Brazil 3, Croatia 1: And so it begins...the hosts fell behind early on a fluke own goal, then rallied behind two goals from debutant star Neymar, including a penalty off a terrible call, and clinching the game in injury time on a Mark Moseley-style toekick by Oscar.  Before anyone tries to draw any predictions based on this shaky start, please note that the last World Cup champs, Spain, lost their 2010 opener to Switzerland, and Brazil was itself unimpressive in its opener the last time it won, in 2002.  That game, a 2-1 victory over
Turkey, also featured an early deficit, an incredibly dodgy dive by a Brazilian player that led to the winning penalty kick, and an even sleazier bit of fakery that got a Turkish player sent off.  Good times....

World Cup 2014 is finally upon us, and as I have done here every four years  since 2002, here is the country-by-country comparison of this year's contestants and their NCAA hoops counterparts:

Algeria -- MEAC champion
Argentina -- Michigan State
Australia -- Play-in winner (16 seed)
Belgium -- Wichita State

Bosnia-Hrzg. -- Oregon
Brazil -- Kentucky
Cameroon -- Play-in loser (12 v. 12 game)
Chile -- San Diego State

Columbia -- Syracuse
Costa Rica -- Mercer
Croatia -- Stanford
Ecuador -- New Mexico

England -- UCLA
France -- Louisville
Germany -- Duke
Ghana -- Michigan

Greece -- Virginia
Honduras -- Big West champs
Iran -- OVC champs
Italy -- Kansas

Ivory Coast --Gonzaga
Japan-- PAC-12 Champion, when Arizona and UCLA are having off-seasons
Mexico -- Baylor
Netherlands -- Michigan

Nigeria -- New Mexico St.
Portugal -- Arizona
Russia -- Tennessee
South Korea -- Ivy League champion

Spain -- UConn
Switzerland -- Oklahoma St.
United States -- Virginia Commonwealth
Uruguay -- Creighton

Leave any criticisms, questions, challenges, etc. in the tip jar....

The Obamabots Are Out to Get Me !!!

It seems that Star Reporter and Brave Defender of Noble Whistleblowers everywhere Glenn Greenwald is in fine fettle today. Apropos of nothing, he takes on his favorite StrawMan, the mythical character who defends Barack Obama at all costs, no matter what he does, without giving any examples of the creature. This time, it's in the context of the President's apparent decision to discontinue the collection of metadata, while still allowing the government to get permission from FISA to review said data. I have no idea how any of that is really a reform or will bolster my right of privacy, but Greenwald seems to be getting some serious wood about this, less because the President has proposed such a step as that his "supporters" (ie., African Americans, feminists, MSNBC watchers, Latinos, etc.) will now have to back this apparent change in policy. Of course, I love a good old-fashioned "Everybody is a Hypocrite Except Me" rant as much as the next guy, except our Intrepid Junior Chomsky in Rio doesn't provide any examples of this misbehavior, not a single "defend-Obama-at-all-cost cheerleaders" who has publicly defended a decision by the Administration, then flipped after the President has had a change of heart. Not one link, not an anecdote nor quote. Nothing. Nada. The article begins with a long dissertation on the Obama Administration's decision not to release additional Abu Ghraib photos in 2009. Greenwald points out that the initial decision, popular with progressives, was to go ahead and publish the pics, but that public outcry forced a reversal. Greenwald claims that the decision was met with a similarly dramatic reversal among Obama's supporters, but provides no examples of same; in fact, he does link to an old Salon article which shows quite the opposite, with people like Andrew Sullivan, Dan Froomkin, John Aravosis and the proprietors of Talking Points Memo all attacking the President for the flip-flop !! This has been a recurrent habit of Mr. Greenwald, a self-righteous tone that demands that we acknowledge not only his bravery and intrepid defense of our Liberties and Freedoms, but that those who disagree with him aren't simply hypocrites, but even worse, Partisan Hacks. That he doesn't see fit to provide any evidence that these people exist outside of a blog's Comments Section ultimately weakens his ability to speak to the undecided, but in the end, that isn't important to him, since the issue, whether it be NSA spying or drone attacks or torture, isn't really important to him either.

Just going to show that for all the recent hyperventilating about the NSA, there is no more intrusive snooper and violator of privacy than the free market.  Websites are now proliferating that enable third parties to post their neighbors' criminal arrests, expunged convictions, mug shots, bankruptcies, and the like.  To be removed from such a site, a monetary fee is required; if you refuse to pay, and naively believe that the website's proprietors should do the right thing anyway, you are greeted with this cheery mission statement of the website: "(it) strongly believes in freedom of speech and nothing will ever be censored on our service for any reason. If you don't like freedom of speech, we encourage you to either contact lawmakers and voice your opinion or move to a communist state."

Ah, the liberty of the private sector....

Triumph of the Will

Triumph of the Will: As yet another nightmare pleasure cruise comes to a bleak end, now is probably as good a time as ever to revisit my 2011 post, much-beloved by libertarians, on the stupidity of the current federal laws and regulations regarding the cruising industry.  Although much has been noted about how foreign-flagged ships do not have to obey American labor and safety practices, the significant barrier to any cruiseship flying the Stars and Stripes is the requirement under American maritime law that it be built domestically, a sop to a non-existent American cruiseship building industry.  Since cruiselines have no capability of complying with that requirement, they have no incentive to obey any other American laws as well.... 

O-2 !!!!!!!!...the second time is always better !!!

Mac Thomason, R.I.P.

When I first began blogging, I originally intended to have both a journal that focused on politics and current events, and another on college sports.  The college sports blog, named Condredge's Acolytes (after the first African-American year-long starting QB for an SEC school, Condredge Holloway), was intended to be open, inviting other contributors.  The most enthusiastic contributor was Mac Thomason, who worked as a librarian in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and he provided invaluable analysis of SEC football, as well as personal encouragement to me in pursuing this interest.  He had started his political blog, War Liberal, at roughly the same time I did, and we had exchanged links early on, so inviting him to participate was a no-brainer.

It is with great sadness to report that on Saturday Mr. Thomason has lost his battle with testicular cancer.   This tribute, by sportswriter Joe Posnanski, who like myself never had the privilege of meeting him, but who also enjoyed the clear prose he brought to the blogosphere, beautifully describes the loss that those who loved and admired Mr. Thomason feel today.

Best Springsteen commentary ever:  And one in which the writer doesn't feel the need to point out the hackneyed use of the sexist term "baby" in every song...someone has noticed that the last twenty-five years haven't been all that great:

The musical decline of Bruce Springsteen has been obvious for decades. The sanctimony, the grandiosity, the utterly formulaic monumentality; the witlessness; the tiresome recycling of those anthemic figures, each time more preposterously distended; the disappearance of intimacy and the rejection of softness. And the sexlessness: Remnick adores Springsteen for his “flagrant exertion,” which he finds deeply sensual, comparing him to James Brown, but Brown’s shocking intensity, his gaudy stamina, his sea of sweat, was about, well, fucking, whereas Springsteen “wants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, ‘with your hands hurting, your feet hurting, your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated!’ ”, which is how you talk dirty at Whole Foods...

