10:59: Yes!!!! Phillies win! One last tense moment, as strike three from Lidge is in the dirt, but Ruiz makes a great stop and makes the throw to first.

What a flawless game -- this is a team that does what it has to do to win. They clearly weren't on their A game against Derek Lowe, who was excellent for 5 innings, but they exploded when they absolutely had to in the 6th, and took advantage of L.A.'s biggest mistake. Great defense and great pitching from Hamels, Madson and Lidge.

Cue the fireworks! That's the 96th win of the season, three more for the Series, four more for J-Roll's prediction of 100, and seven more for history.

10:56: Two deep flies to center, two outs -- excited and nervous here!

10:50: Brad Lidge time! We're be back with the exciting conclusion to this game (hopefully) in a minute.

10:43: Ryan Madson rocks here! Essentially gets four outs after the uusually steady Feliz boots a shot (scored a hit) to 3rd. This is playoff baseball, crisp, taut -- and the Phillies are winning! It would nice for the middle of the lineup to get an insurance run here in the 8th.

10:34: Phillies are going to regret the way they misplayed the bottom of the 7th here.

10:25: Quite an effort by Hamels here, a real quality start, 7 innings and 2 runs, stong finish. Not his best, but what we needed. Getting nervous about the 8th inning, though.

10:10: BOOM! and DOUBLE BOOM -- wow!!!! The Phillies needed two things here -- a break and big hit and they just got both and then some. First an unlikely throwing error by steady Dodgers' shortstop Rafael Furcal allowed Victorino to reach second and then Utley followed with his first post-season home run EVER. a towering bomb to right-center, and after a Howard ground-out, Burrell -- who's fast having a post-season for the ages -- lined one into the bleachers in left.

3-2, Good guys! Amazing.

9:55: Nuttin'. The vibe for this game seems all off. Even in the DN newsroom there's a palpable lack of excitement (maybe because the hard-core fans all manuevered to be at home.) Ditto at the game -- too many rich non-rowdy fans scoring tickets?

Appropos of nothing, does anyone else hate those ads for E*Trade with the baby -- they manage to combine babyhood, stock trading, sex and spitting up, which is downright creedy.

Great DP by J-Roll, reminscent of the clincher (in fact, they just replayed it for that reason.) A little Phillies' momentum, but I'd say it's now (6th inning) or never.

9:51: Switched to traditional reverse order live-blogging style here -- not sure why I was doing it backwards originally. I was going to also change the title of the post to "Simply Blue," but then Cole Hamels finally showed the other guys how to hit, and the crowd is back in the game a little. Let's see what J-Roll can do -- someone needs to come up big (besides Cole.)

9:29: OK, 2-0, normally not a big deal except when every one of your batters meekly grounds out to second. Derek Lowe is a good picture but the Phillies are making him look like right-handed Sandy Koufax, ridiculous. It's time for Ryan Howard to start doing for the Phillies what Manny does for L.A.

9:00: Wasting baserunners, not what you were hoping to see. Still 1-0 after 2.

8:49: Well, Hamels looks relaxed here, but so do the Phillies' bats. It's going to be a long night and the pitcher's dual that everyone expected, but with the Phillies starting out a run behind.

8:26: How was that not an HR by Manny Ramirez -- looked like a 550-foot bomb when he hit it but it bounced off that crooked wall in far, far centerfield, for a run-scoring double. It's only 1-0, but it defintitely has taken some of the air out of the Bank early here.

8:12: Not live blogging here, but I have commandeered a computer near the TVs and will comment from time to time -- this is really a place for any of you who want to discuss the Phillies first NLCS appearance since I was frequently interrupted by a crying 11-month old baby...who is now a sophomore in high school, amazing. Anyome who tells you they know what will happen next -- they don't. I honestly think this game could be 11-0 Phillies or 11-0 Dodgers, or decided in the 13th inning on an Eric Bruntlett home run.

Anyone notice that since World War II anyway, the golden ages of the Phillies seem to coincide with the worst moments for the American economy, most notably 1976-1983, the era of stagflation, gas lines, 21 percent interest rates -- and six playoff appearances, including the Phils' only world championship, in the very same month that Reagan asked "are you better off now than four years ago"?

Well, good grief, it's happening again -- can't we have a good economy AND a good baseball team.

Here's another fun Phillies' financial fact: If the late Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts and the other 1950 Whiz Kids had each bought $100 of General Motors share with some of their payoff for winning the National League pennant, that stock would be worth a whopping....less than $100 today.

