A reliable source tells me Dr. John Silber had lunch with an unidentified person at Petit Robert Bistro yesterday. Dr. Silber, a frequent guest at PRB, ordered the swordfish and praised the restaurant. There was an akward moment, however, when he asked the waitress when the new PRB in South End opens and the waiter didn’t know.

Yesterday’s potato-leek soup was excellent, according to the source.

The team’s cheerleaders are back from their swimsuit calendar shoot. Watch your favorite cheerleaders wrestle in the hotel swimming pool, play volleyball, backflip and otherwise get ready for the new season.

Haven’t we all been in some ho-hum town that claims to have “more restaurants per capita” than any other ho-hum town in America, or even the world? I heard that claim in Saskatoon in Saskatchewan in Canada and I heard it in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and I’m sure I’ve heard it said for other places as well. Here’s an extensive but non-definitive list of places that lay claim to having the most restaurants per capita for some geographic area or another.

The Boston Red Sox announced late this evening that it has sold pitcher Jason Johnson for two small bags of low-fat chips and a can of Diet Coke to Boston Celtics, for whom he’ll work in a concession stand. The Celtics believe the acquisition can increase beer sales for the franchise by 13%, as nobody can serve’em up as fast Johnson.

That wasn’t a draft. That was a ghost in a wedding dress, and I have a feeling she’s just getting started.

Ghost Whisperer on CBS is probably not going to win me over to network television.

*Updated with more links to commentary on Mexico’s presidential election*

Allan Wall has another interesting dispatch from Mexico on Vdare.com discussing the July 2 presidential election in Mexico. Mr. Wall is an immigration-restrictionist who rather likes Mexico, where he lives and works and is married to a Mexican. He does not care for the assumption among much of American punditocracy that it would be good for America if Mexicans elect a pro-American president:

[B]eing “pro-American” is not part of the job description of the president of Mexico. It’s really not. I’d settle for having a pro-American U.S. president!

Mr. Wall on the ideological positions of Mexico’s presidential candidates:

Getting back to Lopez Obrador, is he a “far-left” candidate? Well, yes. But by American standards, all the candidates are leftist. Calderon, the “right-wing” candidate, favors universal state-supported day care centers for Mexican children!

And what could that mean for Republicans?

Mexico’s political system sits farther to the left than ours does. That’s why most Mexican immigrants can be expected to vote for the Democratic party. Teddy Kennedy understands that. Do Bush and McCain?

Mr. Wall on left-wing candidate Lopez Obrador’s desire to renegotiate NAFTA:

Lopez Obrador is concerned about 2008, the year in which NAFTA forces Mexico to remove its tariffs on U.S. corn and beans. And he’s right to be concerned about it. So should we. Poor Mexican farmers cannot compete with subsidized American agribusiness.

When cheaper American corn and beans invade Mexico, you can expect thousands of poor Mexican farmers to go out of business and migrate to the U.S., maybe to your town.

Considering that NAFTA has so far worked mostly, perhaps exclusively, to increase rather than decrease migration from Mexico to America, it seems prudent to not rush to the next set of agricultural deregulation.

Venezuela’s rabidly anti-American and authoritarian president Hugo Chavez looms in the background, but Mr. Wall doesn’t see him as important to Mexico:

Alarmists have also told us that AMLO [Lopez Obrador] is an ally of Venezuela’s neo-communist Hugo Chavez, and that Mexico will join Venezuela’s axis. That’s been the drum Dick Morris has been beating.

The Hugo Chavez-AMLO connection is way overblown and tenuous at best. The two haven’t even met. Except for meddling in U.S. immigration policy, like all Mexican candidates, Lopez Obrador has little interest in politics outside of Mexico.

…

[N]o Mexican president is going to become a satellite of Hugo Chavez. Why would he? Mexico ALREADY has more influence on the United States than Hugo Chavez ever did. Mexico has a huge population of its citizens living in the U.S., it has consulates that meddle in U.S. internal affairs, and its politicians make frequent forays into U.S. territory to make things go their way. Could Hugo Chavez get away with all that? The guy must be green with envy!

You can read Mr. Wall’s piece in its entirety here.

More commentary on Mexico’s election:

Ilya Shapiro writes on libertarian TCS Daily:

And that’s the thing: the socio-economic snippet of Mexico City and environs that I witnessed reflects the reality of so many places in both the developing and developed world. Walmart, new technologies, and greater exposure to the outside world provide cheaper goods, new conveniences, and social mobility to a burgeoning middle class. But the owners of mom-and-pop shops, inhabitants of traditional rural communities, and the unskilled descamisados (to borrow a term from Perón’s Argentina), can and do get left behind.

It’s classic Schumpeterian creative destruction, and it can be good for a country trying to raise itself by its bootstraps. But a restructured economy without a liberalized labor force (or improved schools) also creates plentiful social tensions. Hence AMLO’s constituency — and the (state-supported) safety valve of escape into El Norte.

