The Math Demands It!
Via Atrios, James O’Keefe will be on Good Morning America tomorrow morning.
And Politico asks the important question:
James O’Keefe will probably end up a wealthy man out of this, with a Regenery book deal and a wingnut welfare sinecure. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
I got yelled at for forgetting a Stanley Cup thread the other day, so here ya go.
Even the liberal New Republic is impressed:
Constantly jumping in and out of National Guard helicopters and drawing up plans for additional “burrito levees” and “boudin bags” needed to stop the oil slick from flowing further into his state’s marshes, Jindal has quickly mastered the details of the issue. At a press conference in New Orleans in mid-May, the Washington Post reported that “he gave updates on the size of tar balls washing up in Port Fourchon (up to eight inches), the number of sandbags to be air-dropped (1,200) and state money spent to date ($3.7 million). He also provided a weather forecast (‘The winds continue to come out of the southeast, 10 to 15 knots’).”
This reminds me of when America’s mayor won the Battle of 9/11.
That long black cloud is coming down.
France’s coach, Raymond Domenech must have thought that the gods were smiling on him when France emerged in Group A facing the following opponents: Mexico, South Africa and Uruguay. While none of these nations are pushovers, it could have been much worse for Domenech, chiefly if the draw had left them with another tough European opponent in the group with them. There was certainly no karmic smackdown for Thierry Henry’s notorious handball that led to the goal that sent Ireland to the couch for June and France to South Africa. Here’s a view of their roster before the final cut to 23 due tomorrow.
Domenech’s most surprising decision in my opinion has been in his selection of attackers. While Thierry Henry will likely be used only as a substitute, the inclusion of Djibril Cisse, who has never impressed me, instead of Karim Benzema has me puzzled. Cisse is inconsistent, to be polite, with one more international goal than Benzema with eleven more appearances. Odds are that Nicholas Anelka will be bearing the brunt of the attack along with midfielder Franck Ribery. Indeed, it’s the midfield and defense where France excel, notwithstanding the age of some of their players (yes I’m talking about you, William Gallas).
The host country is a bit of a puzzle to me with the exception of a few players and their coach, the Brazilian, Carlos Alberto Parreira. The only players I have seen play with any frequency are Aaron Mokoena, a fine defender who plays in England, Benni McCarthy, a journeyman forward who has played in Holland, Spain and currently in England and Steven Pienaar, who is a solid attacking midfielder for Everton in England. Parreira led Brazil to the World Cup Championship in 1994 and coached them in 2006. He has also coached Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the World Cup. Here’s a view of their preliminary roster, most of whom play their club football in South Africa.
Uruguay has a potent strike force in Diego Forlan who won the goal scoring title in the Spanish League for the 2008-09 season for his current team Atlético Madrid after having won it with Villarreal in the 2004-05 season. He also scored both goals in this year’s first Europa League final win against Fulham. His likely strike partner is Luis Suarez who is as versatile as Forlan is formidable, with ability to come from the wings and the middle to score or feed to Forlan.
Where Uruguay is weak, in my opinion is on defense. Goalkeeping is shaky and, with the exception of Walter Gargano, one of the best holding midfielders around, the rest of their defense is adequate, but does not thrill me and may be vulnerable on the counterattack with a skilled team attacking their goal, especially if the weak goalkeeping surrenders an early goal. Here’s their preliminary roster
Mexico may be the sort of team that gives Uruguay and France trouble. They have excellent speed in the attack with Carlos Vela and Javier Hernandez forming a solid strike pair with midfield support from Andres Guardado and Giovanni dos Santos making for arguably the best attack in this group. Defensively it depends on the health and mental stability of Rafa Marquez a gifted center-back whose role at FC Barcelona has been diminished in recent months and whether the young Hector Moreno will pick up the slack. In addition, it’s absolutely essential for goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa to be solid against the likes of Franck Ribery, Nicholas Anelka, Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez. Here’s Mexico’s preliminary roster.
My picks to go through to the next round from this group: France and Mexico. Experience will win out and as much as I will pull for South Africa, I just don’t see it happening for them. Uruguay is just too weak in goal.
Cross-posted at Beautiful Horizons.
Next up (hopefully tomorrow): Group B Argentina, Greece, Nigeria and South Korea.