Come back tonight and discuss The Big Game.

But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street -- don't ask me why because I never understand what he's saying -- but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he's come out and vert smartly so that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he's moved on his understanding and depth of the problem...

-- Hillary Clinton, explaining to the Daily News editorial board on March 25, 2008 why she wanted to appoint Alan Greenspan to a high-level panel to solve the nation's economic and housing crises.

"I want to set up a committee headed by Alan Greenspan, whether he's alive or dead, it doesn't matter," he said, prompting laughter from the crowd. "If he's dead, we'll prop him up and put dark glasses on him, like in 'Weekend at Bernie's.'"

-- John McCain, proposing the same solution on Jan. 17, 2008.

See, it wasn't a Democratic thing or a Republican thing, just an inside-the-Beltway thing. As recently as March, no one was willing to admit that the emperor had no clothes:

But others hold a starkly different view of how global markets unwound, and the role that Mr. Greenspan played in setting up this unrest.

“Clearly, derivatives are a centerpiece of the crisis, and he was the leading proponent of the deregulation of derivatives,” said Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of San Diego and an expert on financial regulation.

The derivatives market is $531 trillion, up from $106 trillion in 2002 and a relative pittance just two decades ago. Theoretically intended to limit risk and ward off financial problems, the contracts instead have stoked uncertainty and actually spread risk amid doubts about how companies value them.

If Mr. Greenspan had acted differently during his tenure as Federal Reserve chairman from 1987 to 2006, many economists say, the current crisis might have been averted or muted.

There's not much to add here, beyond a) Read the entire New York Times story, which is excellent, if maybe a few years late and b) pray for some new leadership in D.C. that will think outside of the box, expecially when it's a wooden "Weekend at Bernie's" box.

Hint: Booing Santa Claus would be quaint for these fans:

Ed Snider is a man with two missions in life -- one that I wholeheartedly support, and another that I don't, some parts of which I in fact find repulsive. His day job is to bring a championship to Philadelphia with the two teams that he runs through Comcast-Spectacor, the Flyers and the 76ers. Although he hasn't succeeded in 25 years, he tends to be what we want in a sports owner here in Philly, willing to spend money (albeit sometimes foolishly) or shake things up if that's what's needed on the ice or on the hardwood. So far, so good.

In his spare time, he takes the millions of dollars that he's earned with the blessings of the Philadelphia sports fan and used a big chunk of it to promote conservative causes, moving increasingly to the far right with each passing political season. That's his right in a free society, but I also believe that running a pro sports franchise in a big city like Philadelphia is a kind of a public trust. That may explain why state and city taxpayers were willing to lend a financial hand -- $20 million, according to this article -- to help Snider construct the CoreStates/First Union.Wachovia/Citi/Wells Fargo Center back in the mid-1990s.

Sports and politics should not mix, not here and not now, less than four weeks before such a critical presidential election. But that's exactly what rabid GOP supporter Ed Snider will be doing this weekend, inviting "hockey mom" Sarah Palin to drop the ceremonial first puck at the Flyers' season opener, and more. Here's from the Flyers' own release:

 Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the nation’s most popular hockey mom, will join the winner of the Philadelphia Flyers regional search for the “Ultimate Hockey Mom” contest and drop the puck at the ceremonial opening face-off as the home team Flyers host the New York Rangers at the Wachovia Center on Saturday, October 11 at 7 p.m.

“Because of the tremendous amount of publicity she has brought to our sport, we invited the most popular hockey mom in North America to our home opener to help us get our season started,” said Comcast-Spectacor Chairman Ed Snider who founded the Flyers in 1967. “We are very excited she has accepted our offer and we are very proud of the publicity she is generating for hockey moms and the sport of hockey.”

Pretty clever, huh, how the news release happens to omit the fact that Palin is the Republican vice presidential candidate. Maybe Ed Snider is a little ashamed at what he's trying to pull here. He should be. Do you think he's going to extend the same courtesy to the Democratic vice presidential hopeful, Joe Biden, who actually comes from a state where the Flyers have thousands of fans? (It could be fun -- Biden dropping the puck with Bernie Parent and "Dr. Pistone," as "the nation's most popular hair plug recipient"...but I digress.) Of course not. Because Ed Snider is taking his public trust and abusing badly, for his political cause. Talk about game misconduct!

