Hurricane Foley
Who knew?

By Rich Lowry

If anything good can come from the mess regarding disgraced Florida Congressman Mark Foley, it is a new consensus against the sexualization of teenagers. Democrats and Republicans alike professed to be appalled by Foley’s efforts via the Internet to help male teens “explore their sexuality.”

Alas, this consensus is something of a mirage, since much of the Democratic outrage over Foley is opportunistic. The Foley flap is to sexual politics what the Dubai ports deal was to the national-security debate — a rare chance for Democrats to play to the natural conservatism of the country by attempting to get to the Republicans’ right on a hot-button issue. On the ports deal, the Democrats briefly were the party so robustly committed to national security that diplomatic considerations and openness to foreigners didn’t matter. On Foley, the Democrats, for now, are as zealously against teen sexual exploration as the most uptight member of the Christian right, with an undercurrent of disgust at homosexual sex thrown in.

The temporary turn on the Dubai ports deal didn’t last, as Democrats lapsed into their support for winking at illegal immigration and for diplomatic summits to address all foreign-policy problems, thus turning off any of the nativist-leaning hawks who might have been attracted to their posture on the ports deal. On Foley, their newfound sexual conservatism will be similarly difficult to maintain. Why would anyone who’s repelled by the Foley scandal turn around and vote for the party that is usually proud to represent sexual nonjudgmentalism?

The great divide in our cultural politics continues to be sex. The cultural left considers sex all-important and not important at all. All-important because it is a crucial means of self-expression; not important because the when, where and how don’t matter so much (sex is sex so long as it’s consensual). The cultural right considers sex wonderful and dangerous. Wonderful because it is the ultimate consummation of love; dangerous because if it is not carefully circumscribed, it destroys individuals and cultures.

The reaction of Democrats back in 1983 to the Gerry Studds scandal was more in keeping with its position in this cultural divide. Massachusetts Rep. Studds had had sex with a 17-year-old male page, to which Democrats merely tsk-tsked. Some argued that the relationship was consensual, so no harm, no foul. Studds was re-elected for six more terms and must be glad that he left Congress before it became a firing offense just to send sexually charged instant messages to former pages.

Democrats might benefit politically from the odor of incompetence that attaches to the Republican leadership in how they’ve handled the Foley mess, but on a moral level, there’s been no excuse-making of the sort that Democrats resorted to when President Clinton had his Monica dalliance. No one will believe that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is going to be more suspicious of what gay congressmen are doing with the male pages — as some Democratic rhetoric implies — than Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Of course, it doesn’t take a puritan to object to a 52-year-old man luring a 16-year-old into cybersex. But this is all the more reason to reconsider the broader sexualization of teens in our culture. Britney Spears was the country’s hottest sexual commodity at age 17, but at 25 is considered over the hill. In the nation’s schools, sex education tends to encourage (“safe”) teen sexual activity, with little thought given to the fact that sexually active teens might well find sexually predatory adults (straight or gay) as their partners rather than other teens. In more than half of teen births, the father is an adult.

It would be a welcome development indeed if the Foley flap prompted a bipartisan turn toward the values of sexual probity. It is sexual irresponsibility, in the form of out-of-wedlock childbearing, that is at the root of many of the country’s social ills. But it’s not to be. Foley will be wrung for partisan advantage and then forgotten, as the culture war rages on.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
© 2006 by King Features Syndicate

When you were Young by The Killers


The Killers Are Here to Save Good Music
- By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer

Thursday, October 5, 2006

(10-05) 12:41 PDT New York (AP) --

Let Justin Timberlake worry about bringing sexy back. The Killers have a far weightier goal in mind as they release their grand sophomore album, "Sam's Town" — to bring good music back.

"We've gotten away from what The Beatles did and what started it all, and what Elvis songs were like, and it needs to be brought back," says Brandon Flowers, the rock quartet's lead vocalist and lyricist, looking serious and earnest.

"The experimentation has gone far enough. We lost the song."

OK, so some might argue that it never left — and there are plenty of good songs to go around. Others may question whether The Killers — a Las Vegas-rock quartet who have released just one album (albeit a very good, triple-platinum selling album) — are qualified to serve as saviors.

No worries. The cocky band that helped rejuvenate the rock scene with their Brit-pop, '80s influenced "Hot Fuss" are even more confident with the release of "Sam's Town," a moodier, more mature disc that reflects the influence of Bruce Springsteen and incorporates the guidance of producers Flood and Alan Moulder, best known for their work with acts like U2 and the Smashing Pumpkins.

"We are doing our own thing on this record and hopefully kind of paving the way again," says bassist Mark Stoermer, sitting on a couch and unwinding as the band wraps up a long magazine photo shoot at a downtown studio. "I think really there are no weak songs on the record. ... I think they all show different degrees of growing. Just overall, the sound has matured and improved, in our eyes."

That they decided to tinker with the formula that put them on the map is admirable in itself. Instead of the garage-rock sound that defined some "it" rock bands of the moment, 2004's "Hot Fuss" mined New Wave with imaginative, captivating songs like "Mr. Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me" (which were accompanied by equally ambitious and dramatic videos). Though they first got notice in Europe, it didn't take long before they would conquer their native land; the Grammy-nominated "Hot Fuss" went on to sell more than three million copies domestically.

But when it came time to work on their follow-up, the band knew that despite all their success, it was time for a change.

"They were constantly being called the best English band from America, and I think that they definitely wanted to draw on some different influences," says Rob Stevens, a top executive at Island Def Jam, the band's label. "They just started looking at great American musicians and performers. ... They didn't just want to make 'Hot Fuss, Part 2.'"

However, they knew that many outsiders were expecting just such an album — at least sales-wise. Guitarist David Keuning admits some of that pressure did get to the band — "How could it not?" he asks.

"Everybody is like, 'We can't wait for your second album, hope it's not a slump. And then you've got other people just negative, like, 'Yeah, you're gonna suck, no one is give a crap about you after your second, you're going to fizzle out,'" he says. "We were just determined to prove all of those people wrong."

The band found guidance in the hands of Mark Ellis, known as Flood, and Moulder, producers who have separately or together worked on albums including U2's "Pop" and "Joshua Tree" and the Pumpkins'"Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." But instead of determining the artistic direction of "Sam's Town," The Killers' say the pair simply prodded them until they managed to find one on their own.

"Their dynamic was bringing out what we already do and making sure everybody's voices got heard, so that's why it's probably a different-sounding record," drummer Ronnie Vannucci said as his wife took a catnap nearby. "They almost acted like coaches."

This time around, the band didn't need to search far for inspiration. Unlike "Hot Fuss," whose lyrical content was based on a lot of fictional, fantastical tales, "Sam's Town" is rooted in reality. There's a song about a disillusionment and a family member's addiction. The title track, "Sam's Town," seems to touch on insecurities magnified by fame's bright lights: "I took a shuttle on a shockwave ride where people on the pen pull the trigger for accolades," Flowers warbles.

"Especially lyrically, everything is more nonfictional," says Stoermer. "It's from a real place."

Part of that may be due to the influence of one of the great American lyricists, Bruce Springsteen. Flowers says much of his Springsteen knowledge was from his "Born in the U.S.A." days — until he picked up some of the rock great's earlier recordings and was blown away.

"It's just a real pleasant surprise that I was going to fall in love with something," Flowers says. "I'm 25 years old and I thought that was over. ... You kind of lose the innocence of someone showing you something special, something being god-like."

Flowers and his bandmates seem to find few things special in music today. They've famously feuded with bands like Fall Out Boy and have bashed emo music, and while Flowers takes pains these days not to openly criticize his peers, it's clear he's not impressed with what he's hearing.

"I think bands are lazy. It's so much easier to do anything, even down to recording," he sniffs. "The whole world is lazier, so it's also showing itself face now in rock music and pop music and it's just crap. I'm excited when I hear my own songs, and we would like to be the messengers of good songs."


From USA TODAY:

Killers find roots in 'Sam's Town'
By Edna Gundersen

The Killers titled their new album, Sam's Town, after an old casino on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Before the freeway was built, singer Brandon Flowers remembers the 20-mile stretch of highway connecting his home in Henderson, Nev., to Sam's place on the eastern edge of a city teeming with thrills and temptation.

"When you got to Sam's, you were almost there," he says. "I feel like that's where the band is now. We're really getting somewhere."

To say the least. On the strength of Grammy-nominated hits Mr. Brightside, Somebody Told Me and All These Things That I've Done, The Killers sold 3.1 million copies of 2004's critically hailed debut, Hot Fuss.

Sam's Town, out this week, could be on a similar course. Mojo dubs it "an action-packed blockbuster." On-the-rise single When You Were Young, which has sold 170,000 downloads so far, is "a cyclone ride of insta-nostalgia that takes in Jesus and the devil, and has a hook as big as both," Blender raves.

That song, plus This River Is Wild and For Reasons Unknown, reflects on values that have faded with passing generations, a theme that emerged as Flowers' globe-trotting instilled both a disquieting worldliness and unexpected homesickness.

A newfound appreciation for the wide open spaces of home is "one reason some songs feel like the desert and the Wild West," Flowers, 25, says. "I was always proud of where I was from, but you always think the grass is greener somewhere else. Because of David Bowie and Robert Smith, I had fantasies of England. Going there was a big eye-opener. It wasn't as mystical as I made them in my mind."

He was dismayed by the unfriendly reception he and his bandmates often received overseas as a result of unpopular U.S. foreign policies.

"In Europe, as soon as people heard my accent, I was treated poorly," he says. "People see us as devils, and we're getting a bad rap because of the war. I wanted to make an album that was human, that reminded people what's great about America."

