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FRIDAY

Boy Omega


Sebadoh


Sam Cooke!


Recently discovered video of Bush and Cheney planning
the run-up to war!




Wolf Parade

I've posted this Film School twice I think, but fucking fine ham abounds
(this one's a live performance at KEXP):

Film School


Ham? I work hard all day, I expect a normal ham,
not voodoo pork!

My Fellow Mocomofos

For those of us who live in Montgomery County: yesterday Steve Silverman and Ike Leggett, one of whom will replace Doug Duncan as county executive, debated on the Kojo Nnamdi show. You can listen to it here. Please do.

To be honest, I could live with either, and both make their cases well, and I haven't made up my mind, and I need to listen to the debate again. I do support the purple line, and Silverman's stronger on that (and what both Silverman and Leggett mentioned that I knew, but should have known more, is that the biggest pig in the anti-purple is the Columbia Country Club). Leggett seems slightly less whorish for developers. I need to listen to it again.

DCU 3, RBNY 1

Better, much better. Nowak gave starts to Rimando, Dyachenko, Mediate, Walker and Simms, and all played well, especially Dyachenko (who looks like he just might be mighty useful for United for a good long time) considering the offense was running through him. DCU stuttered in the first half as you'd have to expect with so many different starters, and the strategy was long balls over the top to a racing Walker. Once Olsen and Moreno came on around 60 minutes (and DCU scored within 60 seconds) the game was over and you could see RBNY knew it. It was nice not sweating out the outcome for a change.

Key players rested and a victory and some needed momentum and confidence heading into what I think is a crucial game this Saturday. All in all a very encouraging evening.

Bitchwhipped

I guess the appeals to their base's crude racism and their base's crude xenophobia and the crude accusations against Liberals of anti-Semitism aren't enough. The Pigs are playing the crudest they got: Cruder than the term itself is the accusation, the hole card in the hand of Pignican memes:

MORGAN: I'm assuming that she is going to make the run, unless she sees polling or evidence otherwise right up at the year from now.

CARLSON: Rich, the truth is there are so few men left in the Democratic Party. There are so many wussies at the helm of that party.

MASTERS: Gee, thanks.

CARLSON: Nobody has the huevos to stand up to Mrs. Clinton and say, you, you can't win, step back, you're not running for president. Nobody is in charge. So she just bulldozes everybody. That's the truth of it. And you know it.

Yep, if Democrats can't keep their bitches in place, how're they're gonna fight the terrorists?

Irony aside, there is much truth revealed in how Carlson - and Conservatives - accuses others of being victim of the very scissors he fears himself.

Special Game B in Your Ticket Packet

I have to admit I think Saturday's game vs the Donovan Quarantas is more important than tonight's USOC game vs the Demarenas, though I also must admit that my animus against that west coast team of diving pussies and choking wankers colors my opinion.

I also happen to think that Saturday's game - especially if it follows a good performance tonight by United - is an immensely critical game. Yes, the Cobiskankjones would be out of the playoffs if the season ended today, but the Diving Vagenas won the double last year and are one of the league's premier franchises. United desperately needs a convincing league win, a crisp, dominant, thorough win, and a win against one of the league's signature teams. The rest of the league needs reminding of who the best team in the league is. United needs reminding more than the rest of the league.

Winning tonight would both build on last Saturday's second half and build towards Saturday, but if I'm Peter Nowak, with four substitutions in hand (I had forgotten that USOC games allow four until last Germantown) and a huge league game Saturday (before what's traditionally one of the largest and buzzingest crowds of the year) I'm working on giving minutes tonight to Mediate and Dyachenko and Simms and Walker and giving minutes off to Carroll and Olsen and Gros and Moreno. (The Post's pre-game side panel says Gomez will probably be giving the night off to rest the knee he tweaked this past Saturday. It also says Dema will miss game for a red card he got last year for United.) United should be able, if they just play focused and hard, to beat freaking New York AND give some legs an early evening.

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TACTICS

Mondaystuff

A brutally grim assessment of Iraq in yesterday's Washington Post by Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Byman. Just a fucking shame that Pollack didn't think of this BEFORE he began advocating invading Iraq. The article, without that background, has valid points. The article, with that background, is a template for "Liberal Hawk" self-justifications that will be pestilential in volume in the months ahead.

