A Michael Kinsley classic, on Bill O'Reilly, from Slate's 10th Anniversary:

Yet O'Reilly, like many other people, clings to the fantasy that he is a stiff among the swells. He plays this chord repeatedly in the book, a potpourri of anecdotes and opinions about life in general and his in particular. He had a very strange experience as a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (which let the likes of Bill O'Reilly through its ivy-covered gates, he is careful to note, "in an effort to bring all sorts of people together"). Other Kennedy School students, he says, insisted on being called by three names, none of which could be "Vinny, Stevie, or Serge." Their "clothing was understated but top quality … and their rooms hinted of exotic vacations and sprawling family property. Winter Skiing in Grindelwald? No problem." They tried to be nice, but Bill was nevertheless humiliated, in a Thai restaurant, to be "the only one who didn't know how to order my meal in Thai."

I should explain this last one to those who may not have been aware that Thai is the lingua franca of the American WASP upper class. The explanation is simple. American Jewish parents only one or two generations off the boat often spoke in Yiddish when they didn't want their children to understand. Italian-Americans used Italian, and so on. But WASPs only had English. (They tried Latin, but tended to forget the declensions after the second martini.) So they adopted Thai, which they use in front of the servants and the O'Reillys of the world as well. (At least it sounds like Thai after the second martini.) When they turn 18, upper-class children attend a secret Thai language school, disguised as a ski resort, in Grindelwald.

Having attended a prep school with some of the same swells O'Reilly speaks of, let me add that if you couldn't speak Thai, you were made to feel small by the kids from the mansions and country clubs. Even today, when one of the richies patronizingly corrects my pitiful attempts at "the Thai", I feel the same sting. Damn you, Ben Sherwood....

Spain 3, Tunisia 1: In what was the best game of a day marked by match-ups between countries with hitherto no connection with each other, Spain scored three goals in the final twenty minutes to rally past a determined Tunisian squad, and thereby advanced to the second round. Tunisia must beat Ukraine on Friday to remain alive.

Ratings so far for the 2006 World Cup have improved dramatically over 2002, which is not surprising considering the last Cup took place mainly in the wee hours of the morning in America. But the U.S.-Italy war on Saturday got the highest ratings for any soccer game in this country since the '98 Final, almost doubling the numbers for the third round of the U.S. Open and the sixth game of the Stanley Cup Finals, and nearly matching the numbers the same network got the following night for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Today's games will be the true test of the number of soccer fanatics in America: it's one thing to get sports fans to watch the home country on a weekend, and quite another to tune into Switzerland and Togo at 6 in the morning.

At a recent gathering of local bloggers:

Word spreads that Ann Coulter is supposed to be coming, with Mickey Kaus. Mickey is ostensibly a centrist Democrat, but has long seemed to have a fetish for blonde Republican pundits. This is not to imply that they are or are not dating -- I have no idea.

So anyway, while talking to Christian Johnson and Donna Barstow, I see Mickey arrive with the Ann-tichrist herself. Donna says I have to talk to her; that she would if she were more familiar with Ann's work. Christian is anxious to get a picture with Ann. It's funny how there are people here who have probably used all kinds of invective to describe her, yet immediately wanted to talk to her. Liberal blogger Joseph Mailander, for one, was seen conversing pleasantly with her, and I hope he blogs about what was said, cuz I'd like to know.

Andrew's a fan of Ann's -- I hear a fragment of a joke he tells her that begins "There were these two black guys..." but I didn't catch the punchline. It was probably funny.*

I ask Matt Welch if he'd met her. He responds "Have you met Eichmann?"

Matt is amused to snap a picture of Joseph and Ann. At first, I thought he was just trying to get one of Joseph in the same frame as Roger L. Simon The Man Who Created Moses Wine, whom Joseph frequently and amusingly beats up on metaphorically. Roger looks to have gained weight since last I saw him. Too much lounging around in pajamas?

I did not speak to Ann, though had I done so, I'd have asked what church she attends. I can tell you that she's very tall, freakishly thin, and has big hooters, though not obviously fake ones.

I tell Matt that I'm thinking of a joke along the lines of "What's the difference between Ann Coulter and a turd in a box?" I haven't figured out a punchline, but it probably ends with "....and the other is a turd in a box."

Matt Welch and Luke Thompson are officially deities. [link via LAist]

*No, it wasn't funny, since he wasn't overhearing a joke. See LYT's apology here.

A devastating WaPo piece on Jason Leopold, the journalist who "broke" the story about the indictment of Karl Rove. Leopold has a book out that he was hyping at a recent LA Press Club soiree. I left that one pretty early, since it seemed ridiculous to be listening to someone admit that much of his earlier journalism was little more than drug-addled fantasy.

Ukraine 4, Saudi Arabia 0: Four different players scored for the Ukraine, which earned their first World Cup victory over international soccer's equivalent of a Slumpbuster.

Switzerland 2, Togo 0: Putting aside centuries of bitter strife between the two countries, the soccer players of Switzerland and Togo met today in a match many fans have circled on their calendars for months. Goals by Alexander Frei and Tranquillo Barnetta, and a non-call inside the penalty area that would have given the Togolese a free kick in the first half, proved the difference. The Sparrowhawks showed up for the game, a matter that was actually in doubt only a few hours before thanks to a threatened walk-out by their players due to a dispute over bonuses. The Swiss can advance to the second round with a tie against the Koreans Friday, thanks to superior goal differential.

South Korea 1, France 1: Park ji-sung became the third Man Utd. player in as many days to play the hero, scoring in the 82nd minute as the Koreans rallied to tie Les Bleus. Thierry Henry of Arsenal had earlier put the French into the lead, notching their first goal in World Cup since the 1998 Final. More referreeing controversies occurred in the first half, when an apparent French goal was not called, and in the second half, when Zinedine Zidane received a yellow card that will keep him out of France's final group game (and may end his career), and marred the game. It will be difficult for anyone watching the game to get that ditty the Korean fans were singing out of his head.

One of the stars for France is their bald goalkeeper, Fabien Barthez. Barthez, who at one time was romantically involved with former supermodel Linda Evangelista, bears an uncanny resemblance to the late character actor, and original "Dr. Evil", Donald Pleasance, whose perhaps most famous for his recurring roles in the Halloween movies. But Pleasance earned a special place in movie lore for starring in films featuring two of my favorite actresses. In Cul de Sac (1966), directed by Roman Polanski, he played the owner of a castle who is visited by a mobster on the lam, along with his girlfriend, who is played by Francoise Dorleac. Ms. Dorleac was on the cusp of stardom when she was killed in an auto accident the following year, at the age of 25, and she was, almost impossible to believe, the prettier older sister of Catherine Deneuve. And of course, Pleasance also played the father of Smythe's World icon Phoebe Nicholls in Blade on the Feather (1980), a deliciously tawdry spy thriller in which my blogmuse, playing a spoiled young adult version of Varuca Salt, gets nekkid with co-star Tom Conti. Neither Dorleac or Nicholls really have anything to do with Fabien Barthez, Dorleac having died the year before Barthez was born, and there being no evidence that the infrequently-working Engish character actress has ever met the French goalkeeper, but as Nicholls' character would say in the above movie, "come on daddy, play the game...."

The New York Times does some nice bit of digging on Jorge Larrionda, the ref who endeared himself to soccer fans the world over with his carefree use of the red card in yesterday's U.S.-Italy match. Turns out that Larrionda had a bit of history, getting himself suspended in his native country (Uruguay) on allegations of corruption four years ago, preventing him from working that World Cup, and had blown two calls in a Confed Cup game involving the U.S. and Turkey in 2003, both of which led to Turkish goals.

Meanwhile, it seems that anger at the officiating has been limited to these shores. Elsewhere, the red cards handed out to Mastroeni and Pope have been defended. The Times of London reporter opined that "The match was to finish with just nine men on either side. Simone Perrotta was stretchered off after being caught by the boot of Carlos Bocanegra, and there were no substitutes left to take the field. Ugliness had finished the contest that neither side deserved to win." Der Spiegel agrees, while the title of the Sydney Morning Herald's article on the game ("U.S. Point Way as Red Mist Descends") must be seen clearly seen as a commentary on international disapproval of American foreign policy. Kevin Drum also backs the ref, while moderating a good discussion of the game in his comments section.