(snip)

Nothing has damaged Springsteen’s once-magnificent music more than his decision to become a spokesman for America. He is Howard Zinn with a guitar. The wounded workers in his songs do not have the authenticity of acquaintance; they are pious hackneyed tropes, stereotypical class martyrs from Guthrie and Steinbeck. Springsteen’s sympathy is genuine, but his people are not. His 9/11 and recession songs are bloated editorials: “where’s the promise from sea to shining sea?” His anger that “the banker man grows fat” is too holy: “if I had a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot ‘em on sight” is not a “liberal insistence.” I prefer Dodd-Frank. The drawl in his voice is a production value, the grit a mannerism. A few minutes with one of Johnny Cash’s last records and it is impossible to take Springsteen’s vernacular seriously.

For those who desire that we have the best judicial system in the world, and not see the Supreme Court as just another partisan branch, that was a close call.  Here's the decision.  I would like to see the Constitution amended at some point to prevent narrow 5-4 decisions being used to invalidate laws passed by Congress, a preference on my part for the elected voice of the People over an unelected elite of law school profs and former corporate appellate litigators, but thanks to the Chief Justice, that's a problem for another day.

Another fake Pulitzer "nominee" gets busted !!!

This time, it's the appropriately-fake LA Times pundit Jonah Goldberg....

Since Charles Murray's book about the so-called "white working class" is getting a lot of press, I thought I'd repost my responses to the cliched questions he proffered two years ago as a way of distinguishing class differences.

Working Class Zero: Early on in an analytical piece about the President's reelection strategy comes this little nugget:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics. [emphasis mine]

I wonder when the term "working class" went from being a description of those who engage in manual labor for a paycheck, to a somewhat dispargaging term referring to educational underachieving. The use of the term "working class" to describe anyone who lacks a college degree seems rather arbitrary, and doesn't provide much in the way of analytical value, since it includes Bill Gates, Gwyneth Paltrow, the late Steve Jobs, and the Kardashian sisters as "working class," while expelling any autoworker with a degree from Wayne State from the ranks of the proletariat.

As a demographic term used in political analysis, I fail to see why this term is useful, unless one wants to make the elitist argument that white people who aren't well-educated lean Republican. If there is one group that has been most dramatically impacted by the Great Recession, it's low-to-medium wage college graduates, a group that is particularly susceptible to an appeal based on economic populism. On the other hand, if you want to dig deeper and understand the political biases of those who work for someone else for a living, merely using a label based on educational accomplishments won't get you there.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Haka:

Unclear whether the French were preparing some sort of response along the lines of the can-can, but thought better of it at the last minute. The All Blacks ended up winning the WC Final, 8-7.

Solyndra, solyndra....

I suppose there's no point commenting on the faux-outrage about this story, but it is interesting (at least to me) that there seem to be people who are under the impression that it is a horrible, beastly thing for the government to have lost money on this sort of investment. Solyndra was involved a business that is typically high-risk, so any sort of investment was going to be iffy; the fact that it (and other businesses like it) went under isn't a surprise. The free market is inefficient when it comes to picking and choosing the sorts of new technologies that have a socially useful benefit in the future, since it's all about maximizing profits, right this minute. If the government was basing every decision on what to subsidy as a guaranteed profit center, it wouldn't be serving the public.

For emerging technologies, that's always the case: fifty years ago, similar investments by Big Gub'mint were made on new-fangled devices known as "computers," which were necessary because the free market hadn't really figured out a way to make a profit out of the gadgets. Later, the internet emerged out of similar risk-taking, unprofitable investments by the government. Society as a whole benefits when there is a tension between the free market and government, with the latter making the former more creative and less destructive.

Another legacy brat falls: With the pending fall of Tripoli to the rebels comes word that Saadi Gadhafi, idiot son of the dictator, and the subject of this piece from the early days of my blog, has been arrested. Interestingly, after his soccer "career" ended, he had been investing in the moving pictures, with little luck, before events in the homeland compelled his return earlier this year.

UPDATE [9/16/11]: As it turned out, young Saadi had not been captured by the rebels, and as of this date, is reportedly exiled in the West African nation of Niger, a nation best-known for not providing Iraq with yellowcake uranium, contrary to an infamous set of forged documents.

Something to know about the Kings of the Jungle:

Researchers plotted the timing of nearly 500 of those lion attacks against the phases of the moon. And they found that the odds of being devoured by a lion were highest on nights following the full moon—nights when the moon rises late, providing hours of darkness for lions to stage a strike.

And previous studies have found that the fatter the moon, the slimmer the lion. Probably because the bright nights make hunting harder. So lions are hungriest around the full moon, too—and more willing to pounce on two-legged prey, as soon as they're provided the cover of darkness.

So says a recent study. Also something important to know: the global population of lions living in the wild has declined by nearly 95% in the past fifty years, before, during and after full moons. Thoughts?

About a week ago, I had the opportunity to party it up with some friendly small-l libertarian types. Possessing the Obamian tendency of trying to find common ground with others, particularly ideological adversaries, and not wanting to say the one obviously libertarian tendency that I and other left-of-center types possess (Yes on Pot !!!), I was reminded of something that has rankled me no end on my frequent visits to the high seas: the existence of the what may well be the dumbest, least worthwhile law in the books, the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886 (PVSA).

In short, the PVSA forbids "foreign vessels" from transporting passengers between American cities. Well, actually it doesn't technically prevent that; what it does is force cruiseships going from one US city to another to either stop at what is called a "far foreign port" (ie., outside of North America), or to stop at a foreign port within North America before returning to the American port of embarkation. Thus, a cruise ship cannot start in Los Angeles and end in San Francisco unless it stops in Tokyo or Lima first. But it can start in Los Angeles, go to San Francisco, then later end in Los Angeles, as long as it stops in Ensenada, Mexico or Victoria, British Columbia first.

And effectively, almost all cruise ships are considered "foreign vessels" for purposes of this act, regardless of whether the line is a domestic corporation, since almost all cruise ships are built overseas. This is not from any fault of the American shipbuilding industry, or from high labor costs, or from any of the other reasons typically used to disparage American competitiveness, but because domestic shipbuilders view building ocean-bearing craft for the military or for cargo lines as a much more profitable use of their resources than building cruise ships. The one recent effort to create such an industry collapsed in the aftermath of 9/11, and the only "American-flagged" cruise ship, the "Pride of America", sails for Norwegian Cruise Line in Hawaii, where it has a government-sanctioned monopoly on inter-island cruising.

Although this may be a boon for Norwegian, it's hard to see how other cruise lines have really been disadvantaged by this protectionist inanity. Other cruise ships have their own lucrative version of the Hawaiian cruise, with the minor disadvantage being that it's length is twice as long (since it starts and ends out of a western coastal port, like L.A. or San Francisco), and it must make at least one brief stop in Ensenada. The cruise ship gets to rake in the dough by having its captive passengers on board ship, purchasing overpriced trinkets and souvenirs, not to mention drinking and gambling, for 9-10 sea days, while the customers are none the wiser.

