Okay.

Lars Baron / Bongarts/Getty Images

UPDATED with a link to the official video of the goal, below.

Deep breaths taken, heart rate reduced somewhat but still in triple digits, brain sagging slack-jawed in cranium after cranking out more endorphins than it maybe ever has. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. What a game. The US WNT went beyond exceeding expectations that were a tad low coming into the last round of friendly tuneups, that took a nosedive when Wambach went down with the kind of leg destruction that leaves horses euthanized on the track, that dropped completely off the radar after a sluggish 0-2 opening-match drubbing by Norway. Instead of panicking, Pia Sundhage made adjustments and the players responded, improving their games with every match.

Still, coming into this one my stomach was in knots. The US had beaten Brazil 1-0 the last three times they'd met, but in each of those Brazil played without their supernaturally fast and skilled duo of Marta and Christiane. The last time Marta was on the field against the US, she seemed to have four to six legs at one time, all of them moving with lightning speed, with rubber bands locking her feet to the ball, making US defenders look so bad that practice cones took umbrage at the comparison. The US had displayed steadily improving possession soccer since the first match of the Olympics, with flashes of offensive goods, but I didn't think it would be enough.

Guess what? It was.

There were still too many hopeful passes, as Brandi Chastain delicately put it, particularly coming from central midfielders Lloyd and Boxx. Way too many times the ball was simply dumped upfield 20 yards beyond any running US players. There were too many non-pressured giveaways in the central third and too many howlers under pressure deep in the defensive end, most due to poor first touches. But... defensively, this is as good as a US team has looked in a very long time. The back line organization was superb, and except for the late Marta free kick that froze every player on the field, Brazilians included, the marking was really beyond reproach and the mids tracked back well.

Amy Rodriguez is going to be very, very good when she grows up and learns just one more second of patience, one more touch on the ball. Lori Chalupny ran her ass off for the entire 120 minutes and didn't lose a step, at least not out of proportion to the Brazilians she was defending against. Christie Rampone shut Marta down for the bulk of the game. She still had some magic moments of splitting two or three or ten US defenders, but she wasn't running free. Carli Lloyd makes me crazy, and not in a good way. I am very glad she scored the game-winner, but only the fact that it was the sole goal of the match outweighs her numerous giveaways, statue-like defensive plays, long balls to nowhere, and attempted dives. Nice goal, Carli. You still have some work to do.

Hope. Freaking. Solo. She was a monster. She was completely out of her head. She played the match of her life. Her instincts on when to come out, when to stay on her line, when to punch, when to dive to cut off the cross, were spot on. The point-blank stop against Marta in the 72nd minute was unreal. Aside from one shaky clearance that barely avoided being a here-you-go to the Brazilian forward, she was just... she was just damn. And after the match, being interviewed by Julie "I wouldn't want to play in front of her" Foudy, gave all the credit to the way the team played and the energy they created for themselves on the pitch.

The goal was the culmination of a beautiful sequence in which Lauren Cheney got the ball just to the left of center about 25 yards out, circled under pressure, lasered a short ball up to Lloyd on her left, who hit a one-touch slip pass back toward center to Rodriguez, who touched it back to the left to Lloyd, who deftly collected the ball, took one extra touch just to the outside of the Brazilian defender, and unleashed a left-footed shot to the far post that dipped just under the diving keeper. Brilliant. Quick, controlled touches, smart movement off the ball, quick thinking, perfect execution. Beautiful, beautiful football.

The Brazilian Diving Team didn't make much of a splash today, although Christiane sure tried. Early on, after jumping over an onrushing Solo, she hit the ground and stayed there. Chastain's commentary was perfect. And that's what we call... nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's I missed a scoring chance, so I'm just going to lie here for a while and get some rest for my team. Very bad sportsmanship. I was not sorry to see Christiane crying and flailing at the ground after the final whistle, nor was I sorry to see Daniela be subbed off after repeatedly howling for calls she didn't get. Daniela, honey: if a nudge to your shoulder blades really makes the back of your head hurt that much, maybe you shouldn't be playing soccer. As the game went on, Marta did her share of complaining as well, at one point apparently also bitching at God after some light contact that made her shot sail high and wide.

If Solo is the Woman of the Match, Hucles is the Woman of the Tournament. Who expected her to end up tied with Marta as one of the top goal scorers? Not me. And if she'd put away a few of the other open chances she created, she'd have the Golden Boot hands down. Very, very impressive for an older player who never got much time and whose continuing presence on the roster was always a mystery to me. She was an anchor for the US team. Good on yeh, Angela.

The future looks pretty good. Now they know Pia knows what she's talking about. They should believe in the system and in each other. When Wambach comes back, she should add another dimension to the multi-dimensional attack they discovered in Beijing. Now if we can just find some central midfielders that don't make me hold my breath between the occasional flashes of okayness, well, hell. Gold, baby!

GOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!! And Gold.

Holy shit. The US WNT played completely outta their gourds and beat Brazil 1-0 in extra time for the gold medal. Will try to put together something more coherent than fuck yeah once my heart rate dips below about 270. What. A. Game.

This Does Not Bode Well

Here I was all excited about the new MSNBC show coming up in September, uh, one with some host who does radio and occasionally guest-hosts Countdown, and the embed code from Olbermann's website locked up Blogger on me. I'm sure the actually broadcasty bits will run much smoother.

41 Redux

Thank you very much to everyone who left birthday wishes, and of course to Homer for soliciting them on my behalf. Next project: can someone please tell me if my utter inability to either (1) keep my eyes open or (2) stop craving delicious, delicious hamburgers is a sign of some fundamental, abrupt, and possibly lethal change in body chemistry brought about by having said birthday? I cannot stay awake, the cupcakes are gone, and there's so much to do.

We Read This Morning's Daily Star

Who knew celebrating turning 41 would involve sudden, agonizing exhaustion at roughly 8:16 pm? So much that even the guys on the still rings could barely entice me to keep my eyes open? Jesus. Anyway, a couple of headlines got my groggy attention this morning.

Condo project targets the lesbian market. Really?

San Francisco-based Olivia Travel is teaming up with the developer of the Condominium at Williams Centre to market the project as a lesbian-friendly condo complex.

Olivia founder Judy Dlugacz said her organization has been searching for an opportunity to create a lesbian-oriented condo community. The Tucson project would be her organization's first condo complex, she said.

"We're going to premium-ize the development," she said.

Mercy me. A lesbian condo complex--wait, not just that--a premium-ized lesbian condo complex. In Tucson. "Premium-ize" here apparently means "has a salt water pool," which I didn't think would necessarily have people lining up in droves to jump in since we tend to spend the entire Tucson summer and ungodly parts of the spring and fall walking around in our own personal salt water pools that are contained in our clothing, but as I may be somewhat out of touch with the mainstream lesbian community here, maybe that's a really big lesbian selling point. I've lost both my user's manual and my copy of the agenda, so if someone could help me out here that'd be great.

