Women’s World Cup (yetanotheropenthread)

by

by Ugh

So I've said before the nation rooting order for anyone watching the (male) World Cup should be:

  1. Your home country
  2. Any nation from Africa
  3. Any nation outside of South America & Europe
  4. Brazil
    ….
    121,212,312. Germany (no offense Hartmut!)

This gets more complicated for the Women's World Cup as the primary reason for rule 3 is that no nation outside those two areas has ever won the Men's World Cup, or indeed even made the World Cup Final.  That's obviously not the case for the current tournament.

Anyway, based on my own rules, U! S! A! (for the sportsball tournament, not our nightmarish presidential administration that, apparently, thinks it's cool to emulate Soviet Russia and roll tanks down The Mall on July 4th………).

Maybe someone could trick Trump into reading "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?"

Feh

UPDATE:  You fncking go Sue Bird.

171 thoughts on “Women’s World Cup (yetanotheropenthread)”

  1. And let me just say that I hope Megan Rapinoe continues her hot streak by scoring all the remaining USWNT’s goals while leading the U.S. to the trophy.
    For obvious reasons.

  2. It’s farcical that there will be a small number of tanks sitting on display so Rump can say he had tanks at the 4th of July celebration. He certainly had visions of a dictatorship-style military parade, but what he’s going to get is an appease-the-toddler nominal presence of “brand new” tanks (that he can’t seem to properly identify).
    What an ass-clown of a president.

  3. Maybe someone could trick Trump into reading “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”
    Trump? Read???
    Maybe a PBS-type show would hold his attention briefly. If his favorite Faux News channel could be tricked into running it…

  6. I know about as much about football (soccer) as I do about cricket. But a quick web search reveals that, while more diverse, your #2 still applies to the women.

  8. No offense taken. Still hoping that the German male team will one day get kicked out already in the preliminaries.
    One impression I get is that the general low opinion of soccer in the US (which I attribute in part to the fact that the US are fourth rate in the male version) is even lowered by the female team being so good. “We can’t be #1 in the proper (male) version, so the whole thing is not worth it. And that the b-words are good at it is even more proof of its general unworthiness!”
    And of course it’s denied its proper name which is reserved for what used to be named after that Limey school.

  9. One impression I get is that the general low opinion of soccer in the US (which I attribute in part to the fact that the US are fourth rate in the male version) is even lowered by the female team being so good.
    I don’t think so. And just to be clear, it’s not a negative opinion so much as a substantial number of “no opinion.” But I would bet that the net opinion (positive minus negative) is well into positive territory.
    I think we’re actually seeing a couple of things. First, there all the folks my age, for whom soccer wasn’t visible when we were growing up. (Hence my level of ignorance.) Second, we don’t have a professional league getting substantial prime time TV time. Admittedly that’s something of a chicken-and-issue. But until it’s there for the sports junkies, the “no opinion” cohort will remain significant.

  10. It’s a beautiful thing to see someone at the peak of their power absolutely killing it. Magic.
    That is all.

  11. The Beautiful Game is not popular in the US primarily for Cold War cultural reasons. After WWII, baseball was nearly metonymical for America as a sort of cultural export for the little peoples of the world, but the burgeoning militarism of the US was reflected best in (American) football, and US generals bragged about the role that college football experience played in our decisive WWII victories.
    Soccer was for foreigners and people who could tolerate long, drawn out conflicts where advantages were rare and draws were common. The American Spirit could not abide this mediocrity. Somebody had to win, dammit.
    This was still the state of affairs in the late 70s and early 80s in the midwest when I committed the double heresy of loving soccer and cycling. Thanks a lot, PBS.

  12. Personally, and as a football refusenik (all sports actually, with the exception of tennis), I’m torn. Obviously, I want Rapinoe to kill it for POTUS-baiting purposes, but on the other hand the UK football world has been so deeply inimical to women for so long that I long for the UK team to “bring it home”. For anybody not familiar with the genesis of that last quote, look up the various iterations of the song “Three Lions” on Youtube.

  13. soccer is simply too new to the US. it hasn’t been around long enough for generations of kids to have grown up with it. and, frankly, for casual sports fans, the market is pretty full: baseball, basketball, football and hockey, pro and college, with long overlapping seasons. and they all have deep established fan bases of people who grew up with their favorite sport(s).
    soccer just needs time.
    still, go into almost any ‘brewpub’ in the US and there’s a soccer game on.

  14. Crikey, shows how ignorant I am about this stuff: it’s not the UK team of course, it’s the England team!

  15. still, go into almost any ‘brewpub’ in the US and there’s a soccer game on.
    go into the kitchen area of any software engineering organization, same.
    15 or even 10 years from now the US fan base will expand as all the kids who grew up playing soccer in the burbs become adults.

  16. The Storm and the Sounders are quite popular in the ‘redder’ areas of the 48th Soviet of Washington.

  19. Soccer is not new to the US and certainly not newer than American football. We had a professional league in 1894 and the US Open Cup dates back to 1913. The Great Depression hit the reset button on all that while baseball got on with it because it was such a radio friendly sport.

  20. Gosh, the US looked awfully good to this ignorant viewer, even before the goal

  21. LOL twitter suspended my account for 12 hours for paraphrasing the old Marx quote (or whatever) “The Capitalists Will Sell Us the Rope with Which We Will Hang Them …”. What a bunch of morons.
    Thought about appealing but I just don’t give a sh1t

  23. The Great Depression hit the reset button on all that
    so, it’s new… again.
    what’s really new is that it has become a (the most, in fact) popular high school and college sport. that will grow its popularity.

  25. Hmm, we give up possession much more easily than the US, and their skills just seem generally better than ours. What luck I’m happy about either of them winning, and hopefully going on to win the World Cup!

