The NYT Friday has an article on the infiltration (their word) of the US military by white supremacist groups. It also reports that Aryan Nation graffiti is appearing in Iraq:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

Remember, dominionist christers have had this strategy for years: get the kids into the military academies to create an officer class of christers. This is about the enlisted christers:

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units.

"Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war," he wrote. "It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.' "

He concluded: "As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood."

"Hunted down and 'cleansed.'" If the quotes are accurate, as a white third generation European-American, I will be spared the first round of hunting and cleansing, though I assume that's only if I mind my own business and wait quietly for the second round when they come after Liberals and atheists (who will be defined as anyone who does not believe the very same thing the man with the machine gun believes).

My tax dollars paying to train my potential and willing executioners. Sweet.

FriXdaYFriXdaYFriXdaYFriXday

It was better before before they voted for whatsisname
This is supposed to be the New World

X on Letterman

X on myspace

Knitters on Letterman

Exene on myspace

AARGH!

Start with "In a Young Man's Mind"

and

America is celebrating the 61th birthday of the man
who put the banana in 2nd banana
and is the the role model for The Decider!:

And, it's been a while, but Olddog Cultural Allusion Time!

On NPR's ATC yesterday, Daniel Schorr wondered,
Is there a strategy behind North Korea's actions?

Yep:

Reading
(the activity, not the Home of the Royals)

Billmon

Digby

American Empire?

Seymour Hersh on the military:

In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. “Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ”

Remnick on Bushpress

Bacevich on Liberals and foreign policy

and listen to this:

Cloud Cult

FCD 0, DCU 1

While I'm tired of sweating out 55 minutes of play with a 1-0 lead, I give all credit to DCU for winning them now rather than giving up a late goal and drawing 1-1 ties. Against the flow of play DCU counterattacks through Adu and Moreno to Gomez. The announcers - who called Ruiz on his diving; one, I think it was Garth, once said derisively something like, "Oh, Ruiz must have broken a toenail" - gave credit to Jaime for dummying the ball to Gomez, but it looked to me that Moreno was looking to dummy and turn himself and Gomez ran onto the ball and scored.

An in-form Eskandarian would have buried that late breakaway, and Dallas should have scored after 45 seconds and again a minute and a half later, and again and again and again. There are two ways to interpret games like this: good teams create good luck or karma is a bitch, and spending it in early July may leave a team in deficit in October. I believe it's the former (b/c as a fan I have to), and that DCU's strategy was to absorb and counter. Nowak gave the team three days off before yesterday in recognition of a busy schedule (including Celtic, a week from today!) and anticipation of a brutal July late afternoon in Hell, Texas: I think Nowak decided to let FCD do most of the running. Lucky that Dallas missed open shots? Yes. Burning karma? I don't think so. If you set a strategy and it works, luck may be a component but it's not the driver.

I like Simms, but it was good to see Benny back out there. He brings urgency. Simms will get his minutes, and it'll be interesting to see who starts this Saturday in Hell, Ohio. There are a lot of games (I wonder how fervently DCU will push its Cup run, due to start up in the next month), and there are minutes for everybody.

4th

The anger Republican strategists are inciting when they attack the NYT is not that the terrorists now know what everyone knew. What angers the beehives of conservative drones is that they are reminded of what they always knew about America but deny: the underlying faults in the myth of American exceptionality. It's not the world that Republicans fear having the knowledge of American atrocities on the battlefield or in the prison cell, it's not the terrorists that Conservatives fear having the knowledge of American illegal tactics, it's the American people.

And if the American people have to know - and yes, they have to know - the Right's well aware of the craven bully trick, a combination of killing the messenger and what I call the Nila Hake: I can call my momma a bitch, but you can't. This serves two memes - it reinforces that Progressives are not American, and if they're not American they have no right to criticize. Utterly cowardly, utterly effective. Liberals are responsible for ruining the Rightwing's cherished myth of American exceptionality by demanding the government try to match that myth by actions. Like most Conservative illogic, it's based on a self-serving, self-fulfilling prophesy.

