Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

So 2 of the 3 favorites are out.  Alberto Contador broke is leg in a crash on the Col du Platzerwasel 5 days after Chris Froome was forced to withdraw with a broken wrist and without question this makes Vincenzo Nibali who won the stage the prohibitive favorite to win it all.  Not that strange things can’t happen, that’s why they race.  His chief competitors now are Richie Porte (2:23) who has taken over as leader of the Sky team and Alejandro Valverde (2:47).  What brought down Contador?

Speaking with Agence France-Presse, he said he had taken his hands off the handlebars to reach for an energy bar in his back pocket when his front wheel hit a pothole. Along Monday’s route, there were several small potholes and larger sinkholes on a number of descents. Most were ineffectually marked with orange spray paint that all but faded away in the fog and the on-and-off rain.

But everybody knows that, the surprise this morning is that Fabian Cancellara is out too so he can prepare for the World Championships, leaving Trek with just 6 riders.

That makes 19 drops-

Stage 10

• HAYMAN Mathew, Orica
• KING Edward, Cannondale
• CONTADOR Alberto, Tinkoff

Stage 9

• GARCIA ECHEGUIBEL Egoitz, Cofidis

Stage 8

• FRANK Mathias, IAM
• DE CLERCQ Bart, Lotto

Stage 7

• VAN POPPEL Danny, Trek
• ATAPUMA John Darwin, BMC
• CLEMENT Stef, Belkin

Stage 6

• RICHEZE Ariel Maximiliano, Lamprey
• HERNANDEZ BLAZQUEZ Jesus Alberto, Tinkoff
• SILIN Egor, Katusha
• ZANDIO ECHAIDE Xabier, Sky

Stage 5

• FROOME Christopher, Sky

Stage 4

• SCHLECK Andy, Trek
• HENDERSON Gregory, Lotto

Stage 2

• MODOLO Sacha, Lamprey
• CAVENDISH Mark, Omega Pharma

The results from the 10th Stage look like this, Vincenzo Nibali, Thibault Pinot (:15), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte and Jean-Christophe Péraud (:20), Romain Bardet and Tejay Van Garderen (:22), Riche Porte (:25), Leopold Konig (:50), Joaquim Rodriguez (:52), and Mikel Nieve Iturralde (:54).  Twelve more riders finished within 2 minutes and an additional 3 under 3.  Leaders of the General Classification are Vincenzo Nibali, Riche Porte (2:23), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (2:47), Romain Bardet (3:01), Tony Gallopin (3:12), Thibaut Pinot (3:47), Tejay Van Garderen (3:56), Jean-Christophe Péraud (3:57), Rui Alberto Costa (3:58), Bauke Mollema (4:08), Jurgen Van Den Broeck (4:18), Jakob Fuglsang (4:31), and Michal Kwiatkowski (4:39).  Ten other riders are under 10 minutes behind.  In Points competition Peter Sagan at 287 is waay ahead of the field.  His closest competitors are Bryan Coquard (156), Marcel Kittel (146), Alexander Kristoff (117), Mark Renshaw (101), André Greipel (98), Vincenzo Nibali (95), and Greg Van Avermaet (87).  Everyone else is over 11 points behind.  In the Climbing contest it is Joaquim Rodriguez (51), Thomas Voeckler (34), Tony Martin (25), Vincenzo Nibali (20), Blel Kadri and Alessandro De Marchi (17), and Thibaut Pinaut (16).  Everyone else is at least 4 points behind.  Team times look like this, AG2R, Astana (3:19), Belkin (4:25), and Sky (4:56).  Everyone else is over 20 minutes behind.  In Youth competition it is Romain Bardet, Thibaut Pinot (:46), and Michal Kwiatkowski (1:38).  Everyone else is over 12 minutes behind.

To call today’s 116.5 mile stage, Besançon / Oyonnax, hilly is only by comparison.  There are plenty of bumps and 4 rated climbs, 3 Category 3 and 1 Category 4.

The Sprint Checkpoint is after the first big bump but after a rest day and a flat run up you may see the sprinters try to contest except for Peter Sagan’s overwhelming lead in points.  The finish is down hill after a descent so you will probably see some tight racing, but I doubt it will be a bunch sprint.  Tomorrow is another hilly day and then we hit the Alps where there won’t be many climbs, but they will be very steep indeed.

Jason Jones Revealed

The Internet of Things

The real news, Threatdown All Bear Edition, and Dahlia Lithwick’s 3 part web exclusive extended interview below the fold.