Not many Philadelphians even know about Ed Snider's politics, because most of the time we didn't have to. But he's quite far to the political right, a devoted acolyte of the late conservative icon Ayn Rand, funding an institute based on her principles and giving speeches about her. (A Philadelphia Magazine profile of Snider said he won't read anything in the Inquirer except for the sports sections because the paper's too liberal for him.) Fair enough, but in the last two years Snider has veered off. Even though his beloved Rand did not believe in pre-emptive war, Snider is now a major financial support of continuing our very wrongheaded pre-emptive war in Iraq and sending new storm clouds over its neighbor, Iran.

According to numerous news accounts, Snider is a leading donor to the group Freedom's Watch, which is spending millions (here's the repulsive part I mentioned up top) promoting its lethal policies in the Middle East and right-wing candidates like Sarah Palin and John McCain who support that agenda. Arising from a 2007 meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, one of Freedom Watch's first efforts (employing former Bush White House aide Ari Fleisher as its spokesman) was a $15 million ad campaign in support of the troop "surge" in Iraq that falsely conflated that war with 9/11. (Says a military veteran, over shots of the World Trade Center, "They attacked us, and they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq.") The group also once had ambitious plans to stir up American public sentiment against the regime in Iran, although that seems to have taken a back seat in recent months to so-far failed efforts to elect Republicans to Congress in special elections (perhaps because the Bush administration itself seems to be no longer angling for a showdown with Tehran).

In addition, Snider has donated more than $32,000 to candidates for federal office and political parties in this cycle, all to Republicans, including the maximum $4,600 to John McCain and $20,400 to the Republican National Committee. When Palin was in Philadelphia last month during the first presidential debate, Snider accompanied her to a debate-watching party.

Now, he's making a huge in-kind donation to the McCain-Palin campaign in the arena that we taxpayers kicked in for, giving her a chance to skate her stuff in from of 19,500 mostly upscale male hockey fans from the swing suburbs outside Philly. It will be a warm and fuzzy "hockey mom" event that will make people forget about her ugly and hate-filled rallies of the last week, where she charged that the Democratic candidate for president "pals around with terrorists" as a lynch-mob of an audience hooted and yelled out things like "kill him." (Odd as it sounds, hockey fans are more polite than Palin fans.)

Flyers fans should be outraged -- even conservative ones, because this misuse of a hockey game for his political agenda is flat out wrong. I don't think that Philadelphia fans should boo -- we're all getting a little tired of that stereotype, eh -- or act as rude as the people at Palin's rallies, but I do think that anyone who's as offended by this as I am should stand up Saturday night and turn their back on Sarah Palin, and especially turn their back on Ed Snider.

And send Snider a message to take his politics off of Philadelphia's sacred hockey ice and back to the privacy of his his mansion on the Main Line, where it belongs.

You only thought McCain was making an embarrassing gaffe in Pa. earlier today. Actually, it was a brilliant riff on the Eagles' "Hotel California."

I often disagree with the Politco's main honchos John Harris and Jim VandeHei, but a few times this year they've been right on the money (writing, correctly, way back in March that there was no way that Hillary Clinton could catch Barack Obama) and they're always provocative, a good thing. Tonight, they're here to argue the McCain-Obama showdown was the worst debate ever:

The day after leaves behind a puzzle: How the hell did candidates manage to be so timid and uninspiring at a time when American troops are in two problematic wars, the world financial markets are in scary free fall and the Dow has lost 1,400 points since Oct. 1? This is a moment history rarely sees — and both men blew it. 

Fair enough, but worst debate ever? Does anyone remember one word that Bob Dole or Bill Clinton said in 1996, and America was "treated" to Bush and John Kerry on the same stage just four short years ago. Last night was so unimpressive because they don't have a clue on the economy -- does amyone? -- but on this back-up point, I agree with Harris and VandeHei 100 percent:

The rules were so constraining, it raises the question: Why even put a moderator in the chair? Tom Brokaw threw up his hands from the outset, apologizing for the constraints he was under, which didn’t allow him to press on evasive answers or encourage a promising exchange. Too bad he couldn’t have just defied the commission altogether. He should have tossed out the script and said, "This moment is too important to allow misinformation to go unchallenged and serious issues to be ignored."

It’s not Brokaw’s fault. Or Jim Lehrer’s or Gwen Ifill’s. The problem is the commission that has been invested with pseudo-constitutional status to run the debates but, in fact, weakly defers to candidates and clings to antiquated formats.

Well, 99 perent -- it is partly Brokaw's fault.

Once there was a president in the Oval Office who understood the ramifications of killing innocent civilians abroad, even for an operation that might appear on its face to advance American interests. This commander-in-chief once shunned a sweeping military response to a terrorist killing of a U.S. Navy sailor because, as his highly respected biographer later noted, the president told his aides "that killing civilians in a strike against terrorists would be 'an act of terrorism itself.'"

