Israel may yet get a chance to continue to remove the Iranian infection that is killing Lebanon, and preventing peace.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!