Hope Beyond Hope

OK, having finally unscrewed myself from the ceiling - I can now state the obvious:

That was the greatest performance by a US soccer team that I have ever seen.

Scoreline – July 10, 2011
Brazil: 2
Marta 68', 92'
USA: 2
Daiane 2' OG; Wambach 120'+2

Solo to Melksham: You'll go home before I do

I mean, let's check off the setup:

High stakes? It's the World Cup Quarterfinal, duh.
Rivalry? Brazil. Yes, there's a bit of history there.

Hope Solo has a bum shoulder, or at least is taking great pains to appear to be in pain during warmups.

Tense? Yeah.

Kinda.

So, we have one of those dream starts where the soccer gods (who are a$$holes) gift us an own goal off Brazil's Daiane panic stab.

Hard to feel good about that - but given the US fragility through the rest of the tournament - it's almost divine providence. Brazil on the back foot and the US can focus on playing their game. Brazil drip talent from every pore, can score on the smallest mistake, and God help you if you get behind on goals or players.

But Brazil have a history of mental breakdowns. When they are winning, they are the Samba Queens. When they are losing, they turn into the Drama Queens - every bit as cynical as an Italian mens team.  Diving, Pouting, The pleading cous-cous gesture in front of the ref. Writhing on the ground for every imagined foul.

Vs. the Samba Queens, I'm thinking the US will have a hard time - but the US women can beat the Drama Queens any day of the week.

A goal down, Brazil is looking very dramatic - and the US, while not being bulletproof at the back, is playing a very solid game. Wambach is doing more damage by drawing fouls than anything else - but its a solid 1st half that any objective observer would have to cede to the North Americans.

But in the 62nd minute, the game reverts to type.

Enter the BS Red Card:

 Melksham: I will now utterly F#*k up the game

That's Rachel Buehler getting thrown out because - well, Marta did something clever that didn't work out. Buehler was the closest US player - so naturally she's thrown out of the game.

I'm sure a Brazilian would see that play differently, and you could certainly make the case for a penalty. But Marta was never going to get the ball regardless of Buehler - so the red card is just a load of crap.

The Drama Queens are gifted a PK and it's all onto our injured keeper, Solo. Penalty kicks become goals 80% of the time - so this will become a goal, and the US will play for the remainder of the game with 10 players.

Great.

Only Solo stops it. Incredible.The US is down a player, but they keep the lead.

Solo's screaming at the heavens and the US is in mid-exultation when the ref decides that she hasn't f#*ked up the game quite enough yet.

The Drama Queens will get a do-over - because (take your pick)

1. Solo moved off her line before the kick to a degree that is only perceptible to persons named Melksham; or
2. A US player was 1 step leaning inside the 18 yard box as the ball was struck

Reason 1 is total crap, and reason 2 is an incredibly tight ruling on a colossal play. Encroachment in the box is a big deal, but the merest step in the box is something forgiven in virtually every case unless there is some argument that it affected the resulting play.

It did not, the shooter was not distracted, and the resulting deflection was easily cleared without the encroaching player gaining some advantage.

In other words, much like the red card, the do-over call was total crap.

Marta steps up for the re-do and slots it home.

We're 1-1 with the Drama Queens - awaiting their inevitable transformation as our shorthanded team is ground down by their speed, talent, and (totally undeserved) numeric superiority.

Seen it before. And while I'm sure the US will be valiant, you just can't hope to contain and then score on Brazil while you're shorthanded. They'll lay back and burn you on the counter.

But then something strange happens - the US midfield steps up huge. Brazil is getting picked apart before they get deep into our end. Repeatedly.

We're getting chances in the Brazilian end. And the crowd has seriously turned. Every time Brazil has the ball in our end, the stadium erupts in whistles and boos. They start totally hating on Marta. I can't recall ever seeing a player of her skill booed so vehemently.

And the ref takes the hint. She's totally blown the game apart with her ineptitude, so a flurry of make-up calls start falling against Brazil. And incredibly, Brazil stays in Drama Queen mode.

Pouting, whining, diving - the whole act. Somehow they forget that they are a gifted side - and the USA hold them  until the end of regulation.

At this point - you have to be proud of the USA for hanging in there. But all that valor has earned is another half hour of the same treatment.

Extra time - and we're right on script. Marta gets an impossible ball and does something impossible with it to score two minutes in. It would be deserved if only one of their players hadn't been totally offside.

