his vorpal sword: The Nattering Nabobs of N-Word-tivity

A Tiny Revolution: Tables, Turned

Bernard Avishai: Cordoba House: Too Far Away

Pruning Shears: America's bad reputation gets a little worse

Sadly, No! "Unreal" Story From Hoft, Shockingly, Turns Out To Be...Well, Unreal

The Daily Mash: Outrage over plans to build a library next to Sarah Palin

As if Rand Paul's flippant "No one will miss a hill or two" comment wasn't egregious enough, his latest PR effort on behalf of the coal industry is even worse. In an interview with Details magazine, he makes some of the dumbest and most offensive statements I've heard yet about mountaintop removal.

See, here's what Rand Paul thinks. Seriously.

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Here's a video that's a mash-up of reactions from USA soccer fans from around the country watching Landon Donovan's incredible winning goal against Algeria that put the USA into the knock out round of the World Cup. Today's game is going to be very tough because Ghana is a very young and athletic team and they'll have the entire stadium supporting them, but the USA isn't over matched in this game like they were against England.

Raf Naboa y Rivera writes:

Should the U.S. give up an early goal against the Black Stars, as they did in playing England and Slovenia, it'll be phenomenally difficult for them to tally an equalizer. Should the U.S. score once or twice early on, Ghana will be hard-pressed to draw even, thanks to their lack of scoring punch. And that's really the key to the game. I'll say it again - the U.S. has to do two things here:

1. Capitalize on early goal scoring chances. This is absolutely imperative. We can kvetch and moan about getting robbed of goals by the officials, but the fact remains that we wasted about seven different chances on Wednesday. At the minimum, we should've beaten Algeria 3-0 or 4-0, instead of 1-0 on a gasper.

2. Avoid defensive lapses. The U.S. cannot afford a repeat of what happened against England and Slovenia. Depleted as the Ghanian offense is, it's still blindingly fast, aggressive, and strong. That includes play in the penalty area. I fully expect Ghana to try to draw a penalty kick, so the U.S. will have to be more disciplined than usual in order to avoid this.

As wonderful as it would be to see the lone African team make a deep run, I think Ghana are too offensively deficient. As long as the U.S. scores early, or even first, and as long as they avoid defensive mistakes, they'll win.

Since the team is pretty much cut off from everything in South Africa, Youtube and Facebook is how Landon and the team realized how much passion the US had behind the team since soccer isn't a very popular sport nationally. That's pretty cool.

Donoho, a 21-year-old Purdue University senior and avid fan of the men’s national team, collected a montage of clips of USA fans celebrating Donovan’s injury-time winner against Algeria and assembled them into a catchy package, which he put on YouTube.

It didn’t take long for the images to be passed through to the USA’s training camp near Pretoria and onto the laptop of Donovan himself. For all of the praise and plaudits the goal-scoring star received after his moment of glory, it was seeing the reaction sparked by his calm strike into the bottom corner of the Algerian net that touched him the most.

“Not sure if you guys saw this but it brings tears to my eyes every time,” Donovan wrote on his Facebook account, while linking to Donoho’s video. “Thank you all so much … we can do it.”

I'm hoping for at least one more win, but the USA did what they were supposed to do at this point. If you're not into the World Cup just move on to another post. This only happens once every four years and it's fun watching the sport that the entire world is engaged in.

We have a live chat set for 11am PST today as Blue America welcomes Tarryl Clark, a new challenger we endorsed to take on the half-insane Michele Bachmann. I'm sure you'll want to meet her and support her.

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A golden oldie from the incredible C&L archives on Harold Ford from an appearance he had with Hannity & Colmes:

Colmes: Barack Obama had a great point when he said those who voted for the war in Iraq and then had to apologize for that vote should probably be the last people to criticize he---who was right about the war in Iraq all along.

Ford: I don't know who's been right about this war all along...

Colmes: Sure you do...

Ford: That's open for dispute.

Colmes: You don't know who's been right about the war all along?

Ford: One thing is clear. What we're doing now is not working.