Brazil 2, Australia 0: The tournament favorites struggled at times against the surprisingly game Socceroos, but scored twice in the second half, including the first World Cup goal by someone whose entire name is "Fred". Ronaldo again looked shaky, a prematurely-aged has- been at 29. Thanks to security, there is apparently a dearth of something that has always marked Brazil games: samba drums. It takes away a lot of the color and atmosphere, but it does assure the paying customers safety from the threat of terrorists bringing dirty bombs into the stadium via percussion instruments.

Japan 0, Croatia 0:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Also, Japan saved a penalty kick in the first half.

U.S.A. 1, Italy 1: Works for me...I have to say, although it was technically the correct call, I have never seen a goal waved off because another player was offside on a shot. The Americans played out of their heads today, killing off a 45+ minute power play in the second half, and at the end of the game, it was the Azurri that was relieved the game was over.

I would be remiss if I didn't note that Univision has the best weekend "pre-game show". Who are those women?

Ghana 2, Czech Republic 0: Finally, an upset. Wow. This game was not that close, as Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech (what is it with the Czechs and great goalies, anyway?) made a series of spectacular saves, and Ghana blew numerous other chances with a man advantage in the final twenty minutes, including a penalty kick that clanged off the goal post. But they converted twice, the first time with the game barely a minute old, and dominated the game in much the same way the U.S. was dominated by the Czechs on Monday. The Czechs still have a goal scored advantage on Ghana, which could make margins of victory important come Wednesday.

The ABC announcers have coyly stated that even if the U.S. loses today, they cannot now be eliminated. That would be exactly what the world of soccer needs, the Americans still alive after two bad losses and the brave players from the Ivory Coast and Poland already assured of going home....

Alexi Lalas did not just call out Giorgio Chinaglia for the '74 World Cup, did he?!?

Portugal 2, Iran 0: It took awhile, thanks to some inspired goalkeeping by first game goat Ebrahim Mirzapour, but Portugal scored twice in the second half, including the second goal in as many days by a Man U. star, to knock out Iran. The legendary Figo set up the final goal with a crafty manuever into the penalty area, where he was tripped, setting up Cristiano Ronaldo's clincher. After the huge disappointment of 2002, the Portuguese got out of the first round for the first time since 1966, where they will play either Holland or Argentina. Putting aside the scoreless draws by Angola and Trinidad, there have been no upsets so far, due in large part to the mandate from FIFA after the 2002 Cup that European leagues end their seasons this year in early May, enabling the stars from Europe and South America to be more rested entering the tournament.

LAist, the blog for hip Angelenos not in the "Business", has been hot under new editor Tony "Shaq" Pierce. It's what Defamer could be if it didn't obsess about Brangelina....

Angola 0, Mexico 0: The third scoreless draw of the World Cup, and the second huge surprise. Angola went toe-to-toe with the world's fourth-ranked team, played evenly until a 79th minute expulsion, then held on against a relentless Mexican onslaught in the waning moments to gain their first point of the tourney. Teams from outside Europe and South America are 3-12-4 so far, and have gone 0-9-1 against teams from the two dominant continents.

One of the things you hear soccer haters in this country recite as their justification is that it's boring, due to the low-scoring (and no-scoring) nature of the sport. It's a silly criticism, for two reasons. First, people don't follow a sport because it's "exciting." They follow it because they develop an emotional interest in the outcome. Once they develop that, they grow to understand the sport, giving the games a context that transcend the process of how they are won or lost. To someone who isn't a baseball fan, a pitchers' duel can be like watching paint dry; if you have a rooting interest in one of the teams, it's a tense, taut exhibition of defense and skill. Once you become a fan of baseball, you accept the lack of scoring activity in a particular game as routine, even necessary, a fractional segment to a larger season, one of the many nuances you understand when following a team for six months. Nobody becomes a baseball fan simply because they follow a team that scores a lot of runs, or plays in a lot of close games. Across the planet, billions of sports fans have made the same decision in following soccer. Scoring goals may be the object, but its not the only thing that needs to happen to make the game interesting.

And second, with soccer, as with almost every sport, the most exciting games are almost always not high-scoring affairs. For example, the most boring game today was the first game, in which the two teams combined for six goals, while the two later games, which featured three goals and a double goose egg, were much more interesting for even the casual spectator. Of course, the game that saw six shots hit the back of the net was a 6-0 whitewash, but that's true in almost all sports; a baseball game that features 19 combined runs is much more likely to end 14-5 than 10-9, while a game that features only one run is, by necessity, close and dramatic. "Excitement" comes from witnessing a team break down an impregnable defense with a sustained attack, even if it means sitting through 90+ minutes waiting for that to happen, not from seeing one side exploit a mismatch in talent to produce a rout. Even if the team isn't that good, like Angola, the excitement comes from seeing whether they can pull off the surprise, and hold off the team with superior talent. The number of goals scored has little to do with it.

Ezra Klein, on the meaning of Kos:

When Markos bragged that "popular movements are rarely so practical," it's important to focus in on the word movement because that, it appears, is what Markos is focused on. His pragmatism has mostly been painted as an obsession with winning, and attacks against him tend to focus on his rather poor electoral record. But that's because Markos picks prospects rather than winners, campaigns and candidates who attract little establishment support and whose victory, thus, can be attributed to the netroots. No gambler gains a reputation by betting on 50:1 favorites, but any gambler can make one by putting enough money on a 1:50 longshot.

The "netroots" are, I think, a revolution of tone, not ideology. They've got a few defining characteristics, none of them ideological. A contempt for the establishment is one. An appetite for pugilism is another.

This is in reference to The Kos purportedly rebuffing feelers from the Hillary for President campaign. Considering that he put publicly announced he was putting HRC's e-mails in his spamfilter several months ago, that is no big surprise.

I would add that, as nostagic for the Clinton Presidency as I am, the steady decline of the Democratic Party began under The Big Dog; there is nothing that is quite so deadly to party-building than having your President, and nominal leader of the party, triangulate his way to reelection. Failure to make serious headway against the GOP majority in Congress after 1994 can be laid squarely at his doorstep, as it was Clinton's foibles (his shady fundraising which came up at the end of the '96 campaign, and Monicagate in '98) that thwarted efforts by the party to recapture one or both houses of Congress. Hillary's wishy-washiness on Iraq brings back memories of the Bad Bill Clinton, and someone who has aspirations for building a more durable Democratic majority, like Markos Moulitsas, will understandably wish to shy away from that legacy.

Holland 2, Cote d'Ivoire 1: The two best games of the Cup so far have both featured the same West African nation, and both were 2-1 losses. Great end-to-end action, spectacular goals, and non-stop pressure by both teams, but the Dutch advance to the next round, whilst the nation formerly known as the Ivory Coast will go home next week. Life sucks.

Argentina 6, Serbia-Montenegro 0: In what may be a preview of tomorrow's game against Italy, Argentina showed why they are being considered the co-favorites to win the World Cup in routing their hapless Balkan foes. Two players considered to be the future of the sport, Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez, scored the first of what may be several World Cup goals to punctuate the victory. The Serbians fell behind early, and quit; hearing Claudio Reyna being interviewed this morning, talking about the need to play "cautiously" and "carefully" against the Italians, I fear the U.S. may be in for a similar treat tomorrow.

Throughout the game, one couldn't help but notice that one of the few S&M players to attract attention was their team captain, Savo Milosevic. Are Milosevics as ubiquitous in Serbia as Smiths or Johnsons? If not, don't you think it might have been worthwhile if one of the ESPN announcers had mentioned whether the player was in some way related to the late dictator? We still have troops in that region, in large part because of Slobodan Milosevic; if Saadi Ghadaffi were playing, would they bother mentioning who his dad is?