Brazil is insane, the crowd is not pleased and we're set for a grind down of the US until the final whistle. Down a goal and a player - this is about as dark a hole as you can find yourself in.

Still, the US plays on the attack - we get pressure up on the Brazilian goal against all odds - and the Brazilians are not grinding us down. There's a lot of takeaways in midfield - but no classic torching of the back line.

We lurch into the second half of extra time and I'm thinking we'll avoid the undeserved blowout score. The one critics will spout on about how we were "outclassed" and "outplayed" when in fact we were undeservedly hamstrung and hung out to dry.

[[Late Edit: Anonymous rightly points out another winning moment from the match - Ericka's laughably bad rendition of I've been crippled for life, get the stretcher. Naturally this was followed by her immediate and total recovery as soon as her erstwhile deathbed was carried over the touchline.

The crowd's prolonged outrage was satisfying enough, but the ref was apparently so offended by Ericka's cynical abuse of the game - she carded her. The look on Ericka's face was priceless.

Would that all recipients of the "magic sponge" were so rewarded. Or (as I've said to anyone who won't taze me) perhaps the rules should be amended such that any injury that results in a stoppage requires the speedy removal of the player by stretcher and a minimum amount of recovery time off the pitch. You wanna waste time? Waste your own team's time - the rest of us have a game to play.]]

Wambach is trolling for fouls and Lloyd keeps trying from distance. Morgan is doing her best but we're at the end of extra time and we're clearly going down.

Lloyd's getting run down in mid-field and Ian Darke is looking at the clock saying "She really has to get this pass off.." Literally two minutes to go and Lloyd guts it out to get a pass to Rapinoe, streaking wide.

Rapinoe taps it once, looks up - and fires an orgasmic-ly  brilliant cross into the box-
-and of course - late in the game - have we packed the box with players?

No, there's no one...

-No one except Abby-Freaking-Wambach. My brain starts into ...but she's been in a slump...

And then she heads it home like a guided missile!

Wambach to World: The Drought is Muthafu*#-ing Over.

It's unbelievable. I'm screaming Are You Kidding Me??!! as Abby roars towards the corner flag and the crowd blows the roof off the stadium. Brazilians are looking at each other with expressions of total defeat.

Too bad pouty faces and playacting don't count in PK shootouts.... Awww.

I don't know how Brazil managed to piss off the soccer gods, but the shootout was scripted by someone who clearly wanted to see them suffer full blown agony before death.

The US kicks first and - in a act of karma that is too perfect by half- Boxy's shot is stopped. And the ref calls a re-do because Andreia came off her line. 

Boxy's mulligan goes in - and the life drains out of the South Americans.

Solo's been baying for blood ever since Marta's do-over - so you better believe she's ready.

Daiane (of the I-kicked-the-ball-into-my-own-net fame) gets stuffed by Solo, and now Brazil knows they are doomed.

The US demands it, the crowd demands it- The goddamned universe demands it - and it will happen.

Today the soccer gods are d!cking with somebody besides us.

Alex Krieger steps up with the weight of the nation on her shoulders - and buries it.

• Boxx: Way to step the hell up. You were awesome.
• Rapinoe: All's forgiven for that perfect cross. 
• Wambach: You were just playing with us, weren't you? Waiting for that perfect moment to start scoring again? Well stop that, you're going to kill somebody.
• Solo: FIFA's calling you the player of the match, but only because they're sorry for how bad their ref tried to punk you. You're the player of the match by worldwide acclamation. Rock out and ride this to the final. You earned it.

I am literally dying to see the mash-up of crowd reactions to this match, because I think you're going to see some people seriously lose their sh!t.

Jaw dropping. No other words for it.

I've never seen the like.

Go USA.

Wambach and Solo: Do you see, Brazil??
Do you see how we crush your dreams??!!

Blissfully anticlimactic

E has dubbed it so. And thank the powers that it was so.

The only drama left is whether or not Obama makes it to 370.

Obama was the statesman, so petty gloating and hectoring is left to the bloggers.

So, allow me to address the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.:

Get the hell out of our White House, you pin-headed schmuck. You and your wingnut administration aren't running things anymore.

Human interest

(via CJR)

Two years ago Boston.com told the sad story of an Iraqi boy named Rakan. US soldiers had mistakenly fired on his family's vehicle - killing his parents and paralyzing the boy.