Obviously, there is nothing in the current law that would encourage the development of a domestic cruiseship building industry, since it doesn't increase the operating costs, or diminish the profits, of those lines that contract with Italian or Japanese shipbuilders to build their next megalopolis-on-the-seas. However, the consumer is shortchanged, since we: a) have to spend more money to take an unnecessarily longer cruise, and b) have fewer consumer choices as to which ship to take, since the domestic market is already saturated with ships taking the same routes to the same locales. Moreover, dockworkers and others who benefit from having busy and profitable ports are screwed by the PVSA, since few cities are close enough to foreign ports to make cruising out of those cities a worthwhile proposition.

And who likes this law? Cruise lines, of course. If the law were to be repealed, the increase in the number of short, affordable cruises within the United States would be exponential. One of the most popular cruises at present is the weekend "booze cruise" that leaves a US port, sails to a nearby foreign locale, like the Bahamas or Ensenada, and back. The typical passenger on such a cruise is much less affluent than the seagoing traveler who typically sails on the larger ships; given the option of taking a weekend cruise from LA to San Francisco and back, or from Baltimore to Brooklyn, or to and from cities on the Great Lakes, more people would sail than ever before. But that would also entice other ships into the market, so the market share of the half-dozen or so companies that control the US market would plummet.

In effect, the PVSA provides for the cruise industry what the pre-1980 regulation of the passenger airlines did for flying; it creates a non-responsive, expensive business oligopoly that caters to the well-off, and prevents the emergence of innovative, cheaper competitors. And it does all this while providing nothing of benefit to the consumer, to industry, or to the worker.

UPDATE: Thanx to the good people at Reason for the link. In the comments, a number of people have pointed out that the restrictions in PVSA purportedly protect "American flagged" ships, not ships originally made in the USA. That mix-up is due, I believe, to the confusion centered around the notion that many ships fly what are called "flags of convenience", ie., are registered in 3rd World countries that do not have the labor or OSHA restrictions required under American law. In fact, under American maritime law, in order to qualify as an American-flagged ship, the ship must not only obey such laws and regulations, but must also be built domestically. The government can grant waivers to this requirement, as it did with the aforementioned Pride of America, which was only partially built (with heavy taxpayer subsidies) in the US of A. Since the lack of a domestic cruise ship building industry makes even this step impossible, the circumvention of American labor and safety laws are the least of the problems with this statute.

Definitely not the sort of problem that the fans of Phoebe Nicholls have to worry about....

All Hail Our Galtian Overlords !!!

Ex-TV journalist turned free market shill John Stossel, on a paradise we hard-luck democratic saps should consider:

Hong Kong doesn't even have democracy, but because its rulers protected people's personal safety and property and left them otherwise free, Hong Kong thrived. In 50 years, it went from horrible poverty to income levels that are among the highest in world. Prosperity, thanks to economic freedom.

We should try that here.

Cause if there's one thing the U.S. should be emulating more of, it's the political and economic policies of totalitarian China....

Maybe Chapter can play left field:

"'Linda Green'" by any other name would smell as sweet: Apparently the scam continues:

Mortgage industry employees are still signing documents they haven't read and using fake signatures more than eight months after big banks and mortgage companies promised to stop the illegal practices that led to a nationwide halt of home foreclosures.

County officials in at least three states say they have received thousands of mortgage documents with questionable signatures since lahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifst fall, suggesting that the practices, known collectively as "robo-signing," remain widespread in the industry.

The documents have come from several companies that process mortgage paperwork, and have been filed on behalf of several major banks. One name, "Linda Green," was signed almost two dozen different ways.

One of the big problems in California is that neither the courts nor the prosecutors care if documents used by lenders to bolster foreclosure sales are even close to being accurate; under the "tender rule," a homeowner who has lost his residence in foreclosure has to come up with the entire principal balance of his loan to even get the courts to look twice at a bogus foreclosure, so most judges won't go anywhere near these cases. Unlike her counterpart in New York, the new state Attorney General, Kamala Harris, has been in office for six months and done nothing other than pose for the cameras.

More on the ubiquitious "Linda Green":

In Essex County, Mass., the office that handles property deeds has received almost 1,300 documents since October with the signature of "Linda Green," but in 22 different handwriting styles and with many different titles.

Linda Green worked for a company called DocX that processed mortgage paperwork and was shut down in the spring of 2010. County officials say they believe Green hasn't worked in the industry since. Why her signature remains in use is not clear.

"My office is a crime scene," says John O'Brien, the registrar of deeds in Essex County, which is north of Boston and includes the city of Salem.

In Guilford County, N.C., the office that records deeds says it received 456 documents with suspect signatures from Oct. 1, 2010, through June 30. The documents, mortgage assignments and certificates of satisfaction, transfer loans from one bank to another or certify a loan has been paid off.

(snip)

The 14 biggest U.S. banks reached a settlement with federal regulators in April in which they promised to clean up their mistakes and pay restitution to homeowners who had been wrongly foreclosed upon. The full amount of the settlement has not been determined. But it will not involve independent mortgage processing firms, the companies that some banks use to handle and file paperwork for mortgages.

So far, no individuals, lenders or paperwork processors have been charged with a crime over the robo-signed signatures found on documents last year. Critics such as April Charney, a Florida homeowner and defense lawyer, called the settlement a farce because no real punishment was meted out, making it easy for lenders and mortgage processors to continue the practice of robo-signing.

The problem won't be curtailed until some judge decides to throw a bank president in prison for some ridiculous length of time.

Dodgers Go Red: Here are the initial Chapter 11 filings for the Los Angeles Dodgers, which actually entails five separate bankruptcies, involving the team and the various holding companies that own the team and the surrounding property, including Dodger Stadium. The bankruptcy was filed in the state of Delaware, which is not uncommon for high-end corporate filings, and not surprising considering the profound and deep contempt the local community has for the McCourts at this moment.

The team's largest creditor, interestingly enough, isn't the soon-to-be-ex-wife of the team owner, but is instead former team star Manny Ramirez. Being the largest creditor has certain advantages in bankruptcy court; it was from a similar position that Mario Lemieux was able to put in a bid (financed by Ron Burkle, who is also thought to be in the lead to buy out the McCourts) to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins out of bankruptcy in the late-90's. However, since Manny, being Manny, clearly defrauded someone when he signed a huge extension of his contract shortly before failing a drug test in 2009, the team's liability to him is open to challenge.

Perhaps the best reason why it's always a good idea to have legal representation: to avoid the old bait-and-switch from lenders. From this morning's LA Times:

Mortgage lenders call it "dual tracking," but for homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosure, it might go by another name: the double-cross.

Dual tracking refers to a common bank tactic. When a borrower in default seeks a loan modification, the institution often continues to pursue foreclosure at the same time.

Lenders contend that dual tracking simply protects their investment if the homeowner is unable to qualify for new loan terms. Mortgage servicers can lose money if they don't foreclose in a timely manner, and repossessions often are complicated and lengthy.

But regulators and consumer advocates say the practice lulls some homeowners into thinking they are no longer at risk of having their homes taken away. Regulators are now aiming to curtail the practice as part of an overhaul of the foreclosure system.

This sort of stunt simply doesn't happen when a bank realizes that it will be spending the next year or two in court litigating their quicky foreclosure if they act in bad faith. In California, where an attorney is forbidden from even charging a retainer to a client until the loan is modified, this should be a no-brainer.

