Journolist Uproar: Pot, meet kettle

I don’t think all these Daily Caller stories demonstrate that Journolist was a grand liberal media conspiracy, and almost everyone writes intemperate, sarcastic emails from time to time that would be embarrassing if leaked. Who cares?

Still, if this were a conservative listserv that had been leaked I don’t think liberal writers would be too outraged about privacy issues. And in fact, if you are writing anything in an electronic form that can be forwarded, you have essentially relinquished your right to privacy. Politicians don’t have it, why should journalists?

And there are some embarrassing remarks that have come out in the past few days. Some of the more steamed up liberal writers having orgasms on Obama’s election night are every bit as embarrassing as Rich Lowry ejaculating on his keyboard when writing about Sarah Palin.

“It’s all I can do not to start bawling.”

“I had to close my office door yesterday because I was watching YouTube videos of elderly African Americans saying what this meant to them and tearing up.” (Which reminds me of this Onion item).

The story published today reveals Journolisters talking about how to reply to Palin’s nomination. One comment: “That’s excellent! If enough people—people on this list?—write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket.”

Andrew Sullivan is dead on here: “There was a cozy, self-satisfied network of writers, bloggers, and journalists who shared a broad progressive position and supported the Democratic party (but often disagreed as well). The valid criticism is not that this is a conspiracy, but a clique, a clique that at times (but not always) fostered the notion of coordination, media management, and even petitions.”

Incidentally, Eric Alterman talking about “Fucking Nascar retards” is also pretty embarrassing, but it’s ironic that Jeffrey Goldberg pointed it out. In another item about Journolist, Goldberg wrote: “I tend to believe that group-think can lead people in dangerous directions, and so I try to avoid groups like this in any case.”

Jeffery Goldberg is a critic of “group-think”? This is the same Jeffrey Goldberg who wrote all those articles during the Iraq war — an example of media group-think at its worst — about Saddam Hussein’s WMD capabilities and his links to Osama bin Laden? That, as they say, is rich.

Note: Unlike Tucker Carlson, I never applied to be a member of Jornolist.

Spotty Record on Oil Rig Safety

From the New York Times:

A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.

In the survey, commissioned by the rig’s owner, Transocean, workers said that company plans were not carried out properly and that they “often saw unsafe behaviors on the rig.” Some workers also voiced concerns about poor equipment reliability, “which they believed was as a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over planned maintenance,” according to the survey, one of two Transocean reports obtained by The New York Times.

“At nine years old, Deepwater Horizon has never been in dry dock,” one worker told investigators. “We can only work around so much.”

Our Federal Government: Job training program for energy lobbyists

From the Washington Post:

Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill, a Washington Post analysis shows.

Key lobbying hires include 18 former members of Congress and dozens of former presidential appointees. For other senior management positions, the industry employs two former directors of the Minerals Management Service, the since-renamed agency that regulates the industry, and several top officials from the Bush White House. Federal inspectors once assigned to monitor oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico have landed jobs with the companies they regulated.

With more than 600 registered lobbyists, the industry has among the biggest and most powerful contingents in Washington. Its influence has been on full display in the wake of the BP oil disaster: Proposals to enact new restrictions or curb oil use have stalled amid concerted Republican opposition and strong objections from Democrats in oil-producing states.

The Latest Israeli Crime

From Haaretz:

Lawyers for the Arab man convicted of rape by deception and sentenced to 18 months in prison, say they are considering an appeal to the High Court of Justice. Sabbar Kashur, 30, had consensual sex with a woman after he posed as a Jewish bachelor interested in a long-term relationship. When the woman found Kashur was not a Jew but an Arab, she filed a police complaint that led to charges of rape and indecent assault…

In the past, men who misrepresented themselves in this way were convicted of fraud. One such case was that of Eran Ben-Avraham, who told a woman he was a neurosurgeon after which she had sex with him, and was convicted of three counts of fraud.

Elkana Laist of the Public Defender’s Office yesterday said the Jerusalem District Court had gone too far in its application of the approach of the High Court, “opening the door to a rape conviction every time a person lies regarding details of his identity. Every time the court thinks a reasonable woman would not have had sex with a man based on that representation, the man will be charged with rape. That approach is not accepted around the world either.”