He turned to his parents for inspiration.

"They're in their 60s. I was raised on the morals and values that seem to be eroding or dying now. We're going downhill, it seems to me. The work ethic has changed. My dad was a hard worker and still is at 64. People today are lazy."

He sees a similar inertia in modern rock and is puzzled when appetite and drive are viewed as unhealthy traits. After wrapping up 400 shows late last year, Flowers, guitarist David Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci returned to Vegas and started recording with producers Flood and Alan Moulder.

"People are putting us down for being ambitious, and there are critics who want us to fail," Flowers says. "A lot of bands are getting cynical about hooks and lazier with lyrics and melodies."

Yet mediocrity sells, he grudgingly concedes. Paris Hilton's CD sails into the top 10 "because people feel like they had something to do with it," he says. "It's reality TV now. You get a vote on American Idol. It's upsetting, and it's hurting bands. I hate it.

"But a good song will still find its place. I knew that about Mr. Brightside. As small as we were, I knew one day a lot of people would hear it."

What may surprise fans of Hot Fuss and its British bent is Sam's Town's heartland core, the result in part of Flowers' rediscovered reverence for Bruce Springsteen.

"It was a matter of me getting older and hearing the songs differently," he says. "I heard them through a man's ears, finally. I hadn't felt like that since I fell in love with The Cars and The Smiths. It gave a new breath of life into this album. I do love Bruce, but I was listening to a lot of stuff: Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Tom Petty, ELO."

The Killers will tour the USA through October before heading overseas Nov. 1 for European dates, an itinerary that both excites and distresses Flowers, whose fear of flying is documented in the tune Why Do I Keep Counting?

"As soon as we hit turbulence, I instantly start praying," says Flowers, who never flew until The Killers took off. He began seeing a psychiatrist to learn relaxation techniques. "I'm never going to love to fly, but I can't freak out like I used to. I'd cramp so much that I'd be sore for days."

He happily suffers for his art when the payoff is getting on stage in a packed venue.

"We're from Vegas. The glitz, the glamour. You go into a diner or a 7-Eleven, and there are pictures of Sinatra and Elvis on the walls. Performing is in our blood."

From InTheNews.co.uk:

The Killers: Sam's Town

Monday, 02 Oct 2006

In a nutshell…

Anthemic. Long-awaited. Americana. Sophomore. Success.

What's it all about?

It's about the return of The Killers, those nice boys from Las Vegas who us Brits have taken to our hearts but have been somewhat ignored by those on the other side of the Atlantic. The very Anglo-Saxon influences that seep through whenever Brandon Flowers takes to the stage may well be to blame for that. From New Order to Pulp to Oasis, the higher echelons of Brit Pop and New Wave are all generously referenced. Indeed, it was from New Order's video for Crystal that the band's name was conceived.

But Flowers and co appear to have taken the lack of fuss their first album, Hot Fuss, caused in the good ol' US of A to heart and have sought to redress the balance. Sam's Town is a nod in the direction of Americana at its most brash. References to highways, hurricanes and two-star towns certainly don't seem to be aimed at striking a chord with Johnny, 19, from Camden? Chances are, however, that America will still overlook The Killers in favour of more palatable British bands like Coldplay. Or Keane. Or indeed Bruce Springsteen.

Who's it by?

The Killers came into being after lead singer Flowers got disenchanted by life in synth-pop band Blush Response in 2001 and put up an advert calling for fans of Oasis, who he had seen at a recent gig in his hometown of Las Vegas, to join him in a band. According to Flowers, the only person who "wasn't a complete freak" to reply was guitarist David Keuning. The duo later approached bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci and the band as it is now came together.

After getting noticed in England first and trumpeted by, among others, Radio 1, The Killers released Hot Fuss in June 2004 in the UK to great acclaim. It went on to go multi-platinum in both the US and UK, but it was in Britain where most copies were shifted and where Flowers' band went on to have arguably their finest moment. Having turned down the opportunity to come in as last-minute headline replacements for the sick Kylie Minogue, The Killers instead played second fiddle to the White Stripes at Glastonbury 2005. They proceeded to utterly outshine Jack White and friends and perform one of the best-received slots ever held in the venerable Somerset fields. Rumour has it they will be back as headliners next summer with, if this is not just a viciously ironic rumour in the wake of the critical reaction to Sam's Town, a certain Mr Springsteen.

As an example

"I still remember Grandma Dixie's wake/ I never really known anybody to die before/ Red white and blue upon a birthday cake/ And my brother, he was born on the fourth of the July...and that's all." – Sam's Town

"We're burning down the highway skyline/ On the back of a hurricane that started turning/ When you were young." – When You Were Young

Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys

Critics who previously built bands up on debut are notoriously harsh on second albums and the early reaction to Sam's Town is mixed to say the least. But the dangerous second album syndrome seems to have just about been avoided and The Killers are more than likely to be picking up a raft of awards for their efforts. Although whether they'll be as universally acclaimed as they were last year remains to be seen.

What the others say

"Sam's Town succeeds because the changes have not come at the expense of the tunes. The album doesn't lend Flowers the gravitas he apparently yearns for, but it does prove that few are better at irrepressible pop hooks and fist-pumping choruses." – The Guardian

"Why, Killers? Why? It's the oldest story in the New Wave book: (1) Boys get famous wearing makeup and acting tarty to impress girls; (2) Boys wash off makeup and act sincere to impress boys; (3) It never works." – Rolling Stone

"The tunes may be huger, the influences cleverer, the lyrics more adventurous and the band more self-assured, but their primary concern is still being the biggest indie-pop stars on the planet. For all their smart new ways, The Killers are still as flashy, unintentionally funny, and flagrantly affected as ever - and this time we wouldn't even pretend to have it any other way." – NME

So is it any good?

As soon as the opening bars of the thumping Sam's Town pulsate out of the speakers there can be no doubt about the origin of the Springsteen references. 'I've heard this somewhere before' the brain says, and indeed the three words 'born', 'to' and 'run' go swimming around the head without warning. The Killers have gone all epic on us and they figure there is no point hiding the fact. From the very first note on this album it is clear The Killers have moved on. Does it work? Mostly.

There's just so much of other people's music in here. The pointless Enterlude and Exitlude, which bracket the album's tracks bar the breathless Sam's Town and the bonus track Where the White Boys Dance, are straight out of the Beatles back catalogue. When You Were Young, the excellent single, contains an unexpected homage to that great American hero, Meatloaf, and Bling (Confessions of a King), for all its quality, often merges into U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.

For Reasons Unknown could have been written by Freddie Mercury, Where the White Boys Dance is Bowie-esque in the extreme and the list continues. This is not to say The Killers have lifted anyone else's work, Sam's Town is still distinctly original, but anyone coming to Sam's Town hoping for Hot Fuss part two will go away disappointed. Only Uncle Jonny sounds like The Killers of old and that can only be tinged with regret when The Killers of old were just so damn good.

That said, Sam's Town is more hit than miss. Read My Mind is a stunning slowburner, Sam's Town and When You Were Young only very narrowly fail to emulate The Boss in his prime and Bling (Confessions of a King) is arguably the best song on the record.

Flowers believes it is one of the best albums in 20 years. He says it's a grower and that the critics will come to agree with him in time. Those critics are mixed in their reactions. Some praise the new, leather-wearing, facial-hair heavy image while others pine for the glitzy 80s days of Somebody Told Me. Only time will tell who's right, but suffice to say that Sam's Town is a great Killers record. Just not as we know it.

7.5/10

Martin Ashplant


From The Boston Globe:

Killers buck the trend
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff

October 3, 2006

Early response to the Killers' sophomore album, ``Sam's Town," has been a collective shriek of betrayal. Where do those natty neo-New Wavers from Las Vegas get off trading in their gaudy personas and amusing post-punk -- which won them fame and five Grammy nominations -- for scruffy beards and American anthems? Apparently we've arrived at a cultural moment where an ambitious band that can't abide the idea of going down in history as the deliciously shallow synth-pop band from Sin City is taken down for imagining there's something more.

The joke, as usual, is on the eye rollers. The new album is every bit as stylized as ``Hot Fuss," it's just a lot less trendy and transparent. ``I see London, I see Sam's Town," chants frontman Brandon Flowers on the album's opening track, introducing the music's dual reference points: a mod metropolis and a two-bit casino. The Killers' new terrain is a wind swept wasteland where post-punk dance-pop collides with heartland rock and the Cure goes toe to toe with Bruce Springsteen. Horns come out of nowhere. The band breaks into an operatic refrain. It's a grandiose and counterintuitive mash-up -- and a whole lot more faux than the comfortably tarty trappings of ``Mr. Brightside."

Does anybody really believe that bolero ties and black and white cover art are a bid for credibility? The songs themselves manage to stake that claim: most of them made of crashing guitars, pummeling bass, unsettling synthesizers, and emotive vocals that build -- with a deft mix of bombast and whimsy -- into epic, melody-drenched rock songs that are as grand as they are empty. It's a statement, not a terribly fashionable one, and you can bet a bunch of former fashionistas like the Killers know it. Good for them.

Who Knew Congressman Foley Was A Closeted Democrat?
by Ann Coulter

October 4, 2006

At least liberals are finally exhibiting a moral compass about something. I am sure that they'd be equally outraged if Rep. Mark Foley were a Democrat.

The object lesson of Foley's inappropriate e-mails to male pages is that when a Republican congressman is caught in a sex scandal, he immediately resigns and crawls off into a hole in abject embarrassment. Democrats get snippy.

