Read this instead of watching the Red Sox

I too am a suffering Red Sox fan, not a long once since I haven't cared about baseball since going to college, and I am still not really sure that I do. This team always reminds me of the Utah Jazz in the Stockton-Malone era, who always managed to come up short.

But let's talk about other things, like politics. A reader suggested I plug a political discussion happening in Newton High on Thursday, October 28th @ 7:00 PM. UMASS-Amherst "Prof. Jeff Sedgewick represents the progressive conservative/GOP point of view while his colleague Jerry Mileur will do likewise for the populist liberal/Democrat perspective." What about the conservative Republicans, you know the ones that dominate the current party who are in charge of all the branches of the Federal Government?

Personally, i would rather talk about local politics, my local (dear reader I don't live in Boston anymore, although I know many of my readers still do). I am currently pissed off at the Salt Lake Tribune Editoral board for endorsing Ellis Ivory for SL County Mayor.

After they were hostily taken over by the folks that own the Denver Post, the paper was temporarly USA TODAY-style moderate in their editorials. Slowly, the pressure of competing with the ultra-conservative (and LDS church-owned) Deseret News must have gotten too much for them, because now they tilt right every chance they get.

Who is Ellis but an empty suit country club Republican? He is literally a stand-in for a indicted politican whose carrer is over. The guy who was an honorary chairman and supporter of this crook has no credibility to make the reforms needed in this corrupt county government.

On a national news front, tonight my fiancee went to a Wellesley Alumnae potluck and met an Alumna who is a Army Reservist. She was sent off to Afghanistan even though she had an 18-month year old baby and is due to go back any day now. She was so angry at the Civilian Leadership of the Penagton. She told my wife to be that military intelligence, and intelligence in general, usally looks like a bell curve. The Bush Administration, this reservist said, took all their "intelligence" from one end of the spectrum (the Chalabi end). Sure they were fooled, but they wanted to be fooled. One of the other Alumna there was a conservative local news reporter, but she still wanted to get this Reservist on camera. I have a feeling that the "grunts" of the armed forces aren't going to vote as reliably GOP as they have in the past. They are going to vote for Kerry more than they voted for Gore, because they don't want the incompetant idiots sitting in the E-Ring of the Pentagon putting them in any more danger. Don't believe me? take a look at Operation Truth.

As an aside, this isn't your gandmother's Wellesley: the Utah chapter is made up of judges (including the Supreme Court Justice of the Utah court), law professors, news reporters, ad execs, Army Reservists, and so on. And I am proud to marrying one of them.