The Washington Post on the Sherrod Case: See no racism

The significance of the Shirley Sherrod affair is clear: an employee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture lost her job and was painted as a racist due to the release of an edited, highly misleading video of a speech she made a quarter-century ago. In any rational world, the headline for a story about the case is pretty obvious: “African American woman fired due to bogus charge of racism; victim smeared by video snippet released by conservative group.”

Needless to say, this was not the headline above the idiotic piece that ran in today’s Washington Post by Karen Tumulty and Krissah Thompson: “New front in racism battle: USDA official’s words provide fodder to those who call Obama biased.”

This was a classic piece of spineless “he said, she said” Washington journalism that was desperately afraid to take a position or state the obvious:

For some on the right, Sherrod’s comments as initially reported reinforced a larger, more sinister narrative: that the administration of the first African American to occupy the White House practices its own brand of racism.

Suspicions on the right that Obama has a hidden agenda — theories stoked in part by conservative media and sometimes involving race — have been a subplot of his rise, beginning almost as soon as he announced his campaign. They lie beneath many of the questions that conservatives on the political fringes have raised about his motives, his legitimacy and even his citizenship…

On the other hand, some of the president’s allies on the left have at times reflexively seen racism as the real force behind the vehemence of the opposition against Obama’s policies and decisions.

So basically both sides are guilty here and questions about Obama’s “motives, his legitimacy and even his citizenship” stem from “[s]uspicions on the right that Obama has a hidden agenda.”

Where does one even begin detailing what’s wrong with all that?

First, there are lots of grounds to criticize the Obama Administration, as I do all the time, but the observation that it is “racist” is moronic and not an idea that should be taken seriously, even in a newspaper that’s afraid of its own shadow.

Second, some liberals no doubt see racism behind opposition to Obama, but it’s also true that some notable percentage of opposition to him stems from racism. Voicing “suspicion” that the president has a secret agenda can be a safer way of expressing racism.

Third, I have no idea what percentage of Tea Party members are racist; presumably it’s a relatively small number. But anyone who has spent any time at rallies of the Tea Party or visited their websites or read their literature can discover that racism very quickly. That doesn’t mean the entire Tea Party is racist, but let’s not ignore the obvious either.

But the Post apparently sees the responsible role of a newspaper as being to take every side of an argument seriously, no matter how inane and politically calculated.

BP’s Ticketmaster Service for California Pols

From Mother Jones:

For more than a decade, BP has operated a hush-hush phone line that California lawmakers can call to request box seats to NBA games and concerts at the Sacramento stadium named after its West Coast subsidiary.

In the past five years, BP has given state officials more than 1,200 complimentary tickets to the Arco Arena, hosting them in its corporate suite to see Sacramento Kings games, World Extreme Cagefighting matches, and Britney Spears and Lil Wayne concerts. Getting the tickets is as easy as calling the BP ticket request line, an exclusive, unpublished phone number that appears to exist for the sole purpose of granting freebies to lawmakers, regulators, and their staffs.

Newtie’s Big Ideas

“‘Consultants argue that public anger, if properly stoked, alone can carry the party over the finish line. In their view, getting bogged down in the issues is a distraction and even a potential liability. One who begs to differ is the architect of the last GOP takeover of the House. ‘Consultants, in my opinion, are stupid,’ former speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in an interview. ‘The least idea-oriented, most mindless campaign of simplistic slogans is a mindless idea.’” — from the Washington Post, July 17, 2010

From the inside flap of “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” by Newt Gingrich:

The Obama administration is conspiring to transform America. They want to remake our America—of free enterprise, faith, and personal freedom—into their America—of endless bureaucracy, secularism, and state control—despite overwhelming opposition from the American people…How could such a radical president and his congressional leaders get elected and then take a center-right country in a socialist direction bitterly opposed by most Americans? Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has the answer: the Left have built a secular-socialist machine out of corruption, lust for power, and sheer ruthlessness, and are using it to steamroll over the will of the people…

Exposing the mortal threat now facing America, To Save America offers concrete strategies for dismantling the machine and replacing it with policies and institutions that work. But we must act fast, Gingrich warns, or our children will inherit a secular, socialist America transformed beyond recognition.

