BLCKDGRD

Krrnzkkrrtz!

What kind of man appears on September 11, 2008 at the Twin Towers Memorial site with a terrorist?

Who is John McCain and who does he associate with? Someone, please, ask McCain tomorrow night at a debate, Obama.

Suxdaymon: Have a Song

Upyoursism!

Sarah Palin makes Jonanism Goldbergs sit up straight on the couch not because of Palin's philosophy on the Unitary Executive, Rich Lowrys come in spurts imagining liberal heads exploding imagining Sarah Palin as president.

I've never voted for a Republican in a presidential election (and never not voted) and am rube enough to believe that if the Democrats nominated for vpotus a mean skank from Hicksburg, Crackerstan to cunt-wink the party to victory (or, conversely, to pig-horror, a nigger with a ay-rab middle name who once sat in a room with an American terrorist) I'd, oh.

Doesn't matter that Obama's rise is as much his chops as his exoticism and charisma (plus our deepest desire to force Obama on Crackerstanis, you know it's true): We are the enemy; Obama is the ultimate Fuck-You candidate to crackerstanis.

That any self-proclaimed progressive feminist isn't terrified and offended Republicans chose the bitchiest girl from high school as their Fuck You missile makes me challenge those feminists' progressive credentials, and that John McCain's choice of Palin was to fuck you his own party because he couldn't have Lieberman is now an irony without importance, but Sarah Palin's sole soul-qualification for both professional pigs and Crackerstanis alike is that Palin's as big a Fuck You to us as Obama is to them.

Apply the .06% less-shitty rule to you own motives and beliefs as needed.

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• I thought about it, but Ed got there first.
• Your photoshop of the day.
• Something dumber.
• Skydiving.
• Spec-tac-u-lar.
• Economic 9-11.
• The Sidekick Show.
• Why not gibberish?
• The last paragraph is true, but they were also celebrating pissing of folk like me, don't ya know.
• Doggone, she's a fraud? You betcha.
• American Family Values.
• Because to pigs, the opposite of elite is stupid.

Updates later. Or not.

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Love comes in spurts?

United 0, Chivas 3

Well, any illusions that United by dint of being United are good enough are gone. 

I tried god-taunting before the game, calling 4-0 United with, for extra ju-ju, two goals, two assists for Gallardo and love again, which means I sub-consciously knew United wasn't good enough then, but here's the thing: I did assume United would win a must win at RFK against a mediocre team, even though I wrote, on September 28 after the Dallas 3-0 loss, "eight games, four MLS, four Champions League, long angry winter." I didn't expect United would make the playoffs, but I didn't expect them to lose a must-win at home to Chivas.

And  unlike the Dallas game, United played hard and urgently and still couldn't elevate above their suck. In the most vital game of the season, on their two best chances, on clear breakaways the ball is on the foot of Francis Doe? 

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Crayton 3; Namoff 5, Peralta 4, Martinez 4; Fred 5, Simms 4, Vide 4, Gallardo 4, Guerrero 5; Quaranta 5, Khumalo 5. Subs: McTavish 5, Doe 4, Burch 5.

Off that line-up and subs, only two - Namoff and Guerrero - need absolutely be back next season.

Fred can make a good team better but can't make a bad team good. Simms probably deserves to stay considering he's run, at twelve miles a game, at least 450 miles this year and has been running on fumes since mid-August because there's no one else United can play at his position. Martinez maybe if he can play centrally rather than outside. The rest, feh.

And then there's Gallardo, who's now injured his knee. I stand by my theory, and if he is not to blame for the season Gallardo is the symbol of United 08: The Failing. I don't sense bad faith (though I'd like to know that United did all due diligence in evaluating, medically and biographically, Gallardo before signing him), but Gallardo's constant breakdowns symbolize United's breakdown in constructing this team.

Everybody's first draft of the season's obituary is finished, yes? Like the Long Plunge to Earth?

Updates, links, edits, later. Or not.