  26. Guess it depends on where you live and such, about soccer I mean. Here in Atlanta among the sports fan contingent for years there’s been strong interest and team fan-groups for the English Premiere League, the German League to a lesser extent. And lots of interest and support for the US in the World Cups.
    So when Atlanta got an MLS franchise, with the owner Arthur Blank (Home Depot co-founder) striking a deal with the city for a fancy new stadium to house the soccer team as well as the NFL Falcons, which he also owns, there was a built-in, knowledgeable fan base excited and energized to have a home town team to root for. The fact that they’ve played well, and won the MLS Cup last year in their second season has certainly helped.
    The average home attendance over their first two seasons was 51,457, which ranks 10th world wide. MLS teams play 34 games per regular season, so a little over twice as many as pro American football. On top of that you see lots of people out and about wearing team gear, team banners hanging from porches, in store windows, etc. A big contributor could well be that this is a city with a lot of transplants, who came here with attachments to teams in other cities in football, baseball, basketball. Atlanta United is all “our” team, no divided loyalties.
    We’ll see what happens if the team stinks for a few years.

  27. The HS differential will only grow with the cost of liability and safety equipment for football. Though I fully expect that there will be a hard backlash in the reddest states and football will become even more of a badge of manhood.
    I’m curious to see how the CTE thing plays out in youth soccer. I know that they are phasing out heading in the younger ages…

  28. baseball got on with it because it was such a radio friendly sport.
    Baseball is a game for radio. (American) football works best with TV. And for basketball, you have to be there in person to really follow what is happening. Which medium is ideal for soccer?
    The HS differential will only grow with the cost of liability and safety equipment for football.
    I expect that, as evidence of the long-term bad effects of football grow, its popularity will fall off. Rather like what happened with boxing — time was when that was really big; today not so much.

  29. Though I fully expect that there will be a hard backlash in the reddest states and football will become even more of a badge of manhood.
    Thus completing the split between Jesusland and the United States of Canada. ;^)

  31. Soccer, like hockey, is a sport best followed live. So much of what is happening tactically goes on outside of the field of view for the camera. Hockey is a little more telegenic because there are more stoppages and the ice is a lot smaller. Soccer can be shot a little wider because the ball is easier to see and follow than is a puck.
    And soccer has such a vibrant fan culture with the singing and tifo. Not as much of that comes through in broadcast.

  32. In 2010 I got the strong feeling just watching the World Cup of TV that I would not want to be surrounded by thousands of vuvuzelas. . .

  34. And for basketball, you have to be there in person to really follow what is happening.
    I don’t agree with that at all. I’ve been at a few pro games in my life and countless kids’ games through the high school level, and I’ve even played a little. Okay, a very little.
    For pro games it depends on how high up in the stands you are — high enough, and you get the kind of bird’s eye view that TV gives you. Lower down, whether pros or kids, there’s a lot you can’t see in the scrum of players. TV gives you a much better view, IMHO, although there’s nothing like being up in good seats to be astonished at how big NBA players actually are, and on top of that, how unbelievably quick and skilled.
    *****
    When I’m at home I don’t watch sports at all any more. But I’m often at my brother’s place in Ohio at World Series time, so I do see some baseball games each year. (Not to mention any other sport that happens to be on TV, since he keeps it on all the time. Golf, football (college and NFL), NASCAR, baseball, basketball, you name it.) (Even soccer sometimes. 😉
    Once a few summers ago my boss, an old friend, invited me to a Red Sox game. [P.S. Typepad’s auto editor marks “Sox” as a misspelling. For that matter, it marks “Typepad’s” as a misspelling. Also “Fenway.” Also “heh.” Heh.]
    Being at Fenway Park felt like nothing so much as being at a Little League game. Because it was all right there in front of me, living human beings going at living human being pace. There might have been replays and commercials on big screens scattered around the stadium, but that couldn’t change the fact that there was no cutting away to commercials or replays or news flashes or nothin’.
    It was fun, even for a Yankee fan!

  36. In Kipling’s days cricket seems to have been treated as the game to infuse boys with a warlike spirit (while Tom Brown’s Schooldays promoted the original rugby as the basis for its ‘muscular Christianity’). Kipling’s opinion on both was extremly low (‘flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals’) and his scorn was never more bitter than for those who sent professionals onto the playing field but amateurs to the battlefield.
    In Germany soccer was at first ill received by the authorities because they feared that it would infect the German youth with the dreaded English liberalism (apart from not being manly enough). Iirc there were even laws and ordinaces against it.

  38. If soccer wasn’t manly enough for Germany, what sport did they prefer?
    Politics?
    That’s a joke. I suspect Hartmut was talking about a period long before He-Trump-with-a-toothbrush-moustache came on the scene.
    –TP

  39. Yes I was talking about Germany under William the First. The proper sports was (military) gymnastics where the individual does not count. Fußball (despite being a team sport) was considered too individualistc. It was actually vilified as The English Disease (and, exactly like Kipling, called oafish).
    How times change. The Nazis emphasized the team aspect of it and despised individual sports. Disciplines that served as military preparation were accepted as such but never as expression of individual athleticism but only regarding the benefit for the ‘team’.

  40. The Great Depression hit the reset button on all that while baseball got on with it because it was such a radio friendly sport.
    So much so that many “live” broadcasts were actually reenactments with in-studio sound effects.

  41. The Nazis emphasized the team aspect of it and despised individual sports.
    I guess Jessie Owens was particularly galling.

  43. This just in

    The Trump administration has dropped plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the Justice Department said Tuesday

    Glad to see that’s settled. Now to work repairing the damage already done to probable response rates.