But what really drives them rabid is their dim awareness, scratching beneath the foam, that it's the Progressive/Liberal/Pacifist traditions that give the myths of American exceptionality their perpetual forward momentum. Rugged individualism only resonates if a presumption of fairness is present. The melting pot welcomes immigrants. A kind and generous people doesn't produce uniformed sadists grinningly smirring shit on captives in an imperial war of choice. It was Progressive Liberals that freed the slaves, that gave women the vote, that brought the country out of depression. It was Progressive Liberals that confronted and defeated Jim Crow, that gave workers the minimum wage and workmen's compensation and paid holidays. It's Progressive Liberals that say the job isn't done. What drives the Rightwing nuts is their static reptilebrains is the knowledge that the America they idolize like a boy with a Playboy centerfold could not and would not and will not exist without Progressive Liberals.

E.J. Dionne, in an op-ed today in the Washington Post, defends the Progressive tradition:

But the progressive and the reformer have a problem with what passes for unadulterated patriotism. By nature, the reformer is bound to insist that the country, however glorious, is not a perfect place, that it is capable of doing wrong as well as right. The nation that declared "all men are created equal" was, at the time those words were written, the home of an extensive system of slavery.

Run on the tradition. Progressivism made America the great country it is, Progressivism is the only thing that can make America greater. And stronger and kinder and fairer. And open and tolerant and peaceful and welcoming. It'll drive Conservatives nuts. Which is why the NYTs must be attacked when it reminds Conservatives of the illogic of their illusions.

UPDATE: Conservative Exceptionalism

Nowak? USMNT?

Nowak as USMNT head coach? Rumors? I hadn't heard any until this at the weekly MLS rankings on soccernet:

Peter Nowak wins the All-Star coaching post, and the buzz that comes with it -- whispers of U.S. national team candidacy

And then here, in an article on soccernet:

There is very little doubt that Nowak is a man with an enormous upside here in the United States and he should be a strong candidate for the position.

Went and looked at the DCU threads at Big Soccer and couldn't find anything as of 4:30pm 7/3. Briefly looked at the USMNT threads and couldn't bring myself to explore. I find it hard to believe that a coach with only one team and two and a half years coaching experience would be given the USMNT job, but if it's Nowak or Sigi Schmid or Bob Bradley or Dave Sarachan, I'd take Nowak, my reservations about him (which are eroding) notwithstanding.

(Somewhere over the weekend I heard or read that Klinsmann has committed to Deutschland through Austria/Switzerland Euro 08, quashing that Klinsmann the Californian for USMNT rumor. Scolari has pledged to Portugal.)

In the Washington Post pregame article for tonight's DCU-FCD game, Ben Olsen defends Arena and attacks Arena's critics:

"It's being done in a disrespectful way from a lot of guys around television," said Olsen, who is expected to travel with his United teammates for today's match at FC Dallas. "I think it's just completely ridiculous and cowardly the way they're going about it."

I think Arena did as well as he could with what he had, but after eight years it's time for a change for everyone. The big advantage USMNT had in 2002 over 2006 was an element of surprise: no one in USMNT group in 2006 didn't have the advantage of years of tapes: they knew what to do against the USMNT system. And Arena's fascination with particular players - Beasley, Johnson, Pope - locked him into that system. It's just time for a change.

Nothing about the game itself in the article, really: the projected line-up is the same. Of the two games this week, this one is more important than the road game in Columbus. Beyond the strategy of winning tonight and worrying about Saturday Saturday, this is a six point game in the race for the Supporter's Shield. And FCD's kits are ugly. And Carlos Ruiz is a diving pussy. And Kenny Cooper is dangerous.

But remember Ronnie O'Brien's happy dance in front of Barra and Eagles when FCD tied DCU at RFK back in April? Be nice to see a couple or three happy dances in front of Dallas' fans.