The units are projected to sell in the $170,000-300,000 range, which is pretty square in the middle of the Tucson housing market. Toss in the salt water tank and the proximity of tens upon tens of lesbian couples and it probably turns into a screaming deal, although a quick mental inventory of the lesbians I know of in town returns maybe two who could afford to buy a new place in that range, and they're already ensconced in a lovely home up in the Foothills, so I'm not sure who exactly are among the 50 to 60 reported to have ponied up some cash already.

Item the next: Obama tells McCain to lay off. About damn time.

McCain — a former Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam — has asserted repeatedly that Obama's opposition to the Iraq war showed he would rather lose the war than forfeit the contest for the presidency.

Obama took him to task on Tuesday, saying: "one of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country. I love America, so do you, and so does John McCain. ... you all served together, and fought together, and bled together under the same proud flag."

I'm letting this little bubble of hope tide me over until the veep announcement tomorrow, at which point I will probably start pounding my head into the wall.

Item the last, not in any prominent part of the paper: US WNT trounces Japan to move into gold medal game. I will get to this later, but for now, let me just continue to say that anyone who laid money on Angela Hucles (!) being the money-ball offensive threat for this team in this tournament has got to be drooling over their travel brochures and Mountain Gear catalogs right about now. Damn!

41

Today is my birthday. Hooray!


Boltgirl likes birthday cupcakes.

AG Mukasey Inadvertently Provides Footnote for Entire History of Bush Administration

The career track at the Department of Justice is supposed to be politics-free. It's right there in the rules, or, as we here at BoltCentral quaintly tend to think of them, "laws." DOJ policy and the civil service laws prohibit making personnel decisions on the basis of political affiliation, so when Monica Goodling routinely included numerous explicitly political questions in the interview process for career applicants, she broke the law.

The response of the chief law enforcement official in the US to the documented lawbreaking by an official in his own department?

Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.

And there you have the Bush Administration summed up in thirteen little, mostly single-syllable words. Not every violation of the law is a crime. It's okay if you're a Republican. When the president does it, that means it is not illegal. Some animals are more equal than others. The simplicity and unabashed delivery are what make it so terrifying.

In Which We Are a Tad Perplexed

I haven't exactly flogged the Edwards thing to death, although I did give it a good hard shake when it officially broke on Friday, but the lack of repeated posting on it should not be confused for forgetting about it and moving on. Everything about it continues to piss me off something mighty, and I'm perplexed by many left/lib/progressive pundits and bloggers and their commenting communities shrugging it off with some version of it's a private matter for someone who is no longer serving in or seeking public office, so it's not relevant to public discourse. Aroo?


Boltgirl is confused.

Let me check the wayback machine for a second to see if Clinton pissed me off this much. *zip* Nope, not this much. Maybe it didn't seem so desperate then, so much a sense of narrowly averting disaster. Maybe it's because I stood there in the voting booth on primary day and contemplated writing in Edwards. Maybe it's the shattering of that fragile sense of superiority I got from watching the weekly parade of right-wing pontificators or their surrogates get caught in sexually compromising situations. Maybe it's anger at knowing I gave Edwards the benefit of the doubt when he said he's against gay marriage but was struggling to cross that bridge, when he had been merrily defiling the sanctity of his own marriage with a Dina Lohan clone.

A private matter? Sure, when you're a private citizen. Knowingly being a lying douchebag when I've pinned some hopes on you? I can't shrug that off so easily.

M is for...

I have never liked martinis, but may need to reconsider that position. (no, the Air America embed code isn't working for me, so enjoy the retro linkyness)

HAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, New Zealand was young and overmatched, and the last time against the US got drubbed 7-1, but this morning's game was exactly what the US needed going into the quarterfinals. The Americans scored four goals by four different players, allowing none, and for the most part displayed a short control game mixed up with a few long balls that, while again coming against a relatively low-pressure defense, represents a vast improvement over the opening match against Norway.

Heather O'Reilly has been the player most consistently churning up the field with a killer workrate, showing patience when needed, aggressiveness when needed, threading crosses, finishing close as well as from distance. The distance shot came 40 seconds into the game when she caught the Kiwi keeper off her line after a goal kick and nailed the upper corner from, what, 35 yards out? Chalupa returned from the knock on the noggin suffered in the first match and put on a clinic for what attacks out of the back line should look like. Boxx turned in another solid game in the center mid, and A-Rod finally showed a deft touch to go along with her innate sense of how to time runs to beat the offside trap, converting a run off a beautiful long ball from Rampone (I think) in the second half.

Since Norway inexplicably got destroyed by Japan (two Japanese goals coming off defenders' feet a minute apart did them in), the US goes through as the first-place finisher in their group, and I understand fuck all about how the other groups shake out. I think we go against Canada in the quarters, miraculously avoiding both Brazil (o cagado) and Germany (ach scheisse) until the semis, if we make it that far. Because as good as they looked this morning, those two teams are light years beyond New Zealand. The US back line has managed to cover for each other when, say, Rampone makes an inexplicable weak pass, Cox loses her mark, Markgraf loses a footrace, or, like this morning, Beuhler flies up on the attack but is slow coming back on the counter. Mitts and Chupa have been strong on the wings, despite Mitts' one miscue this morning of attempting to beat a Kiwi forward on the dribble and losing the ball ten yards outside her own box, but they haven't faced anything like Marta or Christiane, and the center backs haven't shown enough to convince me that they will be able to reliably dispense with surgical German crosses. In either matchup I think I want Wagner in the middle with Boxx rather than Lloyd, who has been maddeningly inconsistent when it comes to finding either feet or the frame. If we do draw Canada in the quarters, I would like to see her as an early second-half sub. Precise distribution out of the middle will be the key against the big guns. Hopeful whacks aren't gonna do it.

A ver, as they say in Peru--a notoriously poor footballing country, but a good phrase.

Olympic Moments

Anything to get the Edwards post off the top of the page, I suppose...

Women's national team: much, much better against Japan. The team appears to have settled down and rediscovered the midfield. Boxx turned in a very good performance after looking shaky against Norway and Lloyd managed to put her shots more or less on frame, with one of the "more" category finding the back of the net. Cox is still a liability at left back, leaving the Japan wing open more often than not or getting beaten on the dribble. Rodriguez is fast, fast, fast.

They play again sometime. Tomorrow morning? It's all a blur. I'm sure someone will wake me up at the appropriate time.

Water polo looks like it sucks to play. That is a serious amount of treading water in a funny hat while the other team is trying to drown you. I would angle to get penalties called on me as often as possible so I could sputter over to the floating penalty box and hang on to the ropes for a while.

Things I have not watched with any degree of rapt attention include horses, archers, and rowers. Synchronized diving was cool, volleyball's cool, and other things are probably lovely as well. Three cable channels running simultaneous and sometimes repeated coverage have exceeded my capacity to keep anything straight. Thus ends the Olympic update.

Oh, for Fuck's Sake

Seriously, John? Seriously?

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer. He denied fathering the woman's daughter. Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter but said that he didn't love her.

He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

A former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not Edwards.