So, How do America's Leading Pignuts Think Winky Palin Did?

.

Sweet yah, Crackerstan's pigsters would rather a president who channels McClellan even after Antietam (don't forget the role of cigars in American history, lewinskys) than vote for anybody you would.

Doggone it, not vomiting on the lectern as pig-qualification for president, you betcha.

Which isn't to say Democrats aren't delighted this morning Biden didn't vomit on his, yo.

Sarah Palin: the love child of Stuart Smalley and Sue Ann Nivens.

While Waiting for Tonight's Anticlimax and Tomorrow's Shitstorms, See McCain's Next self-reinvention!

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• Meanwhile, at the salt-mine.
  
• He's mad, you know.
• Elric 7 has video of Palin supporters.
• Obama's Appalachian problem.
• On the efficacy of magical incantations.
• Halluci Nation, or: the difference between being fucked and being fucked in the head.
• Yes, but if it always will be it's because it's always been.
• If you look hard, you might see a pattern.
• Geography in Palinmccainistan.
• Maryland State Police and spying.
• 2017 for CCT? wOOt!
• Maryland state exercise?
• A nation of conspiracy theorists can't be wrong.
• KEXP asked listeners to vote on their favorite albums of all time as part of their Fall beg-athon and will play the 903 down in order. Just started. #891 = Johnny Cash, #890 = Fugazi. SWEET!
• Bloggers make money?
• Pitchfork's list of upcoming releases includes Juana Molina!

UPDATE:

Uncle Fiver (you do, yes?) keeps perspective!

Didier Drogba will undergo scans today to determine the extent of his potential knee ligament crock. "Hearing about Didier was the bad news of the day," said Frank Lampard, callously disregarding stories of further credit squeezes, muted City reaction to the US bail-out package and the UN's bleak portrait of conditions in Zimbabwe.

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UPDATE:

Well, happy coincidence in looking for Johnny Long-Torso and finding this one, which is especially pertinent as I'm currently and desperately trying to get out of the object of Frank's hating this very weekend!

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In my head. Be in yours.

United 0, Cruz Azul 1

The stadium was empty expect for a few thousand, and of that few thousand maybe 15% were United fans. Consider how precarious United's existence is still.

Part of United's gamble on this season, beyond my theory of ownership's hope that a successful season would force action on the stadium project, was to concurrently consolidate and expand the season-ticket base and repeat walk-up customers. I remember thinking as late as past June that if United put an attractive product on the field they could average 25K or more per game.

Wrong on the product. Wrong on the fans.

I don't sense bad faith from United, just poor decisions combined with the bad luck and shitty results poor decisions bring. On the field and, apparently, at the gate too.

Wonder what Victor MacFarlane thinks of his investment this morning.

The game? Meh. A very good time was had, nonetheless.

Updates, links, later. Or not.

OH! I've figured out typepad's photo thingees. Click on pictures from now on to see the full size original, including yesterday's Fleabus.

That Taste of Submission

.
I don't know how a plastic card with a magnetic strip makes money appear out of a machine, I don't know how to rope and butcher the tofu I eat. The computer I'm typing on runs on electricity I can't produce and sends info over cables via technologies I don't understand.

Not to be an apologist for oligarchs, but here's the thing: that corrupt ruling class we all want to see suffer, we'll be begging them to re-serf our complicit asses if true punishment is visited upon them. 

I'm not saying bailout the oligarchs without imposing laws which regulate against recklessness and asswipery. I am saying that while it feels good to say Fuck Them All remember that should a depression occur because of defiant Fuck Them All-ism, your relationship to the oligarchs will be proportionate to your relationship to them now. 

Whether or not a crash is the best and only economic corrective is a thoroughly different debate than stroking one's resentment and daydreaming of Citigroup executives needing sacrifice their third vacation home. Before wishing for soup lines, square your motives.

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• Yes, pigs are pussies, but it is telling that Gwen Ifill didn't see the potential conflict of interest.
  