It was one of those stories where humanity tries valiantly to address inhumanity.

An outpouring of goodwill brought Rakan to the US for treatment. A group of committed backers got him what he needed. His condition improved - although he was still paralyzed. He new friends got him what he needed, bt not what he wanted - to be returned to Iraq.

They relented - and Rakan went home.

Kevin Cullen picks up the story:

As we waved, and the car driven by Rakan's brother-in-law disappeared into the dust, Larry Ronan must have felt what I was feeling because he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, "Don't worry. We'll see him again."

We never did.

Rakan Hassan, the boy whose life Larry Ronan saved, the boy I sat with most days for five months, the boy who became my sons' friend, the boy who touched anybody and everybody he met, was killed in June when a bomb exploded at his family's home in Mosul. He was 14 years old. Two of his sisters - an infant and a teenager - were injured in the attack but are expected to recover.

It happened June 16, but given the madness that is Iraq, it took us weeks to confirm. We got a death certificate the other day and so now we know for sure.

No storybook finish, no TV ending  - just the cold reality that bad things happen in dangerous places. To anyone.

Whatever we end up doing for this boy's country, all we did for him added up to one more senseless death.
Whatever happens in the next few years, we're still going to have a hard time answering the question  

What did we do here? 

What got accomplished?

Memorial Day

So, Memorial Day came and went. Good time, good friends, even good weather.

I'd go into it, but most of you were there.

Then there's today. Just another day to drag my kids to the place where I pay others to look after them, so I can try to earn enough to keep paying for child care.

I do the same route, day in, day out. Aside from traffic patterns not much changes.

This morning - something was different.

Rounding a corner I see the same backdrop, with a different foreground. In the grass of a long park that flanks the road is a war memorial.

I've read about them, seen the pictures - first time I actually saw it in the real. Hundreds upon hundreds of small white monuments lined up in the morning sun.

They are arranged like a timeline, and at irregular intervals a larger sign announces Iraq 2003 Iraq 2004, Afghanistan 2003, Afghanistan 2004.

And it just keeps going on. Year after year after year.

I've been to the Wall, to Arlington, Punchbowl - but the feeling was different. Seeing that number the nightly news treats like a sports score turned into a tangible presence is very uncomfortable. These dead would fill a cemetery - and not a small one.

The monument is political - filled with hopeful statements about how 'You can stop this.' No doubt most of those memorialized in it believed fully in what they were doing - but the mistakes of their leaders makes monuments like this one feel like a barely muted accusation.

Somehow the dead of other wars seem validated, the Wall at least symbolizes a lesson we should have learned.

Obviously we haven't.

Late edit:

Media Bloodhound makes a finer, and better point.

The upside to a McCain presidency

(H/t CJR) Assuming McCain wins the White House, I personally benefit.

McCain was born outside of the U.S., on a military installation, to parents who were both U.S. citizens.

Just like me.

If he can be president - then I can be president.

Score one for military brats!

All this has happend before

Think counterinsurgency, torture, denial and legal revolts are a new thing in American history?

Of course they are not. And no, I'm not talking about Vietnam.

I'm talking about the Philippines. Turn of the century. Remember "the Hiker?"

First we liberated them from the Spanish, and then we pulled the plug on their dream of independence. Then they rebelled, and then we tried to stop the rebellion.

And then things just went downhill.

The New Yorker has an article (h/t to DangerRoom) describing our troubled history in the Philippines.

There are obvious differences, but there are some obvious and disturbing parallels.

Deliver us from the rubber stamp

The idea of a national primary keeps getting floated as a solution to all our electoral woes. MyDD's Jerome Armstrong is on this today.

Despite my confirmed irritation with Iowa and New Hampshire voters getting first crack at those who would be president, I'm not sure a national primary is the answer.

It's a cliché, but if the nomination goes to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in a single, national primary – all campaigns for president must be national. Period.

No campaign will ever start small and grow into a national candidate – they must have the bucks and logistics to cover all the states (or enough of the population centers) to win.

This election has shown us candidates who do not have national legs (Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards) and while they have clearly been given short shrift by the media – were this a national primary, they'd have never gotten into the race at all.