Banging somebody else while your wife was battling cancer and, by the way, tirelessly fighting off the GOP slime machine for you? What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, what the flying fucking fuckity fuck fuck is fucking wrong with you? Did you think nobody would find out about this? Did you think even a teeny tiny bit about the amount of ammunition you were stockpiling for Republican campaigners who you knew would gleefully use it to blow holes in whoever your party nominated? Or was it just more important to be able to stick your dick into somebody who wasn't going through chemo? Way to keep us reasonably close to the moral high ground, asshole.

Maybe we should be grateful it wasn't a 20-year-old intern. That would have been marginally worse, but the whole baby issue cancels out the appropriate age issue. Asshole.

If It's Friday, It Must Be a Hodgepodge

Uno. Hey, the men's U23 soccer team acquitted themselves very nicely against Japan yesterday, coming away 1-0 winners in a match they really dominated more than the score indicates. Maurice Edu, Marvell Wynne, and Robbie Rogers particularly impressed me--Edu and Wynne with their solid defensive play and Rogers with his elegant footwork and ball distribution. The team as a whole looked pretty sharp, although Michael Bradley didn't have his best match and Freddie Adu needs to look up for open teammates now and again rather than consistently dribbling into pressure until he loses the ball. Oh, and Sacha Kljestan, this is not Argentina. Please cut your hair. Or at least wash it.

Dos. See, it's not just me.

Love is too weak a word to describe how some people feel about Rachel Maddow. They lurve her, loave her, luff her. New York magazine’s online Intelligencer column recently ran an item headlined Why We’re Gay for Rachel Maddow, and the blogosphere is dotted with posts like “I’m totally gay for Rachel Maddow.” The “gay for Rachel” meme appears to transcend gender and sexuality. Women, men, straight and not straight: they’re all gay for her. In a year in which we have decided to become postracial and postgender, Maddow may embody a media in which adoring fandom is postgay.

Tres. I try to support locally owned businesses over chains when I can, but sometimes a corporate entity comes along that is simply so delicious that my slender principles are no match. Grimaldi's Pizza (work warning: musical website) is owned by somebody in the Evil Northern Empire of Scottsdale, or possibly Brooklyn--who can tell? not me--but damn. Damn, damn, damn. One of my New Yorker co-workers fussed that it's "not real New York pizza," which probably explains why it tastes so good. It is a thin crust, but its crisp body refuses to be folded, and the rich tomato sauce sings with marjoram and possibly the slightest hint of rosemary, just enough to perk up your tastebuds with a delighted oh, what is this? Even the really unforgivable move of the waitress bringing me an already-opened Stella because they were out of the Sierra Nevada IPA I'd ordered (after being told they were out of the draft Nimbus IPA and had never had Sam Adams, despite its being on the beer list) wasn't enough to make me want to firebomb the place. The pizza was that good. Oh, and it's baked in a coal-powered oven, so the carbon footprint of your meal covers vast swaths of southwestern Pennsylvania. But it is so. freaking. tasty. Chalk it up to a guilty pleasure.

Cuatro. No, I'm really not a fan of Stella Artois. Meh, Belgian Budweiser. But now I guess all Budweiser is Belgian anyway. Maybe they can consolidate their brewing and save some money.

Cinco. Cake Wrecks. Just because.

Quote of the Day

Is it Friday? No? How can it only be Thursday? Jesus. Anyway. Obama played Elkhart (Indiana) yesterday, and left us this gem:

I know that Senator McCain likes to call himself a maverick, and the fact is there have been times where in the past he did show some independence, but the price he paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position, and now he embraces the failed Bush policies of the last eight years--politics that helped break Washington in the first place. And that doesn't meet my definition of a maverick.

Well, as the kids say, w00t. It's about goddamn time.

In other news, McCain also admitted yesterday that keeping your tires inflated is a good idea after all, forcing his campaign to scuttle plans to continue to distribute Obama tire gauges to the press corps. 89 days to the election.

Cubs! Woo!

Clutch fucking hitting. That's all you need to know. Unreal.


Mark DeRosa.


Alfonso Soriano.

You don't even notice when half these guys are hitting under .270, because they step up and knock one when it's needed most.

Sports Corner: Well, That's a Problem

Hmmm. The US women's soccer team opened their Olympic run with a 2-0 loss to Norway, and when I say "opened" I mean "really really opened," as in "at least they waited for the ref to start the game before giving up two quick goals."

Shite.

The first came at 1:07 off a Norway cross from the left side. Hope Solo went to punch the ball away but collided with Lori Chalupny, which resulted in Solo missing the ball but making good contact with Chupa's head. The ball, happy to have escaped a beating at Solo's hands, went off the Norwegian attacker's noggin and skipped into the goal, whistling all the way. Opinion is divided as to where the fault lies for that one, but I'm inclined to say, meh, these things happen. Solo came off her line and made a play for the ball, Chupa went up to try to get a head on it. Maybe Solo should have broken earlier or called the defender off more vociferously, but whatever. It happens. It just sucks when it happens before sleepy viewers quite have it straight which way each team is going.

The second one hurt. Kate Markgraf attempted a back pass that turned into a beautiful through ball to the Norwegian attacker she didn't see behind her, and that was pretty much it. Solo, left hung out to dry, covered the near post like she was supposed to and was beaten high and away by the kind of nice finish you expect to see at the international level. This was at 4;46, more or less, and that was it.

The US was rattled and took quite a while to settle down. Defensively, Markgraf looks like a liability. Love Kate, but aside from a solid shot from outside the arc late in the second half, her game didn't have much to recommend it. Heather Mitts--sit down if you aren't already, because I never expected to hear this from me--was hands down the best US back. She has been nothing less than solid since returning from her ACL injury and has turned into a good attacking back as well. The central midfield was weak. Apparently this is my day to bust on aging Domers, so here we go. Love Boxxy, but she was awful today. Her first touch was rusty, her passes rarely found US feet, she biffed two open chances in the box, and she was hacking Norwegians at a rate that left me surprised to see the Swiss Miss, referee Nicole Petignat, keep her card in her pocket. On the outside, Heather O'Reilly was the most effective attacking player the US had on the field, showing an eagerness to take on defenders one-on-one and fight for every ball. Lindsay Tarpley was off her game, sending way too many crosses and through balls to spaces that didn't have a US player within 20 yards. Tash Kai was too random in the first half; interestingly, as she started to fatigue in the second half, she did a far better job of showing patience on the ball and finding open teammates in front of the goal rather than whacking at the ball mindlessly.

Not that there weren't bright spots, or at least a few sequences that gave me hope that the team is finally moving beyond the one-dimensional long-ball attack of the Ryan era. Ball movement as a whole was not great, with too much panic showing through in the first half. They settled a bit in the second and managed to link a few passes and play possession for brief spurts, which created a handful of scoring chances late. The magic final pass is still elusive, for the most part, and when it was there the finishes were mostly lacking.

