Yesterday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran this local headline:  
Police scramble to combat violence

On a weekend when extra police patrols were added to one area of Seattle to curb violent crime, another rash of shootings, stabbings and brawls broke out in several other locations, confounding efforts to halt the rise in violent crime.

...

Last year, aggravated assaults involving a gun rose by 25 percent. This year, those same crimes are up 26 percent over last year just through the end of September, Kerlikowske said.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this one today:
U.S. poll ranks Seattle safest place to live

Despite a rising violent crime rate and a bloody weekend that left four people wounded in gunfire, many across the United States still consider Seattle one of the safer cities in the nation.[...]

I don't know how many times I have imagined pulling what's left of my hair out after reading something like this:

OMG Bush is at 45% according to Gallup, yesterday Time had him at 37% oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or it might go the other direction and instead of deep despair the "trend" throws thousands of kos-people into fits of religious extacy.

If you're NOT one of those people who are hypersensitive to these types of shifts then you probably know what I'm going to say ... or you might not.  If you ARE one of those people, keep reading ... or I will track you down individually (virtually) and I will not be so nice about educating you next time.

In the extended section I've quoted the entire short story "Minuet" by Guy de Maupassant.  (the translation is in the public domain)

The minuet was once an extremely popular dance which you've probably seen depicted in the movies, associated with royalty and aristocracy and those big powdered wigs and men wearing frilly shirts and satin pants, etc.  Clearly today the minuet is a thing of the past.  In de Maupassant's story it is a thing that represents an era that has ended and all the poigniancy of loss associated with it.

I have a few ideas about why this story resonates today, but I'll save them for discussion if any materializes.

This seems to have slipped under the dailykos radar:

Frank P. Quattrone is going back to work. After facing criminal charges for three years, Mr. Quattrone, the former technology banker, walked out of Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday after persuading prosecutors to agree to a deal to dismiss their case, and declared, "I plan to resume my business career."

Quattrone was convicted the second time around (the first trial ended in a hung jury) based on a single email ordering his staff to "clean up those files."  This settlement followed an appeal that threw out his conviction in favor of a third trial.

It's worth asking whether Quattrone wrongly charged & convicted.  No one can say for sure -- there is always ambiguity surrounding these cases -- but I'm inclined to believe justice was served in this instance and I'll explain why in the extended section.

Well that's a relief!

CARO, Mich. -- The FBI said today it had no information to indicate that the three Texas men arrested with about 1,000 cell phones in their van had any direct connection to known terrorist groups.

From what I can tell, some men bought a lot of cell phones and someone got spooked, apparently because they're Arab-American.  They reported this "suspicious" behavior to the local authorities, who arrested the men on supsicion of terrorism because -- I kid you not -- "cell phones can be used as detonators."  

At this point it looks like the men's story -- that they were buying the phones for resale -- is true.

(contd.)

When republican officials or CNN/FOX "news" persons say things like, "the Al Qaeda wing of the Democratic party...." or "Ned Lamont is the Al Qaeda candidate", they have at least two aims in mind.  One is obvious: they want to associate their opponents with the enemy.  They want you to look at Ned Lamont's face and feel fear.

A less obvious aim is to suppress general voter turnout.  Normal people are SUPPOSED to be disgusted by hearing this kind of crap and naturally they will react to it the same way they'll react to anything disgusting, like road kill -- they'll avoid it and try to forget they ever saw it, and assume someone else will clean it up.

But that doesn't explain why they haven't just gone negative, they've gone nuclear.  Why so vicious so soon, and why the naked politicizing of terror?  It seems risky -- why take that risk?  And is it possible that they've miscalculated hugely?

Remember this??

WH Pooler Geoff Earle of the New York Post writes of the teleconference: "The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?

After dozens of photo-ops -- from the WTC bullhorn to Mission Accomplished to the Turkey-in-Chief carrying a plastic turkey in Baghdad -- the American people have started to catch on.  Even if it's not a conscious realization, I believe that Americans understand at some level that Bush is the Photo Op President.  If this stage managed teleconference with the troops didn't at least raise suspicions I don't know what would.

It's possible that in an attempt to restore Bush's authenticity his handlers and strategists came up with a sneaky idea:  stage some private moments with the President and let them be accidentally caught on the mic ... and better yet, with video too.

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