  45. wj, let’s wait and see. Maybe through a ‘clerical error’ it will still be on the form in selected areas and/or the instructions for the census workers could be misleading on that topic.
    Not that The Donald himself could come up with such subtlety; his fellow travellers on the other hand…

  48. OT, but the thread, she is open.
    Short of a Ken M post and/or the kitty-cat Immigrant Song video, this might be my favorite thing on the Internet ever.
    Look, I’ll ruin it for you. Here’s the punch line:

    The vice president of Super Happy Fun America told CNN that a law enforcement official later informed him that the substance was glitter.

    There is a common theme here. The distance between the “Straight Pride” crowd and the cats in the Immigrant Song video is vanishingly small.

  49. And for basketball, you have to be there in person to really follow what is happening.
    Contemporary digital television has really helped with this. Higher definition, bigger screens, and especially the 16:9 aspect ratio allow a much better view of the game.

  50. I can’t envision cats, even in a cat video, referring to themselves as an “oppressed majority.” Some things are beyond parody.

  51. my favorite thing on the Internet ever
    That’s a very odd collection of favorites, russell. Then again, tastes differ, hallelujah. 😉
    I followed a car home from town yesterday — nice shiny newish well-tended black station wagon (I suppose they’re not called that any more but I don’t know what to call it; it was too small to be an SUV, or at least what I would call an SUV….).
    Anyhow….it had a bumper sticker on the back — “I’m pro-life.”
    Also, a sticker on the back window that I could see was a dinosaur and some little stick figures, so I connected it in my mind with the day, many years ago, when my son came home from our babysitter’s place (good babysitter, sort of a friend) and said, “Mom, guess what? People *were* on earth when the dinosaurs were alive!”
    This was a big deal, since my son was in his years-long dinosaur obsession phase, but of course being my son, he was learning what scientists think about the world, and not what back country preachers think about the world.
    Because yes, the babysitter and her family had taken up going to church, and a deeply fundamentalist one at that, the kind with a back country preacher who can interpret the accurate meaning of the inerrant word of God as conveyed in the Bible etc. etc. etc.
    That babysitter and I parted company soon afterwards, for complicated reasons not only having to do with the indoctrination of my children. She was a nice lady, and I’ve run into her over the years and we always have pleasant conversations. But not about God, or dinosaurs.
    Anyhow, back to the car in front of me. I got close enough at an intersection to see that there was a caption in which the dinosaur was saying something to the effect that that stick family sure tasted good, as it chomped on one of them.
    I had no idea what this was about, but I was curious to know whether it had anything to do with the babysitter’s tenet that of course humans lived when dinosaurs did. And google, of course, could inform me.
    Turns out there’s a whole bumper sticker industry of people who sell stickers that make fun of the other people who keep the other whole bumper sticker industry alive, where you buy a sticker to put on your car that shows your family’s hobby in stick figures: softball, bowling, apple-picking, who knows.
    And now there’s me, bemused at the spectacle. I keep thinking there’s a money-making niche out there somewhere for me………

  53. @cleek — Much like the internet itself: people making fun of people who make fun of people who make fun of……
    I’d say it’s turtles all the way down, but I think the whole think rests on the earnest people who stick their decorations on with a straight face.
    Anyhow, the Jesus fish reminds me of the cackle I once got out of an old friend’s “Nuke the whales” t-shirt. Yeah, it was making fun of *me*, in effect — but it still made me cackle.
    That was the same friend who had the t-shirt I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before. “Jesus is coming” on the front. “Look busy” on the back.

  54. Anyhow, the Jesus fish reminds me of the cackle I once got out of an old friend’s “Nuke the whales” t-shirt. Yeah, it was making fun of *me*, in effect — but it still made me cackle.
    This reminds me of Martin Amis and his father Kingsley, as follows from a piece in the Independent:
    There’s a lovely story in the introduction to Einstein’s Monsters about Martin trying to explain to his father the iniquities of the whaling trade – how the, you know, gentle monsters of the deep, right, are being killed and dismembered, and their blubber converted into soap, rubber and cosmetics. “I don’t know,” mused Kingsley in reply. “Seems rather a good way of using up whales…”

  55. My favorite sweatshirt slogan, stolen out of my closet by my daughter when she was in junior high, was “Free the Bound Periodicals.” I was reminded of it the other day when I came across this local company that still offers journal binding.

  56. I love “Free the Bound Periodicals” as much as I love “Jesus is coming -> Look busy”! I have never seen anything to equal these, although I did like the bumper sticker in 70s California saying “I brake for hallucinations”.

  57. On the back of the “Free the Bound Periodicals” shirt we could have “Bind the Free Radicals…..”
    That would have appealed to a certain segment of the population in the sixties, no?

  58. RE-UNITE GONDWANALAND
    SAVE THE LEMMINGS
    What font should I use for my TRUCK FUMP bumpersticker? I already have the color: orange.
    Never mind. What I really want to say, on this eve of the 4th of July, is:

    When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    For the benefit of Real Murkins, this (and not “We hold these truths …”) is the opening line of young Tom Jefferson’s and old Ben Franklin’s declaration. For the benefit of MAGA maggots, what Tom and Ben were saying was, in modern American English:

    The purpose of this memo is to justify our revolution in the eyes of the world.

    But of course those guys were effete coastal elitists, unlike He, Trump.
    –TP

  62. I’ve been reading some stuff by the Founders recently and among statements made by Thomas Jefferson, who is mentioned in cleek’s link about the 4th, regarding the living versus the dead Constitution, he said the document should be rewritten every 19 years because who were they, the Founders, to shackle subsequent generations to their possibly irrelevant words.
    Of course, Jefferson said EVERYTHING at least once in his lifetime, apparently without any sense of self-contradiction, but the point is be careful what fake news conservatives in 2019 tell you about the document and those who wrote it.