Substitution patterns continue to mystify me. Bringing Rodriguez on in the second half was a no-brainer, but for Tarpley? I expected to see her come in for the ineffective Boxx, with Hucles moving back to the midfield. I would very much like to see the young, speedy players all on the field at the same time, A-Rod, Tarp, and HAO all at once, just to see what happens. Chastain wants to see Aly Wagner start at center mid in the next match. She's getting up there in years and hasn't had much playing time recently due to injury, so who knows if her legendary distribution skills are still there? There has to be another answer. Brazil and Germany looked monstrous in their game today.

I don't mind crawling out of bed at the crack of dark if they play well, but the match today was hardly even worth tivoing.

Heh.

Loathe Paris Hilton. Lurve this:

And, as always, lurve hat-tipping Top!Secret G-woman for passing awesome things along.

McCain's New Rallying Cry vs. Reality: Guess Who Wins?

John McCain went to the Sturgis motorcycle rally yesterday. The salient bits of his address boil down to this:

“We’re not going to pay $4 dollars a gallon for gas (when I am president) because we are going to drill offshore and we are going to drill now. We are doing to drill here and we are going to drill now,” he said.

Awesome. One teeny tiny problem with that, though. The government's own research contradicts him. The Energy Information Administration (the Department of Energy's independent stats and analysis organ) pretty bluntly dismisses the notion that drilling here, drilling now will solve our gas pump price shock any time during the next president's administration. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

And that's a best-case scenario that assumes "local infrastructure issues and other potential non-Federal impediments will be resolved after Federal access restrictions have been lifted." Want a picture? There's also a picture. The green line just above the blue line illustrates the expected gains.

What about all that oil those stupid caribou and polar bears are squatting on in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? That would make a big dent in foreign oil dependence and prices at the pump, right? Uh, no.

The EIA also researched the impact of crude oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. To put it in scale, ANWR is believed to have a potential for 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil, a little more than half of the projected potential for the offshore areas McCain has proposed opening.

ANWR would add only 1 to 2 percent to the overall world oil supply, said Philip Budzig, who authored the report for the EIA. The report concluded drilling there would subtract anywhere from 41 cents to $1.44 per barrel of crude oil around 2025. That translates to a savings of just a couple pennies per gallon at the pump. Again, in 2025.

Budzig noted that the report was prepared when oil was going for about $65 a barrel. It’s now double that. So, in theory, savings might be double what he projected last year.

So, (a couple pennies per gallon) x 2 = what, like four cents? In 2025 pennies? Are we even going to have pennies in 2025?

What will make a difference right away for all Americans' wallets? Let's see. John McCain says drill here, drill now. All the evidence indicates that magically conjuring fully functioning derricks positioned over every sweet spot in Alaska and the continental shelf will not tide me over to my next paycheck. The McCain campaign, which every day exhibits more and more evidence of being run by first-keg frat boys, has been handing out pressure gauges to mock Barack Obama's suggestion that if people want to reduce their own personal reliance on foreign oil, they should keep their tires inflated.

Let's check back with that notoriously liberal, tree-hugging entity known as the US government.

The Department of Energy estimated in 2005 that U.S. motorists wasted 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline a year from driving on underinflated tires -- roughly 61 million barrels of oil.

The government also offers "Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage," and if you go through the whole onerous list of things like keeping your car tuned up, changing the air filter, and inflating your tires, you can see a fuel economy improvement of up to 17%, which at $3.96 a gallon translates to a savings of 68 cents per gallon, or over eight bucks per fillup on a 12-gallon tank. Compare the immediate 17% decrease in gasoline consumption you get from tuning and tires to the best-case 7% increase in domestic oil production by 2025 and tell me which makes the most sense in the short term. Then McCain and the 20,000 idiot bikers who cheered him in Sturgis can explain to me why a party that constantly touts self-reliance ridicules the notion of individuals adopting thrifty behaviors when it comes to gasoline. Never mind we're paying half what Europe does. We want ours and we want more, more, more, and we want it to be handed to us on the cheap right now.

Barack? You need to call him on this bullshit now, not "compromise" when the compromise is directly built on the bullshit idea that drilling is the solution to anything but Exxon's quest for the next quarterly earnings record.

Knock Me Down with a Fucking Feather, Part Ninety-seven: Anthrax

Oh, goody. You probably heard over the weekend that Dr. Bruce Ivins, the prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, has committed suicide, giving the FBI the opportunity to say well, that's that, then, and slam the door shut on the investigation. You may or may not have heard that we now know that the government's original assertion, repeated breathlessly by Brian Ross over and over and over on ABC, that the anthrax was definitively tied to Iraq, was utter bullshit. Utter and deliberate bullshit. Glenn Greenwald blows it open.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”

ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein.

Outstanding. You know, when lying about WMD just isn't enough, well, use a very convenient unrelated terrorist attack as the basis for a whole 'nother set of lies. Works like a charm, every time. I am not willing at this point to entertain borderline tinfoil notions of Bruce Ivins as the point man for a deeper conspiracy. There's enough to be pissed at without that. Things like... this, for example.

It's a bad movie script that's taken on a life of its own and keeps promulgating increasingly bad, unbelievable, downright awful plot twists. But it's real, and if today's depressing Rasmussen daily tracking poll is any indication, it may not stop any time soon. Work this bit of news into your daily conversations with anyone who still thinks the Bush administration and John McCain aren't so bad, yes?

Emirates or Exxon: Either Way You Take It in the Shorts

Maddow brought up an interesting point yesterday I hadn't thought much about before--no, I am not obsessed, thank you; I simply recognize quality when I see it--namely, that the drill here instead of buying oil over there camp falsely conflates "domestic oil" with "United States" rather than "US oil companies." In the absence of nationalized oil companies--quelle horreur--opening up the coastal shelf to exploration and production simply provides us the opportunity to pay a US-based multinational corporation for our gasoline instead of paying the Sultan of Oman. A company like Exxon, for example, which just shattered its own US record for quarterly earnings with a staggering $11.7B profit posted in the second quarter of this year. That's billion.

And, she added, most of that profit isn't even coming from sales to the US consumers they currently have under their thumbs. Can this be true? I did some looking. Everyone who is convinced that domestic oil production and gasoline refining are the solution to all of our woes needs to take a deep breath and take a look at this.

A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.

The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

"We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," President Bush told reporters this week. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home."

We need to find more crude oil here at home so we can... ship it overseas in order to fatten ExxonMobil's wallets even more? The argument to increase domestic production would make sense if we had a Department of Petroleum whose revenues flowed directly back into the nation's infrastructure or even just a giant petty cash drawer for little things like schools and up-armored HMMVs. But we don't. What we do have are companies that operate in the global market and will move their product to the area with the highest profit margin. They exist to line their own portfolios, not to alleviate the skyrocketing prices that are gobsmacking low- and middle-income Americans.

The exports were also equal to half the 3.2 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products the United States imported each day over the 4-month period.

Throwing open ANWR and the continental shelf will marginally increase the global oil supply and maybe cause a small, short-term ripple in prices. But don't fool yourself into thinking that adding another million or so barrels to US corporate oil tanks will do anything but give them more options for their export markets and decisions on refining capacity, and provide the opportunity for 11.7 billion to be chump change down the road.