To much chagrin among local hoops fans, The Lads have suffered through a five-game losing streak over the last week, erasing any chance the defending world champs would catch San Antonio for the best record in the NBA, and ultimately pushing them behind Chicago (and likely Miami as well), in the event they meet up in the Finals. Now, it's more a matter of keeping themselves ahead of Dallas and Oklahoma City in the battle for the 2-seed in the Western Conference, and winning the last two games of the season, against the Spurs tonight and the Sacramento Kings tomorrow, has become vital.

Which was why Coach Phil Jackson's motivational skills are so important, as evidenced in an article in today's local paper of record, authored by beat writer Mike Bresnahan:

Whenever Jackson mentions the Chicago Bulls, it rarely hits home with Lakers fans unless it's a direct comparison of Bryant and Michael Jordan. But some solace was offered by Jackson when he talked about the 1991-92 Bulls, recalling they suffered a "couple devastating losses" in March and April.

"I was concerned. The players said it's just the end of the season and we'll get it back when we get into the playoffs . . . and we did. We got it back."

The Bulls ended up beating Portland in the NBA Finals.

Having been a follower of the sport in the early-90's, Jackson's reminiscence of his earlier tenure coaching the Michael Jordan-led six-time champions certainly resonates with me, although it always seemed to me that the Bulls of that era almost never lost big games, even in the regular season. In fact, during that run Chicago had the best record in the NBA in four of the six championship years, and in only one season did they win the title without having at least the best record in the Eastern Conference, in 1993, when the finished second to the Knicks. So I was surprised to find that the Bulls also had to confront late season demons during that era, even in winning six titles, including the 1992 title mentioned above.

As it turns out, of course, it never happened. Not in 1992, not in any of the seasons in which Jordan, Pippen and supporting cast were winning rings. The season mentioned above, in 1992, the Bulls finished the regular season winning 19 of their last 22 games, en route to a league-best 67-15 record. Of the three games they lost, one was at Cleveland, the team they would meet up with in the Eastern Conference finals, a game in which the Bulls were so pumped to play that they didn't even bother to suit up Michael Jordan.

Maybe Jackson was referring to 1993, when, as mentioned above, the Bulls finished second in the Eastern Conference to New York, and also trailed Western Conference champ Phoenix in the standings, but went on to win their third straight title. In fact, in 1993 the Bulls won 15 of 20 to conclude the season. They did finish behind the Knicks and Suns, and lost to both teams down the stretch, but they were already behind those teams to start with, and their weak, anemic .750 play to close out the regular season was not a factor.

So what championship team was he talking about? 1998, when the Bulls had the top mark in the East but were edged out by Utah (via tiebreaker) for the league's best record? Nope, the Bulls won 16 of 20 at the end, including a thirteen-game winning streak. 1991? The Bulls did have a tepid finish, winning "only" 11 of their last 17, thus enabling Portland to sneak through with the best record in the league by winning 16 straight, but Chicago wasn't the defending champion at the time, and none of its losses down the stretch could really be called "devastating," even by the melodramatic Zen Master. I didn't do a full breakdown of the 1996 or 1997 seasons, but considering the Bulls had two of three best records in NBA history those seasons, it would be hard to claim that they had a rough time of it down the stretch.

In short, the great Bulls teams of the 90's did not suffer "devastating" losses in the regular season in any of the years they won the title, and by no means suffered anything like a five-game losing streak. It could be that in his dotage, using the same brain that remains convinced that Ron Artest, Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher are championship-calibre starters, he simply misremembered the recent past. Considering the Lakers performance tonight, squeaking out a victory over the Spurs' scrub team, it seems to have provided the proper motivation. But what's the excuse for the LA Times writer who permitted that statement to go uncorrected?

Why Wisconsin is important:

Madison has not had demonstrations like this in years, perhaps not since the Vietnam War. Obama's Organizing for America, an offshoot of the Democratic National Committee, has claimed some credit for helping to mobilize the protesters, but the demonstrations have been more bottom-up than top-down. Labor unions have been in the forefront, joined by other progressive groups and angry citizens.

The demonstrations in Madison and the reaction to the House budget measure raise an important question. Have Republicans, in their desire to move boldly and swiftly to deal with state and national budget problems, aroused the progressive wing of the Democratic Party? Through much of the Obama presidency, progressives have been quiescent, lethargic or disappointed. Now they are awake. And not just labor unions. There is a similar reaction among other groups - not just to events in Wisconsin but to some of the cuts in the House bill, such as the amendment to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

If the progressive movement is truly awakened, Republicans could pay a significant price politically. Obama couldn't rouse it in the fall, at least not enough to avoid historic losses in November's midterm elections. Labor leaders couldn't, either. Labor unions spent heavily to try to defeat Republican candidates for governor. Now they see Wisconsin as part of a do-or-die struggle. But if they lose there, and in other states, the movement could be permanently weakened.

The revolt in Wisconsin is the 1995 Gingrich shutdown of the federal government for President Obama, a chance for him to push back against extremists while allowing him a quick and easy way to garner support from one of his beleagured constituencies. Better yet, it discredits the Deficit Fetishists, since Gov. Walker's thuggish and heavy-handed tactics have revealed their true motive: to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy by prioritizing tax cuts and business subsidies over public investment. For liberals, it's win-win.

This classic was later covered by Nirvana:



Hiybbprqag !?! Caliphate !!!

George Packer, on free speech and crazy people:

Loughner might, by chance, have been completely unaware of the climate in his hometown. Or he might have been steeped in it. The point is that the climate is dangerous, in Arizona and elsewhere, and the shootings ought to have prompted its purveyors to step back and do some hard thinking...[A]t a minimum, human decency should have led Sarah Palin to express regret for the dog whistle she directed against Gabrielle Giffords, among others. Instead, in Palinland and across the right, the attitude has been: Never apologize. But this has been the right’s attitude throughout the Obama era, with considerable political success, and I don’t expect this tragedy to bring a change.

Just as many liberals in the blogosphere jumped over the line in trying to make Sarah Palin and John Boehner co-conspirators with Jared Loughner in the tragic events of the past weekend, so too many conservatives are pretending that the violent rhetoric erupting from the Tea Party movement since the accession of Barack Obama to the Presidency was unconnected in any degree or manner to the impulse Loughner had in pursuing a "Second Amendment remedy" to his problems.



Insofar as the Right has steadfastly called for ending all restrictions on the ownership of guns, the ease in which a young man who wasn't allowed on a community college campus without a psychiatric thumbs-up, and who was denied enlistment in the Army because of a history of drug abuse, could somehow purchase and walk out of a store with a Glock 19 should cause anyone with a soul some sleepless nights. This is notwithstanding the political environment fostered by the Tea Party, which fetishises long-dormant right wing talking points straight out of the John Birch Society, and a very disturbing historical pattern emerges: elect a Democrat to the White House, and watch paranoia become mainstreamed, while otherwise sensible conservatives either rationalize the extremism or attempt to pretend it away.

Jared Loughner, and others like him, should not have been able to legally purchase a gun. Period.