Newt Gingrich, the man of big ideas and opponent of “simplistic slogans.”

More on Octavia Nasr Firing: CNN reporter canned for saying the speakable

From Glenn Greenwald (via Andrew Sullivan):

Just to underscore how mild and mainstream were Nasr’s firing comments, consider this 2002 column from ultimate establishment centrist David Ignatius, expressing “sincere respect for Fadlallah’s intellect and passion; he is one of the few Muslim clerics who recognize that there is an urgent need for Islam to find a better accommodation with the West”; this Economist editorial on Fadlallah’s moderating and progressive influence in the Middle East; and even this lament from David Schenker, a senior fellow at the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near Policy, who praised Fadlallah as “the most credible moral, political, and theological alternative to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia,” arguing that the U.S. will regret his passing.

Marlboro Kids

From the New York Times:

Human Rights Watch, the group best known for documenting governmental abuse and war crimes, plans to release a report on Wednesday showing that child and forced labor is widespread on farms that supply a cigarette factory owned by Philip Morris International in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. While child labor should be condemned in any setting, the report said, employing children on tobacco farms is particularly hazardous because tobacco field laborers are exposed to high levels of nicotine while doing their jobs.

Only a tiny fraction of Philip Morris’s global tobacco purchases are made in the country, and no tobacco raised on the farms employing child labor went into cigarettes sold outside of former Soviet countries. Philip Morris, after being provided with an advance copy of the report, said it agreed to sweeping changes in its purchasing policies in Kazakhstan. “Philip Morris International is firmly opposed to child labor,” Peter Nixon, a spokesman, said in a telephone interview from the company’s office in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Although child labor is widespread in agriculture in Central Asia, Human Rights Watch said, the particularly harmful environment on the Kazakh tobacco farms warranted special attention. The report cited conditions it said were dangerous to children and adults alike. Lacking easy access to potable water, for example, laborers had resorted to drinking from irrigation channels contaminated with pesticides, the report said.

The Democrats: Running on empty

From Dana Milbank:

It would not be accurate to say that Democrats are worried about losing control of the House in November. It would be accurate to say that Democrats are in a screaming panic about losing control of the House in November. The panic threshold was crossed Sunday morning on “Meet the Press,” when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “There’s no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.”

On Tuesday, as Democratic lawmakers limped back into town from a 10-day recess, a grim Steny Hoyer (Md.), the House majority leader, sat at the end of a long conference table in his office and was quizzed by reporters about the Gibbs-induced panic.

Hoyer’s…campaign theme was only slightly better: asking Americans “to focus on whether they want to go back to the failed policies of Bush and the Republican Congress. . . . Employment was the worst performance since Herbert Hoover, and unemployment was.” Proposed bumper sticker: “Vote Democratic. Because Republicans are even worse than we are.”

He could also be heard providing the wisdom that “the budget enforcement resolution” made “the House statutory paygo rule compatible with the statutory paygo rule.” Proposed bumper sticker: “Vote Democratic. We made the House statutory paygo rule compatible with the statutory paygo rule.”

No wonder Gibbs is scared.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Paying for sexual harassment

From Politico:

Taxpayers have paid out nearly $1 million per year in settlements to congressional employees who have been harassed or otherwise treated badly by their political bosses over the past 14 years, according to records from the Office of Compliance.

The payouts stem from hundreds of complaints from employees, some of whom may have been sexually harassed or treated so poorly that third-party mediators were brought in to negotiate cash payoffs to settle the cases.

The story says that 2007 was an especially busy year for sexual harassment on the Hill: that year the government agency that oversees the dispute resolution system “settled 38 cases, with 25 resulting in monetary awards worth $4 million.”

And which members of congress are involved in these cases? Sorry: “For privacy reasons, the details of all these cases — including the names of the victims and the alleged harassers — are almost never made public. Lawmakers, regardless of whether they are guilty of workplace violations, do not pay a dime for the settlements, while taxpayers foot the bill for the lawyers.”