Drilling domestic oil does not mean domestic market relief and thumbing our noses at the sheikhs. It just means more discretionary product in the hands of private companies whose last interest is giving you a break at the pump.

A Question for the Guy Next Door

Dear Guy Next Door,

I am deathly curious to learn the exact nature of your yard improvement project, specifically, the attributes it possesses that are so crucial to the continuation of the species that you needed to be out pounding rebar into the ground for it at 5:30 this morning. I suspect you were simply moving your horseshoe pit, since the daily round of clank-thud commenced shortly thereafter. Actually, I guess I have a second question now: precisely how careful do you want me to be when I cut down the salt cedars on our shared property line? Mull that over before you haul out the sledgehammer tomorrow morning.

love,
Boltgirl

But First

As much as you are certainly dying to continue with the historical Loop tour, we must take a side trip right now to watch Dr. Maddow shred Pat Buchanan. The kinda worn-out Intarwebz acronym IOKIYAR truly should be updated to IOIYJMcC; the right can howl to their hearts' content that Obama coverage has far outstripped McCain coverage, but when over 70% of said Obama coverage has a negative slant, well, the liberal media myth continues to inhabit the realm of Bullfinch. So remember, it's OK for John McCain to refer to himself as "President McCain," but if Barack Obama shakes hands with a foreign head of state in the Willard Building instead of from the other side of a rope line, he's acting like he's the president or something and that's just uppity and uncalled for. Huff, huff.

Note: the following exchange has been scrubbed from the MSNBC website. If even they are protecting Pat Buchanan's delicate sensibilities, conservative media bashers really don't have a leg to stand on.

Second note: video link originally courtesy of commenter rhit over on the Maddow blog.

Historical Chicago History Post

Getting back to my summer vacation before it hits the month-ago mark... I spent the July 4 weekend in the city doing a few things I'd done before and seeing a whole lot more I'd managed to miss during the nine years I lived there.

First stop: the site of the Haymarket Riot of 1886. From the plaques at the base of the memorial, which depicts labor activists speaking from a wagon before the meeting turned ugly:

On the evening of May 4th, 1886, a tragedy of international significance unfolded on this site in Chicago's Haymarket produce district. An outdoor meeting had been hastily organized by anarchist activists to protest the violent death of workers during a labor lockout the previous day in another area of the city. Spectators gathered in the street as speakers addressed political, social, and labor issues from atop a wagon that stood at the location of this monument. When approximately 175 policemen approached with an order to disperse the meeting, a dynamite bomb was thrown into their ranks.

The Haymarket Memorial, 151 N. Desplaines St.

The short version of the aftermath is that 7 cops and 4 civilians were killed by the bomb, thrown from Crane's Alley, here:

Crane's Alley, east side of Desplaines.

The slightly longer version is that, despite the failure to identify the bomber by either name or affiliation, the organizers of the meeting and several other people with unpopular pro-labor political beliefs were arrested and imprisoned after sham trials. Two organizers and two speakers were executed; another was murdered in prison while awaiting trial. The Haymarket Affair ultimately became a rallying point for the modern labor movement.

From the memorial at Desplaines and Randolph, it was a decent walk down to the ultimate Chicago historical site: the origin point of the Great Fire. The O'Learys built their barn on DeKoven Street just east of Jefferson. October 8, 1871: cow, lantern, wind, history.

Poof.

The red brick building behind the monument? The one that says "Chicago Fire..."? Yeah, the full sign reads "Chicago Fire Academy." Too fittingly, the original fire site was taken over by the fire department to build their training academy; the back of the brick building is lit up at regular intervals to teach cadet firefighters how to ameliorate the effects of modern day O'Learys.

Boltgirl demonstrates callous disregard. It wasn't me, honest!

From there, a stroll up to the south Loop, where Dearborn Station overlooks the south end of Printer's Row.

Dearborn Station's tower, somewhat shortened after a fire--what else?--destroyed its original high peaked roof.

Next time: fun architectural details from historic Loop buildings. For now, the Cubs won in Milwaukee and are sitting in first by four.

Goodness How Time Flies

My grandpa was an old-school music man, beginning with the dance band he led as a clarinet virtuoso in high school and culminating in a full career as the head of the music department at the high school in the little southern Illinois town where we lived. He also conducted the city band, which I believe is the longest continually performing municipal band in the state of Illinois (the Cummins Band in Olney, formerly populated by musicians who had played with John Philip Sousa).

One Wednesday evening in late July of 1992 my dad walked over to his house as he got ready for his retirement concert, the last he would direct after 40 summers at the town park's bandshell, to give him a bit of news about me. Well, Grandpa replied, maybe on the night I lay down my baton I'll get a great-grandson.

It didn't happen that night, but it did on the next. So happy birthday to my now 16-year-old son, who I shamelessly claim as the best boy ever. Grandpa would be beyond proud. Shout out!

My Week in the Gender Wars...

... is only three days old so far, and the chucklehead contingent is already batting .667 if you're scoring at home.

Sunday night was the more personally irksome incident, on the soccer field during a co-ed game. One of my male teammates runs pretty hot and tends to respond to overly physical play with verbal attacks. He has a knack for identifying the basest target he can aim for and hitting it right away, whether it's relating details to his opponent about the opponent's mother or, as was the case Sunday, loudly informing his fully transitioned MTF opponent through word and gesture that he still has his penis.

At halftime I told him he needed to knock that shit off. Well, she pushed me, he said. I don't even know if it's a she or a he or what. She's a she, so push her back, I replied, but do not bust on her for being transgendered, and just do not even say that stupid shit to anyone, ever again. After the team captain and her mother for good measure chastised him as well, he went over and apologized to the other player, who amazingly accepted his apology instead of just kicking him in the nuts to check to see if he still had those too.

Monday passed without incident.

Today I'm at the gym lifting weights when two early-20s guys come in. It's not the hugest weight room in the world, and there's no music or anything, you can hear pretty much every conversation that goes on. First guy does some curls and passes the barbell off to the next guy, who reracks it and grabs a lighter one. First guy snorts with laughter. Well, if you're gonna be a vag, I guess you're gonna be a vag! Seriously, fellas? Seriously? I'm old enough to be your mother, I actually have one of those dreaded vagi, and oh, by the way, I'm outlifting both of you. Like, OMG, STFU already.

On Sunday, the crime wasn't the push so much as the perceived affront against nature, manhood, Jesus, Thor, and all of existence represented by a guy trading in his dick for a vagina and becoming a woman. Today it was a guy demonstrating physical weakness and thus, for all practical purposes, simulating a woman, which meant, of course, being reduced to the only really relevant part of a woman in his buddy's mind, which--despite being a very desirable part said buddy undoubtedly likes having wrapped around his dick--is something to be despised, something shameful to be equated with.

In neither case did the poorly behaving guy exhibit any shred of awareness that what he said was much different from lovely weather we're having today. The guys in the gym went on at full volume, despite half the people in there being female. The guy on the team thought it was funny until his teammates let him know in no uncertain terms that it wasn't.

It's hard work being a dour, humorless feminist. And it's only Tuesday.