  63. Can you imagine though a Constitutional Convention every 19 years, on top of non-stop Presidential campaigning for most of every four years and completely non-stop campaigning for the House every two years.
    We’d be utter wrecks.

  64. Unlike conservatives generalizing about ALL immigrants crossing our southern border, we must be careful to discriminate between the murderous p-selected conservative subhuman filth stealing taxpayer money among border agents and the paramilitary ICE, and the few good, decent Americans among them, who are patriotic truthful bleeding heart liberal public servants and will testify against their vermin racist republican colleagues who are now in the majority.
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/border-patrol-official-confirm-poor-conditions-migrant-detention-centers
    The executions of the bad, bad ones will take place during July 4th celebrations during the next Democratic Administration down by the reflecting pond along the Washington Mall.
    The military and their weapons will be consigned to barracks, however, as we allow red-blooded American immigrants, newly made citizens, to serve as firing squads for the malign guilty.
    The NPS will be reimbursed for costs occurred for the clean-up of the necessary carnage with a sizable poll tax on every registered republican.

  65. That’s a very odd collection of favorites, russell.
    welcome to my world.
    there was a caption in which the dinosaur was saying something to the effect that that stick family sure tasted good
    stopped on the way home yesterday to get an ice cream. a jeep in the parking lot had a window sticker of jeep chasing a bunch of stick figures.
    the text read “run you stick bastards!”.
    made me laugh out loud.
    my favorite thing, besides viking cats and Ken M, is making fun of people who make fun of people who make fun of people… until it all circles back to myself. sometimes I make fun of myself in my dreams. my wife thinks it’s hilarious, and I do, too.
    self-awareness – an endless source of humor. perspective is everything.

  67. For our British comrades:
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/the-empty-promise-of-boris-johnson
    “I’ve Got Nothing” seems as good a campaign slogan as “Make America Nothing Again”.
    “What next, Dracula as health minister?” is a bit of delicious quotability in the article.
    But then, as Woody Allen said: “It’s hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots.”
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/07/concrete-milkshakes-and-street-fighting-men

  68. In an area I use to live in I would see from time to time a beat-up pickup that looked like it had been in a crash or two. In the rear window was a sticker that said, “God Is My Pilot.”

  70. In an area I use to live in I would see from time to time a beat-up pickup that looked like it had been in a crash or two. In the rear window was a sticker that said, “God Is My Pilot.”
    Messages without words… You know you’re in Boulder, Colorado when the $500 car that pulls up next to yours at the traffic light has a $5,000 bicycle strapped to the roof.

  72. I have never put a bumper or window sticker on my car.
    That car in Boulder is likely going to the disc golf course.

  74. Way back when, at college we had the usual scourge of stoner jesus freaks. Their slogan was, “One Way”.
    In response we formed The League For The Promotion of Militant Atheism, and made up some T-shirts showing a hand making the “OK” sign with our slogan, “No way”.
    We also constructed a 6 ft. tall paper mache’ hand with middle finger extended, and painted it red, white, and blue. It showed up at all the anti-war protests accompanied by Hendrix’s Star Spangle Banner…at an appropriately high level of volume.
    A revolution without fun is not worth the candle.
    Juche, y’all.

  75. A revolution without fun is not worth the candle.
    A lot of good that did, bobbyp. Especially with the “OK” sign. I guess that may not have been a white supremacy signal back in the day.
    Whenever I’ve tried to join a protest regarding something serious (like the Iraq War, and torture, etc.), there have come the clowns with their ready-made paper mache crap from years prior.
    Not helpful to make it a party, IMO.

  76. Hmmmm. Didn’t know what Juche was, so just looked it up. Kim Jong-il? Maybe my sarcasm filter is impaired.

  77. I had a bumper sticker that said “RLRRLRLL”, which drummers will recognize as a sticking pattern called a paradiddle.
    Thumbs up from every drummer on the road. It was like belonging to some kind of secret society.

  78. I somehow never could see the bumper sticker (or window sticker) thing. Just never felt quite right.
    On the other hand, if one looks real closely, it’s possible to see that the license plate holder reads:
    Have sword, will travel.

  79. on wj’s July 02, 2019 at 10:11 PM
    Looks like His Donaldship has decided to defy SCOTUS and to instruct the DoJ to put the citizenship question on the census anyway.
    A judge has ordered the DoJ to clarify their position until Friday this week and denied a postponemnet til Monday (asked for because of the holiday).

  84. Contemporary digital television has really helped with this. Higher definition, bigger screens, and especially the 16:9 aspect ratio allow a much better view of the game.
    VR goggles

  85. Looks like His Donaldship has decided to defy SCOTUS and to instruct the DoJ to put the citizenship question on the census anyway.
    I really hope that it’s just Trump ranting again, with no actual implementation happening. It would be typical of him: a huge fight which will keep him center stage for weeks. Which, after all, is far more important to him than the actual issue at hand.
    That said, if he turns out to be serious, JDT’s various prophecies may come true after all. And a lot sooner than even he expected. Although I suspect that the deep state, which is full of people who know they aren’t immune to legal consequences of ignoring a Court order, will ignore him.
    /whistling past the grave yard

