9/11 Reflects...

The Rude Pundit

It's funny, 9/11 thinks. She feels weary, worn-out this morning, and it's strange because she believed that she would feel so much stronger than usual. After all, the new building is nearly done and, truth be told, it's so much better than the steel and concrete monstrosities that were leveled a dozen years ago. But, of course, one doesn't wish to do urban renovation through disaster and death.

She looks in a mirror and says to herself, "You think you'd be happy, at least a little." After all, while the candidates for mayor in New York City invoked her name more times than they needed to, including Bill de Blasio in his speech last night, she isn't tossed around as casually. She's been mostly absent from the discussion of bombing Syria. She was used to being paraded around, plastered with makeup, made a whore by Giuliani and Bush, imprisoned and roughly fucked by Cheney and Rumsfeld, burned with cigarettes and pissed on by Karl Rove, who jacked off into her hair after. Most of that ended a few years ago, of course, of course, although she pities her Libyan namesake who is little more than a fuck doll for conservatives who love having exotic tongue on their dicks and clits.
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She stares back at the mirror. She can see herself. She's sure of that. "I'm not a ghost," she says. "Not yet."

She realizes, though, that she feels as if she is haunting the debate about Syria. She may not be called on by politicians or even many pundits to justify a new pseudo-war, a war lite, if you will. But she's sure that they've been ringing her door buzzer and running away. All of the terrible things done in her name - the Iraq nightmare, the Afghanistan slog, the breaking down of rights big and small, the drone attacks, the torture and indefinite detention, the surveillance state - hang there. She didn't want her existence to change so many things, but they did change. She didn't do it herself, but others say she caused them to do it. That's why, exhausted and used-up as she is, 9/11 feels it is her just punishment to take all who visit into her bed. Or, in the case of Rove, over the radiator, on the bathroom floor, or hanging in the closet.

There are those who tell 9/11 that she's suffered enough, that whatever implied sins she wishes to atone for have been fucked clean. They have it wrong, though. 9/11 says to them that it's not her sins that must be forgiven. It's that she is taking on the sins of others and trying to redeem them. She's just failed. She's failed, but she keeps trying.

Even as the cries of "Never forget" echo through the canyons of Manhattan, through the monuments of DC, 9/11 wants to be forgotten. Because it would be better to be forgotten than to be remembered in this way for all history.

I too wish she could quit being used the way she is, as a handy fuck piece for politicians.

21 awesome features missing from the new iPhone

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on Features He'd Like To See. Heh.

The new iPhones with iOS7 are packed, nay packed with amazing new features, colors, camera abilities, software doodads, and more. They’re nothing short of miraculous hunks of modern tech gloriousness. But they’re also, shockingly, missing a few key features we’d really like to see in future models. Such as:

1. Snicker Muffler. For every hipster under 40 who struggles to stifle a disbelieving chuckle when they see their Midwestern elders scooping heaps of freeze-dried, lint-colored misery from giant, Costco-sized tins of Maxwell House into pale mugs of watery sadness, and you’re all, like, “Really? You call that coffee? I pay six dollars for a single, hand-poured cup of Lost Guatemalan Ultra Orangutan Intestine Blend from Blue Bottle! [Snicker].”
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14. Toxic Goo Proximity Sensor. Emits shrill alarm and displays a highly detailed photo of multiple gastrointestinal cancer polyps anytime your phone is within 100 feet of Taco Bell.
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19. Wasabi Detector. Special sensor detects just how much wasabi the sushi chef snuck under that piece of hamachi nigiri before you eat it and your face explodes. Phone will tear up accordingly, wave hand in front of itself in desperate fanning motion as Siri goes “OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod” and reaches over and chugs all your sake.

22. Me. I wouldn't have one of those things up my ass if I had room for a boxcar.

Just ... go ...

Headline of the Day

Alex Jones: Syria diplomacy a plot to extinguish humans so Obama and elitists can be cyborgs

When I see shit this stupid I don't know whether to laugh at the asshole or cry for the morons who think it must be true because you can't put it on the radio if it isn't.

Headline of the Day

Home safe and sound. Between being burnt down to my socks from hangin' with all them 68-year-old party animals for three days and a helluva case of truck lag, I'm easin' back inta all the shit that's goin' on. This is as good a place to start as any:

Republicans Are Torn Between Their Racist Hatred of Obama and Eternal Love of Bombing the Crap Out of the Middle East

Enjoy!

No Saturday Emmylou Blogging

I'm being lazy. Fuck everything until at least Tuesday.

Headin' out

We're going out to the coast for a few days for Mrs. G's 50 year High School reunion. Blogging will be light to bupkis, but I'll do what I can. See yas.

Headline of the Day

Maddow to Iraq War architects on TV: ‘Your opinion is no longer required on matters of war and peace’

Word.

Note to Rummie: You better keep your lying pie hole shut and thank your lucky stars you ain't in prison.

Headline of the Day II

If We Stay Out of Syria, Assad Has Bush to Thank

No shit.

Quote of the Day

Tag line from a piece by Charles P. Pierce on the Syria hearings:

John Boehner has no power. John McCain has no power. Only the Stupid has the power now. Fear the Stupid.

Headline of the Day

REPUBLICANS OFFER SYRIA STRATEGY: “WE MUST DEFUND OBAMACARE”

Why do I have no trouble believing that?

The Burn

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford, back from Burning Man with 92 photos.