Talk about tone deaf:
At least nine fishermen hired by BP to use their boats to help with oil cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico have been hospitalized with serious heath problems, including one who “busted his skull” after collapsing on a dock.When asked about this clear pattern of illnesses of workers who come in contact BP’s oil and chemical dispersants, BP CEO Tony Hayward callously dismissed the health problems as “food poisoning.”
“I’m sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it was anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning or some other reason for them being ill,” said Hayward.
Yeah, Hayward. They probably shouldn’t have eaten that Gulf Coast shrimp.
Leave it to the NRO to go the extra mile:
“One final note on proportionality: Fifteen “peace” activists dead is a tragedy, but they represent only one one-thousandth of the death toll of a French heatwave.”
And the number killed on 9/11 was only .00012% of the death toll of Bubonic plague. I guess that makes it ok.
Anyone know how this compares to the violence in Detroit?
I almost forgot- last Friday my hometown unveiled a new memorial for veterans, and they had a nice little ceremony. My small town has a ton of veterans, and many from WWII and Korea still alive. It was very cool:
It says 2009 on the stone, but we just got it last week (a touch behind schedule). Thanks to the Women’s Club for the memorial and all their hard work.
I’m really not sure what Israel or her loud-mouthed supporters here in the United States think they achieved by mounting an assault on a Turkish relief vessel in international waters, but the you know what is now officially hitting the fan. Some links:
1.) Turkey vows to send more aid to Gaza, this time guarded with Turkish Naval vessels.
2.) Ian Welsh notes that Turkey can invoke article V in the NATO alliance, because Turkey is a NATO member, and lo and behold, the Turkish have asked and been granted an emergency NATO meeting.
3.) Israel’s behavior was so stupid and self-defeating (as well as unconscionable) that the normally straight-laced Dan Drezner is dropping multiple f-bombs.
4.) Glenn Greenwald asks us to imagine the coverage at Commentary and the Weekly Standard if Iran had boarded a humanitarian ship in international waters and killed a dozen or so civilians.
5.) Meanwhile, the IDF spin machine is in full effect claiming repeatedly (and loudly regurgitated by all the usual wingnut American blogs) that the soldiers were “lynched” and “ambushed.” How this is an ambush when Israel had to fly miles to sea, and then drop soldiers onto the ship from helicopter, is beyond Orwellian.
Once again, Israel’s worst enemies are themselves and their boorish supporters, and they are bringing us down with them. I have no idea what they think they are accomplishing, and I can only assume they are simply not thinking.
The entire blogoverse in four panels…
Here’s a thread for the three or four of you who care. I’m in the “ANYONE BUT NOTRE DAME” category right now.
I agree that the press is partying like it’s 1999/2000:
Ms Dowd’s involvement is fitting, as this may be the sorriest spectacle of content-free public hyperventilation since Al Gore’s earth tones. The difference is that in this case the issue is deadly serious; it’s the public discourse that is puerile. There is plenty of room for substantive critique of the flaws in governance and policy uncovered by the Deepwater Horizon blowout. You could talk about regulatory failure. You could talk about corporate impunity. You could talk about blithely ignoring the tail-end risk of going ahead with deepwater drilling without any capacity to cope with catastrophic blowouts. Precisely none of these subjects are evident in the arguments our pundit class is having. Instead we have empty-headed squawking over what the catastrophe is doing to Barack Obama’s image.
Who’s raising concrete critiques of administration policy? Chiefly Mr Obama. Last Thursday he laid out a series of mistakes he felt he had made. Chief among them was taking oil companies at their word when they claimed to have the capability to cope with worst-case deep-sea drilling catastrophes. Now, if we feel that the president has failed to act aggressively enough on this issue, both before and since the accident, then what course of action should we now be calling on him to take? One logical step might be for the government to immediately shut down every offshore drilling rig in proximity to America’s coasts, pending the development of redundant, fail-safe capacity for capping and remediating catastrophic blowouts. Is this a good idea? I don’t know. But if you wanted to argue concretely that the administration had not been acting aggressively enough in this crisis, then this is the sort of more-aggressive action you might be calling for.
All that’s well and good, but actually doing something is nowhere near as important as emoting and pounding your good.
Update. Although there are those that say Bob Somerby is nuts, this epic piece on the origins of the earth tones story and other related matters is a must read.