Before we were so rudely interrupted…

Contact High

Possum Droppings

(an annual tradition)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

The 9th Stage of Le Tour was defined by a breakaway.  Tony Martin was part of a 20 rider group that seperated from the peloton about 20 km in while descending the Col de la Schlucht, the first climb.  They broke away decisively ascending Le Markstein (5th on the stage, first of 17 Category 1 or beyond classification climbs) in decidedly damp conditions.   Now Martin is best known as a Time Trialer and on the flats after the last descent (of 6) he drove away from the lead group finishing 2:45 ahead.  The main contenders in the General Classification were content to stick with the peloton and finished 7:46 behind.  That extra 5:01 was enough to remove the maillot jaune from Vincenzo Nibali’s shoulders and put it on Tony Gallopin’s (he was part of the breakaway group).  So we have a Frenchman in the lead on La Fête Nationale for only the second time in a decade (the last was Thomas Voeckler).

On the stage it was Tony Martin with Fabian Cancellara and Greg Van Avermaet leading a group of 18 riders 2:45 behind.  In front of the General Classification is Tony Gallopin, Vincenzo Nibali (1:34), Tiago Machado (2:40), Jakob Fuglsang (3:18), Riche Porte (3:32), Michal Kwiatkowski (4:00), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (4:01), Pierre Rolland (4:07), Alberto Contador (4:08), Romain Bardet (4:13), Rui Alberto Costa (4:46), Bauke Mollema and Jurgen Van Den Broeck (tied at 4:36), and Cyril Gautier (4:44).  Everyone else is over 5 minutes behind.  In the Points competition it is Peter Sagan (267), Bryan Coquard (156), Marcel Kittel (146), Alexander Kristoff (117), Mark Renshaw (101), and André Greipel (98).  Everyone else is over 11 points behind.  In the Climbing contest the leaders are Tony Martin (18), Blel Kadri and Alessandro De Marchi (tied at 17), Nicolas Edet (12), and Joaquim Rodriguez (11).  Everyone else is at least 3 points behind.  Team competition has tightened up considerably- Astana, Belkin (:22), AG2R (:53), Sky (5:31), and Omega Pharma (9:31).  Everyone else is over 10 minutes behind.  Among Youth the leaders are Michal Kwiatkowski, Romain Bardet (:13), Thibaut Pinot (1:06), and Tom Domoulin (4:08).  Everyone else is over 16 minutes behind.  There was one withdrawl- Egoitz Garcia Echeguibel.

Today’s 100 mile+ stage, Mulhouse / La Planche des Belles Filles, is Mountains for sure with 7 categorized climbs- 4 Category 1, 2 Category 2, and a Category 3.

Col des Chevrères is even tougher than its rating since about half of it is an 18% grade.  La Planche des Belles Filles is no picnic either with quite a bit @ 11% and the uphill finish @ 20%.  The Sprint Checkpoint is quite early which is a good idea since it’s doubtful we’ll have many sprinters around at the line.

Astana (Nibali’s team) is discounting yesterday’s finish as a choice to prepare for today.  Contador is not saying much of anything.  In any event the riders will be looking forward to their rest day Tuesday, as will I.

Just a small reminder that TDS/TCR will have new episodes again starting tomorrow.  Usually they suck for about a week after vacation, but your milage may vary.

Next week’s guests are-

The Daily Show

• Monday 7/14: Dahlia Lithwick
• Tuesday 7/15: TBA
• Wednesday 7/16: Jerry Seinfeld
• Thursday 7/17: Emma Stone

The Colbert Report

• Monday 7/14: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich
• Tuesday 7/15: Vint Cerf
• Wednesday 7/16: TBA
• Thursday 7/17: Steven Wise

As is customary the boys have left a few bread crumbs to tide us over Summer Break.  Stephen?  Only one?  Are you too busy getting ready for your new show? (sniff)

On Topic – Dogs

Summertime

Party Time

July 4th

Baseball

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Certainly for Stage 8 you can pretty much forget anything that came before the climbing though Simon Yates had a big breakaway and maintained it almost through the first climb, Col de la Croix des Moinats, when Blel Kadri and Sébastien Chavanel started the charge of the mountaineers with a breakaway of their own.  At this point conditions were pretty miserable and it didn’t really stop raining for the rest of the stage.  Speaking of the Mountain men it was the day Alberto Contador started to make his move and I would have expected something more decisive than a 2nd place finish a mere 3 seconds ahead of Vincenzo Nibali in 3rd.  Another interesting story is Sky’s Richie Porte.  Second to team Leader Chris Froome who is now of course out, he had a really good ride, finishing 4th on the stage and is now in 3rd place in the General Classification 29 seconds ahead of Contador.

Andrew Talansky crashed again, this time after tangling with Sky’s Geraint Thomas (along with Yates the only 2 British riders left).  Mathias Frank of IAM did not start and Bart De Clercq of Lotto did not finish.

