I don't know if America can beat England but I have the rallying cry: "Win one for the pelicans!"

Forget soccer.
Big sport news of the day comes from Vegas where Gary is in the final table of 9 today in Event 18 of the World Series of Poker. Could be history in the making. Stay tuned...

NO comparison to baseball. These guys are beautiful even when they spit. This is like watching every person you have ever been attracted to, running, sweating, falling down, yelling, protesting, agonizing, rolling and spitting. And a continued spirited roaring soundtrack. What could be better?

Spain will win it all.

Bonne Chance en Afrique du Sud, Portland French School students:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYGou2uM-EE

I'll stick with World Cup Coffee. No new terms to learn.

Nice start to the tournament! Mexico 1, South Africa 1

http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/First-2010-World-Cup-goal-somehow-scored-by-host?urn=sow,247634

Meanwhile: *Elephant causes traffic jam, stops U.S. team bus*
http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/Elephant-causes-traffic-jam-stops-U-S-team-bus?urn=sow,247655

Yeah, Bill! Here's hoping the USA lowers the boom on the British.

New Orleans Boogie
Professor Longhair, Allen Toussaint, Tuts Washington
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIwmp7_AcYU
3 new orleans piano players practising. Professor Longhair died before they made it to the performance.

2 ties and TWO goals scored in two games. I hope I can contain my excitement.

FYI --

Not Worth the Coming Hangover - World Cup Profiteers
By PATRICK BOND
http://www.counterpunch.org/bond06112010.html

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, which offers a register of social protests covered in the national media and a new socio-economic ‘World Cup Watch’ update: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs.

Here's some excerpts from Patrick Bond's article (sound familiar?) --

In Durban, our worst face is usually to be found at City Hall, where time and time again, municipal manager (de facto executive mayor) Michael Sutcliffe bans community protests against his anti-poor policies, compelling urgent court interdicts to restrain his vicious police.

As a leading journalist (eNews’ Morgan Collins) learned on his way to jail while trying to cover a nurses’ strike six weeks ago, cop-stamping on constitutional rights has become a bad habit here.

****

Little will trickle down. Aside from extremely loud plastic trumpets (‘vuvuzelas’), the much-vaunted ‘African’ feel to the World Cup will be muted, as women who typically sell ‘pap’ (cornmeal) and ‘vleis’ (meat) just outside stadiums will be shunted off at least a kilometer away. According to analyst Udesh Pillay of the Human Sciences Research Council, in 2005 one in three South Africans hoped to personally benefit from the World Cup, but this fell to one in five in 2009, and 1 in 100 today.

****

Benefits are down and costs are soaring. South Africa’s 2003 Bid Book estimate of between $150 million and $1.2 billion expenditure rose in October 2006 to a final projected $1.5 billion and now, with insane escalations, $5 billion.

Last Saturday, at a community class on economic justice we run at our university, a student pointed out that if Greece’s hosting of the 2004 Olympics was partially responsible for the latest episode of world financial crisis and a €500 billion bailout, South Africa - with our untenable $80 billion foreign debt (triple what Nelson Mandela inherited in 1994) - may get the same treatment.

****

Durban is a special case because of both the grandiose new stadium ($380 million worth, overrun from an original $220 million budget), and the country’s highest-profile chutzpah exuding from the bureaucracy and building contractors.

Sutcliffe has presided over a string of expensive management disasters: failed bus privatization due to cronyism; denial of Blue Flag status at the city’s otherwise excellent beaches due to high E.coli counts, followed by his angry retreat from the program; his foiled attempt to replace a century-old Indian market (Warwick Junction) with a shopping mall; unending public subsidies for elite-oriented megaprojects; a delusional new Trade Port nowhere near Africa’s largest harbour; disastrous water/sewerage breakdowns; and an economic development strategy reliant upon sports tourism in a coming era constrained by climate change and fast-rising air travel taxes, to mention just a few foibles.

Well. Patrick Bond certainly makes his mark.