For baseball fans, the battle between the sabermetric world view and the traditionalist view has always been analogous to the "debate" between evolution and creationism. One view utilizes facts and reason to formulate an hypothesis over, lets say, how a team can best create runs, while the other uses magical thinking, and stresses "clutch ability" and "character". Basketball, which has displaced baseball as the number two sport in America, is a much newer sport; if baseball became a distinct pastime in the 1850's and became a modern game in the 1920's, basketball has had a more protracted evolution, invented in 1887, but not becoming the game we know now until Bird and Magic entered the NBA in 1979. As such, literary analysis of the sport has been much more spotty, and "sabermetric" (or to use the correct term, "objective") analysis of the sport has developed more slowly, and those who do write about the sport tend to be more enamored with flash and hype, rather than who can do what to help his team win.

That's why the publication of The Wages of Wins will no doubt do to traditionalists in the Realm of Hoops what The Bill James Baseball Abstract did to dinosaurs like Dick Young: begin the process of their extinction. I don't think it's any coincidence that this book was published in the aftermath of the U.S. bronze medal debacle at the 2004 Summer Olympics, when a team of superstars went to Athens and got beaten badly by less-talented players from Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina. For the first time, Americans saw that the evolution of the game in this country weakened the sport, making our players helpless against foreign teams that still emphasized teamwork, innovation, and unselfish play. It was inevitable that someone would try to figure out why that happened, and what type of player can help his team best accomplish what is supposed to be the object of the game, namely, win.

It's been three days, and a devastated nation still mourns....

Sweden 1, Paraguay 0: Freddy Ljungberg's goal in the final minute of regulation provided the only scoring in this dreary affair. The last few days have been suspiciously reminiscent of the 1990 Cup, low-scoring battles in which all the scoring is done late in the second half. Paraguay is now eliminated, with T&T barely hanging on; the four combined goals scored in the four games so far in Group B make this the Group of Death Warmed Over.

England 2, Trinidad & Tobago 0: You gotta love English understatement. From the first line of Auntie Beeb's account of today's game:

Peter Crouch and Steven Gerrard spared England's blushes with late goals against Trinidad & Tobago to book their place in the last 16 of the World Cup.

"Spared England's blushes ?!?" Wayne Rooney, the latest in a line of miscreant English soccer stars that includes Paul Gascoigne, entered the game in the second half as a sub for former teen phenom Michael Owen, only six weeks after breaking his foot.

For me, the big difference between watching this and past World Cups is the use of TiVo. I had to be in court most of the morning, so I was unable to watch the game live. When I got home, I was able to watch the whole thing in less than fifteen minutes, putting the replay on maximum speed and reading the score line at the top to see if anything was happening. With eight minutes left, and the game still scoreless, I decided to watch the rest in normal time, and sure enough, Crouch gets his header almost immediately. The marvels of the age we live in....

Ecuador 3, Costa Rica 0: Brushing aside critics who derided them for only being able to win at altitude, Ecuador decisively entered the second round with a convincing victory over Costa Rica in Hamburg (elevation 10 feet). The victory also clinched a second round berth for the host country, Germany, while the Ticos and Poland become the first countries to be eliminated. Should their final game with Germany end in a draw, Ecuador, a team with no stars, would win the group, and thus avoid a likely showdown with England in the Second Round.

One of more interesting facets of Ecuador over the years has been how predominantly black their national soccer team is. In a country where only 3% of the population has African ancestry, the fact that 9 of the 11 starters for this year's team are black is, at least from a sociological standpoint, curious. Other South American countries have a much higher percentage of blacks among the total population (for example, Brazil has a demographic base of 45% combined black and mixed race in the population), but nowhere near that number on their soccer teams. And this year's team is not unusual; in the past, Ecuador has always seemed to be
have more than a fair share of black players. Is the racism in Ecuador somehow more acute? Do blacks have even fewer options other than sports?

Every now and then, you come across a number that reminds you of what your community is really like, and how irrelevant our focus is upon certain issues: last Sunday's World Cup game between Mexico and Iran, broadcast on both ABC and Univision, drew a 40 share in Los Angeles. That's 40% of the combined sets that were on at the time, tuned into a soccer game. Three-quarters of that audience saw the game on the Spanish language channel, a UHF station. Univision's local ratings for the game, broadcast at 9:00 a.m., were 68% higher than for the NBA Finals played in prime time that same night.

Germany 1, Poland 0: For 90+ minutes, as hooligans from the two countries fought with the police outside the stadium, Poland battled the heavily-favored Germans evenly, thwarting wave after wave of attack, even after they were forced to play down a man over the final 25 minutes. Just when it seemed that a tie might be assured, less than a minute after two point-blank shots ricocheted off the goal post, Oliver Neuville deflected in a crossing pass in injury time to give the host country the win, and an almost-certain berth in the second round. The Poles, bereft of the kindness of a merciful and just god, will now likely go home, having once again failed to beat their rivals to the west.

Kevin Roderick has the scoop on the demand by the Chandler Family that the Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times, break up its media holdings and/or sell the newspaper. I happen to believe there should be a law outlawing the public trading of corporations which own newspapers. There is an inevitable conflict of interest. The business side has an obligation to investors to maximize share prices, which can only be done by exponentially increasing profits quarter to quarter. On the other hand, the newspaper's sole interest must be to put out the best possible newspaper.

But the goal of putting out the best newspaper becomes almost impossible when it confronts the bottom line of the market. Right now, in spite of the declining circulation numbers that are endemic in the computer age, the LA Times has never been so profitable. But it has come at the expense of the quality of the newspaper, which has been forced to follow a policy of cut-backs and lay-offs. The first thing I read in the morning, the sport section, is but a shadow of its former greatness, a barebones shell of box scores and hack columnists. It is not enough for the Times merely to match last quarter's profits; it must beat those numbers simply in order to maintain the price of Tribune stock. And of course, other considerations, such as appeasing advertisers and tabloidization, further diminish the quality of the product. Back when newspapers were privately-held, the sole consideration was the idiosyncratic views of whomever the pubisher was, and the newspaper became interesting precisely because of the personality quirks of the person running it.

It may well be that newspapers, like motion pictures, are a dying media, and that people will one day look back at actually getting news from a paper delivered to your doorstep as a quaint relic, akin to having milk or bread delivered to your home forty years ago. As with the neighborhood milkman, it became easier (and cheaper) to buy fresh milk at the supermarket, just as its more convenient to watch movies on your DVD player. But I will miss having the impermeable relic of the newspaper, least of all for the crossword puzzles and sudoku, in a way that I don't miss having to go to the multiplex. It will be a shame if the market, which has brought so much to improving our standard of living, should cause of the extinction of newspapers.

One of the most miserable summer days I ever spent was in London, July, 1995. The temperature got up to a "scorching" 80 degrees, which wouldn't even be noticed in L.A., but in a town where air conditioning is a novelty, I ended up sitting in my hotel room all day, waiting for a phone call from my sister, slowly baking.

Saudi Arabia 2, Tunisia 2: Most exciting match of the tourney so far, and it turns out to be the least anticipated. The Saudis came from behind in the second half to take the lead from their North African foes, sparked by an 84th minute goal by Sami el Jabar, who also scored goals in the 1994 and 1998 World Cups. Just when they seemed to be running out the clock, Tunisia took advantage of a monumental defensive blunder in the third minute of injury time, with an unmarked Jaidi pulling the game even. The real winner, though, was Ukraine, which now can set aside today's debacle with minimal fear that goal differential will prove pivotal.

Spain 4, Ukraine 0: Well, the U.S. didn't have the most embarrassing opener at this Cup after all. Two goals in the first fifteen minutes but the East European debutants in a big hole, then a very harsh red card, and ensuing penalty kick, doomed the only representative from the former Soviet Union. More to the point, though, the Ukraine came in with hopes at least as inflated as the Americans. They were the first team to qualify in Europe, and they did so besting a group that also included Romania, 2002 Bronze Medalist Turkey, and Euro 2004 champ Greece. They also have one of the best players on the planet in Andrei Schevchenko, who may be one of the most recognizable soccer stars in America, thanks to his ubiquitous ad on ESPN. He, and his team, simply laid an egg, while Spain, on the other hand, just sent its supporters expectations to the roof.