  86. The urtext of fuckwad’s speech today:
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/4/1867800/-Prepared-remarks-from-Donald-Trump-on-the-most-big-league-Independents-Day-ever
    Apparently, murderer Kim of North Korea received an invitation to attend the event today and I didn’t.
    Marty, could you score a could of tickets for me, with your connections. Surely, Kim has some left over, or is he bringing his entire entourage to march in the parade?
    Is this an open carry event?
    I hope the NPS thought to have Port-a-Potties on hand so the right wing vermin in attendance will have a little privacy available to wipe their asses on the Constitution at my expense.
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/rick-snyder-withdraw-harvard-fellowship-protest-flint
    I deplore this lack of civility by Harvard. I hope the former Governor lands a spot with faculty of the Flint Community College in the Department of Heavy Metals with cross-discipline in the Riverine Potamology Sciences, which is taught in the comparative religion department at the insistence of Michigan conservatives in the Statehouse.
    His Doctorate thesis was entitled “Lead and You, There But For The Grace of God, I’m Not Going There: An Overview”.
    I suppose this means that MY fellowship to Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and This, That, and The Other Thing is now going to be yanked in retaliation.
    I was to assume the poorly endowed Victor David Hanson Chair of WTF this coming Fall.
    It was a little dicey from the get go anyway, as I was going to develop position papers regarding cost efficiencies to be gained in the private funeral businesses in the United States after man-made disasters, with my primary focus centering on what to do with all of the dead conservative bodies after the coming Civil War in America.
    Mass graves, landfills, or what?
    Monuments to the fallen, or falling monuments?
    From concentration camp to desecration summer camp: a thought bubble hovering over the severed head of Stephen Miller.
    That sort of thing.
    I might venture into William Brr’s bailiwick, expressly his positions over the years making the case for mass incarcerations.
    He has definitely made his case as his massive butt will be incarcerated.

  89. I don’t know why this question popped into my head today:
    Was Anwar Sadat the last national president to be assassinated by his own troops during a military parade?
    –TP

  91. But how is this not trending on the RW noise machine?
    on this blessed day, all attention belongs to our Leader and Savior, Donald J Trump.

  94. How many popes do our military divisions have?
    https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/07/john-roberts-has-made-his-decision-now.html
    There should be massive killing violence against the entire Republican party in the state of Alaska.
    And if the vermin republican federal government interferes in their states’ rights on the side of anti-American republicans, nationalize the violence.
    Let’s get those tanks and fighter jets out of the parade in Washington D.C. and out into the American hinterlands, butchering and murdering decent American liberals.

  95. Note that this happened via a line item veto of funds approved by the state legislature. Including the Republican-controlled state Senate.
    elections have consequences.
    don’t like Republicanism? should’ve voted differently.

  96. There should be massive killing violence against the entire Republican party in the state of Alaska.
    Now, now, don’t overgeneralize.
    The Republican state senate approved the original funding. It’s just the Republican Governor who slashed it. Need to stay focused on the actual enemy here.

  97. elections have consequences.
    don’t like Republicanism? should’ve voted differently.
    It seems to me that there should be a caveat here. If the Governor ran on a platform of slashing funding for higher education (or even just to put it lower priority that the state’s annual payment to residents, from oil), then sure, elections have consequences.
    But if he did no such thing? Then you have the (not unprecedented) situation of an elected official doing something he didn’t support; maybe even explicitly ran against (I don’t follow Alaska politics, so I don’t know). In which case, the “vote against” is necessarily deferred to the next election.

  99. To Tony P’s point upthread, today’s p-fest at the Lincoln Memorial with all of those weapons of mass destruction on hand would be a very fine time for a military coup.

  100. I can’t see the US military staging a coup.
    On the other hand, I can see Trump screaming “Coup!!” when they refuse to remain loyal to him after he loses an election.
    As with most of those who are career Federal employees, their actual loyalty is to the Constitution which they are sworn to uphold. Not to Trump personally. Must infuriate him — especially since there really isn’t a damn thing he can do about it.

  102. Justin Amash may believe that he is splitting principled hairs among right-wing conservatives, but he will be sorely mistaken when the savage backlash against the entire malign conservative movement begins apace, sans elections.
    He is merely one of the original malignant tumors among the now metastasizing malignant masses killing the American body politic.
    Fuck him and fuck p and fuck McConnell equally on this patriotic holiday.

  103. Real Americans aren’t permitted to see the tanks.
    Only the filth who had their taxes cut, and who hate the idea that they are have been forced, I say forced, to pay taxes at all, in order to pay for the tanks, are permitted to fucking see the fucking tanks.
    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/07/04/open-thread-report-from-ground-zero/
    Flood watch in Washington D.C.
    May the Potomac rise from its banks in a fury and wash America clean of subhuman republican vermin.

  104. Jared, Ivanka, the two little p bastards aren’t gonna make it to the July 4th rally.
    I hope someone is left at the White House to prevent those four from stripping the place clean.
    Maybe they are in charge of removing the chunks of Khashoggi’s remains from the walk-in kitchen freezers while the Secret Service is busy keeping the royal hairdo dry in the deluge down at the John Wilkes Booth Monument p is going to unveil sneaking up on the Lincoln Monument.
    And what’s with all the Chinese fire works at an American debacle?

  105. They turned off the camera that filmed the miniscule crowds at p’s fake inauguration.
    https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1146869976986525698/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1146869976986525698&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.balloon-juice.com%2F2019%2F07%2F04%2Fopen-thread-report-from-ground-zero%2F
    Maybe Zapruder’s grandchildren will catch the action on their cellphones so we real Americans get to see our government in action too.

  106. I sure hope all of the Federal employees and military cucks disgracing themselves today for enabling this travesty have better sense when I as President order them to execute all conservatives and republicans in the country.
    But they don’t seem to have consciences, a feature which can be put to good use one day.

  111. RIP Mad Magazine
    I guess it’s just too hard to do satire when reality is so unreal. But it’s a loss nonetheless.

