Two late Nihat Kahveci strikes put ten-man Turkey into the quarter-finals of UEFA EURO 2008™ in an exhilarating climax to their Group A match against the Czech Republic in Geneva. The Czechs led 2-1 with minutes to go when it all unraveled.

Čech, who was at fault for Nihat’s first goal but had no chance with his spectacular second, admitted it would take a while to recover from the 3-2 defeat which not only ended the Czechs’ interest in the EURO but also ended his hopes of winning a trophy this season. “We are absolutely devastated,” he told euro2008.com. “It’s hard to believe what just happened. We felt we played very well in the first half and were in control of the game. Jan [Koller] gave us the lead and when we went two goals up there did not seem any way back for Turkey.

“However, they got the first and their tails seemed to go up and then I made a mistake for the second and suddenly they were back in the game. At least at that point it seemed like penalties and we were still in with a chance but then Nihat broke clear and scored an incredible goal. I had no chance. That game really sums up my season, especially after losing out on three trophies for Chelsea [FC] in the final games. We came so close but blew it in the end.” Asked how he would deal with his error for the second goal, he said: “It’s just one of those things. Everybody makes mistakes and I am a human being. I tried my best but there was a lot of water on the ball and it slipped from my grasp.”

Czech Republic captain Tomáš Ujfaluši added: “It was a cruel way to end our participation in this tournament. We felt we deserved to reach the last eight and were very much in control of the match until the last ten minutes. Then suddenly we made some mistakes which are very uncharacteristic of our team and our defence and we now find ourselves eliminated. It’s awful but we must deal with it and accept that Turkey beat us.”

In the other game, the co-host Swiss said goodbye to their fans with a 2-0 victory over Portugal, who had already punched through the quarterfinals. Portugal wins Group A based on goal differential.

Tomorrow’s Matches
Group B returns to the pitch tomorrow. Croatia is already entered for the quarterfinals faces Poland. While co-host Austria battles Germany. A German win and they go through. Austria has to win and hope that Poland loses. Poland has to win and hope that Germany and Austria tie. All scenarios are explained at Last Scenarios Explained on the Euro2008 website.

For more on the matches and the tourney, please visit Euro2008.

South American FIFA World Cup Qualifiers

The heavyweight match was between group leader Paraguay and third place team Brazil in Asunción. The match did not live up to expectations as host Paraguay waltzed past Brazil 2-0. For the Guaraní (what Paraguayans call themselves), the day could not have gone any better. They now lead the South American FIFA 2010 Qualifiers with 13 points (out of a possible 15) ahead of Argentina with ten, Colombia with nine and Brazil with eight. Chile recovered some ground after beating hapless Bolivia 0-3 in La Paz, a tough place to win. Chile and Venezuela each have seven points in fifth place. The top four qualify.

In Buenos Aires, Ecuador deserved to win having the dominated the match but had to settle for a 1-1 tie as Argentina scored a late goal to stave a complete embarrassment. It looks to be a tough week for the perennial South American football powers. Later this week, Paraguay will be up against Bolivia in the altitude of La Paz, while Brazil will be after the three points when they clash with archrivals Argentina in Belo Horizonte. Both squads are in desperate need of a win now and whoever loses might find themselves on the bottom looking up. A win for Paraguay in Bolivia and they’ll begin to pull away from the rest of the pack.

In other matches this week, Ecuador will host Colombia in Quito; Uruguay will host Peru in Montevideo and Venezuela will host Chile in Puerto La Cruz.

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Riverdaughter over on The Confluence has a few answers for you that have questions on the new coalition of disaffected Democrats called Just Say No Deal.

You can also look at my previous posts: Just Say No Deal Interview on Fox News and Foxy Pumas.

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The View from My Office

“The coldest winter I have spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
— Mark Twain

It rolls in touching us with its magic dew, a blanket of delightful chill that warms our liberal souls. We think of it as our natural air conditioning, providing comfort and joy. As San Francisco heads into its summer, fog is our daily companion and much beloved by me.

Tourists often frown at the cold thinking that it’s summer in California and bronze gods and goddesses run wantonly and scantly clad through the sunshine but the vendors show nothing but glee as they ring up sales of fleeces and sweatshirts for our unprepared visitors. Until late August, fog can blanket the city until late morning giving way for a few hours of sun-filled delight before reclaiming the land with purpose and force. Wind tunnels are common in the city in the gaps between the hills that protect the eastern part of the city from the perpetual fog belt of the Richmond and the Sunset.