Hole-In-One: Ethics “waivers” allow congress to keep golfing

From the Sunlight Foundation:

To allow members of Congress and Hill aides to attend their annual fundraising golf tournaments free of charge, Washington’s premier partisan clubs get ethics waivers from the House Ethics Committee, according to the clubs’ managers.

These clubs — the Capitol Hill Club and the National Democratic Club — are popular spots for political fundraisers and members, aides and lobbyists sit on their boards of directors.

A ticket to the Capitol Hill Club’s “Annual Republican Leadership Tournament,” held today at the Belle Haven Country Club in Alexandria costs $3,000 for a foursome. On July 19, it’s the NDC’s turn to take the greens at Trump National Club, where a ticket costs twice as much for members and $8,000 for a team of non-members.

Health Care Firm Crawls Out From Under Rock: Congressman Boehner takes its money

Remember WellCare, the Tampa-based insurer that was accused of “bilking taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars by using fraudulent practices that were integral to the company’s profit-making,” says a St. Petersburg Times editorial? “But rather than recover every misappropriated dime and then triple the damages, as the law allows, the Justice Department has announced a preliminary settlement of a paltry $137.5 million to satisfy its whistle-blower claims. If WellCare keeps any of its ill-gotten gains and avoids a significant fine, the message to other health insurers will be loud and clear: fraud pays.”

WellCare’s PAC stopped making political contributions in the fall of 2007, after the Justice Department raided its headquarters. But now WellCare’s PAC is back in business, sending $2,500 to the Freedom Project, House Minority Leader John Boehner’s personal “Leadership PAC.”

World Cup: Defeat for Van Diver, Van Whiner and Van Thug

Spain was clearly the best team in the World Cup and it deserved yesterday’s 1-0 victory over Holland. It controlled the ball and the tempo for most of the match, dominated overtime, and generally played far prettier soccer.

The only thing the Dutch were superior at yesterday — and what they excelled at throughout the entire Cup — was fouling, diving and crying to the referee. The worst, of course, was Arjen Robben — seen here in the midst of his Cry-Baby routine during an earlier match. (This, incidentally, was a rare instance of Robben whining in an upright position; he was so busy trying to draw fake fouls that he was rarely on his feet for more than a minute at a time.)

Some commentators have joked that Robben deserved an Oscar for Best Acting, but that suggests he was convincing in his non-stop flopping. Great acting it was not. At least twice I saw Robben actually grimace and pretend to be in great pain well before he even hit the ground. (At which point he’d curl into the fetal position and clutch at his leg in a manner suggesting that only an immediate amputation could save his life.)

Then there was the constant fouling by the Dutch, most egregiously the first half chest kick of Xabi Alonso by Nigel de Jong. That was the worst foul of the entire Cup and deserved a red card.

So congratulations to Spain, and to Holland–grow up before 2014.

My prediction for the next Cup: Having already fired Dunga, Brazil returns to playing attack-oriented football and wins the Cup on its home turf, defeating Spain 3-1 in the final.

You read it here first. If it happens, I’ll remind everyone of this post. And if it doesn’t, no one will remember I wrote it. That’s the beauty of blogging.

Fellowship Travelers: State Department bars Nieman fellow as “terrorist”

From Associated Press:

The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.

Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news program called “Contravia,” has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America.

Incidentally, a warning to CNN reporters: Do not use Twitter to say anything supportive of Morris. You will be fired.

Hand-to-Mouth at a Higher Level

From the New York Times:

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population. More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent. Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

What the Octavia Nasr Case Proves

From the Angry Arab:

The dismissal of Octavia Nasr proves this:

No matter how much you grovel and how much you insult Arabs and Muslims in the US, as Nasr has largely due to her ignorance of Middle East and Islamic affairs, it will never be enough. Unless you advocate the Likudnik positions as Fouad Ajami has, you will be suspect of you are of Arab origin.

Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah has no position whatsoever in Hizbullah, but US media still insist that he is Hizbullah’s leader.

In the US, you may only express sympathy and admiration for Jewish and Christian religious figures. Muslim religious figures are all a bunch of terrorists.