Orszag to Join CitiBank: Classy. Technically, though, Citi will keep MERS on title as the beneficiary.

From a NY Times article entitled "Confidence in Abundance, despite an E.R.A. of Infinity":

When the Texas Rangers’ clubhouse opened for reporters after Game 2 of the World Series in San Francisco on Thursday, the only player talking was Derek Holland. Five minutes after the home clubhouse opened Friday, before a workout at Rangers Ballpark, Holland was back at his locker, ready for more.

Clearly, Holland is taking responsibility for one of the worst pitching performances in World Series history. But he also is ready to move on.

“I’m not worried about it,” Holland said Friday. “Today’s a new day. They’ll call on me again. It’s frustrating, but it’s over.”

Holland, a 24-year-old left-hander, came into Game 2 with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning, a runner on first, and the Giants leading the Rangers, 2-0. He threw 11 balls before his first strike, then threw another ball before he was removed.

Three batters. Three walks. Twelve balls, one strike. All the runners scored, leaving Holland with an infinite earned run average for the World Series.

I presume the reason why he is said to have an "infinite earned run average" is that he allowed three earned runs without retiring a batter, so lets look at this statistic in particular. Earned run average is calculated by multiplying nine by the number of earned runs allowed, then dividing that total by the number of innings pitched.

Since Holland failed to retire a batter, he technically didn't "pitch" an inning, so the quotient in this case is zero. When I was learning math back in the day, I was taught that anything divided by zero was "undefined," which didn't necessarily mean the same thing as "infinity." Has the consensus in this field changed since I was in school? Since the Texas Rangers have a team ERA that is numerically defined (10.69, to be exact), it would seem impossible for one of the component parts of that team statistic to be equal to infinity. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Holland has failed to register an ERA in the World Series?

Proud and Elite: Compliments of Kevin Drum, here are my answers to the Berlinski Quiz on my plebian qualities, or lack thereof:

1. Can you talk about "Mad Men?" Yes. It pretty much encompasses all of my cultural thinking.
2. Can you talk about the "The Sopranos?" Yes.
3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right?" Drew Carey, right?
4. Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? Probably, but I can't say for sure. It may have been when she was still doing shows about Satanic cults molesting children.
5. Can you hold forth animatedly about yoga? No.
6. How about pilates? No.
7. How about skiing? No. Never skied in my life, not once.
8. Mountain biking? No.
9. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? Yes, but I know more about who Jimmy Johnson is. Haven't really paid much attention to NASCAR since Dale Earnhardt died.
10. Does the acronym MMA mean anything to you? Yes. It means the games I want to watch on Saturday are going to be preempted at South.
11. Can you talk about books endlessly? Yes.
12. Have you ever read a "Left Behind" novel? No.
13. How about a Harlequin romance? No. Both 12 and 13 are an extremely cliched notion of what's popular in Red State America (as is 9, for that matter)
14. Do you take interesting vacations? As opposed to uninteresting vacations? Sure.
15. Do you know a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada? Yes. It's called Yosemite, and it's one of the most visited sites on the planet.
16. What about an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor? Until reading the Murray column, I had never heard of Boothbay Harbor, so I suppose the answer is no.
17. Would you be caught dead in an RV? If I had the money to buy one and the affluence not to work, I wouldn't mind in the slightest. In fact, I'd probably drive tween Yosemite and Boothbay Harbor. I once even spent the night in my grandpa's RV up in Kernville.
18. Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship? Dumb question. Cruise ships vary between the ultra-luxury variety (ie., Crystal, Silverseas), the premium ships most people think of when they of cruising (like Princess or Cunard) and the three-day booze cruises down to Ensenada. Had Murray really wanted to nail his point, he would drawn the distinction, and said that the New Elite "wouldn't be caught dead" on a Carnival or Royal Caribbean ship, where many of the passengers probably also vacation in Branson and read Paul LeHaye. But since he didn't, yes, I would, and in fact, do.
19. Have you ever heard of of Branson, Mo? Yes, but I wouldn't be caught dead there.
20. Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club? No.
21. How about the Rotary Club? No.
22. Have you lived for at least a year in a small town (besides college)? No. Other than college, I've lived in LA my whole life. So far.
23. Have you lived for a year in an urban neighborhood in which most of your neighbors did not have college degrees? No.
24. Have you spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (other than college)? Yes.
25. Do you have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian? Several, in fact.
26. Have you ever visited a factory floor? Yes.
27. Have you worked on one? No.

So according to this quiz, 16 of 27 answers would identify me as a Red State, potato-eating, Fly-over country, teabagging lumpenprole. Crap.

Dark Satanic Mills: From the Washington Post comes this inevitable story about Foreclosure Madness:

The nation's overburdened foreclosure system is riddled with faked documents, forged signatures and lenders who take shortcuts reviewing borrower's files, according to court documents and interviews with attorneys, housing advocates and company officials.

The problems, which are so widespread that some judges approving the foreclosures ignore them, are coming to light after Ally Financial, the country's fourth-biggest mortgage lender, halted home evictions in 23 states this week.

During the housing boom, millions of homeowners got easy access to mortgages while providing virtually no proof of their income or background. Now, as millions of Americans are being pushed out of the homes they can no longer afford, the foreclosure process is producing far more paperwork than anyone can read and making it vulnerable to fraud.

Ally Financial is now double-checking to make sure all documents are in order after lawsuits uncovered that a single employee of the company's GMAC mortgage unit, a 41-year-old named Jeffrey Stephan, signed off on 10,000 foreclosure papers a month without checking whether the information justified an eviction.

In fact, Mr. Stephan isn't the only "affidavit slave" to have admitted signing documents in support of foreclosures without having actual knowledge that the information he was verifying was true and accurate; a second robosigner was uncovered last week at Ally, and an employee of JPMorgan Chase copped to the same mistake in May, admitting that her eight-person team had been signing off on 18,000 documents a month used in support of foreclosures.

Even more sinister may be the use of fraudulent loan documents, such as assignments between lenders, to justify claims of standing. According to the Post,

In Georgia, an employee of a document processing company, Linda Green, for years claimed to be executives of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and dozens of other lenders while signing off on tens of thousands of foreclosure affidavits. In many cases, her signature appeared to be forged by different employees.

Green worked for a foreclosure document company owned by Lender Processing Services. The company is being investigated by a U.S. attorney in Florida for allegedly using improper documentation to speed foreclosures.

Lenders have already started to withdraw foreclosures that had Green's name on them.

Green also submitted to courts documents that listed "Bogus Assignee" as the owner of a mortgage instead of the real name. In another case, she signed as the vice president of "Bad Bene," a made-up company.

This doesn't even begin to encompass all the home mortgage transactions that utilized the very questionable legal entity knows as "MERS" as a placeholder for high-risk loans, in order to avoid paying recording fees in local counties. More than a few assignments from MERS to the alleged noteholder include signatures from robosigners employed by the very lenders seeking to claim title to the property.