Foley didn't claim he was the victim of a “witch hunt.” He didn't whine that he was a put-upon “gay American.” He didn't stay in Congress and haughtily rebuke his critics. He didn't run for re-election. He certainly didn't claim he was “saving the Constitution.” (Although his recent discovery that he has a drinking problem has a certain Democratic ring to it.)

In 1983, Democratic congressman Gerry Studds was found to have sexually propositioned House pages and actually buggered a 17-year-old male page whom he took on a trip to Portugal. The 46-year-old Studds indignantly attacked those who criticized him for what he called a “mutually voluntary, private relationship between adults.”

When the House censured Studds for his sex romp with a male page, Studds — not one to be shy about presenting his backside to a large group of men — defiantly turned his back on the House during the vote. He ran for re-election and was happily returned to office SIX more times by liberal Democratic voters in his Martha's Vineyard district. (They really liked his campaign slogan: “It's the outfit, stupid.”)

Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy referred to Studds' affair with a teenage page as “a brief consenting homosexual relationship” and denounced Studds' detractors for engaging in a “witch hunt” against gays: “New England witch trials belong to the past, or so it is thought. This summer on Cape Cod, the reputation of Rep Gerry Studds was burned at the stake by a large number of his constituents determined to torch the congressman for his private life.”

Meanwhile, Foley is hiding in a hole someplace.

No one demanded to know why the Democrat Speaker of the House, Thomas “Tip” O'Neill, took one full decade to figure out that Studds was propositioning male pages.

But now, the same Democrats who are incensed that Bush's National Security Agency was listening in on al-Qaida phone calls are incensed that Republicans were not reading a gay congressman's instant messages.

Let's run this past the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: The suspect sent an inappropriately friendly e-mail to a teenager — oh also, we think he's gay. Can we spy on his instant messages? On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the odds that any court in the nation would have said: YOU BET! Put a tail on that guy — and a credit check, too!

When Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee found unprotected e-mails from the Democrats about their plan to oppose Miguel Estrada's judicial nomination because he was Hispanic, Democrats erupted in rage that their e-mails were being read. The Republican staffer responsible was forced to resign.

But Democrats are on their high horses because Republicans in the House did not immediately wiretap Foley's phones when they found out he was engaging in e-mail chitchat with a former page about what the kid wanted for his birthday.

The Democrats say the Republicans should have done all the things Democrats won't let us do to al Qaida — solely because Foley was rumored to be gay. Maybe we could get Democrats to support the NSA wiretapping program if we tell them the terrorists are gay.

On Fox News' “Hannity and Colmes” Monday night, Democrat Bob Beckel said a gay man should be kept away from male pages the same way Willie Sutton should have been kept away from banks. “If Willie Sutton is around some place where a bank is robbed,” Beckel said, “then you're probably going to say, 'Willie, stay away from the robbery.'"

Hmmmm, let's search the memory bank. In July 2000, the New York Times “ethicist” Randy Cohen advised a reader that pulling her son out of the Cub Scouts because they exclude gay scout masters was “the ethical thing to do.” The “ethicist” explained: “Just as one is honor bound to quit an organization that excludes African-Americans, so you should withdraw from scouting as long as it rejects homosexuals.”

We need to get a rulebook from the Democrats:
Boy Scouts — As gay as you want to be.
Priests — No gays!
Democrat politicians -Proud gay Americans.
Republican politicians - Presumed guilty.
White House Press Corps - No gays, unless they hate Bush.
Active Duty U.S. Military - As gay as possible.
Men Who Date Liza Minelli - Do I have to draw you a picture, Miss Thing?

This is the very definition of political opportunism. If Republicans had decided to spy on Foley for sending overly friendly e-mails to pages, Democrats would have been screaming about a Republican witch hunt against gays. But if they don't, they're enabling a sexual predator.

Talk to us Monday. Either we'll be furious that Republicans violated the man's civil rights, or we'll be furious that they didn't.

From The NY Post:
HE'S BAT-MAN
By JAY GREENBERG

October 4, 2006 -- Derek Jeter's postseason hit No. 136 was a sharp, first-inning single to left. No. 137, with Johnny Damon going on a hit-and-run, was your basic single to left-center that Jeter stretched with a smart slide into second before Bobby Abreu doubled in both runners to key a five-run inning.

No. 138 was another single to left, plenty even for major league baseball's all-time leader in postseason hits, but only until the Tigers got to Chien-Ming Wang with three fifth-inning runs that suddenly made it a game, with the implied risk that it might be a series.

So, after Johnny Damon led off the sixth with a hit, Jeter lined No. 139, a double to left, that set up Bobby Abreu's two-run single.

No. 140, culminating his first five-hit game of his postseason career, tying a postseason record held by six, went over the center-field fence in the ninth, more for insurance in the 8-4 victory than because Jeter was wondering if anybody was still watching. No chance you could take your eyes off one of greatest postseason performers in sports history, still going strong as ever in his Yankee October No. 11.

Anyone who watched the first 10 would have warned you.

"So calm," said Jorge Posada.

"And so explosive."

The second-best regular-season batting average in Jeter's career, .343, did not win him his first AL batting title.

It might not win him the MVP over the Twins' Justin Morneau, or Frank Thomas, or even David Ortiz, if anybody can be more valuable to a team that didn't make the playoffs than one that did. Jeter deserves to win it finally, because this lineup that Jim Leyland yesterday called "Murderer's Row and Cano" was minus Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield and Robinson Cano for huge portions of the season.

Typically, Jeter picked a year threatening to land in the scrap heap to deliver one of his best to get his team again to the spotlight where he never stops shining.

"He just seems to relish this atmosphere," said Joe Torre. "The only way for me to characterize it is that he doesn't go up thinking negative. Failing doesn't scare him."

Last night, Alex Rodriguez had a sharp third-inning single, and hit two other balls on the screws right at second baseman Placido Polanco and right fielder Magglio Ordonez. It was an encouraging start for A-Rod, never mind what the box score says, toward the Yankees postseason it is time for him to finally have.

But after the Tigers had closed to within two and the Yankees needed another jump-start, Rodriguez took a called third strike with Jason Giambi at first. It was part of the reason the American League's reigning MVP being disguised by Torre as a six-hole hitter will need a Derek Jeter mask and a No. 2 uniform for foolproof cover through the rest of this postseason.

The greatest player in the game until he comes up in a big spot is, by his recent own admission, just too good-looking and too smart to blend in among all his friends and teammates who get a pass from the fans and media that Rodriguez doesn't.

Years ago in Seattle, when Jeter considered Rodriguez a friend, A-Rod said that, surrounded by all this Yankees talent, Jeter didn't have the burden to carry the Yankees.

The hell he doesn't.

"It never changes," acknowledged Rodriguez Monday, about the spotlight and expectations. The attitude toward him won't either, until he blows his angst away with a huge hit.

Most great talents, given enough opportunities on the big stage, eventually succeed. Maybe A-Rod's time is coming.

Last night Jeter showed again his is here again.

"You are going to succeed more than you fail in baseball," said Jeter last night. "You can't be afraid."

Lesson for Rodriguez.

From Opinion Journal:

More Troops, Please
"Not losing" isn't the same as winning.

BY PETE HEGSETH

Tuesday, October 3, 2006 12:01 a.m.

I've heard President Bush repeatedly state he will send more troops to Iraq if the commanders on the ground ask for them. I think, having returned home from Iraq two months ago, that there must be a breakdown in communication somewhere along the line. Maybe units on the ground are painting too rosy a picture for the generals. Perhaps the generals aren't asking because it goes against the "can do" ethos of the Army. Possibly the military is being squeezed by the Pentagon to do more with less. Or maybe the White House doesn't want to admit more troops are needed. In any case, while I do not have the answers nor do I seek to place blame, it is painfully obvious there's a disconnect.

I volunteered to serve in Iraq because I believe in our mission there. I share the president's conviction about the Iraq war--we can and must win, for the Iraqi people, for the future of our country and for peace-loving people everywhere. But I'm frustrated. America is fighting with a hand tied behind its back. Soldiers have all the equipment we need--armored humvees, body armor for every body part, superior technology, etc.--but we simply do not have enough troops in Iraq, and we need them now.

After witnessing two national elections during three months in Baghdad, my Army unit moved north to Samarra, where we spent eight months sowing the seeds of progress. While we had success in uprooting the insurgency and building the local government, it wasn't enough. We had just enough troops to control Samarra and secure ourselves, but not enough to bring lasting stability or security. "Not enough" became the story of my year in Iraq.

The future of Samarra, and Iraq as a whole, ultimately lies in the hands of her people--their sympathies are the ultimate prize in this war. No matter how many insurgents we kill, city leaders we meet or policemen we enlist, it is all for naught if we cannot provide security and stability. Tribal sheikhs told us that even within Samarra--deep in the Sunni triangle--a vast majority of people just want peace and order and will side with whoever can provide it. Right now Samarrans rightfully question who that will be.

The end goal in Samarra is for Iraqis to do everything for themselves. But their government and security forces are not ready. Insurgents use death threats and murder to assert power over anyone working with the City Council or joining the police force. This atmosphere forces moderate Samarrans to keep their mouths shut, and their silence abets the insurgents who live and fight in Samarra. Despite killing scores of insurgents, we are unable to provide lasting security, and so the Samarran street slips away.