Marc Ambinder (who has really been tearing it up lately) has a take on the repeal-the-seventeenth craziness that I hadn’t heard before:
Two recent Tea Party-backed candidates who had success in beating Washington-designated candidates are quite taken with the idea of repealing the 17th amendment. Ratified in 1913, it provides for the direct election of U.S. senators. Previously, state legislatures chose the senators. Lots of logistical problems resulted, but you could fairly attribute the popular constitutional amendment to the Progressive movement and to political entrepreneurs in the press. Well, newly-minted Republican nominee for Idaho’s first congressional district Raul Labrador wants to repeal the amendment.
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It’s become a part of the Tea Party orthodoxy, now. Being not sure about the amendment, or not knowing why the heck anyone would want to tinker with direct election of senators, marks you with the stink of the establishment.
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Here is something I don’t think Republican strategists in Washington…many of them, anyway, understand about conservative voters now. Their discontent with the party is NOT about ideology. It is, quite simply, about them. The consultants. The leaders. The people who were NOT able to prevent Obama from becoming president. The people who were NOT able to prevent health care from being signed into law, despite promising that it wouldn’t be. The people who fed the bailout engine. So ideas that seem extreme and bizarre to the powers that be might be more accepted by discontented voters simply because the mainstream forces consider them to be extreme.
I hadn’t ever thought of this before, that teatards are fueled as much by their hatred of the Republican establishment as by their hatred of Obama. But I think it may be true. RedState phones in the anti-Obama stuff, soshulism, unAmerican blah blah blah, but Erick Erickson foams at the mouth when he goes after what he sees as the Republican establishment (I agree with him that what’s going on in the South Carolina governor’s race is unbelievably sleazy, btw).
After president Scott Brown was elected, I thought that the teabaggers would mostly go along with whatever general election friendly RINO their overlords told them to support. Obviously Scozzafava was a gay right too far, but I thought the line in the teabag line in sand was in a very different place than it appears to be now.
Tried desperately to find some good news, and came up short, so here is a crappy open thread for you.
I suppose this really is the only way forward with conservation efforts- make it cool:
As summer finally arrives, you might want to think about more than just the sun and the waves when you hit the beach. Think about what the lifeguard is driving.If you’re in Los Angeles, there’s a good chance that beach lifeguards—the same ones popularized in the long-running Baywatch TV series—will be using one of 45 Ford Escape Hybrids to race to a rescue. The hybrids have been in use for a couple years now, and Ford is ready to share some stats.
For instance, the fleet has now saved more than 20,000 gallons of fuel. Easy to do: Escape Hybrids get 30 miles in city—or beach—driving and 27 mpg on the rare occasions that they are on the highway.
Still seems like low mileage, but I guess it is good for an SUV.
Your liberal media covers the Israeli raid on the flotilla:
The Israeli Navy raided a flotilla carrying thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza in international waters on Monday morning, killing at least 10 people, according to the Israeli military and activists traveling with the flotilla. Some Israeli media reports put the death toll higher.The incident drew widespread international condemnation, with Israeli envoys summoned to explain their country’s actions in several European countries.
The criticism offered a propaganda coup to Israel’s foes, particularly the Hamas group that holds sway in Gaza, and damaged its ties to Turkey, one of its most important Muslim partners and the unofficial sponsor of the Gaza-bound convoy. Ankara recalled its ambassador to Israel and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cut short a visit to Latin America to return.
Sure, Israel boarded a vessel in International waters and killed a bunch of people, but think of the propaganda coup! Thanks, New York Times, for setting us straight!
I don’t know what this person was thinking, though:
“That is a lie,” said Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by telephone from Cyprus. She said it was inconceivable that the civilian passengers on board would have been “waiting up to fire on the Israeli military, with all its might.”“We never thought there would be any violence,” she said.
You never thought there would be any violence? Did you miss the entire Gaza incursion? The minute I read about the flotilla I knew what was going to happen- violence. The only thing that surprises me is that they bothered to board it at all. I thought they would just torpedo it and then have the “moderate” Tzipi Livni go on tv and smile about the reasonable reaction the IDF offered.
BTW- can we have a Stupak amendment so I am no longer paying for this? That is how it works, right? All you have to do is cite your personal morals and you can get things you don’t like unfunded, right?