Ugh

It is hot hot hot humid humid humid and I am a perpetual pool of perspiration. Christ. Everything is damp. I lean forward onto the table and come away with napkins and whole sections of the newspaper stuck to my forearms.

I loathe this time of year. Absofuckinglutely hate it. The thunderstorms are lovely, when they fire up over midtown instead of just taunting us from the east side, the south side, the northwest, but they don't come every day. Just the clouds and the oppressive thick air, clothes that won't dry, a swamp cooler that snorts with laughter and says yeah right, talk to me again in October.

Floor fans. Cold lime seltzer water from Trader Joe's. Immobility. These are the top priorities today.

Memento Mori, in Stone

And so the threatened photodump from my summer vacation begins.

Maybe ten years ago I happened on Scott Sanders' In Limestone Country in the "midwest" section of Bookman's. Hmmm, nifty. Over the years the book metamorphosed from an interesting read to a pilgrimage guidebook on my trips back to southern Indiana, which happens to be underlain by the finest building stone the planet has to offer. Indiana limestone built the Empire State Building, the National Cathedral, and several statehouses across the country. The book talks about the history of quarrying in two counties southwest of Indianapolis, but, best of all, also describes quirky places and monuments you might miss if you weren't looking for them.

So I've been looking for them.

Past trips have taken me to the Empire Hole between Oolitic and Needmore, where, if you took the Empire State Building apart and laid it back in, block by block, you could fill the hole back up to ground level. The edges of the great hole are lined with trees, and the walls stairstep starkly down to the green water that's filled most of the yawning opening in the intervening decades since the rock was cut out. All the old quarries have similarly been converted by time and rainfall to overgrown swimming pools, deserted except for the birds and weeds, and everywhere, everywhere, stacks of extra or rejected stone piled up like so many giant babies' building blocks.

Generations of men spent their lives in the quarries working the stone. When they died they were buried in shallow graves right on top of it, with a limestone monument placed above them, sandwiched for the rest of forever between layers of gray stone. The past trips also led me through tiny Oolitic, with its limestone statue of Joe Palooka downtown, to Bedford, the seat of Lawrence County and the absolute center of the Indiana quarrying industry now. Specifically, I went to the cemetery in the middle of town to see its amazing hand-carved gravestones from the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the cutters were honored with monuments of limestone rather than the modern granite, obelisks and tablets but also lifelike tree trunks covered with carved vines and ferns so detailed as to be identifiable to species. Doves perched on bouquets of stone flowers. A full-sized golfer standing with his bag of clubs. A carver's workbench covered with tools, all preserved in stone by the man's grieving workmates, a stone snapshot of his bench on the day he died.

Those were past trips. This time around I was with a bigger group that had been promised a geode hunt, but the flooded creeks and my inability to remember exactly where we found the good ones a long time ago made that a bust. We still made it to a Limestone Country landmark I hadn't found before, Hopkins Cemetery, a tiny burying ground perched on a peninsula of unstripped land surrounded on three sides by steep quarry walls, south of Needmore, where old Indiana 37 has been chopped in half by a quarry, directly north of the Empire Hole. Graves at the northern edge have begun tumbling over the side.

It's still an active cemetery, but it's old. We walked around quietly looking at the stones. It didn't take long to notice that a lot of families lost a lot of kids at very young ages, or that even this small community had stark disparities in wealth. (if you'd like to see details, all images can be embiggened with a click)






















A finely worked scroll and a verse for Joseph Massey.


















A lamb for Zella.























A bouquet and an unconscious dove for Hershel.























An obelisk for a newborn.

But this one is the one that got me, a simple uneven tablet that was carved with an unpracticed but loving hand, for Kenneth Dale Moffatt, dead at nine. Click to enlarge the photo and you can make out, in the upper right, "Asleep in Jesus," with the J carved backwards, the dates of the boy's too-short life awkwardly squeezed at the bottom under his name, and in the top left corner, in what my stupid sentimental mother's heart sees as a gesture of love and hope, and perhaps a memory of happier times, a sun rendered like a child's drawing.

A stone for Kenneth Moffatt.

It wasn't sadness that quieted our steps as we wended through the gravestones raised by the families of the rich and the poor so long ago so much as the contemplation you can't escape when you come to a place like this. Must've been a hell of a life, my brother said softly as he examined the row of stones set by a family that had lost five children before the age of two. So many kids, so many women dying young, so many men who barely made it past fifty before silicosis or blocks unexpectedly breaking free of their lines caught up with them. But they kept on. And they poured their regard for each other into the stone they carved to set up in memory.

Many of the inscriptions have been rendered unreadable now by decades of rain and wind; limestone's softness makes it excellent for carving but not so great when it comes to permanent memorials. But it's that failing that makes it the best medium, I suppose, for carving out initials to mark peoples' brief stay here, the eyeblink of their lives above the stone. The grass gets mowed and the weeds get pulled and flowers get left even as the names fade from the faces of the monuments, toppled obelisks are carefully propped back up, and the graves sliding out of the north end of the cemetery are, I hope, occasionally grabbed back from the precipice.

Brrrrrrrrrrr

I have never been on a bad acid trip--well, or on any acid trip at all, regardless of quality--but I think this might make up for that. Mommy.

Physician Recommendation

My doc is pretty cool. In the market for a new GP? Give her a call. Aside from being chronically susceptible to schedule creep--get the first appointment in the morning if a quick in and out is important to you--she is on top of her game, is open to discussion, has a no-bullshit attitude, and has a wickedly sarcastic sense of humor. We get along great. She also wrote an op-ed for the Daily Star this morning.

On June 17, I got married in California. Somehow, this was deemed newsworthy. We had two paragraphs in The New York Times, were the lead story on KOLD-TV at 5 and 6 o'clock, and had a multimedia slide show in the Palm Springs Desert Sun, to name only a few of our contacts with the media.

The reason we garnered so much attention was that I married a woman.

I could have married a man I met on the street and if I died the next day, he would get my Social Security benefits. Yet my partner of 18 years, who has stayed home for the last 10 years to raise our sons, would get nothing.

There is something inherently wrong about that.

Attagirl, Melissa.

When In Doubt and Not in the Mood to Photoblog, Talk about Wambach

"Talk" here means, of course, "fling up a link to a real journalist and call it a day." The inimitable Andrea Canales discusses Wombat's conference call today talking about her surgery and outlook on rehab and the team's prospects in the Olympics without her. I am grudgingly, slowly, grindingly swinging toward maybe dialing my opinion of her back up a couple notches with every instance of remarkable chin-upness she's displayed since the second after the nasty double-bone break last Wednesday.

Abby is asked why she didn't scream in pain upon the break. She says she hasn't seen the hit. She says she thinks her experience and competitiveness helped. She didn't want to negatively affect the team by making a scene. She wanted to set an example for her teammates...

She plans to watch the games with other injured players. She intends to grow from this experience. "There's not question in my mind whether or not I'm going to make a comeback - it's just a matter of time. I want to come back and be great again." Abby says she's ready for the hard work that will involve. She's aware of her responsibility as a role model in dealing with challenges and wants to be inspired by that. She wants to show kids how to react when things get tough. She vows to come back...