• Republicans are shettier than shetty Democrats.
• Six months from now, your Leader.
• David Brooks discovers Crackerstan.
• No one field-dresses David Brooks better than Doghouse.
• Mysteries of the wingnut mind.
• BLCKDGRD reader David asked me to mention People for the American Way are arranging Debate Watching Parties.
• Not only is it Nobel guessing time (it won't be a writer in English this year since Lessing won last year), it's National Book Award nomination guessing time. I'm predicting Donald Harington's Farther Along won't be on the list, though it should be.

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Hayden Carruth has died, who I hadn't read in years.

"Silence"

Sometimes we don't say anything. Sometimes
we sit on the deck and stare at the masses of
goldenrod where the garden used to be
and watch the color change form day to day,
the high yellow turning to mustard and at last
to tarnish. Starlings flitter in the branches
of the dead hornbeam by the fence. And are these
therefore the procedures of defeat? Why am I
saying all this to you anyway since you already
know it? But of course we always tell
each other what we already know. What else?
It's the way love is in a late stage of the world.

Did You Know Washington DC Has A Professional Soccer Team?

It's true, and tonight they play the game this whole season was aimed at, a major international game in a major international tournament against a major Mexican team. I can't give a ticket away.

Here's my theory, abridged version:

United's new owners wanted fabulous success immediately for leverage over the District on a new soccer stadium/developers' windfall and gave Payne and Kasper money and orders to be fabulously successful immediately, and after Veron chose Estudiantes Payne and Kasper panicked and swung and missed. Frank O'Neill?

Want a ticket? Come be outnumbered in our own stadium! Use secret dog communication numbers by 4PM.

SORT OF RELATED!

I was thinking about the European Champions League and saw that Chel$ki's playing Cluj, a Romanian team, so out of curiousity I wikipediaed the club and

That? is an awesome shield.

Why I'm a Rube

This makes me happy:

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.

I've started x-number of notes attempting Om accepting that the shittiest and piggiest Republicans, for the shittiest and piggiest Republican reasons, successfully blocked a bill I oppose, but a corporate Democrat calling Republicans pussies? wOOt!

And corporate Democrats: Watch Rahm Emanuel behind Frank. Think he's happy Frank's calling pussy on Republicans?

Dick Armey's Barney Fag! rising to the wOOt!bait? wOOt!

It hasn't even started to get weird yet.

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• Sure, surprise me.
• May I suggest not dancing on graves yet.
• Don't pity the fool.
• Don't pity the fool.
  
• Don't pity the fool.
• Don't pity the fool.
  

  

• Don't pity the fool.
• Don't pity the fool.
• Don't pity the fool.
• Shadow of the Pitchfork.

Updates later. Or not.

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TV on the Radio, one of my favorites, has new music.

There's new Lindsay Buckingham too.

You heard me. Lindsay Buckingham.

Dallas 3, United 0

Click on that picture over right and enlarge and you will see, in my notes, witnessed as signed by Planet,  that in the 74th minute I predicted a tired and dirty United would take a red. I didn't predict it would be the team captain right in front of the ref.

So Quaranta hurt*, Emilio hurt, Jaime out next Saturday, Guerrero off to Honduras for WCQs in a couple of weeks plus and plus and plus....

It's hard to imagine this game isn't the season's nadir, but shitty, uninspired, disgraceful performances? Sheeit....

Eight games, four MLS, four Champions League, long angry winter.

*My mistake. Quaranta was benched, not injured.

Here's Stollar, Fullback, Lifton, Shatz.

Sleeps With Fishes

People are impatient for Obama to garotte McCain while Elric 7 reminds us ain't no Crakerstani gonna vote for no nigger, yo, so I ask, if

• Obama needs avoiding inflaming congenital Crackerstani ooga-booganism and
• John McCain is that crazy batchelor great uncle with a gambling problem who becomes more publicly embarrassing as he gets older and angrier
• why should Obama get overly aggressive since, out of McCain and Palin and Biden, he's the only one looking presidential plus
• the meme that Uncle Crazy would rip out his wife's jugular with his teeth on The View if he thought it'd get him elected is spreading like a stomach virus through kindergarten plus
• Sarah Palin, whom even Crackerstani columnists are calling on to quit?