  112. JDT: To Tony P’s point upthread …
    Point? Moi?? I was only wondering whether we had to worry about Our President, whose insouciant assumption that His military is all on His side matches poor old Sadat’s.
    I guess I need not have worried. As wj assures us, the American military is faithful to the Constitution. Oh wait … does that mean He, Trump does have to worry?
    –TP

  113. I guess it’s just too hard to do satire when reality is so unreal.
    Poe’s law rules the world. The Onion is probably next.
    Hope everyone had a nice 4th. My wife and attended a “boat parade” at a friend’s house, which consisted of a couple of pontoon boats tricked out as parade floats making a circuit of a local pond. We had Danerys on a sword throne, an eagle, and a couple of Uncle Sam’s, including a blow-up one riding a rocket. Plus some kayaks and a canoe. The canoe was going the wrong way.
    It was whimsical, hilarious, and about ten minutes long, which is the definition of a perfect parade in my book. Then up to NH for my niece’s daughter’s birthday. A glass wine and a plate of papadam at our local Indian joint on the way home.
    A very nice day.

  114. I guess it’s just too hard to do satire when reality is so unreal.
    Poe’s law rules the world. The Onion is probably next.
    Hope everyone had a nice 4th. My wife and attended a “boat parade” at a friend’s house, which consisted of a couple of pontoon boats tricked out as parade floats making a circuit of a local pond. We had Danerys on a sword throne, an eagle, and a couple of Uncle Sam’s, including a blow-up one riding a rocket. Plus some kayaks and a canoe. The canoe was going the wrong way.
    It was whimsical, hilarious, and about ten minutes long, which is the definition of a perfect parade in my book. Then up to NH for my niece’s daughter’s birthday. A glass wine and a plate of papadam at our local Indian joint on the way home.
    A very nice day.

  115. A very nice day.
    Worth repeating I guess. Texas temperatures just reaching averages. I’m barely using the A/C.

  116. Should His Donaldship carry out His announcement that He will deport the families of active service members of the US military, He may have to take care that none of said service members are in attendance should His Donaldship call on military presence in His presence. And even greater care will have to be taken to monitor any Ciervillo Cardenillo in order to keep him out of range of any US official in His favor let alone His Donaldship himself.

  118. I would laugh at the failure of Trump’s parade, were it not for the sneaking suspicion that when he is disappointed or hurt, other people suffer. It reminds me of the last two lines of the wonderful Auden poem Epitaph on a Tyrant:

    Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
    And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
    He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
    And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
    When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
    And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

  122. It is tempting to resort to poetry as the art form that explains His Heinous-ness, but with all due respect to the wonderful Auden, let’s give satire one more shot at it:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U
    No, it just doesn’t ring any longer, does it? One breaks into laughter and forgets what needs to be done, the running through with a broad sword, for example, et tu?
    I have Von Clausewitz’s “On War” on my bookshelf.
    Let’s take a peek. Please turn to Book Four: Engagement, chapter title: Mutual Agreement To Fight. Page 291.
    McArdle’s modified Haiku is instructing us that she’s voting for p, unless there is a Democratic candidate with the given name “Someone”.
    But his or her last name has to be “WhoWillFurtherEliminateMyTaxes”

  123. The Generals were no shows at yesterday’s flatulence display as well.
    Ingrates.
    They sat around at holiday barbecues in those spiffy new uniforms p stole my money to dress them up in, yelling “Charge!!!” (it to the Treasury)

  124. The all-knowing, all-seeing Markets this morning:
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-market-wants-payroll-data-130628608.html
    Please lay more Americans off or send their jobs abroad and cut their pay so we can force the Federal Reserve’s hand on further lowering the interest rates on our yacht purchases.
    We have 30-room manses and only 28 are furnished. For God Sakes, don’t think of the children!
    Please continue Obama-era easy money monetary policies which we hated because they were Communist.
    Our kingdoms for a Keynes! Our kingdoms for a Keynes!
    Or we’ll demand p abolish the Federal Reserve and the Census.
    Over-stimulated, anti-American jagoffs.
    Arthur
    Laughing.
    Kudlow
    Dead.
    Stephen
    Moore … gimme more and more and more and …

  125. McArdle:

    the leading candidates have wandered so far out into left field…

    The leading candidates are calling for a return to pre-1980 norms on the socio-economic front, and a preservation of post-1980 gains on the social equality front.
    It’s not the leading (D) candidates who have wandered.
    We’re just trying to fix the mess people like you have made, Meghan. But, by all means, please do vote for a (D).

  127. Gee, if we Dems nominate the wrong person, we will be forcing poor Meghan to vote for He, Trump. Again.
    Hillary had it wrong. It’s not the deplorables who are the problem. It’s the despicables, like McArdle.
    Let Meghan hold her nose and vote for He, Trump if she doesn’t find the Democrat sufficiently Republican next year. Just remind her where the stink actually comes from.
    –TP

  128. McArdle:
    the leading candidates have wandered so far out into left field…
    McArdle suffers from the fact that our political vocabulary is stuck with only a left/right dichotomy. In fact, she isn’t a conservative, just a strong libertarian. Think of CharlesWT here.
    So I doubt the Democrats could find anyone who would push her to vote for Trump. At most, someone like Sanders might cause her to stay home. But I suspect that, even for Sanders, when push came to shove she would hold her nose and vote for the only guy with a chance to beat Trump. Go back to voting Libertarian when the stakes were lower.
    Always chancy to guess another’s intentions, of course. But I’ve been reading her since she was the Economist’s US correspondent, and that’s my take.