BNF's made a nice video mash-up for us that exposes his anti-gay, pro gun, anti civil rights, anti- choice, Bush loving creds. His sudden change of positions to justify his entrance into NY politics is incredible.

I remember Ford's 2006 election very well. I wouldn't raise him any money, but did write a lot on the smear ad that the republican party promoted about him. It was tough watching him proclaim his Blue Dog credentials and then he did a campaign commercial inside a church.

Now he's a carpetbagger trying to run in NY and running away from his old positions as fast as he can.

I imagine NYers are smart enough to see right through his lies.

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Well, well, well, it looks like Shanna Moakler is proved right after she quit the USA Pageant and called Carrie Prejean a liar. Prejean wasn't fulfilling her contract with the pageant and after The Donald went to bat for her and saved Prejean from being fired a few weeks ago---he finally had enough and dumped her. I guess the wingnut circuit and FOX News will be her new home now.

TMZ:

Sources connected with the pageant tell us even Donald Trump has now had it with Carrie, because she's violating her contract by not getting clearance to do her extracurricular stuff.

We're also told Carrie has been a no-show for appearances she was supposed to make for the pageant organization.

The firing, we're told, is strictly based on Carrie breaching her contract. It's not based on her political and moral views.

Olbermann grabbed audio of her being interviewed on a radio show and she didn't even know that she was fired. Her initial response to the news was a jumbled mash up of words that made no sense.

Olbermann: They said they didn't tell her, she found out doing an interview with Bill Bush.

Prejean: Hmmm, that's the first that I've heard of it Billy. It's just because of my answer I think, ha. None of this would be happening right now if I just said yea, gays should get married. You're right Perez Hilton. The only one that likes me is Donald Trump, hahaha.

Bush: And he gave his blessing to terminate you, you gonna call him?

Prejean: Well I think that he definitely is a business man and I know that he's looking out for my best interests and right now and I think that maybe he thinks that's my best interests right now.

Let's see. Trump saved her job so that has nothing to do with her anti-gay marriage answer, and he just fired her, so... I still don't understand her Trump answer ... Oh, well....

We've been doing a lot of posting on Pat, but Media Matters put together a cool mash up.

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I'm so happy that David Letterman was able to work out a deal with the WGA, because I missed the show very much and let's face it, this political season is just ripe for political satire. Here's a little mash up of comedy bits from Letterman's show, including a Mitt Romney cliché counter and my personal favorite, Great Moments in Presidential Speeches

Taylor Marsh got a little nasty gram from right wing pundit Debbie Schlussel over the use of her image from a Google Search. The irony is that Debbie--herself an attorney, apparently--doesn't have a lot of respect for trial lawyers. Here's a tasty little nugget from right after 9/11:

If anyone will improperly benefit from the terrorist attacks, it's the usual culprits--trial lawyers--and a new one: radical Islamicists. Lawyers and America's organized radical Muslims have developed a whole new litigation racket to clog the courts.

The rest is free of facts but so full of hate of Muslims that you'd swear that little Debbie is the spawn of Melanie Morgan.

Taylor actually characterizes it much better than I could:

This morning I was dealing with the threat of being sued by a wingnut blogger who defames Muslims at every turn, but thinks my using a photo of her I got off a simple Google search is worthy of a lawsuit. I was also talking to my lawyer (who happens to be my big brother), First Amendment lawyers, copyright lawyers, and got a lot of help from my progressive friends, which included Bob, Mash and Joe Gandelman, as well as others who have also posted on it, as well as emailed me on it. Who the hell is Debbie Schlussel? is right, Roxanne.

Don't miss the art gallery of Debbie portraits so as to not infringe on Debbie's copyright in the future.

Jesus General: ..."A few hours ago, I read a post at Captain's Quarters that prompted me to think about the important work the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are doing. It was basically a mash note from Captain Ed to Mr. Rove. Reading it, I was reminded of the time he allowed me to tour his basement command center. It was a short tour. His mother sent me home after she got into an argument with the Captain about taking out the trash....read on"