cryptique

I think Ghana will give Brazil all they can handle -- though with Essien out after two yellows, they won't have quite enough to upset them.

Yay, another Posies fan. NP: Judee Sill - s/t Trying this out. I've read a lot about her (here and elsewhere) and finally decided to Oink this and give it a test drive.

Rush Limbaugh uses the same "entertainer" excuse. The problem is, there are a lot of people who take Limbaugh and Coulter very seriously -- and it would be na

That's a cop-out response, and it's not even true. You may think she's not taken seriously, but she is repeatedly offered a slot as a "serious" pundit on the various cable and network news channels/programs. Moore has been largely marginalized, while Coulter's profile has only ascended.

Precisely why I will never, ever cheer for Italy. Too bad that the Australians had to lose that way.

Oh my god, you have got to be kidding. If anyone agrees with ikol on this, please speak up. The quotes he offered are here. For reference, here are a few Coulter chestnuts. There are plenty more where these come from. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." - at the Conservative

I only did that to save space in my reply. Wouldn't have bothered me if he'd done the same to one of my responses. ikol raised the question why nobody was complaining about people like Chomsky or Moore, and I challenged him to provide quotes from those two that were anywhere near as hateful or extreme as Coulter's. He couldn't. I'm not really a fan of Moore and I wish Chomsky would spend less time writing his opaque political diatribes and more time writing his opaque linguistics texts, but as controversial as they both can be, they don't come anywhere close to Coulter's level of invective

The last time he marked anyone was probably 2002. That was also around the last time he made a decent slide tackle. Beckham has the cracking right foot, but England would be better off with a player on the wing who's actually willing to do some hard running and tackling. If they want to leave Beckham in, at least move him into the middle and put someone like Lennon out wide.

Tadahito Iguchi has driven in seven runs in two innings to bring the White Sox back from 9-2 down to a 9-9 tie. They're now going into the 11th. He hit a three-run homer in the 8th and a grand slam in the 9th. The Sox were down 9-5 and down to their last out in the 9th with one man on, and they got a single and a walk to load the bases for Iguchi, who got the job done. Watch -- they'll lose this one now. But damn, what a comeback.

Aside from his goal, he had a typically mediocre Beckham match, I thought. He is brilliant on set pieces, but spends most of the rest of the time trying not to sully his uniform.

Not even in the same ballpark. Coulter has actually suggested that liberals (specific ones and in general) should be killed, tortured, etc. And that's just for starters. If that's the best you can come up with in response, you've not only lost, it's a rout.

Oh, they're all guilty of it. But the Italians are the experts.

Why don't you go ahead and start. When you find something in their commentary that's anywhere close to being as hateful or extreme as Coulter's everyday ravings, you let us know.

No surprises in today's early matches, and the afternoon ones aren't that interesting to me. Bring on the elimination rounds!

Duh.

I do agree that the Hitler comparison has become the clich

So are we to infer that no one should ever be compared to Hitler in any way ... even when such comparisons may be apt, such as in the case of eerily similar quotations? Please instruct us, oh wise one.

I'd certainly feel confident with Koufax on the mound. My elder relatives held Bob Gibson in high esteem ... possibly even more so than Koufax, though he was revered as well.

When Italian players stop acting like they're near death every time they so much as trip over a blade of grass, I might consider backing them sometime. Yes, players all across the world flop. The Italians, however, take it to an extreme that becomes tiresome to watch. Get the fuck off the ground, dude. We coined an abbreviation in my family well over twenty years ago to refer to any Italian player who's executed an overly dramatic descent to the pitch: PBLOG, or "poor bastard lying on ground." It's a pity they're so dependent upon diving, because much of the rest of the time they're cap

After this year's showing, he may opt to play for Ghana instead. Freddy wasn't quite ready this year. I think he will be next time around.

Out of curiosity, who would you nominate instead? I think Clemens is the best I've seen. I never saw Bob Gibson pitch, however. I also wonder what J.R. Richard's career might have been like, had it lasted.

Today, yes. But from what I saw he wasn't all that effective.

I'm not sure I buy into the idea that the penalty kick was part of some anti-U.S. conspiracy within FIFA ... I think it was just a lousy call. For the most part, I thought the ref did pretty well with the rest of the match. If he'd been biased against the U.S. I doubt there would have been four yellow cards for Ghana and only one for the Americans. As for the ref in the match against Italy ... still not buying the conspiracy theories. He just sucked. No, the refs didn't keep the U.S. from advancing ... their mediocre play did. Speaking of FIFA corruption, there's an interesting (but disa

Has anyone in this thread given Ozzie a pass for his comments? I haven't seen it. Sure, there have been jokes made, but they haven't been attempts to downplay the offensiveness of what he said. You're really reading a lot into all this ... almost seems like you're trying to fan flames that aren't even there. For what it's worth, I expect Ozzie to be heavily fined at a minimum, and suspended for a week or so at a maximum (probably both), and that's perfectly OK with me. MLB has to do something that will get his attention.