The use of foreclosure mills in judicial foreclosure states like Florida, where judges must sign off on sales beforehand, has created an aggressive and active counterreaction, from attorneys representing desperate homeowners who cannot turn to bankruptcy to modify their loans to reflect the actual value of their depressed property. The failure of Congress to provide the most equitable free market remedy, the cramdown, has meant that many homeowners who caught a tough break in the recent past, and/or overborrowed at the peak of the Bubble, but who now have the financial stability to resume paying their obligations, are unable to obtain realistic terms for future mortgage payments based on the actual value of their houses, and must either abandon the dream of homeownership or throw the Hail Mary. However, anything that mucks up the machinery of the already overburdened foreclosure system will lead to higher costs beforehand, even where the homeowner has surrendered the property, thus complicating the process of getting homes back on the market, and hurting the short-term recovery in housing.

In non-judicial states, where an expedited process allows lenders to avoid the courts in exchange for waiving additional efforts at recovering the debt, the problem is only slightly less acute. Robosigners are involved in fewer transactions, but since those tend to be at the beginning of the process rather than the end, any mistakes could prove especially costly for the banks. In California, recent loans are subject to a requirement that lenders must first contact the delinquent borrower at least thirty days before a notice of default is sent out to discuss repayment options; those affidavits in support tend to be signed by clueless out-of-state pencil pushers who have little contact with the file, and who often use the same tactics as their brethren in Florida. The combination of an especially acute housing crisis in California combined with a very large legal profession will see an explosion of litigation in this area before too long.

One of our great writers, Bill James, writes in defense of the spirit of scofflawery, a uniquely American tradition that, like our lax standards for bankruptcy, is one of the principal reasons our society is more vibrant and entrepreneurial than any other on the planet. James writes:

...America is an immensely creative country, very inventive, extraordinarily dynamic, meaning that things change in America at a staggering pace. Not only do Americans derive fantastic benefits from this, but the entire world derives great benefits from it, from the things that Americans invent and create. And this … nature that we have (which is not truly nature or truly natural) … of giving one another space to ignore the rules and do whatever we think is right is central to our creativity, our inventiveness, and to the power of American society to stagger, adjust, and rush forward.

He's writing specifically about baseball's tendency to produce "cheaters" like Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Branch Rickey, and Roger Clemens, but one could also include athletes such as Reggie Bush, who in his efforts to support his family while in college has taken more excoration, and held to a greater standard of accountability, than a more powerful political figure with the same last name has over the Iraq War. As James points out, our obsession with punishing these "cheats" leads us to ignore far more serious transgressions.

Sign of the Times: Bankruptcy filings have become so great in the LA area that the mandatory meetings of creditors are being scheduled for the Los Angeles Convention Center; the regular site does not have enough space !!!

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the Obama Presidency so far as been the passive role his administration has taken concerning the primary cause of the Great Recession, the collapse of the housing bubble. The HAMP program has been an unqualified failure, at least from the perspective of enabling financially-shaken borrowers an opportunity to modify their loans at rates closer to the current value of their properties; the recent revelation that the Administration was more concerned about creating a program that would stall the inevitable foreclosures for a period of time long enough for banks to get a breather indicates that the lowly consumer was not at the top of Obama’s agenda.

In other areas, too, the Obama Administration has acted in a manner more consistent with being the allies of the banks that gave out the bad loans than trying to aid the borrowers unlucky enough to have been saddled with them. There is nothing to indicate that those banks (I’m talking to you, IndyMac and Aurora) that have been least interested in modifying delinquent mortgages are being made to pay a price for their coldheartedness. Of course, it’s not just the executive branch that has chosen to do nothing; so-called conservatives and libertarians, hearing their master’s voice, fought against restoring free market principles when it meant ending the cramdown prohibition to residential property in bankruptcy. If anything, the policy that the brunt of the housing bubble collapse should be borne by the homeowner has been bipartisan.

Seemingly, with no support coming from either side, and with the cavalry nowhere to be found, middle class homeowners have to fend for themselves, either coming up with funds they don’t have to cure huge arrearages on modest homes they can no longer afford, or losing their homestead to foreclosure. However, as we all learned in school, nature abhors a vacuum, and with bankruptcy an ineffectual option in most cases, more enterprising solutions are being found by the one group with a financial interest in exploiting this situation: lawyers for consumer debtors.

This New York Times article, about an attempt in Florida to clear a backlog in foreclosures, shows what the future holds in store for banks that would rather swallow up homes than negotiate:

Florida’s foreclosure mess is made murkier by what analysts and lawyers involved in the process say are questionable practices by some law firms that are representing banks. Such tactics, these people say, have drawn out the process significantly, making it extremely lucrative for the lawyers and more draining for troubled homeowners.

Doctored or dubious records presented in court as proof of a bank’s ownership have become such a problem that Bill McCollum, the Florida attorney general, announced last month that his office was investigating the state’s three largest foreclosure law firms representing lenders.

(snip)

To be sure, adjudicating foreclosure cases is difficult, complicated by multiple transfers of mortgages and notes when a loan is sold, bewildering paperwork submitted by loan servicers and shoddy record-keeping by the many institutions that touched the mortgages during the byzantine securitization process that fueled the housing boom.

Nevertheless, Florida law requires that before a financial institution can foreclose on a borrower, it must prove to the court that it actually has the standing to do so. In other words, it has to show that it is truly the owner. And this is done by demonstrating ownership of the note underlying the mortgage.

Borrowers’ lawyers say they confront dubious practices, often involving false documentation “proving” who owns the note on a given property. Typically, they say, this involves questionable affidavits asserting ownership of a note because the actual document has been lost or cannot be produced. Because the affidavits are often signed by bank representatives who have a stake in the outcome, they should not be allowed as evidence, borrowers’ lawyers say.

Although the article focuses on the difficulties the Florida system has given those who represent homeowners in foreclosure litigation, perhaps the more telling issue, a lede buried in the article, is the fact that increasingly in states like Florida and California (which uses a non-judicial system of foreclosure), homeowners are aggressively using the courts to fight foreclosures. This phenomenum, which was almost unheard of a decade ago, has proven to be a godsend to struggling borrowers, who can now use the same shortcuts the banks developed to save money when it was bundling high-risk loans during the heyday of the Housing Bubble against the banks.

Challenging the lender's standing to foreclose has opened up a new front in the housing wars, a transition away from bankruptcy as the last recourse for the Forgotten American trying to stop foreclosures. Since litigation, real or threatened, can be more expensive to institutional lenders than negotiating an equitable modification of a loan, especially since the resale of foreclosed homes becomes more problematic when there is a lis pendens attached, this gambit holds the promise of being a more efficient way of saving your home, while at the same time being less expensive to the consumer than a bankruptcy filing or a HAMP agreement.

Evidence that being Athletic Director at USC causes you to become the world's biggest asshole:

First Mike Garrett, now this clown:

Former star USC quarterback and NFL player Pat Haden guested on the Dan Patrick Show today. Haden, who was recently hired as USC Athletic Director, was asked by Patrick during the interview: “If you were Reggie Bush, would you give back the Heisman?”

Haden, after a long pause and sigh, replied:

“If I were Reggie Bush with Pat Haden’s soul, yes.“

Patrick: “Does he have your soul?”
Haden: “I don’t know Reggie Bush.”

