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Germany, as most host countries do, has made a good run, but mostly because its group was disgustingly easy. As their games against England showed, neither Ecuador nor Sweden were very good – Sweden didn’t even come close to meriting the point they salvaged against the Brits – which means that Germany hasn’t faced a serious test yet this World Cup.

Argentina, on the other hand, outplayed a very skilled Dutch team and beat a solid Mexico that was playing as well as I’ve ever seen it play. They’ve overwhelmed teams, they’re unselfish, they’ve shown they can come from behind without panicking and their substitutes are often better than their starters. Pekerman can’t not start Hernan Crespo, and yet Unfrozen Caveman Striker is the most dangerous and disruptive player on the Argentine squad. This should be the game in which the German defense gets exposed, and as an Arsenalista, I can testify that while Lehman is a good keeper, he is unlikely to rescue an overmatched Deutschland ala Oliver Kahn in Korea.

Italy will have no trouble with Ukraine. A team that can’t score against a Swiss team missing Senderos will find it next to impossible to put one in the net against the Azzurri, even if the Italians are missing both Nesta and Materazzi in defense. Just as Buffon, Cannevaro, Camoranesi, Zambrotta and Del Piero helped render their Juventus teammate Nedved ineffective in the Czech game, the extreme familiarity of Milan’s Inzaghi, Pirlo, Gilardino, Nesta and Gattuso with Shevchenko – who played seven years with the rossoneri before this summer’s move to Chelsea – will help enormously in shutting him down.

My affection for the Azzurri aside, I hope we get the chance to see Italy-Argentina as it promises a clash between two well-coached, highly-skilled and technically-excellent teams.

Only in a rather less offensive manner:

Indeed, back when I toiled in the fields of feminist debate, to say that women owe a larger allegiance to the common good than to themselves was to invite hobgoblins of slippery-slopism and dystopian visions of handmaid’s tales. For as a matter of simple logic, a philosophy which says that women should subordinate their own aspirations — particularly when it comes to their role as mothers — to the national community (or volksgemeinschaft, if you prefer) is a philosophy which can be used to justify forcing women to become breeders for the posterity and prosperity of the nation. Oh, but just to be clear: this isn’t my prediction, it’s just the sort of argument feminists used to make when feminism meant the opposite of what Hirshman says it should mean. And, fear not, even if the day comes when women are asked to put aside their own hopes for themselves and their families for the demographic common good, feminists will surely not call it “feminism.”

Frankly, I preferred my Normanesque take on the matter.

From NRO’s Corner:

Unfortunately, I’m going to be out-of-pocket for most of today, so I’ll miss a lot of the post-mortem if the decision comes down. For pre-mortem, though, I’ve been poking around, and it seems like there’s a prevailing view that if — as expected — the decision comes out in favor of Hamdan, the theory will be that al Qaeda does have Geneva Convention protections.

Make no mistake: if this happens, the Supreme Court will have dictated that we now have a treaty with al Qaeda — which no President, no Senate, and no vote of the American people would ever countenance.

Since we don’t have a declaration of war against “al Qaeda” either, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a fictional treaty with them as well. I mean, isn’t it time to stop being surprised at the Supreme Court’s continual manufacture of legal fictions? This wouldn’t exactly be the first such occurrence of it.

It’s just a good thing that we’ve got Roberts and Alito on the court to prevent such unconstitutional activity….

Podhoretz the Younger manages to miss the point entirely:

It turns out that Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israeli soldier, is also a citizen of…France. But I guess, since he’s a Jew, the French Foreign Minister would just as soon he was murdered by Hamas rather than actually support efforts to free a French citizen.

Or, perhaps, the French quite reasonably feel that someone who is not only a citizen of another country but has actually taken up arms for that country instead of France is no longer a concern of theirs. And while I’m no expert on French citizenship laws, I seem to recall that it wasn’t all that long ago that swearing allegiance to another country, let alone taking up arms for one, was enough to automatically cause the loss of one’s US citizenship.

This is not a new dichotomy. Napoleon once famously required the Jews of France to decide if their loyalties lay with their people or with France. Gilad Shalit obviously decided that his lay with Israel, as was his right, but at that point his fate ceased to be a matter of concern for his former nation.

After all, the man didn’t get captured because he was a French citizen, but because he is an Israeli soldier. It is an Israeli problem, and Israel certainly has the werewithal to respond to it.