That happened in 1985, and the president was Ronald Reagan, the man that Sarah Palin and John McCain have practically nominated for sainthood during their rallies and their TV debate shtick in 2008. But Palin and McCain have in fact dishonored Reagan, and all the leaders from both parties who have come before them, with their cavalier attitude toward how America treats other people around the globe, and how other people should perceive us. We see this in their vicious and petty high school pep rally approach to politics -- where chants of "drill baby drill" seem to be morphing dangerously closer to "kill baby kill" every passing day.

The once noble idea that U.S. military actions that kill innocents as collateral damage are a thing to be minimized and ideally avoided altogether is now a wussy concept for those arugula-eating tire-inflating wimps, now that we're in the glorious new era of American "shock and awe."

And so Palin has made a big deal -- in a soundbite the McCain campaign is recycling in a TV commercial -- about some comments that Barack Obama made last year against the way that we're fighting the war in Afghanistan. In Palin's recent words: 

"Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians." Palin insisted that "such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause."

First of all, you'll be shocked, shocked to learn that Obama's actual remark on Afghanistan was taken way out of context. Here's what he really said:

"We've got to get the job done there," Obama said. "And that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."

In other words, Obama's concerns are all about how to "get the job done" over there -- which seems to contradict Palin and McCain's cartoonish portrayal of the Democratic candidate as someone who doesn't believe in U.S. "victory" abroad, although I guess you can see why it's hard for them to understand when a leader doesn't use their exact pep-rally lingo. And as this excellent analysis in the Guardian notes, Obama's words were anything but "untrue" -- at the time he said them, U.S. forces and our allies were killing civilians, albeit inadvertently, at a higher rate than the militants we are fighting in Afghanistan.

And that was last year. So far in 2008, the issue of collateral damage and innocent civilian deaths in Afghanistan has grown much worse -- much of that tracing back to a strategy that's hampered by a lack of manpower, which is tied up in John McCain and George W. Bush's surge in Iraq.

Indeed, the utter vapidity of Palin's comments that any comment about Americans killing civilians in warfare are automatically "untrue" was rendered even more ridiculous by this sad story today out of Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON — An investigation by the military has concluded that American airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a village in western Afghanistan killed far more civilians than American commanders there have acknowledged, according to two American military officials.

The military investigator’s report found that more than 30 civilians — not 5 to 7 as the military has long insisted — died in the airstrikes against a suspected Taliban compound in Azizabad.

The investigator, Brig. Gen. Michael W. Callan of the Air Force, concluded that many more civilians, including women and children, had been buried in the rubble than the military had asserted, one of the military officials said.

This is one incident, and the facts are still very much in dispute. The U.S. military says the target was a Taliban compound, and if that's so it shows how hard it is to avoid this kind of tragedy in modern warfare. That doesn't mean the problem of civilian deaths shouldn't be taken quite seriously, and thus brushed off with embarrassing pep-rally bravado.

Most importantly, killing innocent civilians is morally wrong, period, and what had happens it should be the subject of mourning, not baseless denial and an avenue for political ridicule; you'd think even a pit-bull hockey mom would have a little more human empathy, especially when the Afghan people are our allies that Palin and McCain so much say they want to deliver freedom to.

But beyond that, avoiding civilian deaths is also so critical to that victory over there that Palin and McCain talk so much about; every needless death creates more hatred toward America and our allies, and drives new converts to anti-U.S. terrorism. And that totally undermines our strategy abroad -- it ultimately puts more U.S. citizens and soldiers at greater risk, including Palin's own son, now fighting in Iraq along with the sons of John McCain and Joe Biden.

And Palin's political abuse of the civilian casualty issue is disrespectful to our own military leaders, who have asked for more ground troops in Afghanistan so that we don't have to use so much airpower, a situation that's more dangerous for our soldiers as well as for innocent Afghans. I thought a McCain-Palin (or is it Palin-McCain these days?) administration was going to be all about respect for our military leaders and listening to what they have to say. Very sad.

The  problem of civilian casualties is -- at least back here in the "reality-based world" -- just too sober and serious to get those war whoops and whistles at your Sunbelt cheerleading competitions, too easy to lump into an evil effort to demonize Barack Obama as "that one." Even Ronald Reagan -- despite his many flaws as president --understood the gravity of the issue. Have we really fallen this far, this fast in just one short political generation? 

This doesn't look so good.