When she's asked to name three players who people should look out for, Abby says she can name 18.

Not bad, not bad at all.

After watching the replay of the game last night, I am increasingly impressed with Amy Rodriguez' speed and work rate. She is desire for the ball embodied and whizzing around the field on a blur of legs. Lauren Cheney has been brought up as Wambach's replacement on the front line; watching the two of them together is going to be very interesting. And hopefully will create unanticipated problems for the opposition.

Updated: the link to the audio of the conference call is up at US Soccer.

Wombat Health Update

I was going to lead off with something about still being wary when it comes to re-pledging my allegiance to Wambach, or the entire WNT, for that matter, after the Incident at the World Cup, but you know, meh. It's been hashed and rehashed to death (if you want one more go 'round, it's here; find the money quote explaining why my Wambach-related drool has stayed dried up and win a prize).

Anyway. Wombat's surgery was successful, and she now has a shiny new titanium rod to keep her tibia company on cold nights; no word as yet on whether Megan Rapinoe continues to be a component of those cuddle plans. However, the initial 12-week estimate for a comeback was probably premature and not realistic.

“She’s sustained a very significant injury to her bone,” said Dr. Valletta. “It can sometimes take a year to return a professional player to her previous level of activity, but the expectation is that we will have an aggressive rehab program and progress her weight-bearing rapidly to minimize her time lost for competition.”

Speaking from the pretty much completely unrelated experience of a bone bruise, that aggressive rehab will not be pleasant. She's proven the ability to gut it out through a broken toe and a split-open, stapled-back-together head, and she's seen teammates come back from equally bad injuries ahead of schedule without losing much of a step, if any, so I believe she'll get there. What the team she returns to will look like is the bigger question at this point.

People Are Starting to Notice

If I must share my massive crush with the rest of America, so be it. Le sigh.

Well, That Explains Why It Takes Me So Long to Get to Flagstaff

I've just been doing it wrong all these years! Cindy "Regular Folks" McCain sets me straight (click 'n' zip forward to the 1:30 mark).

If you don't have the patience for non-embedded video, this is her key point:

...in Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.

Delivered without a whiff of self-consciousness, maybe because she specified "small" instead of "737." But Obama is the elitist in this election, and don't you forget it.

Oh, Sad. Sad!

Mmmm. Mmm, mmm, mmmm. The WNT finished up with a 1-0 victory over Brazil last night in a friendly that rapidly devolved into anything but. I didn't see any of the Peace Queen matches, obviously, and didn't follow it closely enough to know if Brazil carried their hack-a-minute defensive style straight through from the World Cup to Korea to San Diego, but if they did take a break in the last tournament, they were back last night with a vengeance.

Brazil play dirty. Period. And they don't need to. Jesus, they absolutely don't need to, at least not when their holy trinity of Daniela, Cristiane, and Marta--otherwise known on the BigSoccer boards as Fast, Faster, and Fastest--are playing. Which they were not, in this series of stateside friendlies, and the US still barely escaped each time. The only consolation from last night, the only thing that kept the Wambach injury in the ah shite category rather than prompting me to whisper in Dick Cheney's ear that Brazil harbors prime al Qaeda training camps, is that it came on a clean play. It's a microscopic consolation at best.

What's this mean for the Olympics, with the Wombat watching from the sideline on crutches with a titanium rod in her shin? Amy Rodriguez brings one-on-one creativity and fearlessness on 21-year-old legs. Lindsay Tarpley and Heather O'Reilly have shown great flashes of combining well when they're on the field together. Carli Lloyd has power, turns well on the ball, and isn't afraid to shoot from distance, but sometimes has trouble keeping the ball on frame. Tash Kai is a huge ball of random puppy energy. Just ask the Brazilian player she barreled into when she came on the field in the second half. Her entry into the game turned the fire back on in the US attack, and she did get the deciding goal, but can she magically find the focus knob and learn which direction to turn it in the next three weeks before the Olympics start?

Final notes. Things I was wrong about: Mitts can play after all. She was very strong last night, and obviously worked her ass off to come back from her ACL tear suffered just before the World Cup. Angela Hucles' continued presence on the roster is no longer a mystery to me. Solid. And a thing I wasn't wrong about: completely aside from Wambach's behavior during the Great Hope Solo Fiasco, completely aside from how she may or may not comport herself with teammates, damn. The woman is made of rock, iron, and any number of other extremely tough things. After snapping both bones in her lower leg (watch the replay for the rebound after her left leg hits the ground and then undulates up in a way it's really not supposed to), she calmly waved for assistance and smiled a little rather than doing anything I would have done in that situation, which probably would have involved scream, puke, pass out, repeat.

Career-ender? I hope not. Her eyes as she rode the gurney off the field will haunt me for weeks.

Two ways to look at it. The door's open now for the young talent to show what they can do up top. Or there's now a huge hole up top left by the absence of one of the most prolific active goal-scorers in the game, who incidentally in the last year had added a decent amount of speed, foot skill, field vision, and distribution to her formerly head-based arsenal. Three weeks, Pia. Get to it.

Oh Dear

Uh, spoiler warning, sorta, if you're into the WNT and aren't either watching the game on Fox Soccer or following it online.

They were looking decent against Brazil, playing more of a control game with some tantalizing 20-yard through balls onto perfectly timed runs by the forwards, creating some chances.

Then Abby Wambach snapped her left leg.

Brazil have been fouling through the entire first thirty minutes, hitting Wambach in particular, but this was a 50-50 ball, no foul. Just a full-speed followthrough by the Wombat's left shin into the Brazilian defender's full-speed onrushing right knee. Still no score at the end of the first half, but my god. The decent crowd at Torero Stadium in San Diego is stunned and subdued. The team is soldiering on, almost scoring in near the end of stoppage time, but Christ.

Maybe it's not as bad as it looked. Wombat kept a brave face while being loaded into the ambulance, but her eyes told the story. Maybe it's not as bad as it looked. Maybe.

The Inevitable Next Step Comes a-Trip-Trappin' Down the Hall

Don't worry about that little Conscience Clause thing, they told us. It only protects the delicate sensibilities of fundamentalist pharmacists who don't want to hand you certain kinds of perfectly legal and prescribed medications. After all, you're an American, right? You like freedom of religion, right? So don't think of your inability to get contraception when you ask for it as the elevation of one person's religious beliefs over your own, or your lack thereof. Just reframe it as a constitutional celebration and you'll be fine! Would you like some pre-natal vitamins instead? I would be happy to give you those. What? You still want those birth control pills? Well, then maybe you should have thought about going to pharmacy school and opening your own abortifacient candy shop before you had sex, you stupid slut. Now step aside. The guy behind you needs his Viagra and has been waiting four full minutes while you've been here whinging.

