Before we get to the trivial and inconsequential events of the day, a word about the Boston Red Sox/New York Yankee series playing out in the Bronx over the weekend.

Wow.

And it's not even over, as Pedro Martinez and "Moose" go at it today (think I'll be eating lunch in the car).

Who would have thought that the Sox, after a couple of dispiriting losses to the Devil Rays, would win the first two games in New York by a combined score of 20-5? Writing in the Globe, Dan Shaunessy explains the feelings of a blissed-out Sox fan in New York this weekend (thanks to the Bambino's Curse for the link):

"The first two days here were two of the greatest days of your life, right up there with the birth of your children and the day you got your driver's license. You walked around Yankee Stadium in your Sox garb and hardly anyone bothered you. It was like you'd been granted immunity from pinstripe harassment. You were even able to start a 'Let's Go Red Sox' chant -- without inciting a beer-drenched brawl. You were able to do what you've done in Baltimore, St. Petersburg, Montreal, Toronto, and Oakland. You were able to take over an enemy yard and make your Sox feel almost like they were playing at Fenway Park. It was a first at Yankee Stadium."

The "day you got your driver's license?" Isn't that going a bit too far?

Fortunately, on Sunday, Andy Pettite pitched a masterpiece to stop the Yankee hemorrhaging. And the chants of "1918" would again be heard in The Stadium.

Regardless of the outcome of today's game, for Yankee fans this Boston organization is a scary threat to our team's hegemony. With Bill James as advisor, Theo Epstein is building an offensive force based on the example of Billy Beane in Oakland, as described in the fantastic book, "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis (highly recommended, if only for the way it makes Joe Morgan sound like the idiot blowhard that he is). Look for guys that are patient at the plate, work the pitcher until his arm falls off (if there's one truism in baseball, it's that relievers are not starters for a reason -- they're not as good), work a walk, don't waste the baserunner getting caught stealing, etc. That, along with the unstated secret weapon -- wait for the three run blast -- and you pretty much have the Boston roster.

Look at some of these OPS numbers (On-Base + Slugging average):

David Ortiz, 940
Nomar Garciaparra, 955
Manny Ramirez, 996
Trot Nixon, 975

And that's just the four best on the team. The rest of the usual starters are not far off that pace. These guys simply don't make outs easily, and that's the point of the game. By comparison, only Jason Giambi (despite an iron-deficient .266 BA), has a 900+ OPS (955) for the Yankees.

Fortunately, they have only one Pedro.

But they will fix the pitching problem eventually. Maybe they'll patch it up before the trading deadline this year, maybe they'll overhaul it before the start of next season.

Then we'll have a pennant race. And as the only team in New England, with an incredibly lucrative cable contract, they have the money to compete with the Yankees.

*****

Tom Tomorrow, once again, sums it all up (it's worth the daypass).

Does Ari actually tell the truth and concede that Bush was using incorrect information in the State of the Union address? It's really hard to tell. Fleischer is teaching a master class on spinning the white house press corp.

Scroll down the site. TPM conducts a post-Iraq war interview with Ken Pollack, whose book "The Gathering Storm" and his op-ed pieces were influential in convincing a lot of us liberal "I can't believe I'm a hawk" to support the Iraq invasion. Pollack makes an interesting point. The Bush administration can't be faulted for postwar intelligence showing little in the way of chemical or biological weapons, since pretty much everyone figured Saddam was still capable of developing WMD. What we can and must study is the fact that the administration was pushing an "imminent threat" on the U.S. public that simply wasn't there. And they knew it:

"But in some ways it's unfair to use the evidence that we've found since April 1st against the administration, because that was unknown. All the administration really had to go on were the intelligence estimates. And that's why in my New York Times piece the point that I made was that, not that I felt that what we've found since was an indictment of the administration. As I say, it wasn't fair to hold the administration accountable for that because the fact is that the intelligence community did believe that there was an active program. What I think it is fair to hold against the administration is that they stressed continuously the imminence of a threat which in fact the intelligence community felt was much more distant. Even at the time, even before the war."

Can whoever borrowed my Norman Mailer decoder ring please return it so I can decipher this thing? However, Norm is spot on in his final paragraph:

"Democracy, more than any other political system, depends on a modicum of honesty. Ultimately, it is much at the mercy of a leader who has never been embarrassed by himself. What is to be said of a man who spent two years in the Air Force of the National Guard (as a way of not having to go to Vietnam) and proceeded—like many another spoiled and wealthy father's son—not to bother to show up for duty in his second year of service? Most of us have episodes in our youth that can cause us shame on reflection. It is a mark of maturation that we do not try to profit from our early lacks and vices but do our best to learn from them. Bush proceeded, however, to turn his declaration of the Iraqi campaign's end into a mighty fashion show. He chose—this overnight clone of Honest Abe—to arrive on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on an S-3B Viking jet that came in with a dramatic tail-hook landing. The carrier was easily within helicopter range of San Diego but G.W. would not have been able to show himself in flight regalia, and so would not have been able to demonstrate how well he wore the uniform he had not honored. Jack Kennedy, a war hero, was always in civvies while he was commander in chief. So was General Eisenhower. George W. Bush, who might, if he had been entirely on his own, have made a world-class male model (since he never takes an awkward photograph), proceeded to tote the flight helmet and sport the flight suit. There he was for the photo-op looking like one more great guy among the great guys. Let us hope that our democracy will survive these nonstop foulings of the nest."

Well, except for the "never takes an awkward photograph"