Not everyone spent last weekend in Vegas being coopted by the Warner Campaign. Tony Pierce checks out the new Hooters Hotel and Casino, and receives some pearls of wisdom from working girls. Pierce's sage advice: stay away from the hotel pool.

Brazil 1, Croatia 0: A player with a nickname Beavis and Butthead could love scored late in the first half to get the defending champs off on the right foot. Kaka's goal in the final minute before halftime enabled the Brazilians to win their eighth straight game at the World Cup, a new record. The hero last time, Ronaldo, played poorly, and was jeered off the field late in the game. Brazil, the only team to have appeared in every World Cup, has not lost an opener in 72 years.

Classy: James Wolcott, the number one fan of the late and odious fabulist Albert Goldman, sucks up to one of the leading lights in the lefty blogosphere:

But all of Las Vegas's top dominatrixes cleared room and clung to the walls last week when Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher hit the neon strip for Yearly Kos, her arrival heralded by whipcrack lightning and the baying of distant coyetes. Now Jane Hamsher looked amiable and sweetly accessorized hosting a panel on C-SPAN, almost schoolteacherly in her glasses; but cross her, displease her, and the cruel lash will be one's crimson reward.* She has visited her wrath upon the former Wonkette, shown here flanked by a jovial pair of freeloaders. But even that pales beside the rejoinder she offers a critic in the comments section. It's quite a pithy exchange.

"margaret says:
June 12th, 2006 at 2:16 pm

"Well, now, we have a bunch of folks who love the nastiness, and we have a small bunch who like some intelligent analysis, sans vituperation. And, we have a few who suggest if you don’t like what you read, go……..somewhere else. And, a really physically lovely, intelligent woman with a gift for language, i.e., Jane, abuses her gifts with really the kind of words, I’m afraid I have never encountered, not even on bathroom walls while in college. I don’t even know what they mean.

"The problem with these dark words is that they stay in the head, and change one’s internal grace as a human being. I simply don’t want certain images in my head, be it bathroom graffiti, or, to carry it further, detailed descriptions of beheadings by Middle East terrorists, or stories about rape victims, or accident victims, or any other victims of horrendous action. Words have great power, and we should be careful how we use them. They can incite the unhealthy to assassinations and other kinds of violence. On the FDL level, it doesn’t amount to anything with any depth. It’s only word-slinging back and forth to give the Poster and the bloggers who share the Poster’s low-mindedness strokes. Weird, to me. And, a form of word-rape.

"It’s responsible to be inventive and creative with language; it’s dangerous to sling language around, carelessly, insensitive to whom it may hurt or offend. Ah, for the days of Addison and Steele."

"Jane Hamsher says:
June 12th, 2006 at 2:17 pm

"Margaret 116 — 'Ah, for the days of Addison and Steele.'

"You’re a smug, self-righteous bitch. How about those words?"

To which I say, the compassionate liberalism of MLK and RFK is truly dead. We have become our enemies.

France 0, Switzerland 0: Two teams that have a problem putting the ball in the back of the net played to a scoreless draw. The French, who scored only a handful of goals in qualifying, where they tied the Swiss twice, have now been shutout in the four Cup games they've played since they won it all in 1998; the Swiss now have three straight goose eggs dating back to 1994. France ties Peru (1978-82), England (1982-6), and Tunisia (1978-1998) in that regard; the record for goalscoring futility is held by Bolivia, which was blanked in the first five games they played in the World Cup before scoring against Spain in 1994.

In addition to being a racist scumbag, a perjurer, and a plagiarist, who despises the widows, police and firemen of 9/11, it also appears Ann Coulter is a world-class airhead. Kudos to Rude Pundit for discovering that she can't even rip off the mistakes and typos of smarter people very well...and to Art Buchwald, who has come out of retirement to pen this column eviscerating NaziPundit. It starts:

A broomstick in my closet was missing. I asked someone about it and he said,
"Ann Coulter took it."

"What did she do with it?" I asked.

She's flying around on it as a witch, looking for more 9/11 widows for a follow-up
book called 'The Coulter Code.'"

I said, "She's a very busy witch. This is her fifth broomstick."

There's also a good Walmart dig at the end.

No Fitzmas: Karl Rove walks. Bush aide didn't break law. Man Bites Dog.

In the long run, this was probably good news for progressives; Plamegate focused a great deal of attention on the hypocrisy of the Neocon Right, their willingness to expose the identity of a covert agent out of ideological spite, but there are hundreds of better reasons why they should be purged from the engines of power, none of which involve the First Amendment or give blanket protection to the CIA from public exposure. Rove is an odious person who did a crummy thing, but that doesn't mean he committed a felony, and as Ken Starr could attest during his investigation of Ms. Lewinsky, actually proving "perjury" is a damnable task.

Finally, the issue seemed to be a particular obsession of some of the biggest s**ts, c**ts and a**h***s in the lefty blogosphere, so it will be fun listening to their whining the next few days. Joseph Wilson may be a noble public servant who was only doing his job, and he was certainly telling the truth about what he found in Niger, but his fifteen minutes ended a long time ago.

If the megabloggers of the left would spend half of the time thinking about health care or urban poverty that they do popping off about like some low-rent McCarthyite about"Treasongate", the blogosphere might live up to its promise. At least now there's one less distraction to worry about.

South Korea 2, Togo 1: Ahn Jung-hwan, whose game-winning heroics four years ago against Italy merited him the honor of being dumped from his Serie A team in favor of Saadi Gaddafi, once again came up big, blasting yet another knuckleball into the upper corner. Incidentally, Togo has saved Otto Pfister from a career of being a "character actor" much in demand on certain Chatsworth and Reseda sound stages, and he was on the bench today.

Italy 2, Ghana 0: So much for the theory that the Juventus Scandal was going to distract the Azurri. Hard-fought match, decided on goals late in each half, with the Ghanaians screwed on a no-call late in the game inside the penalty area. Since both teams should have an easy time against the U.S., the games against a Czech team that lost another of its stars will be critical. For Italy especially, anything less than a three-goal margin Saturday could be devastating; the Czech Republic has an edge in goal differential, and the runner-up in this group will likely play Brazil in the Second Round. Ghana, on the other hand, needs at least a point Saturday, then hope Italy beats the Czechs in the final game, to have any chance of advancing.

I see Thomas Lipscomb is still hyping his non-existent Pulitzer "nomination." The first time, it can be excused as excessive puffery; the second time, you really have to call his honesty into question. What is simply inexcusable is that the conservative bloggers hyping Mr. Lipscomb know the truth, and they just don't care.

Czech R. 3, U.S.A. 0: Men playing with boys. I saw this same game sixteen years ago, when we sent college kids to our first World Cup in 40 years and got smoked by a veteran Czechoslavakian team. Other than Reyna and sub Eddie Johnson, the team played with no heart; collectively, the team had the same look George Bush has at an unscripted event, when someone asks him about WMD's. Nevertheless, if the Czechs play at this level the rest of the way, they win it all.

Australia 3, Japan 1: On the verge of an undeserved defeat, the Socceroos scored three times in the final six minutes to pull out a stunning victory. Australia was shutout in its previous World Cup, in 1974, and took 84 minutes to pop its World Cup cherry this time. Questionable calls were prevalent; Japan's first goal came after a rather blatant foul on the goalkeeper, while Australia received the benefit of a non-call inside their penalty area after they tied the game in the 82nd minute. All three of the winners' goals were scored by second-half substitutes.

Thinking Outside the Penalty Box: The New Democrat Network is spending $2 million on an ad campaign during the World Cup, focusing on Spanish-language media. The voice of the ads is none other than Mr. Goalllllllllll himself, Andres Cantor.

Did you know "Rock's Renaissance Man" (as Time Mag once called him) has a blog? I didn't...he posts even less frequently than Matt Welch, but more so than Brian Linse.

Portugal 1, Angola 0: Zzzzzzzzzzzz. Early goal (in fact, Portugal almost scored in the first eleven seconds), then 85 minutes of a Euro power treading water against an outclassed opponent. See here for more of the same.