So, if Reggie Bush had the soul of a super-rich equity-swapping corporate lawyer from LA, he would have "returned" the Heisman Trophy he won five years ago, for violating the NCAA's malum prohibitum bar on receiving money to play football. Similarly, if Pat Haden had Reggie Bush's soul, he would have returned the money he was paid by the Rams from 1976 to 1981 for impersonating an NFL quarterback.

Without a doubt, the best TV ad run by a losing candidate in this election cycle:

Stay classy, GOP....

Perhaps it's not the biggest story to come out of the world of hoops this past fortnight, but one of the ramifications of the LeBron James signing last week is the decision by each of the twelve players on the gold-medal winning 2008 Olympic basketball team to take a powder in this year's 2010 FIBA Championships. The tournament, to be played in Turkey starting in late-August, has always been the sickly step-child of the Olympics, although the participation of a number of key players on the 2006 bronze medalists, including James, current Heat-mates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, as well as Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony, presaged their commitment to the national team in the run-up to Beijing. I suppose nothing would put a damper on the South Florida hype more than losing James or Wade (Bosh, with his two playoff appearances in seven years, strikes me more as the Larry Fine of the trio) to a season-ending injury chasing a loose ball against Tunisia.

Coach K will still have notables like Chauncey Billups, Rudy Gay, Amar'e Stoudemire, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose at his disposal, which should provide a stronger, younger nucleus for London in 2012. Moreover, since the US has not won the title since 1994, in spite of having access to NBA talent (the 2002 team, playing at home in Indianapolis, finished sixth, in spite of having Paul Pierce, Jermaine O'Neal, Baron Davis, Ben Wallace, and Michael Finley on the roster), any sort of victory that doesn't rely on having Kobe Bryant (injured) carry the load again will be appreciated.

World Cup Final--Spain 1, Netherlands 0: It took 117 minutes, but Spain finally overcame the Orange-clad Stormtroopers to win their first World Cup. Don't believe me? Ask Johann Cruyff (website in Spanish):

Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff has launched a scathing attack on Netherlands' display in the World Cup final, deriding it as "anti-football".

The Dutch received nine yellow cards, and a red card for Johnny Heitinga, as they lost 1-0 to Spain in South Africa.

"Sadly, they played very dirty," Cruyff told Spanish newspaper El Periodico.

"This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style... If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost."

(snip)

Cruyff, along with many others, believed Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong were lucky not to be sent off before half-time, Van Bommel for a tackle from behind on Iniesta and De Jong for kicking Xabi Alonso in the chest.

"They should have been down to nine immediately, then they made two [such] ugly and hard tackles that even I felt the damage," said the 63-year-old Cruyff.

"It hurts me that Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title."

Spain may well be the most unexplosive, least feared team to win the World Cup since England in 1966. Winning four consecutive games by a score of one to nil will do that to your reputation, as well as an offense that achieved the dubious distinction of scoring eight goals in the entire tournament, the fewest of any champion in the tournament's history. Which isn't to suggest that Spain's title was undeserved, since there was nothing flukish about any of their wins; this was definitely not your father's Spanish team, the Cleveland Cavaliers of soccer. But as the Swiss showed in the opener, Spain was a very beatable team, and most of the squads that participated in this World Cup, including the U.S. and Mexico, would not have needed to elevate their game that much to match what Switzerland did.

Sorry, but there's no vintage video of past World Cup games between Spain and Holland, simply because the World Cup finalists have never played each other in this tournament. Not only that, but they've never been placed together in the same qualifying group. They've never played against one another in the next biggest international tournament, the European Championship, or in the third, the Confederations Cup. To find the last time the two teams have met with anything on the line, you have to go back to 1983, when the teams battled to qualify for the Euros the following year.

That is itself an interesting story. Head-to-head, Spain and Holland both had 2-1 wins against the other at home, so the matter of qualifying came down to how well they fared against the other teams in that group; specifically, who could pound the bottom team in their group, Malta, by the most goals. The sport of soccer not having figured out yet that games needed to be played simultaneously to maintain integrity when something like goal differential was involved as the tie-breaker, Spain went into the final qualifying game knowing that if it beat the Maltese by eleven or more goals, it would qualify for the 1984 European Championships. The Dutch, having played their final game four days earlier, could only sit on their hands and watch.

Spain scored first that night, but Malta came right back and tied the game up ten minutes later. After 25 minutes, the game was tied, but the Spanish scored two quick goals to retake the lead. That's where the game still til halftime, 3-1; Spain needed to somehow score nine goals in the second half to win the group. Which it then proceeded to do, obliterating Malta 12-1, and sending them on their way to the Euros, where they finished second. This they managed in spite of the fact that Spain had not scored more than three goals in a game up to that point, and had not beaten anyone by more than two goals. A fishy result for all concerned, one that still rankles the Dutch:

Germany 3, Uruguay 2 [Third Place]: The Kings of Bronze of international soccer, Germany, "won" their fourth third-place game in soccer's showcase tournament, coming from behind in the second half to win a typically lively affair. Thomas Müller and Luis Suárez, both barred by infractions from playing in their team's semifinal losses, figured prominently in the scoring, Müller knocking in a rebound in the 19th minute off a rebound for the Germans' opening goal, and Suárez coolly setting up the Uruguayan opener a few minutes later. On paper a meaningless game, the consolation final has usually been a connoisseurs' feast, in that one of the teams is usually lucky to have advanced this far, and with the fortuitous participation of the fifth-best team from South America in the festivities, together with the Germans playing a very young line-up geared towards 2014, today proved no exception.

Germany and Uruguay have played each other three times before in the Cup, each before the fall of the Iron Curtain allowed us to retire the moniker "West Germany." In 1966, they drew each other in the quarterfinals; the West Germans were expected to breeze, but after scoring an early fluke goal struggled to put away the Uruguayans, until a rather questionable non-call in the penalty area pissed off the South Americans, who were convinced that the powers-that-be had it in for non-European teams. Deciding that the best revenge was to play kick-the-kraut the rest of the way, at the expense of having two of their players ejected, Team Uruguay collapsed in the final twenty minutes, losing 4-0, and hastened their fall from the ranks of world soccer powers thereafter:

The teams also met in a first-round battle in 1986, resulting in a 1-1 draw. The West Germans thoroughly dominated the game, but had to play catch-up almost the entire way after a bone-headed back pass by the usually dependable Thomas Berthold allowed Uruguay a cheap early goal. Relentless pressure paid off for the Germans in the final ten minutes, allowing both teams to walk away with a point:

But it was back in 1970 that the two countries played each other in a game that, like tomorrow's, really didn't matter, for third place. The Germans, incorporating some of the stars of the team that would dominate '70's soccer, had breezed through the first round, winning all three of their games, then rallied from two goals down in the second half to stun the defending champions, England, in overtime, 3-2, thereby defeating their historic rival for the first of many times. In the semis, against Italy, they played one of the classic games in the history of the World Cup, a see-saw, back-and-forth game that saw three lead changes, an injury time goal by the Germans to tie the game at the end of regulation, and five extra time goals before the Azzurri finally won, 4-3.