When I lived on Russian Hill on Union and Taylor, the back of my flat, where my bedroom and den were, faced San Francisco Bay. I lived in a three-story walk up off the street but the back of my flat was on a cliff. It was seven stories down to the garden in the back. The winds could swirl off the bay and the temperature off the backside was at least a few degrees colder than on the front side of the apartment. Luckily, there was a fireplace in the den. It was a joy to see the fog stream in and envelope Alcatraz in its powerful mist.

Now living in the Castro, the fog is largely above me. I see it on Twin Peaks where the mountain breaks its forward path. It is quite the sight to see it hover above the Castro as if big balls of fuzzy cotton being pressed against our terrain.

The Fog Bank Above The Castro in San Francisco

A Classic San Francisco View

And if you are coming to visit us, bring a sweater or a fleece and carry it even though you might not think that you will need it for in summer in San Francisco wearing flowers in your hair brings no warmth at all.

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Well at least, we now know that he suffers from a neurological disease. He also suffers from CDS, Clinton Deranged Syndrome, another affliction that seems highly contagious these days. Perhaps it was only an epidemic but my sense is that it is a virus with no known cure. Pity, because the Clinton health care plan covers pre-existing conditions while Obama claims that his does as well, being a market-based insurance solution it leaves loopholes for insurance companies to circumvent. And it may be fatal to one’s journalistic career. So Keith Olbermann has made his sick bed, now let him lay in it.

The New Yorker this week profiles the not-so-special political commentator, Keith Olbermann. A few money quotes:

Olbermann, who is six feet three and a half, once bumped his head while leaping into a subway car; it permanently upset his equilibrium, which makes driving a trial. (He says he loses depth perception at speeds greater than fifteen miles per hour.)

I am sorry to hear that his equilibrium was upset by his own impetuous actions. But frankly, his perception is not any better sitting down and staying still. In fact, it may be worse. Equilibrium is not a word I have ever associated with Keith Olbermann. Slanted and off-balanced are. Now at least, we know why. As for trying, Olbermann tries our patience five nights a week and offends our sensibilities with every word he utters.

Olbermann’s tenure at ESPN was characteristically contentious. One of his co-anchors, Suzy Kolber, has said that Olbermann was sometimes so overbearing that she would lock herself in the bathroom and cry. Another colleague, Mike Soltys, has said that when Olbermann left the network, in 1997, “he didn’t burn bridges here—he napalmed them.”

Overbearing is apt and his misogyny is nothing new. If I were to cry, it would be over the fact that he is killing American journalism by pretending to be Edward R. Murrow, whom he is not. And in terms of the death of the US Democratic Party, Olbermann is simply Agent Orange, a defoliant that has stripped bare what was once a vibrant political party, now likely headed for death because of the toxicity of pundits like Mr. Olbermann.

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is that this country is worth fighting for. Are you ready? Are you committed?

It’s time to destroy the Obama political machine once and for all. This blog is part of a vast anti-Obama campaign, join the cause. This country is worth fighting for.

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A video from BoyThreeOne shows what to do. Personally I got a lot of satisfaction from shredding my DNC card, but you are free to make your own choices.

How To Change Your Party Affiliation
Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Florida
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah (for Norm)
Washington State
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

If your state is not listed contact The Secretary of State for your state. Google Secretary of State + the name of your state.

If you live in Massachusetts, I would recommend doing it after the primary. Vote John Kerry out first.

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From the New York Times:

A Democratic voter registration drive in largely black neighborhoods of Louisiana has swamped the state’s voter registrar offices, forcing them to hire new staff members and work 12-hour days to process thousands of applications.

Buoyed by the popularity of Senator Barack Obama, the drive has raised complaints from registrars about large numbers of duplicate, invalid or incomplete applications, and has led to an investigation by the Louisiana secretary of state, Jay Dardenne, a Republican.

Election officials have expressed concern that large numbers of people who believe they are registered will show up at the polls in November, only to find that they cannot vote because their application had been improperly submitted.