For Angelenos Only: If you want to watch World Cup action with an interested audience and some liquid sustenance, LAist has some suggestions (including my old hang-out, Joxer Dalys).

Mexico 3, Iran 1: That's Brooklyn Avenue over Rodeo Drive, Huntington Park over Encino. In the Battle of the Great Satans, the Paleocons' edge the Neos. Going where Team U.S.A. so ignomoniously failed in 1998, the Pride of Aztlan dominated play throughout, taking advantage of the Iranian keeper's blunder with 15 minutes to play to score the winner. Viva Reconquista !!! Por las Tricolores, todo. Fuera de las Tricolores, nada.

Holland 1, Serbia-Montenegro 0: The Clockwork Orange banged out an impressive victory, both offensively and defensively. The S&M squad had managed a long scoreless streak in qualifying, but conceded an early breakaway by Arjen Robben, and never sustained any prolonged pressure on the Dutch goal.

I assume that many of you reading this blog are watching the games on ESPN or ABC. If you have access to the Spanish-language Univision network, you might partake of its programmming, which is pretty much non-stop soccer during the day. Right now, Univision is airing a between-games show featuring a mariachi band, a feature piece in which the reporter asked some Bavarian locals what they knew of Mexico (sadly, more of them seemed to know a good deal more about who the President of Mexico is than their American counterparts), and two absolutely stunning co-hosts clad in t-shirts and dolphin shorts (sex is truly the universal language). Hopefully, this will be continue to be on throughout the tourney.

A number of you have asked me whether I was going to YearlyKos, the convention of lefty bloggers now going on in Las Vegas. Having just been to Vegas over Memorial Day, I wasn't about to spend another weekend in that city so soon. Maybe next year.

If, in fact, they hold another YearlyKos next year, we should have a great deal more data on the effectiveness of the lefty blogosphere in terms of political influence. The political reporter for the nation's paper of record remarks here that blogs have become as important to the left as talk radio is by the right, which is true, but which also has the potential to worsen the partisan cancer that has afflicted our national dialogue. Talk radio reaches a much wider audience than blogs, and its listeners are a good deal more diverse than the white upper-middle class readers of Kos or Atrios. When Rush Limbaugh lies, a lot of people listen, and it actually has an impact on the political debate.

Although it is untrue that Kos has a perfect losing record in terms of endorsing candidates (his blog endorsed two special election victors in 2004), it is not irrelevant to note that the intense partisanship, while an effective money-raising tool among the party base, is a pretty lame strategy for liberals when it comes to putting up W's on the scoreboard. If liberal blogs were really all that, Howard Dean would be President, and not holding the exalted title of DNC Chief.

Hopefully, the loss last week in the special election will prove to be chastening. Tarring the other side as a cabal of corrupt hacks may be affirming to our sense of moral superiority, but it doesn't elect squat. People are concerned about the continuing quagmire in Iraq, immigration, the cost of health care, and of course, the economy; they don't give a rat's rectum about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity or who Jack Abramoff is. Conducting e-mail campaigns against least-favorite reporters or whining about how the mean MSM doesn't laugh at Steven Colbert's after-dinner jokes doesn't redound to the prestige of the blogosphere, especially when there are serious problems afflicting our country. It would be nice if the stars of next year's convention actually have ideas to tout, rather than just anger and strategies for fundraising and sucking up to the media establishment.

Argentina 2, Cote d'Ivoire 1: Argentina played without two of its stars, but still found a way to beat a determined Ivory Coast team. The Ivorians, playing their first-ever game at the World Cup, fell behind by two at halftime, but had the run of play for almost the entire second half as the RG's were content to coast and play in a defensive shell. Even after Drogba cut the lead in half with just under ten minutes to play, there was no sense that the Argentines were in trouble.

This was my first visit to a public establishment in this World Cup. After the experience of 2002, when games started at 11:30 p.m. and 2 and 4 a.m., and I discovered the sad truth that there is nothing more depressing than seeing a sunrise from a bar, getting to watch games at noon is much more to my liking.

Trinidad & Tobago 0, Sweden 0: In my Idiot's Guide, I compared T&T to the play-in team at the NCAA Tournament, while Sweden was this year's CAL, a bland, boring team that shows up with the belief that they can win a game or two, but has no serious shot at ever contending for the title. Today, even playing a man up the entire second half, the Swedes seemed to play like Ben Braun was calling plays on the sidelines. A gutty, wonderful draw by the Soca Warriors.

Much of the conservative commentary on last Tuesday's special election in San Diego has the feel of someone whistling past the graveyard. This article gives a much better sense of what the significance of Bilbray's narrow victory, but I think it bears noting that for the second time in nine months, a special election took place in a heavily Republican district, and the GOP candidate failed to crack 50% against an underfunded Democrat.

As far as the race being a test of the immigration issue, the result should be chastening for any Republican who wants to pursue the nativist bloc. If any district should have been ripe for this issue, it was the 50th; a largely white, upper/upper-middle class suburban community north of San Diego, where the Republicans have an partisan edge, and the Democratic opponent had clumsily gaffed on the issue of documentation in the final week of the campaign. If the best the xenophobes can do in a district like this is win by less than 4 points, the resonance of the issue can be called into question.

In a normal year, or even in a year that was mildly trending Democratic, like 1992 or 1998, this should have been a convincing win. It wasn't; Busby improved by almost ten points over her run in 2004, while Bilbray was down by the same amount from Duke Cunningham's performance, in spite of the large spending edge. The LA Times (and Mickey Kaus) noted that two other candidates siphoned off about 5% of the vote, but those same two parties took 3% of the vote in 2004, and even assuming that every additional voter those candidates received would have voted for Bilbray, an improbable scenario given the psychology of third party voters, it still would have left him with barely 51% of the vote, well behind even the mediocre showing the President received in the district (in a state where he didn't campaign) last time.

Did someone order a pizza? Togo soccer skipper Otto Pfister has resigned, three days before his squad plays its World Cup opener against South Korea. For those of you who want to see how well a country you've never heard of plays without a manager with the name of a gay porn star, set your TiVo for 6:00 a.m. Tuesday.

England 1, Paraguay 0: Yawn. England's best team in 40 years took a quick lead, off a David Beckham-directed own goal. Nothing happened thereafter. The win probably puts England into the second round, and reduces the need to use Wayne Rooney any earlier than necessary.

I doubt I'm going to be able to do this for every game....

Ecuador 2, Poland 0: For some reason, the Poles were favored. Other than the home crowd advantage accruing from playing in a neighboring country, it's hard to see why. Poland didn't do anything in the last World Cup, other than defeating an American team that was clearly overconfident, didn't qualify for Euro 2004, and they qualified for this Cup from a very easy group; in fact, the other good team in that group, England, beat them twice. And yet they were picked to finish second in the group, and were even seen as possibly threatening the Germans for the top.

On the other hand, coming into the W.C. Ecuador was dissed as a lightweight, a team that took advantage of altitude to create an overwhelming home field advantage in qualifying, but their road losses to Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, the other qualifiers from South America, were by one goal each; I think it's safe to say that it would be hard for most of the teams in this tournament to beat Brazil and Argentina at home, then go to Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo and lose by a single goal. Like Poland, Ecuador went 1-2 in 2002, but they were in all three matches, and their final win, over Croatia, eliminated a semifinalist from the previous tournament. One would think being the third best team from South America would have earned them some respect.

Anyway, Poland hit the post a bunch of times, but were otherwise listless, and Ecuador can probably advance to the next round with a win over Costa Rica next week. I have a couple of friends who are Ecuadorian, so congrats to them.

Germany 4, Costa Rica 2: Impressive start to the Cup. The Costa Ricans, badly outclassed, nevertheless refused to play cynically, and although the Germans sometimes cut through their defense like a knife through butter, managed to keep the game in doubt until the end. The hosts outshot the Ticos 24-4, but were stunned by two breakaway goals by Paulo Wanchope. The Germans, playing without the injured Michael Ballack, didn't ice the game until a spectacular 35-yard blast by Torsten Frings in the final three minutes. Incidentally, Wanchope attended Vincent Memorial High School in Calexico, where he was the 1994 California Division V player of the year in basketball.

