US Soccer is Wearing on Boltgirl's Very Last Nerve

CONCACAF qualifying for the 2011 World Cup is underway, and in a surprise to no one, we beat Haiti again. Haiti have never scored against us, at least on the women's side, and tonight the US poured in five goals that could easily have been ten. That's fine; I'm actually glad that the score stayed both in single digits and in the bottom half of one through ten, since blowouts don't do anything for either side, nor for the game in general. My problem is with this:

Lori Lindsay goes to the spa plays soccer in a jersey that renders redundant the giant O HAI I'M A GURL sign the Fed would clearly prefer.

What, US Soccer, the holy hell is this? I muddled through the men's World Cup this past summer and those godawful 1950s throwback jerseys with the knowledge that at least the women's side wore sharp-looking shirts. Well, I'm glad the Fed jumped right on it and brought that nonsense to a stop. The clean lines are gone. Now we have weird wraparound piping that makes Wambach et al. look like they're tied into those awkward kimono things you put on before getting your highlights touched up.

The upside is that the level of fug almost keeps me from being annoyed that you can't buy these things anywhere--but, of course, the official US Soccer store will still sell you any permutation of the men's kit you can think of, as well as a Freddy Adu hero t-shirt, just in case anyone's left who still thinks they guy has a future. Or maybe they're banking on people confusing him with actual starter Maurice Edu and buying up all the stock before they have to put it in remainders.

Anyway. The women go at it again on Saturday night against Guatemala, and the match is being streamed on the CONCACAF website, kimonos and all, so give it a look and see what you think. I think I don't like it.

While I Was Away

I swear, you can't leave this state on its own for more than 24 hours without someone forgetting to shut the door and letting the stupid in.

To be fair, there was already a shit-ton of stupid here (Exhibit #1: RealSheriffJoe). Palin's Maricopa County-issued pink panties are just the stupid cherry on the stupid cake.

In other news, it turns out that one of the judges who will be deciding whether Arizona can go ahead and start enforcing the odious SB1070 papers-please law was himself almost deported back in the 1950s when he was a resident alien. Turns out it was just a small series of mistakes on the then-college student future judge's part compounded by an INS officer, but an appeals board sorted it all out and the future judge eventually attained citizenship. Of course, the Daily Star's usual commenting pack of reading comprehension champions are convinced that the judge is a Cuban (Spaniard, actually) draft dodger (he wasn't) appointed by Clinton (by W, actually) who needs to recuse himself right away because he cannot possibly be neutral in any immigration matter now.

This is the same pack that howled about Sonia Sotomayor potentially deciding cases involving Latinas, wise or dull, and about big gay judge Vaughn Walker nixing Prop 8. Corporate lawyer John Roberts siding with corporations in Citizens United, though, was simply jurisprudence. The pack might not have agreed, but it was the decision they took issue with, not the perception that the background of the person making it had any influence on it whatsoever.

What will Arizona do today? I shudder in anticipation.

Jet Setter Goes Jetting

Off to Seattle for the weekend. I hear it may actually rain this time.

Dear Teabaggers

Dear Tea Party Americans:

Let me be the first to admit that I qualify as what you most likely define as an elitist. I have a college degree. In fact, I have a master's degree on top of that. I read a variety of newspapers and works of fiction and non-fiction. I have strong liberal tendencies. I speak and read German tolerably well, can get by in Spanish, and can phonetically read Hebrew even though I don't understand a lick of it. I am a student of the Howard Zinn version of history, not the Glenn Beck chalkboard revisionist version. I spent my college and young adult years in Chicago and have traveled and worked abroad. I hate country music and do not believe that driving a car around in circles for hours counts as a sport, no matter how fuckin' awesome the burnout at the end is. I do the New York Times Sunday crossword in pen. Jane Addams is a personal hero. Oh, and I've got The Ghey.

Elitist to the core.

Be that as it may, I don't want people just like me running the country. I want the people running the country to be smarter and more capable than I am. I want them to be able to grasp complex geopolitical and economic concepts, do a million things at once, and function on very little sleep. I do not want the average American Joe off the street or average Boltgirl off the blogosphere running the government with good old common sense. I want policy analysis with some teeth to it.

I definitely do not want poeple like Sharron "Hispanic? You look Asian to me" Angle and Christine "the First Amendment says WHUH?" O'Donnell anywhere near the halls of power unless they are clutching tourist maps and paying attention for the first time in their lives.

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.