As always the first day in the Mountains shakes things up a bit.  On the stage it was Blel Kadri for the first French win, Alberto Contador (2:17), Vincenzo Nibali (2:20), Riche Porte (2:24), Thibaut Pinot tied with Jean-Christophe Peraud (2:28), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (2:36), Tejay Van Garderen (2:40), Romain Bardet (2:48), Sylvain Chavanel (2:54), and Bauke Mollema (2:55).  There were 16 riders between 3 and 4 minutes behind.  In the General Classification it is Vincenzo Nibali, Jakob Fuglsang (1:44), Riche Porte (1:58), Michal Kwiatkowski (2:26), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (2:27), Alberto Contador (2:34), Romain Bardet (2:39), Rui Alberto Costa (2:52).  There are 7 other riders less than 4 minutes behind.  In the Point competition Peter Sagan (267), Bryan Coquard (156), Marcel Kittel (146), Alexander Kristoff (117), Mark Renshaw (101), and André Greipel (98).  The next nearest (Vincenzo Nibali) is 23 points behind.  In the Climber contest it is Blel Kadri (17), Cyril Lemoine and Sylvain Chavanel (6), Simon Yates (5).  For the Teams it stands at Astana, Belkin (5:23), and Sky (5:31).  Everyone else is over 10 minutes out.  The Youth competition is Michal Kwiatkowski, Romain Bardet (:13), and Thibaut Pinot (1:06).  Everyone else is over 9 minutes behind.

Today is Mountains for real, about 106 miles of them.

The Sprint Checkpoint is after the 2 Category 2s and 2 Category 3s and is uphill on a Category 1.  Pretty tough sprint if you ask me.  They finish flat after a descent so there might be some opportunity there for speed if a rider has kept up to that point.  On La Fête Nationale tomorrow they spend their last day in the Vosges and Tuesday is a rest day.

Almost everyone is familiar with today’s featured piece as it’s very popular and frequently performed, especially at Young People’s Concerts which were one of my favorites on CBS back in the day.  Hard to imagine a network doing something like that now.

But I was always weird, listened to WQXR before I picked up News Radio 88 (with traffic and weather together on the eights at 8, 18, 28, 38, 48, and 58 minutes past the hour).

The themes are used in many movies and commercials and it’s very, very short (for those with limited attention spans).

To Camille Saint-Saëns it was an elaborate musical joke, intended for private performances with his friends.  He’d just finished a Smell the Glove like tour of Germany and was pretty fed up with the music scene as you can tell by the titles of some of the sections (Wild Asses, Personages with Long Ears, Pianists, Fossils, c’mon)

Today’s clip is an abridged version, which I don’t normally do, a full version is below along with some other ‘long haired’ music.

“The Turtle”, “The Mule”, “The Cuckoo” and “The Swan” are omitted, a brief version of “The Pianists” is heard in the end credits, and the verse for “The Mule” is tacked onto the verse for “The Jackass.”

Also below- Obligatories and News.

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Flaming chunks of twisted metal!  You could hardly ask for better weather or roads than you got in Stage 7 and still you had massive, race altering crashes.  So much for your theories about cobbles, or rain, or ‘selfies’.

‘Selfies’! even my activist brother who admits he can’t watch 15 minutes of Le Tour without falling into a coma of boredom repeated that laughable excuse.  Folks, spectators have been crowding the road and even dashing into the middle of the course to take pictures since the invention of the camera, which is to say basically forever.  I wonder what the tough guys of the first Tour would have to say about these whiny ass pretty boys when they rode cobbles almost every day and had to deal with flash powder explosions?

Stef Clement, Belkin captain, withdrew after a crash at km 40 (dead flat and dry), but then again he wasn’t expected to even start.  Mathias Frank withdrew early in the stage and Danny van Poppel at km 120 leaving Simon Yates, who scored the Climbing point for Côte de Maron, the youngest rider left at 22 years old.  Shortly after Tejay van Garderen who fancied himself a contender in the General Classification at (2:11) was involved in a crash and ended up losing 1:03 on the day and taking out his team mate Darwin Atapuma.  

In the last km there was another crash when Andrew Talansky went down during the final sprint and it looked like Peter Sagan would get his first stage win only to be aced out by Matteo Trentin in a photo finish.

On the stage it was Trentin and Sagan followed by 25 other riders who scored the same time as the leaders.  In the General Classification it is still Vincenzo Nibali followed by Jakob Fugslsang (:02), Peter Sagan (:44), Michal Kwiatkowski (:50).  Three more riders are under 2 minutes back, Tony Gallopin, Riche Porte, and Andrew Talansky and only 10 more under 3 minutes including Alberto Contador (2:37).  In Points competition the leader is Peter Sagan (259), Brian Coquard (146), Marcel Kittel (137), Alexander Kristoff (117), Mark Renshaw (85), and André Greipel (91); the next rider is 31 points behind.  In the Climber contest another static day, Cyril Lmoine (6), Blel Kadri (5), Jens Voigt and Nicolas Edet tied at 4.  Among the Teams it’s Astana, Belkin (4:18), Sky (6:31), BMC (7:08), and Trek (8:25).  Everyone else is over 10 minutes behind.  In Youth competition nothing changed, Peter Sagan, Michal Kwiatkowski (:06), Roman Bardet (1:27), Tom Dumoulin (1:41), and Thibaut Pinot (2:40).  Everyone else is over 11 minutes out.