Two things are to blame for our predicament, one a corollary of the other. The first reason is that we did not have enough troops in Samarra. The skill and courage of 150 American soldiers prevented chaos, but was never enough to fully secure a city of 120,000 people or maintain the rule of law. The soldiers in the city were preoccupied with defending themselves and conducting night raids, and were therefore largely unable to regularly patrol during the day--thus giving insurgents reign to move freely and intimidate the local population. A visitor in Samarra on an average day would be hard-pressed to point out a single American humvee traversing local neighborhoods. The same is true for Baghdad.

Our four-vehicle civil-affairs patrol was often the only American presence deep inside the city and we were frequently greeted by locals with the question, "Where have you been?" Americans can't of course be omnipresent; but we should at least be there when it matters. When Americans are there, either the insurgents are not or they are on the losing side of a firefight.

Second, because of a lack of troops, American military leaders are forced to make a choice between mission objectives and self-preservation. Many of our leaders are opting to guard supply routes and coagulate on sprawling military bases, rather than consistently moving into dangerous areas and fighting the insurgency. In our case, we had 500 soldiers stationed outside Samarra who made infrequent trips into the city center. There is little reason why most of these troops were not stationed inside Samarra, canvassing every neighborhood with platoon-sized patrol bases and suffocating insurgent operations. Rather than take the risks necessary--like small patrol bases and frequent foot patrols--our unit opted to secure itself and its supply routes rather than commit resources inside the city. And while this approach is safer in the short run, it only prolongs mission accomplishment, ultimately endangering more troops. We often speculated our unit would be back next year, driving the same streets with even fewer guys.

In due time, the Iraqi Security Forces will take over Samarra, but they are not ready yet. If the Americans left today, the Iraqis would be co-opted by the insurgents--who are utterly ruthless, willing to kill family members of policemen or decapitate Iraqi soldiers to preserve disorder. It will take time. Both the Iraqi Army and Samarra Police need to get bloodied a bit and bounce back, proving their strength to the people. They will eventually be ready, but until then, security belongs to us.

I also understand calling for more troops is contrary to conventional thinking inside government and the military. Supporters of the current approach argue sending more troops would further inflame anti-American sentiment, incite more violence and retard independent progress. My experience suggests otherwise. American troops are tolerated, even welcomed when they effectively provide security; but their presence is cursed when it does not accompany progress. Violence persists not because American troops are present, but because our presence is futile. Many local leaders asked us, "How come the most powerful country in the world cannot defeat local criminals and thugs?" They suggested our failure was part of a larger conspiracy to keep the Iraqi people suffering.

I have not lost the optimism that sent me to Iraq. We did make gains. Our 10-man civil-affairs team established good relationships with brave Iraqi leaders and sat across from them as equals. I watched city leaders battle insurgents, not only with guns but with newspapers and economic development. By the time we left, the City Council was meeting on its own accord and with increasing legitimacy, forming committees to oversee fuel allocation, new construction and security. Increased home construction was evident and local markets were open.

Even the security situation inside the city improved. Previous summers in Samarra had been extremely violent, but the summer of 2006 was different. Days passed without a significant attack inside the city. Less than 150 Americans, along with Iraqi counterparts, controlled a town of over 120,000 Sunni Arabs through targeted raids and sniper operations. One local insurgent even begged city leaders for amnesty in exchange for good conduct. Our unit killed or captured hundreds of insurgents, knocking the wind out of the local insurgency--but never crushing it.

I believe, as the president noted, that "the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad." Why then do we have just enough troops in Iraq not to lose? Most of the people I've spoken with since coming home--those both for and against the war--believe we must finish the job in Iraq. Americans understand a defeat in Iraq would have horrible consequences for America and its allies for decades to come. America has the capacity to win and the will to support a winning strategy.

Why then are we pursuing a bare minimum approach?

First Lt. Hegseth served as an infantry platoon leader and civil-military operations officer in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division.

From The New York Daily News:

Captain and The Clipper
BY T.J. QUINN

Sunday, September 17th, 2006

Every day the Captain walks into the clubhouse with his grande skim cappuccino from Starbucks, answers questions at his locker, goes off to the training room, takes batting practice, takes the field on a sprint ahead of the rest of the guys, plays baseball without much more emotion than an occasional pumped fist.

There is something in Derek Jeter's routine, the clean lines and the gentle strides that looks familiar to a couple of old Red Sox.

He was born to pinstripes, never grandstands, never gives voyeurs a glance within. He has the unquestioned respect of a clubhouse where players carry enough MVP and Cy Young awards to fill a wing of a museum, and the same respect from those who play against him.

The old Red Sox players remember someone else like that.

"He's got a little Joe DiMaggio in him," says Bobby Doerr, the 88-year-old Hall of Fame second baseman who came into the game a year after DiMaggio and left at the same time. "You look at a player for what he does, for what he represents. That's the awe we had with Joe D."

Jeter, Doerr says, is worthy of the mantle.

"Right now, I think he might be the best player in baseball. There's nothing he can't do, for God's sake," says the Red Sox' 86-year-old legend-in-residence Johnny Pesky, speaking New England heresy. "He's the epitome of a Yankee."

There has been a quiet search for the modern DiMaggio ever since Paul Simon wondered about Joltin' Joe's forwarding address in 1968, although Simon was singing about more than a lost ballplayer.

Red Smith, maybe the greatest of all sportswriters, laid it out in the final column of his career in January of 1982, about why he maintained his faith that he wouldn't spend the rest of his days with middling, uninspiring ballplayers: "I told myself not to worry. Some day there would be another Joe DiMaggio."

They were the last words Smith wrote. There hasn't been one since.

Jeter is playing toward what might be his first MVP award this season - both Doerr and Pesky say he deserves it - or possibly his first batting title. DiMaggio had three of the former and two of the latter, in a career that lost three years to World War II. He was also considered the greatest centerfielder anyone had seen until the emergence of Willie Mays. By that standard, the Clipper eclipses the Captain.

But those who knew DiMaggio and have seen Jeter say the comparison is legitimate.

"They have the same kind of mannerisms," Yogi Berra says. "Joe never walked to the outfield - he always ran on the field, he always ran off, just like Jeter. (Players) all looked up to Joe. Joe did everything perfect like Jeter does. I knew Jeter as he came along; he's a loner a little bit, he likes to be private. But all the girls go after him. With Joe, it was the same thing."

Frank Torre, Joe's older brother, knew DiMaggio for years and has watched Jeter since he was a rookie shortstop and Joe was a new manager in 1996.

If anything binds Jeter and DiMaggio, it is their sense of occasion.

"Some people perform at a higher level when the chips are down and that's why it's important not to look at stats," Frank Torre says. "But look at (Jeter). One of them plays they still talk about in Oakland. The flip. That's leadership taking over."

In David Halberstam's book, "Summer of '49," he writes of how Charlie Keller was awed by DiMaggio's intensity when he had to rise to a moment, such as facing Bob Feller: "You could actually see the veins and muscles in DiMaggio's neck stand out, Keller remembered."

From his home in Nantucket, Halberstam says, "I think (Jeter is) more a real leader than DiMaggio was in some senses. DiMaggio was clearly the best player of his era, but he was very aloof, so the leadership was that he was the great DiMaggio and that he always played hard and that the bigger the game, the better he played."

Jeter, ever reserved, gives the expectedly demure response when asked about the comparison.

"I've heard people say it. It's flattering anytime you hear something like that. It's kind of unfair to him, though," Jeter says, sitting in front of his locker. "I've only been here a little while."

If there are similarities, they are accidental, Jeter says. "It wasn't like I molded myself after him. You can't be something you're not or you aren't going to be believeable."

There may never be another Joe DiMaggio in the way Paul Simon and Red Smith pined for one. Elegance has been replaced by hipness, swing by hip-hop. The counterculture DiMaggio despised is rooted in the game and baseball no longer dominates the cultural landscape the way it did in the 1940s, before television was common, before cable existed, before the NFL and NBA were viable leagues. In that sense, it would be hard for Jeter, or anyone, to be larger than the game. Alex Rodriguez might have been a candidate, recognized as the best all-around player in baseball, but he has been criticized too much for having a manufactured personality. People can get too close now, and lines show up in players' faces the way they never did on newsreel footage. Jeter's mystique might come from the fact that he has guarded his privacy with the same intensity DiMaggio did.

Dom DiMaggio, now 89 and living in Southeastern Massachusetts, admires Jeter, but he isn't so quick to dub him his older brother's successor.

"For one thing, we know that Joe was extremely graceful. On the field, his every move was just as graceful as can be," Dom says. "I think Jeter is a little more, not voluntarily showy, but Jeter plays hard and it shows. Joe, everything he did, he played hard, but he did it so smoothly and gracefully it didn't appear he was doing it hard."

Part of being Joe DiMaggio meant never letting them see you sweat. Ernest Hemingway saw in DiMaggio the perfection of grace under pressure, which is why he befriended him and had Santiago, the Old Man in "Old Man and the Sea" refer to him as "the great DiMaggio."

"I never seen him slide for a ball in the five years I played with him," Berra says. "He caught everything shoulder high."

The relationships with the media were different, too. Writers were sometimes part of the inner circle at Toots Shor's and other hot spots, but they knew they were never to share their private view of DiMaggio with the rest of the world.

"We used to ride the trains together. We ate with the writers, we drank with the writers," Berra says. "It's changed a little bit."

Inside the clubhouse there were only a few reporters, not the dozens greeting Jeter and his teammates, even for an unexciting mid-week game against a second-division team.

"Joe just sat at his stool, have something to read, smoke his cigarette. Nonchalant," Berra says. "He'd be there looking around. You say, 'Hi,' he says 'Hi' to you. Them days, they didn't have it like they do now. We used to park out in the street and walk in." Now fans in the Bronx are kept 100 yards away, reduced to shouting at players who walk from the fenced-in parking lot to the stadium entrance.