Obamagasm?

Frack no, not in fracking Crackerstan, a country where 33% of Crackerstanis will vote for Sarah Palin because she's got an imaginary friend named Jesus and 40% won't vote for Obama because of ooga-booganism, but other than Paleold Dirtyjay Bastardarra, no one has taken my pint bet that Obama won't win (provided he survives).

He's winning, an African-American with an ooga-booga name, and things haven't even started to get weird yet.

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• The most important, and funniest, thing you''ll read today.
• Actually, this is the most important, but it's a buzzkill.
• Bearz on the debate.
• Sfunny how the words "Supreme Court" never got mentioned in Friday's debate vis a vis $700B, but not as sfunny torture got mentioned once and Guantanamo once, neither connected to Supreme Court.
• Something worth considering. (h/t RC)

Updates later. Or not.

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Fracking typepad has bugged up youtubes again, without the help of Dema Kovalenko, so the above garotte-ing of Luca Brasi plus Root Boy Slim's "Hey Mr President" I'd have shown you, go click the links.

Fleabus, Look Me In the Eye!

Even after diminishing my expectations that Sarah Palin's partner would turn beet red and physically attack Obama with his pen, how anticlimactic was the anticlimax?

Which means Obama won. Rube that I am, I damn Obama for not goading Sarah Palin's partner into the raving and lunatic explosion of anger and - I'm serious - psychopathic sense of entitlement and all-consuming desire to be president Sarah Palin's partner clearly was squelching. That would have been awesome! I wanted to be entertained, dammit.

Obama doesn't need to campaign for my vote, and if you're reading this shitty bleg he isn't worried about yours either. Here's what he needed to do last night: not fuck up. Victory.

Sarah Palin's partner is hair-triggered tighter than Rick Davis' nutsack. Patience, rubes: the kaboom is coming.

I will say this about Obama: For a guy who wants to assure the world that his foreign policy would be less reflexively militaristic than a Palin/McCain administration, Obama sure seems hot to attack Pakistan, yes?

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• Higher monkey, lower monkey?
• Notes from an imperial microcosm.
• Meanwhile, in Pakistan....
• Sexy Puritan, or, Piglust.
• Don't see plants growing out of toilets.
• Game theory.
• As the deal turns!
• Eine Kleine wolfangst von blogst.
• Henry Laundering.

Updates later. Or not.

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And I have no idea why this appeared in a dream last night, but BWOCK! be in your head too:

Sixty-Three Today

Fleabus, Joe Lieberman Lectured Me Yesterday on McCain's Nobility!

Nobility? Nobility is Obama bum-rushing a crappy bailout plan so McCain's ignoble ploy to claim nobility is thwarted, snap!

Signing a ignoble bill sooner that will inevitably be signed anyway, if it prevents cancellation of next week's Palinpalooza, is .06% less shitty than permitting the ignoble cancellation of Palinpalooza.

Om in a clusterfuck, mofos, Om in a clusterfuck. Even when Obama gets pwnd, Om.

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• Lefty political satirist who's lived a life of fiscal calamity on the bailout.
• McCain gambit explained succintly.
• Underestimating Palin's shittiness.
• I admit my daily Froomkin consumption dropped in proportion to W's dropping significance, but he's still worth reading, especially when expertly documenting the obvious that needs documenting.
• Elric 7 warns of Earth Farts.
• Swift says suspend the election.
• News of Bush admin sanctioning of torture reduced to bullet point on NYT webpage!
• IOZ dropped acid w/Alexander Hamilton!
• Scott's Anti-Intellectual Presidency.
• Moco Dems against slots.
• Laura Ryding, part 3.
• Wyatt Mason screams AAAAH over Gaddis. In a good way.

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In my head. Be in yours.