  129. We must see corporate profits rising at all times.
    By hook or by crook:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/corporate-profits-have-been-falling-since-last-summer-but-buybacks-came-to-the-rescue-2019-07-05?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
    Brought to you by the same lot who condemn dairy farmers for pouring their excess milk production down the storm drains.
    The same lot who condemn federal crop price supports and taking excess corn, peanuts, and such off the grid.
    The same lot who condemn labor holding back their productivity to force increased wages.
    The same lot who want OPEC destroyed for keeping oil off the world markets.
    The same lot who are against minimum wage supports.
    But the same lot who love them some monopolies.
    The same lot who shut the world’s art away in climate-controlled secret places off the market to maintain the value of their holdings.
    The same lot who revel in limited edition everything as they supply side and disrupt the shit out of everyone else’s livelihoods.
    America: The Land of the Big Lie

  131. wj: … she isn’t a conservative, just a strong libertarian.
    A “strong libertarian” is the kind of person who can say

    Haw, haw! Your end of the lifeboat is sinking

    with a straight face.
    I don’t know if CharlesWT is that strong a libertarian.
    –TP

  134. At most, someone like Sanders might cause her to stay home….. when push came to shove she would hold her nose and vote for the only guy with a chance to beat Trump. Go back to voting Libertarian when the stakes were lower.
    I would need to see the long form original of her 2016 ballot before I could even begin to believe that.

  136. Ugh is John Lovitz!
    LOL, that’s exactly what I was doing in the tweet (perhaps you saw), “let me introduce you to my wife, uh, morgan fairchild…”
    didn’t tag her or anything. So funny.

  137. But I’ve been reading her since she was the Economist’s US correspondent…
    You have my sympathy. My take on her oeuvre is that it is characterized by a rather glib dishonesty that is rather breathtaking.
    But opinions vary I guess.

  138. Twitter is nobodies getting 15 seconds of attention from somebodies. 🙂
    Yes, something I was discussing with my therapist on Wednesday…. 🙂

  139. rather glib dishonesty that is rather breathtaking.
    She was IMHO far better when she was at the Economist than now that she has her own column. And less editorial constraints.

  144. In fact, she isn’t a conservative, just a strong libertarian.
    I seem to be basically allergic to McArdle, so apply grains of salt as needed.
    I see her as not so much a libertarian, but specifically a Randian, who sees unfettered markets as the solution to everything, and finds moral hazards behind every attempt to help people basically eat and have a job and a place to live.
    Combine that with her apparent lack of self awareness regarding the privilege she was born into, and predilection for going off on topics like her new kitchen appliances and pink Himalaya salt, and you end up with someone who is hard to take seriously.
    Just speaking for my own experience.

  145. her apparent lack of self awareness regarding the privilege she was born into
    But isn’t that true of pretty much all libertarians? At least, I’ve never run across a libertarian who started life poor. Almost all were born upper middle class at least. And are convinced, nonetheless, that their success was due entirely to their own merits.
    You’d think successful people who were born poor would feel the same. And with far more reason. But it doesn’t seem to happen.

  146. I’ve met plenty of rags to riches, nobody ever handed me anything types who are strongly libertarian – they tend to be harsher than upper-middle and upper class libertarians who usually possess some self doubt. But maybe it’s different in Europe.

  147. Didn’t MM say exactly what we’d want her to say – that she’ll vote for the D regardless, because Trump is Trump?
    I disagree with her about almost everything, but not this. Well done Megan.

  148. What Pro Bono said.
    It’s clearly futile to expect the MM’s to agree with the Democratic platform – but attacking her for expressing a determination to vote against Trump is self-defeating.

  149. for the record, i didn’t attack MM for saying she’d vote D. i merely noted that these are strange times.

  150. P tweet-bombed this morning that if only California would follow his advice and caulk and spackle over those earthquake fault lines and fissures, the Earth would be more conservative.
    Meghan McArdle responded that while this may be technically correct, she’s not sure, let her check her sources, certainly we can’t permit government entities to engage in such operations for fear of providing the wrong incentives to geologists and crackheads, and besides, government interfering and disrupting the free market spackle and caulk industries will only hold things together at the expense of the disaster movie sequel industry.
    We mustn’t tip the scales, she opined, and then she started a new diet.

  152. Someone hand me that microphone so I can announce to everyone that while someone just handed me something, no one has ever handed me anything.

  153. Libertarians are never handed anything.
    No, you must serve them a court order to get them off government property and to stop handing everyone else a crock of shit.

  154. I’ve known libertarians who were raised by their ma’s wearing hand-me-downs and then grew up claiming “Look ma, no hands!”
    My brother is a professed Libertarian. He refuses to participate in grab bags and no one ever handed him a nickel.
    They knew better.
    He has principles, and if you don’t like those, he has others near at hand.
    He’d go through my mother’s purse for spare change behind her back when she wasn’t handing him a twenty for gas money.
    He was always lecturing us that his bird in the hand was worth two in the bush and then he’d point at the bush to divert us from his reach into the cookie jar.

  155. Libertarians remind me of Yogi Berra when a sports interviewer said to him, “OK, Yogi, let’s play a game. I’m going to toss out a series of names to you and you must limit your impressions of them to one word. Ready?”
    Yogi: “?”
    Announcer: “Mickey Mantle”
    Yogi: “What about him?”

  157. Perhaps Charles WT will enjoy this one 😉
    A mixture of the mundane and farfetched. As though the mundane wouldn’t be irrevocably changed by the farfetched.

  158. A variation of a lot of the other SF of that era. Rewritten westerns with spacemen, aliens, and spaceships instead of cowboys, Indians and horses.

  159. attacking her for expressing a determination to vote against Trump is self-defeating.
    Fwiw, I’m pleased that notable public conservatives are publicly stating that they won’t vote for Trump.
    All of that said, I think it’s safe to offer candid opinions here on obwi without fear of influencing outcomes in unwanted ways.