Palin’s Plans: Horndog wing will not be enough to carry her across the line

There’s been much speculation about Sarah Palin’s political prospects and the possibility that she will win high office in the 2012 elections. Yesterday Andrew Sullivan posted an item in which a reader speculated that Palin’s real aim is to win her party’s vice presidential nomination:

Her moves and the GOP’s current condition suggest to me that what she’s really running for is vice president again. I’m surprised that no one out there seems to be considering this possibility, since from what I can tell it’s pretty much inevitable.

Palin is not going to be the GOP’s next presidential or vice presidential nominee. She’s not going to be the former because she can’t win the nomination; the combined weight of the Tea Party wing and the Love-struck Horndog faction is powerful within the GOP, but not that powerful. She won’t be the latter because she’ll end up being a drag on the ticket, as John McCain discovered to his misfortune last year.

However unqualified she might be for high office, Palin is smart enough to know this. Palin is not even running for high office. She is running to get very, very rich and in that endeavor she will be enormously successful.

Nixon and Kissinger: The Cheech and Chong of Political Murder

From Jeff Stein:

President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, joked that an “incompetent” CIA had struggled to successfully carry out an assassination in Chile, newly available Oval Office tapes reveal.

Media Filters: For Washington Post, Krugman not a reliable source but Wall Street analyst totally impartial

One of the more revealing examples of the mainstream media’s laughable claims of “objectivity” came in a Sunday Washington Post story about what lies ahead for the U.S. economy.

Written by Frank Ahrens, the story cited Paul Krugman saying, as paraphrased by Ahrens, that “we’re in for a long period of high unemployment and deflationary contraction, with wages falling and businesses failing. Krugman draws comparisons to the Great Depression, to be sure, but also sends us to our history books to remember the Long Depression that began with the Panic of 1873, saying the coming depression will be more like that one.”

But Ahrens felt it necessary to offer two disclosures about Krugman, including this:

When you read Krugman on economics, you need to read him through a filter. He believes that the $787 billion government stimulus approved last year was not enough to really kick-start the economy and that much more is needed. You can correctly read many of his columns — including this one — as arguments for more taxpayer-funded stimulus. So just know that.

Oddly, Ahrens didn’t feel any sort of “disclosure” was necessary when quoting Peter Boockvar, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak whose remarks were far more political than anything Krugman offered. Read this section of Ahrens’ story:

My e-mail [to Boockvar] was short: “Double-dip or slowdown?”

His response was equally abrupt: “Depends on who wins Nov. elections and what taxes get hiked in 2011.”

The tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush expire at the end of this year. President Obama has proposed extending those cuts — except for families that make more than $250,000 a year. If Republicans win Congress in November, it’s a good bet that the wealthiest Americans will keep their tax cuts. If the Democrats hold the Hill, it’s unlikely.

“Our fragile economy CANNOT handle any tax hikes whatsoever, particularly on capital and the income of those who invest, save and spend the most,” Boockvar wrote, meaning those American families that make more than $250,000 a year. The all-caps are his, but the feeling is shared by many.

Gee, I wonder if Boockvar may have a personal and political and professional stake here. Hey Ahrens, next time you cite him how about running this disclosure:

“Peter Boockvar’s economic well-being is tied to rich people having a lot of money to invest in stocks and other equities. He himself is rich and doesn’t really give a shit about poor people. Like others on Wall Street, he profited handsomely from de-regulatory policies that led to the financial collapse that has beggared millions of Americans. Many people share the view that he is essentially a blood-sucking leech. So just know that.”

Incidentally, I don’t know where the economy is headed but I do know that you’d be better off asking a monkey about that matter than relying on the advice of Boockvar. Back in the fall of 2008 he was predicting that the Dow would fall to 5,000 and that Chinese stocks — which just hit a 15-month low after rising on the same sort of speculative fever that led to the U.S. stock run-up — were set to climb through the roof.

And back on September 19th, 2008, a newspaper story had this paragraph: “Unless the central bank stops interfering with market discipline, Wall Street’s problems will continue, he said. ‘The market can get to the right price on its own,’ Boockvar said. ‘Anything that prevents it from happening is just prolonging the inevitable’.”

Note to Ahrens and the Post: Everyone has a point-of-view — sources, readers and even, heaven help us, reporters. Everyone but you seems to get that so spare us the charade of your virginal “objectivity.”

