Nothing quite like...

...sitting around of a quiet, early autumn evening, playing a boardgame with a friend, and hearing four rounds rapid, semi-auto, pistol fire going off a couple of blocks away.

Followed, several minutes later by a distant police siren.

This is not a frequent occurrence, but it's not uncommon.

Gotta love urban living...

suspended? really?

via link by peaceful_fox to the Guardian and so onward

NYT on McCain's non-campaigning campaign stops

TPM on McCain's advisors campaigning for him

Andrew Sullivan's readers on McCain's continuing campaign

And what is it that McCain is going to do when he gets to Washington, given that he doesn't sit on the Senate banking committee, the finance committee, the budget committee, or the appropriations committee? or the subcommittees on Financial Services and General Government; Economic Policy; Financial Institutions; Securities, Insurance and Investment; or Security and International Trade and Finance?

we're in a cleft stick

If the Pakistanis don't deal with the Taliban sheltering in their country, we are going to feel the need to go in and deal with them ourselves (as will, in time, the Afghans).

But when we do so more and more openly and violently, this sort of thing is bound to happen. Keep going this way, and the Pakistanis will be killing NATO troops soon.

We need to find a way out of this situation, but I can't for the life of me imagine what it is...