While it doesn’t make any sense according to the conventional wisdom, it looks to me as if Gov. Pataki is the likely Republican nominee for president in 2008. The Nostradamine auguries also indicate that war with Iran is unlikely, unless the USA is willing to go without a backing coalition.

I still think the Republican will merely play the role of the sacrificial lamb, but I could certainly be wrong. Time will tell.

Ms O’Rourke lays the logical foundation for enslaving young women:

“If you are a woman who is committed to gender equality, who doesn’t believe that a woman’s place is necessarily in the home, she argues, then you have to think about how your choices shape the collective good. Her stubborn insistence is refreshing. Unlike others, she is willing to come out and say, in no uncertain terms, that the luxury of making our own decisions as if they had no larger implications isn’t ethical at this point in time….If you buy her argument, then even if you find it hard to leave your baby at home, and even if you find the workplace sometimes less-than-fulfilling, it’s important—to society as a whole—that you work. This sounds extreme, but of course it’s the lesson every man is taught when he’s a boy: Your responsibility to society—the way to become an adult—is to work.”

1. A woman’s responsibility to society is to work.
2. Work is an(y) activity that generates an economic benefit for the employer which an individual will not perform unless paid or forced.
3. Sex slavery is an activity that generates economic benefit for the employer.
4. Sex slaves do not perform unless forced.
5. Therefore sex slavery is work.
6. Therefore an unemployed woman who is not serving as a prostitute or sex slave is not fulfilling her responsibility to society.
7. Most high school and college women are unemployed.
8. Therefore, most high school and college women are failing to fulfill their responsibility to society. In the absence of other employment, they have an ethical duty to serve as sex slaves.

The working girls win, society wins, everybody wins! So, enslave that sorority girl, put that cheerleader in chains, it’s important to society as a whole!

Have at that logic, puppies.

In fairness, the odds were only 6-1 in their favor:

The Belgian state is no longer able to guarantee the security of its citizens. On Saturday afternoon Guido Demoor, a 54-year old Flemish train conductor on his way to work, was kicked to death by six “youths” on a crowded bus near Antwerp’s Central Station. The incident recalls the rush-hour murder ten weeks ago of Joe Van Holsbeeck, 17 years of age, in a crowded Brussels Central Station on 12 April.

Guido Demoor, a father of two, intervened when six “youths” got on bus 23 in Antwerp and began to intimidate passengers. There were some forty people on the bus. Demoor asked the “youths” to calm down, whereupon they turned on him, savagely beating and kicking the man. At the next stop thirty passengers fled the bus. The thugs kept beating Demoor. They then pulled the emergency brake and jumped from the bus leaving their victim to die.

Three Moroccans, two of whom are minors, were arrested today. The website of the Dutch paper De Stentor reports tonight that a fourth suspect, believed to be the ringleader, fled into a shop as the police were poised to arrest him. He managed to escape from the shop when dozens of “youths” came to his rescue. Witnesses had described the culprits as immigrant youths of between 18 and 21 years of age. During the weekend the police had called for witnesses as only four people had come forward. The police offered the witnesses absolute confidentiality and promised not to reveal their identities. “Obviously people fear reprisals,” Gazet van Antwerpen wrote today.

I’d say that a society deserves to die when 40 adults cower in fear from six unarmed teenagers. And referencing the recent subject under discussion, a government that can’t control random youth thuggery isn’t about to do anything about the organized crime syndicates that run drugs and sex slaves.

From Jump the Shark:

If ER didn’t jump the shark when they cut Romano’s arm off, it ran screaming on fire straight at the shark, tripped, and fell flat on its face when they dropped the helicoptor on him. I stopped where I was, walking through the room, stared open-mouthed at the television, and started to laugh. My fiance said, “That’s the worst thing on television, ever.”

I wouldn’t say that I particularly liked ER and I don’t think I’ve seen more than a fifth of the episodes, but I would have to say that the helicopter falling on Romano was probably the single most inadvertantly funny thing on television that didn’t involve Joe Namath.