Uruguay, on the other hand, had played a distinctly unmemorable tournament, scoring a grand total of four goals in five games (half of them in their opener against Israel). Somehow, they finagled their way it into the semis, where they took an early lead, but were promptly and easily dumped by future champ Brazil, 3-1. Having done absolutely nothing to merit their high placement, and playing against a German team that had played 240 minutes of soccer in the previous five days, Uruguay then proceeded to have its best game of the Cup, but to no avail, losing 1-0. The highlights:

Quick, which team has finished third in the World Cup the most times? Time's up, it's....Germany!!! Yep, the Germans "won" the Bronze in 1934, 1970, and most recently, in 2006. And guess who's lost the most consolation games...you got it, none other than tomorrow's opponent, Uruguay, the only country to have lost the Third Place game more than once, in 1954 and in 1970, the latter occasion being bested by the Germans.

There used to be a consolation game in the NCAA tournament, not only between the two Final Four losers, but even between the two losers of the regional semifinals, but since neither the fans nor the teams were particularly psyched about a game that had little in the way of relevance, the practice was discontinued after 1980. FIFA soldiers on with the idea, however, and the game tends to be an aperitif to the main course the following day.

Spain 1, Germany 0: A better game to watch than to summarize. Nothing flashy, just good, solid, efficient German-style football, used in the crusade to beat the Germans, who obviously were exhausted from having to celebrate all their goals in the earlier rounds. First time since 1978 both teams in Finals are championship-virgins.

Why are my compatriots in the progressive blogosphere such whiny assclowns? I guess it's unfair to limit such a generalization to left-of-center bloggers, since someone like Andrew Breitbart or Patterico can sound positively gruesome when they detect some trivial bit of political bias in the media, but I don't generally don't read (and don't care) what the far right has to say.

But when I'm reading blogs that are ostensibly on my side of the debate, I really don't give a shit about why you can't get on the Sunday talk shows, or how awful it is that the MSM was so nice to Bush in the run-up to Iraq. Here's a clue: angry, whiny ass-clowns may be right, and have mucho integrity, and may spark the flame of social justice, but it's the quiet, shrewd people who actually accomplish something. It's the difference between Abe Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and William Lloyd Garrison, who didn't.

Tomorrow's semifinal involves two teams that have met each other on more than a few occasions. In World Cup play, they have played three times, with Germany winning twice and the teams drawing on the other occasion.

The first game, in 1966, was the final game of group play; Spain, then as now, was the defending European champions, but thanks to a loss in their opening game to Argentina, needed a win to advance, while the then-West Germans needed only a tie. The Spanish took a quick early lead, only to wilt beneath the future Cup finalists, losing 2-1. It is a game remembered, if at all, for this spectacular impossible-angled shot by Lotthar Emmerich to tie the game late in the first half. For more of a taste of what this game looked like to a mid-60's TV viewer in Great Britain, here's the broadcast of the first ten minutes, complete with an opening musical montage of Masterpiece Theatre and NFL Films:

The most recent game came in 1994, another group play game that ended in a 1-1 draw. Both teams were playing in the easiest group, although Spain had to settle for a tie in its opener, against South Korea, so the result suited the occasion. A German-language broadcast of the game:

But it was the second game that has always been a dagger in Spanish hearts, in 1982. Spain had gone into the Cup as one of the favorites, especially since they were the host nation, but again got off to a slow start, needing a late penalty kick to tie Honduras in their opener (notice a pattern?). They came from behind to defeat Yugoslavia, 2-1, in the next game, but again after earning a penalty kick under very questionable circumstances. West Germany also got off to a terrible start that year, being shocked its group opener to Algeria, 2-1, then getting its mojo back in a decisive 4-1 victory over Chile.

Because of the brilliant manner in which FIFA scheduled World Cup games back then, the final games in group were not played simultaneously, so both Germany and Spain knew what they needed to do to advance to the second round. Since Algeria had lost its second game (0-2, to Austria), but had won its third (3-2, vs. Chile) the day before, Germany and Austria found themselves in the serendipitous position of both being able to qualify if the appropriate result could be attained, which, as it so happens, was for Germany to win by a margin of less than three goals. Which, against no odds, they did. Germany scored ten minutes in to take the lead, and the two teams conspired thereafter to play kick-the-ball-around for the next eighty or so minutes before the ref mercifully blew the whistle, sending both teams through to the second round, and eliminating Algeria. As befits the most blatantly rigged result since the 1919 World Series, the game has its own Wikipedia page.

Almost forgotten is the fact that both Spain and Northern Ireland were in the same position when their game started two hours later. Both teams would advance if Northern Ireland won the game, 1-0, whereas a scoreless tie would eliminate the Men of Ulster, whilst a margin of defeat greater than a goal would knock out the Spanish. Maybe it was the fact that Northern Ireland had a man red-carded in the first half, or the fact that neither team could score early, but more likely the fact that the winner would get to play in a weaker second round group, this game ended up being one of the more exciting, hard-fought games of the first round, with Spain losing in the end, 1-0. No Anshcluss here, please.

For the second round in 1982, FIFA had another inspired idea: after having played the previous two World Cups with two four-team round-robin qualifying groups leading directly into the Finals, it juiced up the proceedings by creating four three-team groups, with the winners reaching the semi-finals. The only problem is that all three teams could not be playing simultaneously; one of the teams would play its second game against an opponent playing its first. That would be fine if the opening game resulted in a win or loss, but if the game drew, then the team playing its opener a few days hence would be instantly eliminated if it lost.

As it so happens, Spain and Germany were, along with England, put into the same group, and Germany and England drew its opener, making the Germany-Spain match-up that followed a sudden death result for the loser. Under massive national pressure, Spain again fell short, losing heartbreakingly 2-1, and suffering one of the earliest knock-outs of a host nation in World Cup history.

Needless to say, Spain can exorcise quite a few demons with a win tomorrow.

Holland 3, Uruguay 2: In the highest-scoring regulation semi-final game in 48 years, the Dutch held on to defeat an undermanned but gutsy team from South America, and will now return to the Final for the first time since the glory years of the Clockwork Oranje. I don't know if Uruguay's performance this time was the biggest fluke since Renee Zellwegger won the Oscar, but three cheers to the losers.

For those few of you are interested, today's semifinalists, Holland and Uruguay, have played once before in the World Cup, all the way back in 1974. At the time, Uruguay was a perennial contender, having made the semifinals four years earlier, but had gone through a prolonged period of stagnancy, dating back to its previous championship a quarter century earlier. In short, they were similar to Argentina was in this World Cup: a team that was usually to be reckoned with, but with its glory years long behind it (I believe they sent the oldest team to that tournament).

Their opponents, Holland, was the team that everybody was looking forward to watching, with the best player in the world at the time, Johann Cruyff, and a supporting cast much to be envied (Neeskens, Rep, Rensenbrink, Surrbier, etc.). But they hadn't played in the World Cup recently, and no one knew exactly how they would handle the Big Time when they stepped onto the field against Uruguay. The highlights below of their 2-0 victory hardly do justice to their dominance:

The score could have easily been 6-0, and was the first sign that year the balance of power was shifting in the sport. Uruguay was quickly eliminated in 1974, and thereafter disappeared from the ranks of the sport's powers, at least until this year.