What Berra sees in Jeter that reminds him of DiMaggio is the command of the clubhouse. Coming to the Yankees 60 years ago, he says, there was no question DiMaggio was in charge.

"You were a little scared of him at first. You got to know him after a little while and it's okay," Berra says.

Even Joe McCarthy, the stern manager who guided the team through much of the 1940s, had a healthy respect for DiMaggio's place.

"When Joe McCarthy started a meeting of players in the clubhouse once, Joe wasn't there yet, he got there about five minutes late," Dom DiMaggio says. "(McCarthy) stopped the meeting and they waited for him, Joe had his topcoat on, his jacket, he took them off. And Joe McCarthy said, 'O.K., we'll start all over again.' Joe laughed, McCarthy laughed; they understood each other. But they knew what the deal was."

Everyone around Joe DiMaggio knew the deal. If you were loyal, he would be loyal.

"If you did something with Joe that he didn't like, that was the end of it," Dom DiMaggio says. "And the person who had done it knew that he had made a mistake, and he knew Joe was right, and he admired Joe despite the fact that Joe cut him off because he knew he made the mistake."

It could be saying the wrong thing to the press, hot-dogging or loafing on the field, embarassing DiMaggio, being too familiar with him or breaking rules like bringing wives to the wrong occasions.

There is also some of DiMaggio's famous pride in Jeter, too.

Jeter has been known for freezing out transgressors as well, notably Rodriguez following the 2001 interview in Esquire in which he said Jeter never had to lead and wasn't as good a player.

When Ruben Rivera was caught stealing one of Jeter's gloves, it was ultimately Jeter who decided Rivera's fate, and Jeter decided Rivera should not be a Yankee.

When Jason Giambi fought to regain his teammates' respect following his all-but-explicit admission of steroid use, it was Jeter who signaled to the rest of the team that Giambi had paid his dues. On the other hand, when Rodriguez was being booed like a Bostonian at Yankee Stadium earlier this year, members of the team noticed that Jeter did not put an arm around A-Rod or tell fans that they should support their third baseman.

While Dom DiMaggio says he admires Jeter, he says it takes more than leadership or stoicism or elegance or greatness to claim his brother's legacy. It takes all of them.

"You'll get ballplayers that might have the statistics that might match Joe, but they might not match the overall person," he says.

For decades he has been hearing baseball people talk about the next Joe DiMaggio. He heard Paul Simon's song, heard Red Smith's vision that someday there would be another.

"Has there been one?" Dom DiMaggio says. "I haven't seen one come around."

For now, Jeter might come the closest.

A great post about an event 35 years ago, accomplished by a real Yankee, with no performance enhancing drugs or human growth hormone. From www.sheilaomalley.com:

October 1, 1961

Roger Maris hit home run # 61 (that's the 61st in the photo there), breaking the long-standing record held by Babe Ruth. It was a record that not a lot of people wanted to see broken. It was sacred. Maris wasn't a "real" Yankee, etc. Also - he was neck and neck with his teammate - Mickey Mantle - and Mantle, of course, was the ultimate Yankee. If anyone SHOULD break the record, it should be Mickey!! (Oh, and what the hell - this is a post about Maris, but whatever: just thought I'd link to Bob Costas' eulogy for Mickey Mantle. If you're a baseball fan, I know you have read it. It is ... well. It's beyond words.)

But Maris beat Mantle - and the controversy then ensued - that Babe's record should stand - because Ruth hit his 60 home runs in a shorter game schedule. The commissioner of baseball decreed (ha, what a ma-roon) that Maris had actually NOT broken Ruth's record because of this discrepancy - and then there was the whole asterisk debacle - that Maris' record should be listed with an asterisk after it, to show that he hadn't REALLY broken Ruth's record. It's all rather annoying, but still - baseball fans and experts are legitimately insane (I should know) - and this was all important stuff to them. Finally - in 1991 - Maris' record was decreed as "real" and it could stand without the asterisk. Of course Maris was dead by this point so a lot of good it did him!

Billy Crystal's movie 61* is one of my favorite sports movies. It really GETS it. I mean, I wasn't alive in 61 - so I don't know - but from my standpoint, as a person who grew up with baseball, who has the same achey nostalgia and passion about the same thing - Crystal completely expresses THAT in his film - along with the story itself of the battle between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle to break Babe Ruth's record. Great movie.

Congrats, Maris ... ya done good.

The day before The Yankees start the postseason, a tribute to Mickey Mantle.

Bob Costas'
Eulogy for Mickey Mantle

August 15, 1995 - Dallas, TX

"It occurs to me as we're all sitting here thinking of Mickey, he's probably somewhere getting an earful from Casey Stengel, and no doubt quite confused by now.

"One of Mickey's fondest wishes was that he be remembered as a great teammate, to know that the men he played with thought well of him. But it was more than that. Moose and Whitey and Tony and Yogi and Bobby and Hank, what a remarkable team you were. And the stories of the visits you guys made to Mickey's bedside the last few days were heartbreakingly tender. It meant everything to Mickey, as would the presence of so many baseball figures past and present here today.

"I was honored to be asked to speak by the Mantle family today. I am not standing here as a broadcaster. Mel Allen is the eternal voice of the Yankees and that would be his place. And there are others here with a longer and deeper association with Mickey than mine.

"But I guess I'm here, not so much to speak for myself as to simply represent the millions of baseball-loving kids who grew up in the '50s and '60s and for whom Mickey Mantle was baseball.

"And more than that, he was a presence in our lives – a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic. Mickey often said he didn't understand it, this enduring connection and affection – for men now in their forties and fifties, otherwise perfectly sensible, who went dry in the mouth and stammered like schoolboys in the presence of Mickey Mantle.

"Maybe Mick was uncomfortable with it, not just because of his basic shyness, but because he was always too honest to regard himself as some kind of deity. But that was never really the point. In a very different time than today, the first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, said every boy builds a shrine to some baseball hero, and before that shrine, a candle always burns.

"For a huge portion of my generation, Mickey Mantle was that baseball hero. And for reasons that no statistics, no dry recitation of facts can possibly capture, he was the most compelling baseball hero of our lifetime. And he was our symbol of baseball at a time when the game meant something to us that perhaps it no longer does.

"Mickey Mantle had those dual qualities so seldom seen, exuding dynamism and excitement but at the same time touching your heart – flawed, wounded. We knew there was something poignant about Mickey Mantle before we knew what poignant meant. We didn't just root for him, we felt for him.

"Long before many of us ever cracked a serious book, we knew something about mythology as we watched Mickey Mantle run out a home run through the lengthening shadows of a late Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.

"There was greatness in him, but vulnerability too. He was our guy. When he was hot, we felt great. When he slumped or got hurt, we sagged a bit too. We tried to crease our caps like him; kneel in an imaginary on-deck circle like him; run like him heads down, elbows up.

"Billy Crystal is here today. Billy says that at his bar mitzvah he spoke in an Oklahoma drawl. Billy's here today because he loved Mickey Mantle, and millions more who felt like him are here today in spirit as well.

"It's been said that the truth is never pure and rarely simple. Mickey Mantle was too humble and honest to believe that the whole truth about him could be found on a Wheaties® box or a baseball card. But the emotional truths of childhood have a power to transcend objective fact. They stay with us through all the years, withstanding the ambivalence that so often accompanies the experiences of adults.

"That's why we can still recall the immediate tingle in that instant of recognition when a Mickey Mantle popped up in a pack of Topps® bubble gum cards – a treasure lodged between an Eli Grba and a Pumpsie Green.

That's why we smile today, recalling those October afternoons when we'd sneak a transistor radio into school to follow Mickey and the Yankees in the World Series. Or when I think of Mr. Tomasee, a very wise sixth-grade teacher who understood that the World Series was more important, at least for one day, than any school lesson could be. So he brought his black-and-white TV from home, plugged it in and let us watch it right there in school through the flicker and the static. It was richer and more compelling than anything I've seen on a high-resolution, big-screen TV.

"Of course, the bad part, Bobby (Richardson), was that Koufax struck 15 of you guys out that day.

My phone's been ringing the past few weeks as Mickey fought for his life. I've heard from people I hadn't seen or talked to in years – guys I played stickball with, even some guys who took Willie's side in those endless Mantle-Mays arguments. They're grown up now. They have their families. They're not even necessarily big baseball fans anymore. But they felt something hearing about Mickey, and they figured I did too.

"In the last year, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate that distinction between a role model and a hero. The first he often was not, the second he always will be.
In the end, people got it. And Mickey Mantle got from America something other than misplaced and mindless celebrity worship. He got something far more meaningful. He got love – love for what he had been; love for what he made us feel; love for the humanity and sweetness that was always there mixed in with the flaws and all the pain that wracked his body and his soul.

"We wanted to tell him that it was okay, that what he had been was enough. We hoped he felt that Mutt Mantle would have understood and that Merlyn and the boys loved him.

"And then in the end, something remarkable happened – the way it does for champions. Mickey Mantle rallied. His heart took over, and he had some innings as fine as any in 1956 or with his buddy, Roger (Maris), in 1961. But this time, he did it in the harsh and trying summer of '95. And what he did was stunning. The sheer grace of that ninth inning – the humility, the sense of humor, the total absence of self pity, the simple eloquence and honesty of his pleas to others to take heed of his mistakes.