Smart and commonsensical op-ed by Andrew Bacevich:

Frustrated American hawks and some anxious Israelis now want to up the ante. Believing that big victories require big wars, some advocate attacking Iran. The appeal is clear: At least in its initial stages, a war with Iran would play to the U.S. or Israeli strong suit. It would be a war of "shock and awe" rather than of ambushes and roadside bombs. But even if a war against Iran were winnable militarily — a large assumption indeed — would victory solve our political problems? History says don't count on it.

Gunter Grass' public trial.

Tom Tomorrow on seriously confronting terrorism.

Billmon, smart as always:

I think if Shrub were ever forced to let go of his vision, his one big idea, it would not only crush his fragile ego, it would leave him completely incapable of making any sense at all out of his presidency, out of America's role in the Middle East, out of the universe.

New short story by Richard Ford.



Futureheads

Ballooning Rumsfeld's Fall

That Joe Lieberman would call for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense comes neither as courageous or unexpected. It really is the least he could do, which means it's exactly what anyone could have predicted. There are no accidents round here.

Transparent cynicism aside in the case of the ickily despicable Joe, turn instead to the transparent cynicism of the Kingdom of Wicked: I'm thinking that Plan X , already plotted, is being ground-memed and balloon-floated, enabled through Holy Joe. If Standard Rove fails - if Americans stubbornly refuse to be fear-stampeded into voting Pignican - The Decider! offs Don in October.

The Decider!s famous loyalty begins and ends with his sorry ass. Hmmm.... Possible takeover of House by Democrats and all the misery that would cause or firing Donald Rumsfeld in mid-October in a last ditch wtf to change the election's dynamic? Loyalty, schmoyalty.

Which would prove that even when the turdtard in charge does something that benefits the country it's for motives that have nothing to do with the good of the country.


UPDATE: Alterman makes this prediction today:

Here’s my prediction: If Lieberman wins the election, he will not switch to the Republicans, as some fear. But he will do the functional equivalent, which is accept Bush’s appointment to replace Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, resign his seat and allow the Republican governor of Connecticut to appoint a Republican in his stead. That is the implicit deal between the Lieberman camp and Rove, Cheney, Bush etc and the reason, that alone, in the entire country, this is the only race where this most partisan of political operations, refuses to support the Republican in the race. Bush, Rove and Cheney do not make political decisions on the basis of what they think is good for the country. They care only about their party and themselves. If Lieberman supporters are genuinely supporting him as a Democrat, is it not enough for him to pledge to vote with the party in the Senate. He must pledge that, under no circumstances, will he accept an appointment from Bush or resign his seat under any circumstances, so long as a Republican occupies the state House.

Sounds plausible to me.

DCU 1, Colorado 1

I know I wrote yesterday that a tie would be disappointing, and if United had scored in the second half on a badly given PK while playing just as listlessly as in the first half, it would have been, as well as worrisome. I'm hoping that first half is the low point of the season; it better be if United has ambitious goals.

But United came out in the second half with as much intensity and urgency as I've them display in a league game in what seems an eternity. If Gomez' goal itself was odd and soft, it was deserved as United should have had three or four. Around the sixty minute mark Colorado bunkered, and at the final whistle the Rapids clearly were happy with a tie.

Nowak started Stokes for the yellowed Namoff and then subbed out Stokes for Walker at half, dropping Gros back on defense. The move was made for offense, and Walker's speed on the wing helped open up the Colorado defense. If MLS teams are going to clog the middle and jam the midfielders - and Colorado did - than United has to go wide. It made me think about the signing of Donnet. If the description of Donnet's speed and skills on the wing are even half true, I have to assume that an Argentine professional, in academies since an early teen, would exploit the openings Walker had far better than Walker can. Watching Walker yesterday with yards and yards of space and watching Walker just not have the skills to finish, the signing of Donnet - if he is all that - made infinite sense.

Yes, a win would be better, but I'm more encouraged with this tie than I was with the recent past. That second half had a buzzing United playing before a buzzing crowd. Yes, United ran out of gas and yes, Gomez limped off with a hammie-pull (no one knows as yet how bad, or is saying). But I get the feeling that United is sick of this shit. They played the second half with an attitude which makes them the best team in the league. If they play whole games with the urgency they played the first thirty minutes of the second half yesterday, they'll be fine. The issue is, can they?