World Cup: Hands of God

Because I tend to root for Latin American teams at the World Cup (except for Argentina), I began to worry about the fate of its teams when the media narrative here turned to the region’s early dominance in the tournament, when four of the eight quarter-finalists were from South America. As is the case with political coverage, it’s usually safe to assume that any sports narrative that hits critical mass will turn out to be entirely wrong. Cases in point: President Hillary Clinton and NBA champion (insert New York Knick joke here) LeBron James. And so it was predictable that only one Latin team, Uruguay, survived the quarters.

I knew Brazil was in big trouble against Holland when, on the way to watch the game at The Grill From Ipanema restaurant here, my 10-year-old son, a fervent Brazil supporter, told me he’d dreamed the night before that it had lost to Holland by one goal despite being ahead early, and that in the dream he’d seen Brazilian fans crying after the game. He didn’t say anything about “redrum” but it sent a chill down my spine nonetheless, and his vision proved eerily accurate.

Still, the expectation by its fans and the media that Brazil is going to win every four years is ridiculous. They always have a good team, often a great one, but losing at the Cup requires only a mistake or two in one game, which is what happened most famously in 1982 when its fantastic squad was eliminated by Italy 3-2. It happened again against Holland when the defense gave the Dutch team two pathetically easy headers. Then Brazil lost its composure and that was that.

For Brazil fans like me, the pain of the team’s exit ebbed substantially after Argentina was crushed 4-0 on Saturday by Germany. Headlines in Brazilian newspapers were delicious, getting revenge for the same treatment Brazil got after it lost to Holland. Brazilians sarcastically refer to the Argentine squad as “Los Hermanos,” and one headline ran: “You can buy a TV, brothers.” There was also the simple yet elegant headline of “Hahahahahahahahaha” accompanying a photograph of Argentina’s goalie watching helplessly as a German player tapped the ball into the net.

Brazilian newspapers published sentiments expressed on Twitter, including this one: “Perder é humano. De 4 é hermano!” Translation: “To lose is human. To lose by 4 is Argentine.” Another great message on Twitter, sent to me by a friend: “Hand of god gives Maradona the finger!”

The most exciting quarter-final game was Uruguay-Ghana. I wanted Ghana to advance because it was the only African team left, but I also admire the way the Uruguayans, led by the amazing Diego Forlan, have played in the Cup. It was a painful loss for Ghana, and I felt especially bad for poor Gyan, but I can’t understand the uproar about Luis Suarez using his hands to knock out Ghana’s sure winner at the end of overtime.

In baseball, if a player on the opposing team hits a walk-off homer in the 9th it doesn’t do any good to tackle him as he rounds the bases. But in football, if in overtime the cornerback is beat on a long bomb you want him to draw a pass interference call instead of passively allowing a touchdown. If FIFA changes its rules, fine, but under the circumstances Suarez did exactly the right thing and rightly became a national hero; if he hadn’t, his team would not be playing later today.

In one of the dumber comments, the New York Times wrote, “There was little dignity in Suárez’s over-the-top celebration after the shootout, in which two Ghanaians missed and one Uruguayan shot over the goal. While Gyan wept at midfield, Suárez climbed atop a teammate’s back and twirled his shirt above his head.” Suarez had just single-handedly saved his team’s ass — don’t forget, he made the first save in that sequence as well, using his leg to knock out a sure goal before the handball; what was he supposed to do, not celebrate his team’s victory?

As for the semis, the Dutch are the clear favorite against Uruguay, especially with Suarez suspended and several players possibly out with injuries. Germany looks awfully hard to beat and I still can’t figure out Spain, which doesn’t look nearly as good as it did two years ago when it won the European championship. On the one hand, it keeps doing just enough to win; on the other, maybe it’s just doing as well as it can, and won’t be able to pick up its game against Germany, which would be fatal.

So I’m expecting a German-Holland final, though I want to see Spain play Uruguay. The odds are against the latter but as i have said frequently during the past few weeks, predicting the World Cup is a thankless task. Furthermore, my son hasn’t had any more soccer dreams so I’m truly in the dark.