"All of America watched in admiration. His doctors said he was, in many ways, the most remarkable patient they'd ever seen. His bravery, so stark and real, that even those used to seeing people in dire circumstances were moved by his example. Because of that example, organ donations are up dramatically all across America. A cautionary tale has been honestly told and perhaps will affect some lives for the better.

"And our last memories of Mickey Mantle are as heroic as the first. None of us, Mickey included, would want to be held to account for every moment of our lives. But how many of us could say that our best moments were as magnificent as his?

"This is the cartoon from this morning's Dallas Morning News. Maybe some of you saw it. It got torn a little bit on the way to the hotel to here. There's a figure here, St. Peter I take it to be, with his arm around Mickey, that broad back and the number 7. He's holding his book of admissions. He says 'Kid, that was the most courageous ninth inning I've ever seen.'

"It brings to mind a story Mickey liked to tell on himself and maybe some of you have heard it. He pictured himself at the pearly gates, met by St. Peter who shook his head and said 'Mick, we checked the record. We know some of what went on. Sorry, we can't let you in. But before you go, God wants to know if you'd sign these six dozen baseballs.'

"Well, there were days when Mickey Mantle was so darn good that we kids would bet that even God would want his autograph. But like the cartoon says, I don't think Mick needed to worry much about the other part.

I just hope God has a place for him where he can run again. Where he can play practical jokes on his teammates and smile that boyish smile, 'cause God knows no one's perfect. And God knows there's something special about heroes.

"So long, Mick. Thanks."

Bob Costas, August 15, 1995

From The Chicago Sun-Times:
At Gitmo, detainees get La-Z-Boys, pastries
BY MARK STEYN

October 1, 2006

'This is not just a bad bill," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. ''This is truly a dangerous bill." And it's not just a dangerous bill. It's also "unconstitutional" and "unconscionable" and represents the loss of the nation's "moral compass."

Wow! That's quite a lot for a humble bill on military trials for terrorist (OK, "alleged terrorist") detainees. But Vermont's lefty colossus wasn't done yet in his excoriation of the Bush administration. "Even they cannot dismiss the practices at Guantanamo as the actions of a few bad people," he continued. "Before they just did it quietly, and against the law, on their own say-so, but now they are obtaining license to engage in additional harsh techniques that the rest of the world will see as abusive, as cruel, as degrading and even as torture."

Hmm. I should say a word about "the practices at Guantanamo." As it happens, I've just got back from Gitmo. (That glitch on my green card was finally straightened out.) I've visited several prisons in several countries over the years and never seen anything like this one. Granted, most of what I know about enemy detainee camps comes from what Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who runs Guantanamo, calls "bad movies and worse TV shows," and from a distance very little seems to have changed: the basic look -- barbed wire and watch towers -- would be recognizable to any World War II POWs. But, close up, pretty much everything else has been flushed down the toilet of history. Indeed, even the toilet has been flushed down the toilet of history: In the interests of cultural sensitivity, Gitmo cells were fitted with "Asian-style toilets," because "that's what the detainees prefer." Given that much of the matter that should be going down there ends up being flung over the guards, it seems that this sensitivity over choice of bathroom fixtures is not always appreciated.

When visitors like yours truly swing by, the camp likes to serve them the same meal the prisoners get. This being Ramadan, Adm. Harris was particularly proud of the fresh-baked traditional pastries his team had made for the holy month. And he was right: The baklava was delicious. "Baklava" is said by some linguists to come from the Arabic for "nuts" -- and, indeed, in that sense this entire war can sometimes seem like one giant baklava. There was a film out earlier this year called ''The Road To Guantanamo,'' and the poster showed the usual emaciated prisoner hung by shackles against a dungeon wall. No doubt the actor in question did the full Robert De Niro and lost 40 pounds to get himself looking that cadaverous.

If they've got anything like that going on at the real Gitmo, they must be doing it behind the confectioner's sugar at the back of the pastry chef's cupboard. If you're hoping to hear about the old wooden chair under a bare lightbulb swinging on its cord, here's the reality: The detaineeare interrogated on either a La-Z-Boy recliner or a luxuriously upholstered sofa -- blue plush with gold piping.

As for being emaciated, it's the only death camp in history where the soi-disant torture victims put on weight. In contrast to the undernourished thesp in the movie version, the average gain at Gitmo is 18 pounds. The Afghan detainees were the chunkiest Afghans I've ever seen. If they ever make it home, their old comrades -- the lean wiry warriors of the Hindu Kush -- will wonder why a party of Florida retirees has suddenly shown up. These Pushtuns are pushing a ton.

And, if you do start losing weight suddenly, don't worry. As one of the camp's medical staff explained, they offer free colon-cancer testing for jihadis over 50. If President Hillary decides to have another crack at socialized medicine in 2009, there are worse slogans than "Every American should have the right to the same health-care plan as a Sudanese terrorist who put his arm out stabbing a prison guard."

Perhaps this is what Senator Leahy means by "abusive," "cruel," "degrading" "torture." If you're used to the Afghan health system, no doubt it's profoundly humiliating to be offered free colonoscopies every time you bend down to use the prayer mat. Nevertheless, it surely requires a perverse genius to have made the first terrorist detention camp to offer homemade Ramadan pastries a byword for horror and brutality. If I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new Qurans in each unoccupied cell. To reassure incoming inmates that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Qurans are hung from the walls in pristine surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of the United States government to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry.

When I put this point to Adm. Harris, he replied, "That's an interesting question," and said the decision had been made long before he arrived. He explained that they had a good working system whereby whenever it became necessary to handle a Quran -- because a weapon or illicit communication had been concealed in it -- a Muslim translator would be called to the cell to perform the task. But I wasn't thinking of it in operational so much as psychological terms: What does that degree of abasement before their prejudices tell them about us? Mulling it over since I got back, I'd go further: It seems to me that one sign this war is over is when Muslims are grown-up enough not to go to full-blown baklava nuts over other folks touching their Qurans.

Of course, for the likes of Sen. Leahy, not only is the war far from over, it hasn't even begun. Almost every argument in this area isn't "about" the war so much as whether there even is a war. As the Washington Post reported, "The Senate joined the House in embracing President Bush's view that the battle against terrorism justifies the imposition of extraordinary limits on defendants' traditional rights in the courtroom."

Well, they're only "extraordinary" if you regard these men as traditional "defendants." If you regard them as traditional wartime detainees -- rather than OJs in turbans -- the only "extraordinary" aspect of this is the kid gloves with which not just their Qurans but the jihadists themselves are handled. This is the only war in American history in which enemy detainees have been freed before the end of hostilities. Of those released, at least 22 are known to have returned to the battlefield in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. The ones who remain are dangerous men, no matter how "sensitive" you are. They unscrewed the foot pads from those Asian-style toilets and used them as bludgeons to attack the guards. After listening to Pat Leahy's contribution to the debate, I wonder if the Gitmo medical facility's lavish team of mental health experts might not be more usefully deployed to the U.S. Senate.

From WasWatching.com: Quitters and cheaters, about what was expected...

Clemens & Pettitte Fingered By Grimsley

From Newsday -

Roger Clemens, one of professional baseball's most durable and successful pitchers, is among six players allegedly linked to performance-enhancing drugs by a former teammate, The Times has learned. The names had been blacked out in an affidavit filed in federal court.

Others whose identities had been concealed include Clemens' fellow Houston Astros pitcher Andy Pettitte and former American League most valuable player Miguel Tejada of the Baltimore Orioles.

According to the 20-page search warrant affidavit, signed by IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, Grimsley told investigators he obtained amphetamines, anabolic steroids and human growth hormone from someone recommended to him by, a source said, former Yankees trainer Brian McNamee. McNamee is a personal strength coach for Clemens and Pettitte.

Personally, I believe that Clemens has been using PEDs - and I would love for that to be proven in order for it to be part of his legacy.

Since Pettitte has always been Clemens' puppy dog, it should not shock me, if true, that Andy followed Roger down this path.

I've always been a big fan of Pettitte - so, this news saddens me today. The book that Pettitte wrote is entitled "Targeting A Life Of Integrity & Purity." If these charges are found true, I guess that's not exactly going to help book sales, huh?

Lindsay Buckingham, from The New York Times:

Right Out in the Spotlight and Feeling Invisible
By ANTHONY DeCURTIS

NOT Too Late,” the song that opens “Under the Skin,” Lindsey Buckingham’s first solo album in 14 years, begins with a surprisingly confessional verse. “Reading the paper, saw a review,” the lyric runs, “Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew/Now that’s been a problem, feeling unseen/Just like I’m living somebody’s dream.”

In rock critic circles, the term “visionary” clings to Mr. Buckingham the way “fleet-footed” defines Achilles in Homer’s “Iliad.” As singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer for Fleetwood Mac, he has garnered much of the credit for “Rumours,” the 1977 pop masterpiece that has sold close to 20 million copies in the United States alone. Even that album’s more daring follow-up, “Tusk,” widely regarded as a commercial failure for having sold a mere two million copies, won Mr. Buckingham critical admiration for his willingness to ditch a hit-making formula in favor of daring sonic experimentation.

So how is it possible for a member of one of the best-selling bands in history to feel “unseen”? Speaking by telephone from his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles (“not the O.J. side,” he took pains to point out), Mr. Buckingham seemed a bit chagrined.

“Much of Fleetwood Mac was a double-edged sword,” he said. “Band politics can be joyous and supportive, or competitive and sinister. For me things tended more often to fall into the latter category. Maybe that’s because I was the glue, the one putting the songs together, and yet I wasn’t necessarily the one with the political power in the group. That’s a strange place to be. But, you know, that’s my paranoid side.”