Like the guy who wrote the quote above, I wasn’t watching the episode but I did happen to walk in the room just as Romano looked up at the evil helicopter and I, too, burst out laughing. I haven’t been able to even think of the show without chuckling since… it astounds me that someone didn’t look at the writer who came up with the idea and tell him that it was too silly to even consider. I can only imagine the ordeal that the poor actor who played Romano must have gone through in attempting to keep a straight face while pretending that flaming death was descending from the skies.

Now, it’s entirely possible that ER jumped before that, but if not, you couldn’t point to a more flawlessly executed shark jump than that one.

While the international federation has made a good start in fixing the beautiful game, it’s clear that it still has a long way to go in cutting down on the acting and diving that still permeates the game at the top level. There’s much less nonsense in the national leagues – except for Serie A – since a player practically has to have his leg broken to draw a card in the Premiership, but the 20 cards distributed in the Holland-Portugal game and the dubious penalties that decided the Australia-Italy and Ghana-USA games indicate a need for a comprehensive solution.

The real problem is not with the rules, but with the human limitations of the referee. It’s very hard to see precisely what is going on, and when a ref sees player goes down out of the corner of his eye, his first reaction is to penalize the player committing the foul, whether it is real or a phantom one. And then there’s the problem demonstrated last night, when Thierry Henry was legitimately fouled with an elbow in the chest that knocked him down, but clutched his face in an attempt to make the foul look worse than it was and draw a yellow. Unfortunately, FIFA seldom penalizes players for acting after the fact, which only guarantees that matters will get worse.

I recommend three changes. The first is an assistant referee in the booth at all televised games with a phone link to the referee. When a card is given, the assistant ref can review the play as play continues, giving the referee the opportunity to withdraw a wrongly given card and/or to give a card to a player that is clearly seen to be acting in order to draw a called foul. This would have prevented the Portugal-Holland game from spiraling out of control when Holland’s Boulahrouz began the series of mini-dramas after being lightly bumped in the nose by Figo’s forehead as Boulahrouz, not Figo, would have been penalized, bringing the matter to a close instead of inspiring the old Portuguese fox to return the favor minutes later.

The second is to force each team to withdraw one player at the end of injury time. After each five minutes that proceeds without a score, the referee will blow a whistle and another player will be withdrawn. This will speed up the finish and eliminate the stupid penalty kicks that are not properly a major part of the game. Five-on-five is still more of a soccer game than penalties and it would lead to some interesting tactical decisions, such as when the right moment to pull the goalie would be.

The third is to abandon the ill-conceived Fair Play concept. Players who are willing to cheat in order to stick their opponent’s with a yellow card are perfectly willing to go down and play hurt whenever the other team is on the attack. This happens far too often and I applauded Spain last night when they completely ignored the French defender on the ground and went on to have a crack at goal. Furthermore, if a player’s injury forces a stoppage of play, I’d require him to sit out for at least five minutes before he is allowed to return to the field. Zambrotta played injured the last 30 minutes of the USA-Italy game because the Azzurri were out of substitutions, so clearly the players are capable of it when it’s required.

ES disagrees:

Regarding your column, it hardly seems Christian to gloat and proclaim “I told you so” where the lives of so many millions of your sisters are concerned. In 2004 and 2005, I went to Iraq and Afghanistan to study the performance of American servicewomen; in both countries, was embedded with combat troops. I discovered that for many Iraqi and Afghan women, the sight of GI Jane was their first real glimpse of freedom for women. I don’t mean that they wanted to become soldiers, or even that they approved of our presence there. But they saw that women have choices other than the burqah or the brothel.

Sometimes, freedom begins when you say No to the people who tell you what your choices are. And as every good Christian knows, you do not have to genuflect before every jerk who presumes to speak in the name of the Lord.

It’s not a question of “I told you so”, especially because I didn’t. I predicted neither European post-Christianity nor sex slavery. I am, however, logically extrapolating future American trends from recent European ones, which seems sensible given the way in which the Panamerican political elite is directly imitating their European counterparts. It is a warning, nothing more. If I happen to find humor in the irony, that does not change the accuracy of the prediction. Time will tell.

The idea that being a professional soldier is freedom is a rather bizarre perspective, especially given the Founding Father’s jaundiced view of standing armies. Indeed, the “performance” of female American soldiers has been pathetic, the Private Jessica myths notwithstanding.

I daresay the ratio of GI Janes pulling off this sort of thing is 1000x or more compared to enemies killed or wounded by our brave American Amazons.