That's not elitism, Tea Bag Nation. That's the fucking common sense you keep howling about. I don't try to fix my plumbing because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with home repair once we migrate away from wood and nails. I get Mike from Expert Plumbing to come out and do it for me, because he's excellent and fast. I don't want him writing legislation for me, however, no matter how good he is at sweating pipes together. Putting witchcraft and Hare Krishna-ism and the aversion to wanking aside for the moment, do you think Christine O'Donnell is a salt-of-the-earth common person just like you? Awesome. Good on you. She's cute and perky as all get out. But governing is complex, and hard--just like Barbie always said math is--and it takes more than pluck and a smile. A basic understanding of the Constitution you're sworn to uphold might make a nice start, and since that inherently requires the ability to rub two brain cells together, well, 'nuff said.

love and kisses,

Boltgirl

Stuff on My Mind

1. Rage! At work! Enter my new sunshiny office with caution. If you're preceded by a plate of cookies or bottle of single-barrel bourbon, you stand a better chance of leaving with your head.

2. Sharron Angle! Jesus Christ. I listened to twenty minutes of her debate with Harry Reid tonight before hitting my limit, and now give mad props to Harry Reid for not vaulting over the lecterns and tearing her insipid, insipid throat out before it could vomit up more tripe like "Obamacare" and "legislate from the bench" and "one man one woman."

3. Pinot noir! Did not like! But this Mirassou '09 is quite delightful.

4. Rage! At the gym! Because rehab is not progressing the way I would like. Also I discovered that I really do not enjoy being naked around a bunch of strangers. Worried about homoseckshuals stalking you in the shower? I should be Exhibit One re: keeping eyes so downcast and working so hard to get dressed in a flash that I managed to (a) put my boxers on backwards, then b) turn them inside out while trying to get them off and then back on in a hurry, and finally (c) topple over into the lockers in the process.

5. Mays Counter in Tucson. Go there and eat a lot.

6. Rage! Over DADT! Is the DOJ appeal simply another brilliant move in Obama's brilliant three-dimensional aikido Holmesian chess game that we mortals simply will not understand until the whole thing comes together in a giant fucking explosion of oh, so that's what the fuck he's been doing all this time? Or is it just another unfortunate opportunity to get comparisons between gays and goat-fuckers into the official record? Only time will tell.

7. Rage! Seriously, the work thing has me down, and is sucking the confidence and poise right outta me. I'm back to being the funny-looking kid from the sticks, at least in my head, and IT SUCKS.

8. Well, Mays. Jesus cornmeal-breaded Christ, that place makes everything better. Just get your cholesterol and all that shizz checked before you eat there, not after. Your arteries will protest but your soul will be very, very happy.

In Which the Arizona Governor's Race Gets Even More Stupid

So the guy who lost the Democratic senate primary in Arizona to closet Republican Rodney Glassman (who will be trounced by Maricopa County Republicans voting for John McCain anyway) posted this little nugget Friday on his Facebook:

Is it just because Jan Brewer looks and sounds like a chain-smoker who's been lying out in the Phoenix sun eight hours a day for the last 40 years? I'm more concerned with her lack of mental acuity than the tarballs she hacks up each morning, and actual attributable information is always a plus, but to each his own.

Brewer's puppetmaster, private prisons lobbyist Chuck Coughlin, sprang to her defense with the kind of class that, frankly, we've come to expect: he called Terry Goddard, Brewer's opponent in the gubernatorial race, gay.

Her top campaign adviser blamed her opponent, Terry Goddard, for fanning the gossip and said it was irrelevant.

But then the adviser, Chuck Coughlin, went on to say that if the media are inquiring about Brewer's health, reporters should question Goddard about his sexual orientation.

Remember, Arizona: there are only 20 days left before November 2, and Chuck Coughlin has set the bar for political discourse pretty frickin' high here. Get on it, son!

Shhhhh...

Today is the Boltgirl Heritage Derby, featuring Ireland and Slovakia in a qualifying match for the 2012 Euros, and I am anxiously awaiting to see how Ireland can get screwed over in a football match this time. I hope it at least involves a streaker, a referee payoff, and a duck.

Friday Reading

Need some absorbing reading for your lunch break? We highly recommend this. Then get revenge for all the unhinged e-mails your right-wing brother has been sending you since the last presidential campaign started, and send it along to him and put your phone on vibrate.

The Measure of One Man

My grandfather died seven years ago, and not many days in a row go by that I don't think about him. Sometimes I see him in my dreams when I most need to, and sometimes I'm surprised to see him in my waking hours when I come across someone who shares his mannerisms, or his eyes, or the cadence of his speech.

I saw this on the Maddow Blog this morning, and in John Walker's quiet compassion and measured reason, I saw my grandpa again. Mr. Walker would kick ass even without that--his account of thinking around the biases he was raised to have should be required instruction in our time--but it was a nice little extra on an otherwise gloomy day in the desert.

I wanna be a goshawk.