Still, paranoia is only one of the facets of Mr. Buckingham reflected on “Under the Skin,” which will be released on Tuesday, his 57th birthday. Emotionally he long ago overcame his stormy breakup with Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s most visible star, which devastated the two of them while generating some of the band’s most gripping songs, like Mr. Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way.”

Since his last solo album in 1992, he has married, and he is now the father of three young children. And after a decade’s absence from Fleetwood Mac (not including a performance for Bill Clinton’s 1993 inaugural festivities), Mr. Buckingham rejoined the band in 1997 for its hugely successful live album “The Dance” and has remained a member in good standing ever since.

He found the group’s last tour, which followed the release of the album “Say You Will” in 2003, especially invigorating, despite (or perhaps because of) the departure of keyboardist and songwriter Christine McVie. “I was in a really confident place,” he said. “Whatever ‘Say You Will’ turned out to be, just having done a new studio album with the band was a great thing. And as much as we missed Christine, how that translated for me is that I was able to get up there and be a guy onstage. The testosterone level was high, which was great for me. I don’t know if Stevie was real happy with it, but that’s a whole other story.”

The pleasures of his reconciliations and new beginnings run through “Under the Skin,” along with the jitters and insecurities chronicled in “Not Too Late.” Songs like “Show You How,” “It Was You” and “Shut Us Down” depict a man determined to find his dream woman and commit, despite his deep-seated fears about himself and the evanescent quality of love.

Mr. Buckingham wrote and recorded much of the album while on the road with Fleetwood Mac, which tempered his tendency to tinker in the studio. “I wanted to make songs that were a step or two above sitting in your living room playing for somebody on guitar,” he said. By Mr. Buckingham’s lush standard — his taste for densely layered melodic textures has drawn frequent comparisons to the work of his idol, Brian Wilson — “Under the Skin” is a stripped-down affair, focused intently on Mr. Buckingham’s voice and acoustic guitar. But it also features electronically treated vocals playfully chase and shadow each other, skittering bass and percussion parts, fleet guitar finger-picking and subtle orchestral coloration. The result is a kind of intensely modern folk music, candidly personal, seemingly direct songs that flirt with soul-baring and then retreat into an enveloping cocoon of sound.

“Those are probably my strong points,” Mr. Buckingham said about his production skills and his eloquent acoustic guitar playing. “I’m not the best singer, and I don’t even think of myself as a writer per se. I’m a stylist. But you can get a long way on style, so I’ll take it. I’ll work with what I got.”

Mr. Buckingham will perform six weeks of solo shows in support of “Under the Skin,” including an Oct. 10 date at Town Hall in Manhattan. Meticulous to the point of obsession, he is worried about that performance, since he will have only three warm-up shows beforehand. “My phrase of the month is, ‘New York’s going to take what they get and like it,’ ” he said, laughing ruefully. “I’m just a little frightened that we’re not going to be able to pull it off.”

Once his tour is done, Mr. Buckingham, uncharacteristically, has more than an entire album of new, more rocking songs that he wants to record and put out “in a fairly short amount of time.” And after that?

“Well, there’s Fleetwood Mac,” he said, a smile nearly audible in his voice. “I suppose I don’t have to, but they’d like to do something. And why wouldn’t I want to do that?”

From Chayyei Sarah:

"The Greatest Deception of Modern Times"


Cross-posted from Israelity:

Who is killing the Muslims?

Imshin has gone to great effort to translate an important article from Maariv, with the following introduction (by Imshin) about why she wants this story to get more attention in English:


The reason I translated the article by Ben Dror Yemini that appeared on the Friday addition of Maariv is that it is extremely important. It makes the important case of the libel against Israel, which he calls the greatest deception of modern times.

He explains that while Israel is seen as a state committing genocide and war crimes, and its very right to exist is widely questioned, in actually fact ‘only’ about 60,000 Arabs have died in the Arab-Israel conflict since 1948 (including the War of 1948 itself), most killed in wars started by the Arabs themselves, and only a few thousand of those killed have been Palestinians!

Now, it goes without saying that every one of those killed is a tragedy, but the numbers killed in this conflict are dwarfed to insignificance by the terrible, horrendous atrocities that have been committed elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world at the very same time. All this time, millions of Muslims and Arabs have been dying at the hands of Muslim and Arabs. And he goes into detail. He calls it a cover up and says that the great deception of the libel against Israel is the great tragedy of the Arabs and the Muslims - for it allows this horrific carnage to continue undisturbed.


A summary:

Number of Arabs killed in the framework of Israeli-Arab conflicts since the creation of Israel (including in the 1948 war for Israel's independence, all the wars fought between Israel and its neighbors, and the occupation of Palestinians): 60,000.

Number of Algerian Muslims killed by the French in the 1950's Algerian war for Independence: Between 500,000 to 1 million.

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in the 1990's Algerian civil war: 100,000.

Number of people, including some Muslims, killed by Muslims in Sudan between 1955 and today: 2.6 million- 3 million.

Number of Muslims killed by the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's: at least 1 million

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in the Afghan civil war of the 1980's-90's: 1 million

Number of Muslims killed by the Americans in efforts to overthrow the Taliban: less than 10,000.

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims since 1977 in Somalia's civil war: Between 400,000- 550,000.

Number of Muslims in Bangladesh killed by other Muslims from Pakistan since 1977: 1.4 million-2 million

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in Indonesia since 1965: at least 400,000.

Number of Muslims in East Timor killed between 1975-1999 by Muslims from Indonesia: 100,000 - 200,000

Number of Muslims killed in Iraq by other Muslims (mostly those in the regime of Saddam Hussein): 1.54 million- 2 million

Number of Iranian Muslims killed in their war with Iraq: 450,000 - 970,000

Number of Lebanese killed by Israelis between 1975-1990: up to 18,000 (this number is included in the first statistic given several lines up, about Arab deaths at Israel's hands)

Number of Lebanese killed by other Lebanese or by Syrians between 1975-1990: at least 112,000.

Number of Yemenites, Egyptians, and Saudis killed in the Yemen civil war of 1962, and in the Yemen riots of 1984-1986: 100,000 - 150,000

Number of Chechen Muslims killed by the Russians since 1992: 80,000- 300,000

Number of Arabs and Muslims killed in Jordan (includes at least a few thousand Palestinians), Chad, Yugoslavia, Tajikistan, Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Zanzibar in the course of smaller conflicts in the 1970's, 80's, and 90's: at least 150,000.

Summary of the summary:

The next time Arabs and/or Muslims complain about the persecution they suffer at the hands of the Americans and Israelis, remember this . . .
Since 1948, the number of Muslims killed by the Americans and Israelis combined is still less than the number killed by the French. And the number of Muslims killed by the French, Israelis, and Americans combined is still less than the number killed by the Soviets/Russians. And the number of Muslims killed by the Soviets, Russians, French, Israelis, and Americans, combined, is still about 1/3 of the number of Muslims who have been killed by Muslim states.

I don't mean to minimize anyone's suffering, and as an Israeli I'm interested in continuing to pressure Israel to keep Arab casualties at a minimum while still protecting Israelis. But if the goal is to save lives, then to focus one's pressure on the deeds or misdeeds of Israel is to apply an incredible, ridiculous double standard, one clearly motivated by anti-Semitism and nothing more. If the goal is to spare Muslim lives, then the Muslims could start with themselves, and come back to us when they value each other. (Oh, and when they themselves don't think anymore that 1,000 of them is worth 2 of us.)

A Guide to the Hold Steady States of America
By KELEFA SANNEH

THE HOLD STEADY was supposed to be a local band, and in a sense that’s what it is. The members mainly live in New York, and Sunday night they’re coming to Manhattan, to Irving Plaza, to celebrate their great new album, “Boys and Girls in America.”

But the Hold Steady might also be one of the least local bands around. As you might have guessed from the album title, the members are intrigued with the idea of being an American band. And they have found an intriguing way to be one.

Their story starts with a couple of guys, Craig Finn and Tad Kubler, who played together in a beloved Minneapolis band, Lifter Puller. (Lifter Puller was huge, if only in the minds of a small number of fans.) Mr. Finn and Mr. Kubler left the Twin Cities for Brooklyn, where they started the Hold Steady. A bar band, they called it. And Mr. Finn, the singer (ranter, more like) and lyricist, had the good sense to avoid writing about his new hometown.

Instead he wrote about his old one. He wrote about a sketchy fellow named St. Paul, about a wasted hero “swishing through City Center.” He wrote about Payne Avenue and about the “war going down in the Middle Western states.”

He wrote about the rest of the country too, as if he were compiling a guide to the country’s wasted wayward youth. “The kids out on the West Coast are taking off their clothes,” he reported. Also: “Pensacola parties hard with poppers, pills and Pepsi.” And: “We got so high some nights Michigan looked just like a mitten.” More ominous: “I looked deep in his eyes I saw Lynn, Massachusetts.”

The Hold Steady made an album, “The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me” (Frenchkiss), and started to tour. Mr. Finn was an unlikely lead singer: small and rumpled, with glasses that always needed adjusting and a guitar that rarely, it seemed, needed playing. No matter: it turned out that Mr. Kubler’s beery guitar riffs went well with Mr. Finn’s beery stories; both went better than well with actual beer.

It turned out too that those lyrics had been pretty prescient: as the band members traveled the country, drinking and meeting weirdos and prowling shady neighborhoods and drinking some more, their lives got downright Hold Steady-ish: “I guess we just needed space/We heard about this place/They called the United States.” They toured, getting sucked into their own songs.