Matthew Yglesias has an interesting World Cup-related query for the Far Right....

With the World Cup starting in nine hours, here's Deadspin's list of blogs, both MSM and off-beat, dedicated to the El Copa Mundial, and a useful primer from the local paper (did you know Brazil has a player with the one-word nom de guerre, "Fred"?). Steve Gilliard, lefty blogosphere's biggest soccer obsessive, will no doubt be posting frequently on the topic. And of course, there's my Idiot's Guide to the Cup, here.

Mr. Kournikova Gets Promoted !!!

Had a very weird and frightening dream last night. I woke up with a start in the wee hours of the morning, and my imaginary girlfriend, Charlize Theron Princess Madeline Maria Sharapova, asked me what was wrong. I told her I had just had a very bizarre dream, and it was troubling me. She said that it's good to talk about these things, and that she might be able to help.

So I told her about my dream: that I was on my computer, and had just spent an entire day on Blogger without having a single problem posting or logging on. Maria just looked at me and said, sympathetically, "Ah, honey, we all have dreams like that. You just have to let it go."

In the meantime, here's a preview of what we can expect in the NBA Finals, starting tonight.

As I noted several days ago, a possible defense of right wing flack Thomas Lipscomb's claim to being a "Pulitzer Prize nominee" is that since the Pulitzer website only lists "Nominated Finalists", those writers who were merely "nominated" aren't included. Of course, since anyone can nominate anybody for a Pulitzer, boasting about that kind of "nomination" is a joke, and far more disingenuous than anything Lipscomb is accusing Senator Kerry of having done. It would be like Lyndon LaRouche claiming that he was a Democratic nominee for the Presidency, simply because a delegate voted for him at the convention.

And sure enough, someone is now making that defense of Lipscomb. The Swift Boat controversy is a stupid one for the Far Right to be refighting. When bloggers were initially dismissed as pajama-wearing nerds at the outset of the forged documents imbroglio involving 60 Minutes II, it was in large part due to the then-recent Swift Boat controversy, after the allegations made by bloggers defending the Swifties collapsed and were discredited once the mainstream media belatedly investigated. The Swift Boat allegations became a blogospheric disgrace, and helped solidify the reputation that all bloggers, right and left alike, were more interested in winning ideological and partisan battles than discovering the truth.

Lipscomb's credibility on the topic is therefore important. There are no permalinks in his column, so he's requesting that his readers take his accusations against Senator Kerry and the New York Times on faith. Most of the people who read his piece, or read summaries of his piece at other blogs, are not going to be able to go back and do the necessary research on what the public record actually says about whether the Senator contributed to action reports whilst in Vietnam, for example. Lastly, the entire point to his, and other, attacks on the service record of John Kerry is the claim that the Senator exaggerated his military record. It therefore ill-behooves Lipscomb to be exaggerating his own credentials as a journalist.

Claiming that his previous investigations “earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination” gives the false impression that his work was peer-reviewed and found to be meritorious. At the very least, it calls into question the reliability of his research, and the blind citation of his work discredits the credibility of the blogosphere.

[UPDATE]: Mickey Kaus was not the only blogger to have been conned. Michelle Malkin, Powerline, Democracy Project, Instapundit, Free Republic and Tom Maguire were also hoodwinked, although only Captain Ed was gullible enough (along with the aforementioned U.S. News and Liz Smith) to regurgitate the Pulitzer claim.

More perspective on Thomas Lipscomb's bogus Pulitzer "nomination":

One of the editors dropped by with a list of pieces I might want to submit for a Pulitzer. That’s right! I’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer! Along with a ham sandwich a piece from the Chancre Falls Fistula-Gleaner on the peculiar nomenclature of “twice-baked potatoes.” (I mean, what do you get when you microwave them? Three-time baked potatoes? What’s up with that?) Anyone can be nominated. He handed me a print out of my story slugs and asked me to make a few recommendations. Apparently I wrote 174 stories for the paper last year. They want the top 12. Can’t wait for next year, when I’ll have to choose from 312. (emphasis added)

--noted lefty James Lileks [link via Tristram Shandy]

Everything about the new bankruptcy law detailed here is true: the impractical and irrelevant hoops debtors have to jump through, the "credit counseling" that's next to worthless, the byzantine language judges are trying to interpret, the higher fees lawyers are charging everyone, the luxury car/vacation home "exception" to the means test, etc. Filings, at least for now, are way down, but that's largely because everyone who was even close to thinking about bankruptcy filed last October. Simply put, a stupid, evil law....

Huh? Mickey Kaus approvingly links this morning to one Thomas Lipscomb on the Swift Boat allegations from two years ago, calling him "the nation's leading expert on why not all of the Swift Boat veteran allegations against Senator John Kerry are discredited." The column in question states that Mr. Lipscomb has been "nominated for a Pulitzer for his reporting on Kerry during the 2004 elections." Wow, and I always thought the allegations attacking Senator Kerry's war record had been discredited...but since it turns out the person investigating those allegations had been nominated for the highest award given to journalists in this country, we should all have second thoughts on the traitorous coward who almost became our Commander in Chief....

One problem: the Pulitzer Prize website actually lists the people and newspapers who were nominated in 2004, 2005 and 2006, and Mr. Lipscomb's name appears...nowhere. [link via Pamela Leavey] In fact, if you search the Pulitzer archives, not only has Thomas Lipscomb never been a nominated finalist, no one with that last name has been so honored, nor was anyone else for "reporting on Kerry during the 2004 election". According to the website:

Nominated Finalists are selected by the Nominating Juries for each category as finalists in the competition. The Pulitzer Prize Board generally selects the Pulitzer Prize Winners from the three nominated finalists in each category. The names of nominated finalists have been announced only since 1980. Work that has been submitted for Prize consideration but not chosen as either a nominated finalist or a winner is termed an entry or submission. No information on entrants is provided.

OK, so maybe Lipscomb was an "entrant" for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. To be an entrant, you have to fill out the entry form, and anyone who has published something in a daily newspaper is eligible. Although "many newspapers prefer to submit entries of particular staff members or achievements," that doesn't matter, since the nomination can be "made by newspaper readers or an interested individual." For example, the brilliant writer who penned this Op-Ed piece for the L.A. Times last October, on the YBK problem, could have feasted on the reflected glory of the most prestigious prize in American letters, had he simply sat down and taken five minutes to fill out the application, and sent it out with the warmest regards to the Nominating Jury. And, best of all, its free it only costs $75.

So I suppose it would be like Jennifer Lopez claiming she was "nominated" for an Oscar for her work in Gigli. Her name wasn't one of the five contenders rattled off on the last Sunday in February, but I'm sure someone (her publicist?) voted for her. It's a neat, harmless way of building up your resume, in much the same way that Tookie Williams was a Nobel Peace Prize "nominee" (actually, it is even less impressive than those two examples, since the Oscar and the Nobel have closed nomination processes). What it has to do with the truth, however, is anyone's guess.

UPDATE: Apparently the Pulitzer nomination claim is an ongoing part of Lipscomb's reputation. Both the U.S. News & World Report and columnist Liz Smith have cited his "nomination" in recent articles about his latest bit of investigative reporting, into the alleged tampering of the Zapruder Film.

A good primer on the tactical divide that prevents the left side of the spectrum from consistently winning, by the Grumpy Forester.

We're now less than a week from the quadrennial sporting baccanallia that is the World Cup. Even with the recent growth of soccer in the United States, and especially the expansion in fan interest in the event, most American sports fans still possess an attitude that ranges from casual dismissal to frothing disdain at the world's biggest sporting competition. To that end, I am repeating my efforts of four years ago, and comparing the teams at this year's World Cup to an event near and dear to the hearts of many of my compatriots, the NCAA basketball tournament.

The two events have much in common, from the intense national focus they generate, even after the local favorite has gone home, to the early-round interest in seeing an upset by a school/nation no one has heard of over a long-time power. So, without further adieu, your Field of 32:

Brazil: Kentucky (great history, exciting style; can never be ignored); actually, the college team most like Brazil is USC’s football team, a second-choice national fan favorite with its relentless offense, the band, and the gorgeous young women dancing on the sidelines. It’s a different sport, but Brazil always seems to play a different game, and like the Trojans, they always seem to bring the most stars. Fight on, Brazil...