Today’s stage is almost exactly 100 miles.  It starts out fairly flat though constantly ascending and the Sprint Checkpoint is at exactly 100 km.  After that the day goes up hill for the pure sprinters as we finish with 2 Category 2 climbs, Col de la Croix des Moinats and Col de Grosse Pierre, and in a Category 3 climb to the line in Gérardmer La Mauselaine.  This is the start of 6 more days in the Vosges which while not as tall as the Alps or Pyrenees are pretty steep and narrow.  We shall see in the standings start to change.

Coverage will be on NBC proper, not Vs. (or NBC Sports as it is now known) at 8 am ET.  Your usual schedule of constant repeats will be interupted by IndyCar racing and Outdoor shows though they will do the customary noon and 8 pm.

Germany Expels Top U.S. Intelligence Officer

By ALISON SMALE and MELISSA EDDY, The New York Times

JULY 10, 2014

“The representative of the U.S. intelligence services at the United States Embassy has been asked to leave Germany,” a government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement.

“The request occurred against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation by federal prosecutors as well as the questions that were posed months ago about the activities of U.S. intelligence agencies in Germany,” he said. “The government takes the matter very seriously.”

…

German officials have been frustrated in their efforts to receive clarification from Washington over allegations of spying that began last year when it was revealed that the National Security Agency had been monitoring the chancellor’s cellphone. Although President Obama has offered assurances that it will no longer happen, revelations last week that a member of the German secret services had been spying for the United States sparked a fresh round of outrage.

On Wednesday, the police searched the Berlin office and apartment of a man suspected of being a spy, federal prosecutors said. They declined to give further information, but the German news media reported that the suspect worked for the Defense Ministry. A ministry spokesman confirmed that it was involved in an investigation.

Oh, that’s right.  In case you missed it the was a second spy, this one in the Defense Department.

Second German government worker suspected of spying for US

Philip Oltermann, The Guardian

Wednesday 9 July 2014 13.20 EDT

Public prosecutors confirmed that the home and office of a defence ministry employee in the greater Berlin area had been searched on Wednesday morning.

They told the Guardian that a search had been conducted “under suspicion of secret agent activity” and that evidence – including computers and several data storage devices – had been seized for analysis. The federal prosecutor’s office confirmed that no arrest had yet been made.

According to Die Welt newspaper, the staffer being investigated is a soldier who had caught the attention of the German military counter-intelligence service after establishing regular contact with people thought to be working for a US secret agency.

The news came just days after a member of the German intelligence agency BND confessed to having passed more than 200 confidential files to a contact at the CIA.

The new case is not thought to be directly related to that of the BND staffer. However, one government insider familiar with the case told Süddeutsche Zeitung that the new case being investigated was “more serious” than that of the BND spy, in which the sold documents are thought to have been of limited value.

So we have the NSA tapping Andrea Merkel’s phone.  A spy at the German intelligence agency.  Another spy in the Defense Department and John Brennan, Director of National Intellegence for the United States and proven liar under oath to Congress calling to try and patch things up.

US officials have been trying to limit the diplomatic fallout, with the CIA’s head, John Brennan, reportedly calling Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in the wake of the latest spying scandal.

Why John Brennan you ask?  Well because the CIA and the NSA don’t deign to tell Barack Obama about their spying on friendly allied governments.

Spying Case Left Obama in Dark, U.S. Officials Say

By MARK MAZZETTI and MARK LANDLER, The New York Times

JULY 8, 2014

What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case – and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.

…

What is particularly baffling to these officials is that the C.I.A. did not inform the White House that its agent – a 31-year-old employee of Germany’s federal intelligence service, the BND – had been compromised, given his arrest the day before the two leaders spoke. According to German news media reports, the agency may have been aware three weeks before the arrest that the German authorities were monitoring the man.

A central question, one American official said, is how high the information about the agent went in the C.I.A.’s command – whether it was bottled up at the level of the station chief in Berlin or transmitted to senior officials, including the director, John O. Brennan, who is responsible for briefing the White House.

Yeah, right.  The BND spy was arrested and in custody and identified as a  CIA spy a full day before the phone call to Merkel.

And Brennan didn’t know?  And Barack Obama didn’t know?

There’s a lovely little bridge in their home town I’d like to sell these propagandists.