  162. Very dry, russell!
    Look, I take Pro Bono and Nigel’s points, but I also do not embrace McArdle or her point of view. I find the things she advocates to be harmful, and I’m not inclined to not say so out of concern that she will decide to vote for Trump.
    How she votes is her choice and her responsibility, not mine. Not least because I most certainly am not on her radar either way.
    The idea that the (D)’s have “wandered” off into some left wing cloud cuckoo land is absurd. It’s ahistorical. It ignores, at a minimum, the history of the US from at least the end of the 19th C until the ascendancy of Reagan.
    The (D)’s are advocating for programs that have been on the table for decades. Often as (R) proposals. The folks who have gone off the reservation are the (R)’s.
    I’m glad McArdle is interested in voting for anybody but Trump. I’ll have better things to say about her when she grows out of her Randian free market dogmatism.

  164. Very dry, russell!
    Your 10.01 perfectly understandable and (as always) reasonable. For the avoidance of any doubt, I was appreciatively referring to:

    All of that said, I think it’s safe to offer candid opinions here on obwi without fear of influencing outcomes in unwanted ways.


    which seemed to me both a rationale for us being honest with each other, and a realistic evaluation of the (probably minute to non-existent) impact of this blog in the real world!

  167. What bobby linked to.
    Don’t listen to them. We’re nothing but prey to them:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es83ejXi5wg
    That said, with the stock market and the voting booths jacked up to fuck us, and our institutions gelded and anesthetized, I fully expect this is what we wake up to the day after election day 2020. Because they cheat, lie and steal:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP_SdjD5ms
    After the past 40-plus years, we still didn’t see it coming. All of the portents, the signs, the hints, the nightmares, the allegations, the threats, the thousands of position papers and FOX Friend’s pronouncements by the subhumans about the plan for us and our children:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C-Y3oX5PyQ
    Donny Fucking Deutsch. Another shallow fucking sell-side pig who rose up, like Maria Bartiromo, like Kudlow, like Cavuto, like Martha McCallum, like the fat dead p-loving guy on FOX whose name by brain refuses to barf up at this moment, the entire lot of them, from stock market business channels like the old FNN, CNBC, the old, old Nightly Business Report on public television happy talk shilling every piece of business news, because happy talk is the most profitable business in pigfuck America, their gleaming capped teeth blinding you, when necessary hiking their skirts and minxly, basic instinctly, sharon stonely, crossing their legs because the one thing, the only thing they wanna keep your eyes riveted on is what’s up there between their legs, the glimpsed nirvana of ever higher stock prices, juked into your brain stem and your portfolio, like dagny taggart reminding john galt of Galt Gulch’s street number:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z8H6cutVRo

  168. bobbyp, in response to your 9:32, how do you suppose that they missed that, in addition to nominating a rapist, the GOP got one named to the Supreme Court? Guess which one we are likely to be stuck with longest. And is likely, over time, to do the most damage.
    The Moral Majority: even if one was under the illusion that they ever were, they’ve definitely abandoned the slightest claim to “moral”.

  170. GftNC: … a realistic evaluation of the (probably minute to non-existent) impact of this blog in the real world!
    “This blog”, with its “Voice of Moderation” motto and its ironic avatar, has always seemed to me like a digital analog (if you’ll pardon the expression) of the fictional lamasery of Shangri-La in one of my favorite novels.
    I have mentioned Lost Horizon before. Several times, sorry. And yet I never quite recognized the parallels between Obsidian Wings and Shangri-La until GftNC’s comment. Two things in particular:
    First, the “point of it all”. As the High Lama explains to Conway, the international community of lamas practicing moderation and pursuing knowledge in an obscure and isolated corner of the Tibetan plateau does not expect to influence the world; it merely hopes to survive the coming cataclysm because of its obscurity and isolation, and thus preserve the seeds of culture and decency for humanity’s battered survivors. ObWi, like Shangri-La, may “faintly hope for neglect” and survive because “the passing aviator may not think us worth a bomb”.
    Second, recruitment: the regimen of Shangri-La prolongs their lives tremendously, but the lamas are nevertheless mortal. At first, the order kept its numbers fairly constant by offering its hospitality to lost wanderers who stumbled into the Valley of the Blue Moon by chance. Later, it began to seek out and extend invitations to the occasional travelers making their way across the mountains. Always, the lamas made newcomers feel welcome; almost inevitably, guests were seduced into staying “for good”. They were never prisoners: the High Lama explains that Shangri-La has “no sentinels except those Nature herself provided”. All are free to leave, but most choose to stay. Incorrigibles do crop up from time to time; they are, in extreme cases, banished to The Outside — a most dreadful punishment, not lightly imposed.
    And so the lamas front pagers of Shangri La Obsidian Wings carry on, welcoming new postulants commenters who may, in the fullness of time, enter into full lamahood and carry the modest flame of moderation through the darkness and the storm in the hope of rekindling Civilization itself for some remote posterity.
    Well, well. I see I have been immoderately flowery and allegorical. What chew gonna do bout it? Huh?
    –TP

  171. I’m in full accord with TonyP’s conception of ObWi, although I hadn’t previously tied it to Lost Horizon. I guess that somewhat idealised picture is also why I have often tried (annoyingly I am sure) to maintain a semblance of courtesy, in order to pay more than lip service to preserve the seeds of culture and decency for humanity’s battered survivors. Clearly, this is only in cases where I believe there is underlying good faith.
    As for Tony P’s apologies for mentioning anything “several times, sorry”, I can only say that each time I post a poem I am suddenly conscious that I have almost certainly posted the same one before, maybe more than once. Please accept this as my blanket apology: I never think of it until I have already pressed “Post”, and then it is too late. I don’t know whether this is cognitive decline, or general distraction, but they are always good poems….

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