France: Florida (recent champs, with an all-or-nothing tradition; interestingly, the star player for both teams is a French-born son of African immigrants)

Argentina: UConn (perennial favorite; talented, but bland)

England: Kansas (oldest tradition in the sport, with a history of choking in big games)

Germany: Arizona (guaranteed to qualify, but going through a down-period), or Duke (talented, smart, and the team everyone loves to hate)

Spain: Illinois (always talented, but never win a damned thing)

Italy: UCLA (great history, and a defensive juggernaut) or North Carolina (good counterpoint to Germany)

Portugal: Washington (on the attack, but never fails to disappoint at the Dance)

Mexico: Gonzaga (high seed, overrated, will win a few games but under-perform when it counts)

Cote d’Ivoire: MAC champions (at least one African team always "surprises", and even if they don't get out of the first round, they'll make the foes bleed)

Czech Republic: Villanova

Saudi Arabia: MAAC champs

Croatia: Mountain West champions

U.S.A.: Nevada (solid recent performances earn it a high seed, but beware the weak conference)

Australia: Creighton

Sweden: California (perennial underachievers; rarely excite or do anything to convince people they have a legit shot at winning anything)

Ghana: MVC at-large team (see Cote d'Ivoire; their opener against Italy has the potential to be the upset of the tourney)

Costa Rica: Pacific (underrated; their next bad first round game will be their first)

Paraguay: Bucknell (overachievers)

Iran: Montana

Ukraine: Tennessee (sudden emergence at the top-flight, easily winning a tough qualifier but have a lot to prove)

Poland: 4th at-large team from Big Ten (see Sweden)

Angola: SWAC champs

Holland: Texas (exciting, offensive-minded team that never wins the big one)

Japan: George Washington

South Korea: George Mason (memorable Cinderella run recently; iffy long-term prospects)

Ecuador: Air Force (it's the thin air)

Togo: Big South tournament champions

Serbia: Syracuse (boring, mediocre and defensive; will play down to their opponents)

Switzerland: Wisconsin

Trinidad & Tobago: Play-in winner

Tunisia: Sunbelt tournament champions

And of course, feel free to dis my comparisons if you have any better ideas....

Having been skeptical of the claims made by some that the 2004 election was rigged, I would be remiss if I didn't link to one of the more thorough treatments of the subject, which concludes that the outcome was one of the most fraudulent in the history of democracy. Having seen exit polling give consistently inaccurate results in the past, I take the amount of faith the writer gives these polls with a grain of salt. And the fact that it is theoretically possible to rig a voting machine doesn't mean that it happened in 2004. But the weight of evidence, the totality of circumstances, are just too overwhelming to ignore...[UPDATE {6/3}: Or maybe the evidence should be reexamined. Two different reviews, here and here, of the allegations contained herein question the charges that Ohio was rigged (second link via Armed Liberal). The exit polling-as-gospel charge has always been the weak link in the conspiracy arsenal; besides the example of exit polling errors giving Clinton a much larger victory in 1992 than he actually won, the exit polls also gave Michael Dukakis a slight edge in 1988, and gave wins to Tom Bradley in 1982 and Neil Kinnock in 1992.]

The report, released today, exonerating Lance Armstrong for blood doping before his 1999 Tour de France victory, also takes a long-overdue crack at the unethical conduct of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) and the autocratic martinet who runs it, Dick Pound. Among its findings are that the tests conducted on the urine samples tied to Armstrong did not satisfy even the minimum standards for a finding of a positive result, and that WADA, the laboratory that conducted the test, and the French ministry in charge of the lab all refused to provide evidence and fully cooperate with the investigation.

Troubling, but predictable:

With immigration perhaps America's most volatile issue, a troubling backlash has erupted among its most fervent foes. There are, of course, the Minutemen, the self-appointed border vigilantes who operate in several states. And now groups of militiamen, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are using resentment over the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. as a potent rallying cry. "The immigration furor has been critical to the growth we've seen" in hate groups, says Mark Potok, head of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center counts some 800 racist groups operating in the U.S. today, a 5% spurt in the past year and a 33% jump from 2000. "They think they've found an issue with racial overtones and a real resonance with the American public," says Potok, "and they are exploiting it as effectively as they can."

(snip)

In addition to white supremacists, the immigration debate seems to have reinvigorated members of the antigovernment militias of the 1990s. Those groups largely disbanded after the Oklahoma City bombing orchestrated by militia groupie Timothy McVeigh and, later, the failure of a Y2K bug to trigger the mass chaos some militia members expected. "We've seen people from Missouri and Kentucky militias involved in border-vigilante activity, especially with the gung-ho Arizona group Ranch Rescue that used face paint, military uniforms and weapons," says Mark Pitcavage, fact-finding director of the ADL. "It's a natural shift. Militias fell on hard times, and this anti-immigration movement is new and fresh."

As Time Magazine details, the resurgence of hate groups, like the Minutemen and the Klan, in the context of the immigration reform battle in Congress, only raises the stakes for why any enforcement-only measure cannot be allowed to pass the Senate. There can be no appeasement with the forces of hate. [link via Crooks and Liars

Back when I was writing about YBK, I used a chart showing the relationship between home values and a number of other variables, including bankruptcy filing rates and voting patterns in Presidential elections. The most recent numbers are out, and they still show the strong correlation between rising property values over the past quarter-century and Democratic voting in Presidential elections. The twenty-five states that have seen the smallest increase in home prices since 1980 are, without exception, states that cast ballots for George Bush in the last election. All but six of the states in the top half went for Kerry, and of the Red States that cracked the top twenty-six, five (Virginia, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada) are states that are either Purple States and/or trending Democratic, and the other state, Montana, has a strong historical track record of backing progressive Democrats in statewide elections.

In the meantime, here's an interesting summary of what the recent flood of foreclosures means, and how the new bankruptcy law has exacerbated the problem. [link via Susie Madrak]

Back from Vegas, where I just spent an exhausting weekend with my buds from college (and their children). For many people, the drive from Vegas to LA on Sunday (or Monday holiday) is one of the most discouraging travel itineraries, an event lasting from 6-7 hours, depending on the traffic on the I-15. Few locals have heard of the Pearblossom Hwy shortcut, a straight, flat road that cuts across the northern part of Los Angeles County, starting in Victorville, and which is invariably empty. Since the worst traffic on the 15 is always south of Victorville heading into the Cajon Pass, this simple detour will save the driver at least a half-hour every trip.

I'm off to Vegas...Luxor, to be exact...everyone have a safe and sane Memorial Day Weekend.

The Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh this morning, after a three-year delay. The Dems didn't even try to filibuster.

Atrios approvingly links to this HuffPost by Eric Boehlert, on the Gore-Bradley battle for the Democratic nomination in 2000:

But did Gore really "struggle" putting away primary contender Bradley at the ballot box? I went back and looked up the answer. Here's a look at the 2000 Democratic primary results, state-by-state in alphabetical order (Bradley was not on the ballot in every state):

Arizona, Gore +59
California, Gore +63
Colorado, Gore +47
Connecticut, Gore +14
Delaware, Gore +15
District of Columbia, Gore +90
Florida, Gore +63
Georgia, Gore +66
Idaho, Gore +59
Illinois, Gore +70
Indiana, Gore +53
Kentucky, Gore +65
Louisiana, Gore +52
Maine, Gore +13
Maryland, Gore +39
Massachusetts, Gore +23
Michigan, Gore +42

You can see where this is gong [sic]. In the end, Gore won every primary contest against Bradley in 2000, and did it by an average of +47. Gore threw a shut-out in what was one of the most lopsided routs in recent primary history as Bradley, despite spending $40 million, was only competitive in a handful of New England states. But now Slate, which fawned over Bradley in real time, casually re-writes history to suggest Gore "struggled" against Bradley. That's pure fiction, as well as lazy and dishonest.