My experience from the the brutal restructuring of Sweden’s economy in the first half of the 1990’s tells me that Mexico has a long way to go before it can undergo “classic Schumpeterian creative destruction” without sending new waves of emigrants to America. Mexico is so far behind, and America so far ahead, that El Norte will continue to exert a strong pull on millions of Mexicans for years and years to come, no matter how brilliantly Mexico’s economy is managed over the next 20 years. And it probably won’t be brilliantly managed at all.

Washington Post columnist and economist Robert J. Samuelson stresses the obvious but unavoidable truth:

For Americans, the implications are sobering. Mexico has long regarded immigration as an economic safety valve. Whoever wins, that won’t change.

Political science assistant professor Davi Shirk sees the election as a referendum Obrador:

In many ways, this election is López Obrador’s to lose. Many Mexicans feel disappointed that the Fox administration failed to deliver on his promises to bring change. With continued concerns over crime, failure to achieve an immigration accord with the United States, and 40 percent of the population still living in poverty, it is easy to see why.

Yet, the primary issue of this election that most Mexican voters are pondering is not public security, migration or jobs, but López Obrador himself. His opponents have effectively conjured negative images of leftist extremism that López Obrador has done little to diminish. Thus, whatever doubt exists about the upcoming election, the real question that Mexicans will decide on Sunday is whether López Obrador is fit to govern.

When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail, as the old saying goes. Perhaps now that we are rightfully concerned about terrorists, domestic and alien, everything looks like a terrorist group in the eyes of law enforcement officials. Like Boston Globe metro columnist Adrian Walker, I’m no at this point convinced that the sect/cell/fraternity busted by the feds in Liberty City in Miami was all that in terms of terrorism. Perhaps the case is stronger than I realize, but right now it seems to me as if the group is mainly being used to advance careers. What is important at this stage is that the federal government pursues a fair-minded investigation and, if proper, prosecution of the seven “brothers.” What must be avoided is an investigation aimed at simply saving faces.

One of the seven is reportedly an illegal alien from Haii. Now that he is in government custody he should end up either in prison or in Haiti.

Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino, the self-styled Urban Mechanic has banned utilities and contractors from digging up city streets since they do such a poor job restoring them. Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi thinks the mayor is missing something:

Menino first earned a reputation as the dedicated urban mechanic who gets the streets paved and the trash picked up on time. So, it’s understandable he wants to refocus attention on the bumpy roads beneath his city-owned SUV.

But a new claim to mayoral fame is urgently needed. The city’s needs are changing, and so must the mayor’s priorities.

Ms. Vennochi lists the familiar list of woes: Crime. Population loss. Boutique-ification. Housing prices.

But what are the chances of any of those problems being solved anytime soon? Or at all? I don’t see why we should let streets degenerate into third worldness just because there are a bunch of other, essentially unfixable issues to tend to as well.

My impressions from having watched bits and pieces of a handful of World Cup games:

Team USA: Shame on you. Awful performances. Yes, there was a lot of guts and glory in the game against Italy, but it wouldn’t have hurt the Americans if they had interspersed the near-brawling with a few minutes of soccer every now and then. Sure, America was in tough group, but it wasn’t tough because of the American team.

Germany - Sweden. I missed the first few minutes of the game, which was just as well. Beating Germany was a tall order, but collapsing like a bunch Mediterranean divas is inexcusable. Blaming the ref for the defeat is equally inexusable (even though, in all honesty, he was terrible). How Henrik Larsson missed the penalty-kick is a bit of a mystery. He explained to Swedish newspapers that he was actually aiming for the other side of the goal. No matter what he aimed for, he hit nothing but air. Would have been good for three points in football.

Argentina - Mexico. You have to hand it to the Mexicans: They played hard, and they played well. With some luck they could have beaten the perhaps overly confident Argies. Unlike the Americans, the Aztecs can return home with their heads held high.

England - Equador. The English were clearly better but they were shockingly bad at finishing off their attacks. Quite hilarious that Beckham won the game by bending a shot just past Equador’s goal keeper. I watched a few minutes of England’s game against Equador on Univision. That whole “Goooooooool” crap gets old really fast.

The same was true for the Dutch against Portugal. In fact, time and again I found myself thinking that one of the reasons I just don’t care much soccer is that so many almost exciting situations just fizzle. That, plus all the times when players lay writhing on the ground in excruciating pain even though replays show there was little if any physocal contact preceeding the grievous injury. That, plus a bunch of other things. A rather amusing aspect of the Dutch - Portugal game was the fantastic ball control play by the Portuguese during the last couple of minutes of play, where they simply toyed with the exhausted Dutch.

I hope England and Germany do well through the rest of the tournament. A word of caution to the English: Sweden scored only three goals in its four World Cup games, and two of them came against your side.

Years ago, but probably not too many years ago, this situation what have resulted in an epice melee, but not anymore.