Predictably, now the conscience meme has spread beyond the initially promised narrow spectrum of pharmacists, nurses, and doctors to the entire range of healthcare funded by the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services, perhaps bolstered by the growing tendency of state education departments to decide "science" means "whatever we damn well say it is," has taken the mind-bending step of basing crucial biological definitions on public opinion polls. Zogby polls. Which typically have an error in the +/- four million percent range.

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The "Definitions" section of the HHS proposal states,

Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term "abortion."

Something like 40% of Americans also believe in the Genesis creation story and eschew evolution, so I expect HHS to make the administration of medications based on evolutionary biology optional as well. Enjoy your camphor oil, people, and be sure to close up your windows tight so you don't get the night vapors!

Jesus. Why does this matter? It matters because of this:

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and our nation's pregnancy experts, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation. With this proposal, however, HHS is dismissing medical experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on polling data. It now claims that pregnancy begins at some biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could be denied contraception under HHS' new science.

Any woman could be denied contraception by HHS. If your employer-provided health plan continues clinging to a slender thread, you'll be okay, provided, of course, you have access to a pharmacy whose employees are required to do their jobs rather than proselytize. If you rely on federally funded clinics--in other words, if you tend disproportionately to be low-income and/or a woman of color--you're screwed. Twice.

All together, please. Science is indeed a consensus, but it's not a democracy. Public opinion is lovely but has exactly no relevance to the definitions portion of the program. Against abortion? Don't have one. Really super duper against it? Don't go into healthcare.

Thanks to Top!Secret G-woman for the tip, and for starting my day on a very stabby note.

Mmmmmmaddow.

Still catching up on several years of journal reprints and data tables I'm sure are important for something, because otherwise I never would have stacked them in teetering piles all over my office. And whilst doing the re-stacking today I am also catching up on a week's worth of Rachel Maddow guest hosting Countdown, so in lieu of anything resembling a thoughtful post, I give you Maddow's presentation of John McCain on reproductive freedom:

Back to the Grind

The falls, McCormick's Creek, southern Indiana.

This is where I was. And it's where my mind still is, mostly, when it's not off wandering North Side neighborhoods in Chicago looking for the next bakery with promising cupcakes. I came home to a Tucson that is much greener and damper than when I left, although the big monsoons have yet to fire up overhead since I've been back. Half the flowers in the yard are dead, a bumper crop of weeds is springing up, and green fuzzy stuff that is probably mold but that I'll hopefully call short moss has taken over one of the rock terraces in the back.

My office failed to spontaneously combust during my absence, so today I have to make good on a vague promise to myself that the piles of paper will be plowed under at least once a year.

Politics rage on. Bush is lifting the offshore drilling moratorium, causing Bomb Bomb McCain to clap his hands with glee. The New Yorker has put out a deeply satirical cover this week portraying the Obamas as angry black Muslim terrorists, forgetting that most of the country doesn't (a) recognize satire or (b) know that the proper response is not fuck yeah that's what Rush has been saying for months! And the people who led the fight against Arizona's most recent anti-gay-marriage amendment are admitting that they were only in it for the straight couples who might have been adversely affected, and so aren't really interested this time now that gays are the explicit, exclusive target. Awesome. Thanks for the welcome home, guys!

Will Somebody Just Hurry Up and Hand this Guy a Puppy or Something, Please?

Another day, another Obama moment that stops me in my tracks.

My only point is this--historically I have been a strong believer in a woman's right to choose with her doctor, her pastor, and her family.

This was part of his clarification of statements about abortion made in an earlier interview. Statements indicating that he thinks mental illness doesn't count as debilitating enough to terminate a pregnancy, that "partial-birth abortion" is valid terminology to continue slinging around, that women pop off to the abortionist on a whim because they periodically feel a little down.

Now, I don't think that "mental distress" qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term...

The new explanation:

It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue.

Okay, look. Even if the greater context of the statement was to take on the usual anti-choice meme that women in their 36th week get an abortion to counteract that nasty case of the Mondays, especially if they break a nail or something, he's not doing us any favors by phrasing it this way. I completely agree that feeling blue is not a valid reason for a late-term abortion. Good for you. Now maybe you can point out that feeling blue is really very probably and most likely never a proximate cause of late-term D&Xs anyway, and that suggesting it is in the first place completely trivializes an agonizing decision process and ascribes to women the agency of a five-year-old.

And the fact that you even made the statement that the only health exception you'd consider for a woman who, by the way, is not now and never will be you, would have to be physical? Not that I don't appreciate the clueless clarification, but that crap never should have fallen out of your mouth in the first place. Who are you preaching to? It sure as hell ain't the pro-choice choir. Oh, and you think I should be able to make the choice with my pastor? How wonderful. Because my pastor's always been a key player in my healthcare decisions. Especially since I don't have one. Quit sucking up to the goddamn religious conservatives who aren't going to vote for you anyway and remember the rational, intelligent bloc whose votes won you the nomination.

I'm still voting for you in the fall, but I'm less enthused about it by the day. If you come back from Iraq sounding more like McCain than McCain already does, we are going to have some serious issues.

Far more eloquent postings from Jeff Fecke here and Bitch PhD here.

4th of July Frippery

Because you can just never have enough Peeps. I'm off to the big city, although the Adler isn't on my list for the day. In the immortal words of the late Mayor Washington: Chicago, 150 years old! America, older'n that! Happy 4th. 

Ridiculously Predictable? Or Predictably Ridiculous? We Cannot Decide.

Not content to let the states be the only players in the tired yet true no-gay-marriage-amendment game, Senate Republicans this week trotted out the federal marriage amendment again.

`Section 1. This article may be cited as the `Marriage Protection Amendment'.

`Section 2. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.'

Yes, that one. That's not the ah shite moment, though, not yet. That moment comes when you read the list of co-sponsors. Who's lurking there alongside usual suspects Sam Brownback and James Inhofe? Is it possibly David "Whore Diapers" Vitter and Larry "Tappity Tap" Craig? Why, yes. Yes, it is.

I can sincerely think of no two better pure and holy warriors for the cause of marital sanctity than those two. I mean, at least Vitter chose a hooker who not only looked like his wife but had the same first name too! If that doesn't scream devotion I don't know what does.

Keep it classy, GOP!

Really, Barack? Really?

Obama's suddenly on the faith-based initiative bandwagon. Because it worked so well under Bush.

Courting evangelicals and other religious voters, Barack Obama today called for an expansion of President Bush's initiative distributing federal aid to church-based groups that provide community services.

"The challenges we face today - from saving our planet to ending poverty - are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need an all hands on deck approach," Obama said a few moments ago at a press conference outside a community ministry in Zanesville, Ohio.

Obama promised the faith-based initiative would be "central" to his administration if he is elected.

Oh, awesome. Just awesome.

Seriously, what the hell is this? How does Obama propose to conduct the oversight that will be necessary to insure that no proselytizing goes along with whatever government-funded service the individual faith-based programs are providing? And does he do it with a straight face?

Barack. Change-meister. Buddy. You can do better than this. I get it, really, I do--you're trying everything you can to pick up the Christians who are disillusioned with the Republican party--but can't you come up with a different, a better, a, a... a more Constitutional, perhaps, way of doing it?