Actually, Eric, what's "lazy and dishonest" is not reporting the result of the New Hampshire primary, which was where Bradley spent most of his time and money (btw, it would have been next on his alphabetical list). Gore won that won as well, but by only four points; the subsequent primaries listed by Boehlert were all after New Hampshire, when the battle was effectively over. There was a five week gap between New Hampshire and the next primaries, on "Super Tuesday", and Bradley, running as a progressive alternative to Clinton and Gore, needed a win in New Hampshire to remain viable for the Super Tuesday primaries. He didn't get it, had almost no funds left, and Gore's narrow victory in the Nutmeg State effectively ended the race.

Boehlert's book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, has predictably been embraced by one of the more depressing elements in our body politic, the Whiny Left. The Whiny Left is perhaps best seen in its native habitat, the blogosphere, where it moans about how mean the New York Times is to focus on the Clintons' sham marriage, or how outrageous it is that the Washington Post attempts to draw links between Jack Abramoff and Democrats, or what a satanic thug Joe Lieberman is, or, even more importantly, how vicious the MSM is for not hyping an after-dinner speech by Steven Colbert a few weeks back. The Whiny Left is the core audience for anyone who writes a book detailing what a spineless bunch of wussies the media is (are?).

The fact that the Whiny Left may be right (especially about Lieberman) is less important than the fact that its only effect is to harden the attitudes of those less invested in their partisanship, who might otherwise be potential allies. The Whiny Left offers nothing in the way of solutions or alternatives to the status quo, and seem united only by an intense and unwavering hatred of George Bush, not understanding that the broad disapproval the general public has toward the President and his policies does not mean that they will embrace the agenda, such as it is, of the Whiny Left.

If there's one thing I've learned about angry people, it's that they may be publicly amusing, but privately, they're all bores.

From this morning's Kausfiles:

Steve Sailer chops up Dana Milbank's sneering treatment of Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has committed the sin of arguing in a detailed, reasonable and lawyerly fashion against the Senate immigration bill. ... Sample Milbank sneer and Sailer response:

(Milbank) Sessions has joined the immigration debate with typical ferocity, impugning the motives of those who disagree with him. "We have quite a number of members of the House and Senate and members in the media who are all in favor of reforms and improvements as long as they don't really work," he said last week of those who opposed the 370 miles of fencing. "But good fences make good neighbors. Fences don't make bad neighbors."

The senator evidently hadn't consulted the residents of Korea, Berlin or the West Bank. [Emphasis added]

(Sailor) Killer line, Dana! Obviously, the residents of Korea or the West Bank would have lived in perfect harmony without those horrible fences keeping them separate.

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but isn't there a bit of a difference between the relationship our country has with its neighbor to the south, and the relationship between Jews and Arabs on the West Bank, or North and South Korea since 1950, or between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War? Not even the most paranoid fantasists obsessed with Reconquista and Aztlan believe that our relationship with Mexico is akin to that of two countries at war.

Kaus goes on to defend Senator Sessions, whose track record on civil rights is, shall we say, a bit spotty. To wit, back when President Reagan attempted to put the then U.S. Attorney on the U.S. District Court in 1986, during his confirmation hearings:

Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people." In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings.

It got worse. Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn't see it that way. Sessions, he said, had called him "boy" and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks." Figures echoed Hebert's claims, saying he too had heard Sessions call various civil rights organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "un-American." Sessions denied the accusations but again admitted to frequently joking in an off-color sort of way. In his defense, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, controlled at the time by the G.O.P., voted against sending his nomination to the floor. Since then, his record on civil rights has been even more spotty, a fact that obviously hasn't inhibited the good people of Alabama from electing the man to two terms in the U.S. Senate.

The fact that Senator Sessions is, or is not, an unreconstructed bigot is not, by itself, a reason not to pass strong laws against illegal immigration. I just got through reading a biography of William Jennings Bryan, the perennial Democrat Presidential nominee of the turn-of-the-century, and one of the fascinating points the author makes is that most, not just some, but most of the cherished progressive principles liberals believe in, and defend, today, were ideas that came from the heads of some of the most virulent racists of the day. This wasn't just true of Southern Democrats, who because of competition from the Populist Party in the 1890's were forced to evolve into the wing of the party that most embraced economic liberalism at that time. Many of the great radical figures of the day, men like Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and "Big Bill" Haywood, were also racists, but that doesn't mean that child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, or collective bargaining were bad ideas. The fact that the poison of racial bigotry was mixed in with the soup of modern progressivism is a reminder that we are all prisoners of the culture in which we live.

What it should mean today, however, is that no immigration law that seeks to punish border crossers should be taken up until its supporters get their own house in order, purge their ranks of the bigots, in the same way that supporters of welfare reform were made to purge their ranks of the idiots who saw the black "welfare queen" as their bête noire before any serious debate about welfare legislation could commence.

Of course, not all people who support tighter border enforcement are bigots, and not all reasons for supporting such a policy are nativist, but unfortunately, racism does permeate the issue. As long as the fear of the brown-skinned lurks behind the surface of this debate, we must make sure that any legislation ultimately passed not be tainted by such an association with racist bigotry. I would rather live in the Aztlan of the nativist's warped fantasy than in Jeff Sessions' America.

Gorillas in the Mist: Believe it or not, this isn't from The Onion....

UPDATE: A dyspeptic commenter asks: What's the difference between the Senate Majority Leader and his patient? One is a bi-pedal mammal with opposing thumbs and a brain the size of a lemon, and the other is a gorilla.

We should all be so lucky: The actual CNN headline is different, but the RSS feed I got for this story read "O.C. star pleased at her death".

Do you realize that, historically speaking, the 2006 mid-term election is probably the least important national election we've had in some time, or will have in some time to come? It's a non-Presidential election, so it's automatically less pivotal than '08, '04, '00, '96, '92, etc. Mid-term elections in years ending with zero or eight are always important, since they determine who gets to redraw districts at the state level, and thus shape who controls the House for the next ten years. Compared with this November, the mid-term election four years from now will be infinitely more important, falling as it does in 2010, the midway point of President Hillary (or President McCain)'s first term.

Next in importance are mid-term elections in a President's first term, such as '34, '46, '62, '66, '74, '82, '94 and '02, since they impact the scope of the domestic agenda of the party in power, at a time when the power of a President is at its zenith. Then come mid-terms falling on a year when a disproportionate number of Senate seats are held by one party ( '42 and '86), where a strong performance by one party can shape control of the Senate for some time to come.

This mid-term has none of those factors. Reapportionment won't be decided until after 2010, so no one elected this time around will necessarily be involved in the future reshaping of the political map. Bush is already a lame duck, even with his party firmly in control of Congress, and any investigations a Democratic Congress might initiate will have dubious long-term impact, other than reaffirming that he has been an awful Chief Executive. And the Democrats are actually defending more Senate seats this time around, thanks to their strong performance in the 2000 election, so even a good performance this time around will probably not net much in the way of gains, or have much long-term impact.

So don't let anybody fool you when they say that "this is the most important election in our lifetime". It's not. In the context of history, it will barely even register.

Tonight was probably the greatest night in the history of television.

Props to Kevin Drum for setting up the "Eating Liberally" meet-up this afternoon at Farmers Market in Hollywood. It was nice getting to put names to faces...I have lived my whole life (so far, at least) in L.A., and up until today I had been to Farmers Market maybe twice, even though it's one of the biggest tourist attractions locally, and it was the site of Gilmore Field, the home of the late and legendary Hollywood Stars baseball team. Just goes to show what you miss out on in life while you're waiting for something else to happen.

Michael Hiltzik returns to the LA Times this morning with a piece on Clipper superstar Elton Brand's forlorn attempts to succeed as a movie producer. Hiltzik, you might recall, was stripped of his column and blog for having the audacity to use pseudonyms when commenting on other sites (as well as, embarassingly enough, his own). I spoke with a high muckety-muck at the Times about that this past week, but only got special pleading about how "any journalist would know what he did was wrong", as if that would have any weight in the wild, unfettered world of the blogosphere. What Hiltzik did was embarassing to his employer, but not unethical.