Since the release of that first album, in 2004, the band has become much less of a well-kept secret. The 2005 follow-up, “Separation Sunday” (Frenchkiss), was even better: it told the overlapping stories of three characters (Charlemagne, Gideon and Holly) drifting in and out of punk shows, Catholic Masses and scary parties. Assessing that album now, Mr. Finn admits, “It was never as fun as I wanted it to be.” Maybe not for him. But it was one of last year’s best albums.

Mr. Finn and his mainly Midwestern group — the drummer Bobby Drake, from Minneapolis; the bassist Galen Polivka, from Milwaukee; and the keyboard player Franz Nicolay, from Center Sandwich, N.H. — keep finding ways to prove that “bar band” isn’t an insult. “Boys and Girls in America” is to be released by a bigger label, Vagrant. And it was produced by the alt-rock veteran John Agnello, who helped make Mr. Finn sound more like a band member and less like some liquored-up Twin Cities street-corner bard.

Which means that a few die-hard fans may prefer the old stuff. There are, in any case, some bumps in the road. “Chillout Tent,” an excursion to western Massachusetts, has guest vocals by Elizabeth Elmore (from the Reputation) and Dave Pirner (from Soul Asylum); if there’s one thing the Hold Steady doesn’t need, it’s help. Another, “You Can Make Him Like You,” sounds uncharacteristically heavy-handed. But over all the CD sounds strong and streamlined, and if anything, Mr. Finn’s lyrics are pithier than ever. In “Massive Night” he evokes prom night with a pungent couplet: “The dance floor was crowded, the bathroom was worse/We kissed in the car and we drank from your purse.”

About that title: it’s playfully misleading. (It comes from Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” which Mr. Finn quotes in the first couplet: “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.”) The first Hold Steady CD was a call to arms, and the second one was a concept album; this new one is more modest. It starts and ends in Minneapolis, and nearly all the songs in between seem to take place there too.

It sounds as if Mr. Finn and his gang are heading back home. But surely it can’t be a coincidence that, just as the Hold Steady is starting to reach a few more of the boys and girls in America, Mr. Finn has refocused on Minneapolis. He’s clearly obsessed with the link between small stories and big ones, between local favorites and national successes, between punk-club stages and dive-bar jukeboxes, between bands no one’s heard of and songs everybody knows.

This, maybe, is his idea of what it means to be an American band: singing about Minneapolis, and all the Minneapolises across the country. A dull street corner gets transformed into a rousing refrain; a fictionalized town inspires its real-life counterpart. That album title, “Boys and Girls in America,” really isn’t so misleading; it’s a salute to the neighborhood kids in the songs, and outside them too. The Hold Steady’s made-up map of the country is looking a little bit less imaginary.

Here’s what their America looks like.

BROOKLYN Mr. Finn put it plainly in one early song. “I got bored when I didn’t have a band/So I started a band, man.” In a city full of ambitious transplants, he was happy to play the part of the unassuming local guy. Mr. Finn said he warned the label that the band wouldn’t be touring; there was a modest practice space, but no van. But a local show led to a booking in Baltimore, and before long the Brooklyn bar band was crammed into a borrowed van, off to see the place they sang about.

YBOR CITY, TAMPA, FLA. Mr. Finn saw the name somewhere and thought it was “fun to say.” He heard it was a hard-partying part of Tampa, and so a Hold Steady tradition was born: three separate Hold Steady songs pay tribute to Ybor City’s alleged decadence. (“Ybor City is trés speedy but they throw such killer parties/Killer parties almost killed me.”) When the band finally played Tampa, some fans traveled down from New York, eager to see if the real Ybor City would be as wild as the one in the lyrics. For one night, anyway, it was.

NEW ORLEANS In one old song, Mr. Finn sings about avoiding this city: “He said, ‘What about New Orleans?’/She said, ‘I don’t think you understand what that means/All those hangers-on, the girls lifting up their shirts when the cameras come on.’ ” Did he consider changing the lyric after Hurricane Katrina? “No, I think it got better,” he says. The lyric, that is, not the city.

(A stickier situation: “Hot Fries,” which includes the lines, “All your favorite songs wouldn’t seem so sad/If you weren’t so depressed/Elliott Smith seems like a mess to me.” After Mr. Smith’s death, those words line sounded even meaner, but Mr. Finn decided to keep it. “I felt weird for a second, but then I thought, even as a casual fan, you knew he was a mess.”)

New Orleans is also the adopted hometown of Dave Pirner, who submitted his backing vocals for “Chillout Tent” via courier. As it happens, Mr. Finn still hasn’t met Mr. Pirner in person, even though he’s been a fan since the 1980’s, when Mr. Pirner helped put Minneapolis rock on the map. When you’re talking about the Hold Steady, all roads lead back to the Twin Cities.

MODESTO, CALIF. This town made it into a Hold Steady song — “Modesto Is Not That Sweet” — only because Mr. Finn used to see the name on envelopes when he worked in an American Express office. It’s a great nonalbum track about dashed expectations (find it on iTunes or eMusic), although Mr. Finn sounds a little bit sheepish when he talks about it. “You learn about geography on tour,” he says. “And one thing I learned was, Modesto is not where I thought it was.”

HOSTILE, MASS. As you may have noticed, this town doesn’t actually exist. But so what? Besides the Twin Cities, this is probably the most important place in the Hold Steady universe. Mr. Finn went to Boston College, though he seems to have spent a good chunk of his time enjoying the city’s famously knuckleheaded punk scene.

“You know what Boston shows are like,” he said. “You can’t even have an indie-rock show without a fight.” He remembers seeing a local hardcore band — Eye for an Eye, perhaps — during his first week on campus: “They don’t play two songs before the whole crowd goes nuts. I jumped behind the bar. I knew, like, one guy there; he lost a tooth.” You can hear that scene reflected in his affectionate odes to punk-rock violence, and also in “Hostile, Mass.,” one of two Hold Steady songs that mentions this mythical town: “He woke up deep in Hostile, Massachusetts, reaching out to try to touch the special effects/He had no shoes and no pants/They dressed him in a shirt with a collar and called him Porky Pig.” Considering the locale, this partygoer probably got off easy.

LITTLETON, COLO. It’s the town made famous by the massacre at Columbine High School. It’s also the site of the Freshman Academy, a program within Littleton High School, established after the killings for at-risk students. A teacher there, Thom Uhl, fell in love with the Hold Steady, and helped his students fall in love too, by using the band to help structure the curriculum. The band’s lyrics were a starting point for discussions of religion (“Separation Sunday” is in part an album about Catholicism) and the band’s touring schedule helped organize a study of American geography. When the members finally arrived for a special seventh-period concert, they were greeted by one student playing a heavy metal version of their song “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” on guitar. The Hold Steady’s core audience tends to be well above the legal drinking age (for some reason this band attracts more than its fair share of 30-something ex-punks), but at this show, “the kids” were exactly that.

BRUNSWICK, ME. A tip for rabid Hold Steady fans everywhere: Don’t be shy. If you hear the band is coming to your town, go ahead and throw a pre-concert warm-up party. Encourage your friends to write their favorite lyrics all over their bodies. Share an expensive bottle of Scotch with Mr. Finn. Do all that, as some students at Bowdoin College did, and you may win the ultimate prize: a salute in song. A line from the new album originally went, “She drove down from Colgate with a carload of girlfriends.” But after the frenzy in Brunswick, Mr. Finn rewrote the line: now it’s Bowdoin, not Colgate.

HOBOKEN, N.J. The home of Water Music, the studio where the band recorded much of the new album. Mr. Kubler says it was helpful to have a strong outside voice like Mr. Agnello, someone who was “really good at saying, ‘This song isn’t going to make the record.’ ” And though Mr. Kubler experimented with some extra guitar tracks, he erased almost all of them, which was probably wise. Part of what makes this band work is the rude sound of an elementary guitar riff, and the space around it. The first single, “Chips Ahoy!,” starts at a racetrack (the title is the name of a horse) and quickly moves to a bar, or maybe an apartment, as Mr. Finn poses an unanswerable question: “How’m I supposed to know that you’re high if you won’t even dance?” Elsewhere “Same Kooks” is classic rock, only more frantic, and “First Night” is one of those piano ballads this band is unaccountably good at. Even better, the song brings back the hero of the last album, though she’s not in great shape: “Holly’s not invincible/In fact she’s in the hospital/Not from that bar where we met on that first night.”

MINNEAPOLIS: It’s where the album starts and ends. In “Stuck Between Stations” Mr. Finn sings about the poet John Berryman, who committed suicide in Minneapolis (by flinging himself into the Mississippi). But he might also, teasingly, be singing about himself: “He was drunk and exhausted, he was critically acclaimed and respected/He loved the Golden Gophers but he hated all the drawn-out winters/He likes the warm feeling, but he’s tired of all the dehydration.” The album ends with “Southtown Girls,” a tribute both to Cheap Trick’s “Southern Girls” and to a Twin Cities species slightly less exotic than its name: “Southtown Girls” are the type one might find at the Southtown Shopping Center in Bloomington, Minn.; it is, Mr. Finn is proud to note, “a really lame mall.” Yet the song has a great, swaggering guitar riff, and a refrain that balances sweetness and sarcasm: “Southtown girls won’t blow you away/But you know that they’ll stay.”

So maybe the song is also about how even the most mundane place can seem exciting, if you sing about it right. After the first chorus Mr. Finn reels off some whimsical directions. “Take Lyndale to the horizon,” he sings. “Take Nicollet out to the ocean.” And that’s the Hold Steady’s hometown: a singular city that goes on forever.