Armstrong links to an article from Democracy Journal where Kenneth Bauer asserts that a national primary will not endanger "retail politics" (something I'd concede) and rebuts my particular objection with :

It’s at this point that someone pulls the Jimmy Carter card, arguing that the current system enables a relative unknown to emerge. This idea is as dated as a can of "Billy Beer." Carter is, in fact, the only candidate to have made such a journey, and even he made important moves to build support during the Invisible Primary, winning, for instance, the Iowa State straw poll in 1975. And Carter benefited immensely from being the first candidate to exploit fully the dynamics of the new nominating system.

Assuming he's right about Carter (a fair assumption) Armstrong's argument gets boiled down to: "The door's practically shut on emerging candidates now, why not slam it?"

I don’t agree. While the political establishment would never go for it- the idea that the nomination begin in a few states before going to a wider set of states I think has merit. My chief objection is that the order is fixed in stone – Iowa and New Hampshire always get the Pole Position. The established powers always know what ground they will be battling on.

You set up a system where the order changes from time to time, and I think you afford the outsider a (slim) chance to get in – and you add some variables to the mix.

I mean, look at the primary we have now – the states were all jostling for position in the primary season and we've ended up with primaries after Super Tuesday that actually matter. (Yes, I understand that Super Delegates can F that up, but stay with me…)

Candidates may break under the relentless strain of campaigning – but we're seeing states voting with enthusiasm – people are just so happy to be asked their opinion (as opposed to being informed who their party's candidate will be, and won't-you-please-pull-the-only-lever-you-have?).

Making it a national primary will ensure that my vote is counted, but it will also ensure that my choices of candidates will be limited in a process I have absolutely no say in.

Call me Polly

...because I'd pretty much parrot everything that Rick Perstein said about Ahmadinejad's visit to the US. By way of Digby - here's a sample of Bed-wetter Nation:

Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people—then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers' family quarters....

Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Had the general running the country—the man who had faced down Hitler!—proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?

No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great.

...

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess.

Iran's president speaks at a great American university. That university's president, in the act of introducing his lecture, whines like a baby bereft of his pacifier that his guest is a big meany poopy-head. City Council members, too, and a rabbi, make like ten-year-olds, giving their press conference in front of a sign with his face struck through and the legend "Go To Hell." Up in Albany, Democratic leader Sheldon Silver treat the students of this great university like ten years olds, threatening to defund Columbia University lest censors like himself prove unable to shut the poor children's ears to difficult speech. (What, was he worried they'd be convinced, join the jihad?) Then a Republican presidential candidate chimes in—bye, bye, federalism!—saying Washington should starve the school of funds, too.

I mean, what's the deal people? Are we as insecure intellectually as we are physically? When do we halt this insane notion of "because I don't agree with you, you must be forbidden to speak."

I mean, if there hadn't been all this teeth gnashing, the headline wouldn't be "The Evil has landed," it would be "Iran's president denies there are gay Iranians."

Weak.

Broadband envy

Here are some encouraging graphics, courtesy of the Washington Post:

Feeling ripped off yet?

It gets better, one of the reasons Japan's broadband is blazingly fast has to do with aggressive government regulation and (you guessed it) Net Neutrality.

Japan's Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future

TOKYO -- Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it.

Once again corporate America is protesting laws that will lead to a better, cheaper product.

Nice.

When did we stop being America?

I was reading the declassified excerpts from the NIE on Trends in Global Terrorism, and got distracted by a small thing that has bugged me for years.

From the declassified key judgments:

...We judge that al-Qaida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad...
We assess that the operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow in importance to US counterterrorism efforts, particularly abroad but also in the Homeland...
...[groups like Jamaah Islamiya and Ansar al-Sunnah] pose less of a danger to the Homeland than does al-
Qaeida...

Homeland.

When did we re-brand this nation as "the Homeland?" As in: the-completely-fabricated-proper-noun, Homeland.

When did "America" become inadequate to describe where we live? Why do we suddenly need to refer to this nation as anything other than its given name?

Nevermind the fascist overtones this re-branded pretender implies. Ask yourself, what need is this word filling? Precision? Imprecision?

Department of Homeland Security.
Why in Sam Hell couldn't we have a Department of Domestic Security?

There are bigger fish to fry in the world, but its just another symptom of an ideology moving to sneak into our thoughts by taking over the language.

Estate tax? Death Tax.
Eavesdropping? Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Torture? Interrogation Techniques.

Don't think of America in the same way, this seems to suggest - think of it our way.

Sorry, but I live in America. The "homeland" can bite me.