Project Vote and Acorn, a left-wing national organizing group, have teamed up to conduct large voter drives across the country, with the goal of registering 1.2 million people by Labor Day. They have already submitted 600,000 applications, said Michael Slater, the deputy director of Project Vote. Acorn is among several groups registering voters in Louisiana.

The Obama campaign itself has announced a 50-state registration drive known as “Vote for Change.”

It remains unclear whether election officials will be prepared to handle more registrations and the potential for overwhelming turnout on Election Day, Mr. Slater said. “Party politics is driving up registration at unusually high rates,” he said.

These won’t be the only voter irregularities we will see in the general election. I would expect a repeat of many of Obama’s tricks, especially having students vote twice — at their collegiate address and at their home address. Obama is nothing but a bag of dirty tricks.

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By The Fault turns two months old today and along the way we have made many new friends. The readership is now more than double from where it was a month ago. I am still trying to work a few kinks here and there. More than a few readers have had difficulty registering and providing comments. My understanding is that it is a Word Press issue and that an update will soon resolve the problem. However, you can email me and I’ll add you to the list of registered users.

I also want to thank Norm Jenson of OneGoodMove for his invaluable help in getting this blog started. Could not have done it without his help and guidance.

While the readership of By The Fault remains largely an American audience, the international audience is growing. I am amazed from where readers log on from. Other the past month, there have been visitors from Syria, Pakistan’s Northwest Territories, American Samoa, Moldova, the Turks and Caicos and Barbados. I have added two widgets that track visitors on a world map. One records the visitors in the past 24 hours and the other measures the density from where visitors are from. There’s also a widget on the price of gas in the United States that tracks in real time the average price of gas in the US.

I am now also contributing to No Quarter USA, Larry Johnson’s blog, on Obama and foreign policy mostly but a few other sundry topics. I had expected the traffic to die down with Senator Clinton’s departure from active campaigning but the opposite has happened. I get the feeling that there many disgruntled and disaffected Democrats out there. If so, consider yourself at home. Where there is a will, there’s a way. And this blog is part of a larger coalition of bloggers that take exception to the choice of Barack Obama as the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Moreover, we believe that some of the antics of the Democratic Party such as moving the DNC to Chicago and removing Debra Bartoshevich as a delegate from Wisconsin simply because she cannot in good conscience support Obama in the Fall represent a threat to long-term survival of the Democratic Party. They are digging their own grave. It’s also hypocritical for I do not see a movement by Senator Reid to kick Senator Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. You might want to remind the DNC of that fact this week.

Charles Lemos
San Francisco, CA

Here is the Sunday, June 18th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

Pakistan’s Long March

Thousands of Pakistanis gathered in front of the presidential palace in Islamabad on Saturday to demand the reinstatement of about 60 judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf last year. More from the New York Times and from All Things Pakistan.

Raul Castro to Overhaul Cuba’s Pay Structure
In what some experts call Raul Castro’s boldest break yet from socialism, Cuban state companies have until August to overhaul their salary structures to pay hard workers more than slackers, the government newspaper reported last week. The Houston Chronicle provides the coverage.

One Million Flee Floods in China
While the floods in Iowa and the American mid-west grip the United States, China is experiencing heavy flooding in southern China. State media reported 55 people have been killed and seven are missing in flooding across a broad stretch of southern China. A Sunday report by the official Xinhua News Agency said more than one million people have been forced to flee their homes across nine provinces, including Sichuan, which is still reeling from last month’s earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people. Heavy rain in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces will further raise water levels downstream, especially in the coastal manufacturing powerhouse of Guangdong, Xinhua said. Most of those areas are expected to receive more heavy rain over the next 10 days.

Transport Strike Update from Spain
It all started in Spain, it quickly spread to Portugal and southern France. Lorry drivers are on the streets and on roads protesting against high fuel prices and bringing normal day life to a stand still. An update from The Oil Drum: Europe.

Domestic Violence Among Muslims in Britain Cost the British Treasury £25.3 Billion Over Two Years
Domestic violence cost the British government 25.3 billion pounds in 2005-06, a parliamentary report has said, even as an influential Muslim group admitted the linked issue of forced marriages among Asians had reached a crisis point. More from Europe News. I can’t believe that number is accurate.

Iraq’s Gold Artisans
Iraq has a long tradition of gold artisans. The Los Angeles Times reports on their plight in current day Iraq.

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