Keep in mind, this gallery is but a tiny sample, a glimpse, a taste; I’d say it represents not even 10% of what’s really out there. And it’s utterly impossible to capture the tremendous scale of the thing, the vast flatness, two miles across and 360 degrees of brain-melting, body-blasting, anima-pumping, skin-scorching sensory overload like you can find nowhere else in the world. Trust me. And that’s not just the stimulants talking. Mostly.

That's the only warning you're going to get. Heh. Enjoy.

The End of U.S. Imperium - Finally!

David Stockman

Next week Congress can do far more than stop a feckless Tomahawk barrage on a small country that is already a graveyard of civil war and sectarian slaughter. By voting “no,” it can trigger the end of the American Imperium—five decades of incessant meddling, bullying, and subversion around the globe that has added precious little to national security but left America fiscally exhausted and morally diminished.
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The screaming strategic truth is that America no longer has any industrial state enemies capable of delivering military harm to its shores: Russia has become a feeble kleptocracy run by a loud-mouthed thief, and the Communist Party oligarchs in China would face a devastating economic collapse within months were they to attack their American markets for sneakers and Apples. So the real question now before Congress is, how is it possible that the peace-loving citizens of America, facing no industrial-scale military threat from anywhere on the planet, find themselves in a constant state of war? The answer is that they have been betrayed by the Beltway political class, which is in thrall to a vast warfare state apparatus that endlessly invents specious reasons for meddling, spying, intervention, and occupation.

I don't necessarily agree with all the writer's points but I'd like to see the end of American Imperialism, in particular the mess we've made for ourselves in the Middle East. Please read the rest.

"He knew that this was so wrong that he didn’t want to tell anyone"

Yes, Obamacare is going to be a disaster. To all the usual suspects' bottom lines.

Raw Story

Georgia governor gets paid through secret PAC to obstruct Obamacare
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Contributors to Real PAC include Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross, United Health care and other interests that want to keep health insurance premiums and other costs as high as possible. Bryan Long of activist group Better Georgia told Raw Story that the list of donors shows who Gov. Deal really works for.
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“What’s remarkable about this isn’t that there’s money in politics,” he continued. “We all know there’s money in politics. He knew that this was so wrong that he didn’t want to tell anyone. He tried to keep it a secret for two years.”\
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Last week, state insurance commissioner Ralph Hudgens was caught on tape boasting to a crowd of supporters that his office is deliberately obstructing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. As Floyd County Republicans called out “Amen!” and applauded, Hudgens said that his office is interfering with the certification of the ACA’s insurance policy “navigators,” individuals hired to help consumers choose policies on the open market.

“Let me tell you what we’re doing (about Obamacare),” he said. “Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”

Got caught because he bragged about it. Nothing will happen to this yingyang because IOKIYAR. Business as usual. Yeesh.

9 Years

Today is the 9th anniversary of my tour at the Brain. Fixer started it on 4 July 2004. Lotta water under the bridge. I came along a little later, and depending on who's telling this war story, I was either left on his porch in a basket with a $50 bill pinned to my chest or he tracked me down with dogs. Either way, he gave me a home and I've never looked back. I didn't even know how to cut and paste when I started. I know a lotta tricks now.

A few specs: We've had 1,126,894 pageviews; 20,471 posts; 12,471 comments; and thank you to our 53 followers. We get 1000+ pageviews per day on average, and have had as many as 5000. The trick is to use the same headline as the article I'm posting so it pops up on browsers. Heh. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

A lot has changed in 9 years. When we got going, Kerry was running for POTUS against the Chimp, and Repuglican't Rule lasted 4 more years. Nowadays, the Repugs are well on their way to being an officially backward and shrinking party of old scared Southern white people and their ilk elsewhere. Their antics have gone from day-in-and-day-out outrageous to mostly comedy gold, and I'm enjoying the shit out of them swirling the drain.

On the federal level, that is. If you live in one of the states they run, times are bad. Throw 'em out in '14, '16, whenever you get the chance. Show up and vote. Dems in general dropped the ball big time in '10 and I hope we've learned our lesson: Off-year elections get less turnout, but ALL the morons we're trying to defend against crawl out from under their rocks and vote and so must we or we're screwed. 2010 NEVER AGAIN!

I figured out early on that opinion writing is too much work so I find real writers who say things I like and quote them with short, pithy even, diabolical genius comments of my own. I'm spending more time on Facebook these days, like Fixer is, and I know the Brain has suffered for it. On the flip side, I get a lotta good material off there.

I discovered I'm not as liberal as I once thought I was. I believe in liberty and justice for all, and if that makes me a godless commie fuck, so be it. Damn, I wish a 'bagger would say that to my face just so I could tell him to tell his friends he got those shiners from a pussy liberal!

I believe that Repugs in any of their 5 factions are the worst enemy our country has ever faced, and anything else is better. Despite his flaws, I'm still down with Obama and will be with Hillary too.

This isn't as much fun without Fixer.

Thank you all for reading and commenting. You're the reason I plug away at this. Here's to 9 more.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

PUBLIC DOESN'T SUPPORT STRIKE ON SYRIA
Supports strike on Time Warner Cable.

Heh.

Revealed: NYPD Has Secret Spy Cab
Discovered when someone got a ride from the airport and was driven directly to their destination and charged the proper amount.

Obviously unclear on the concept.

Oxford English Dictionary Adds “Twerk,” “Selfies” and “Vom”
Removes “linguist,” “spinning” and “grave.”

Unpaid Laborers Begin Raising Billions for Their Wealthy Masters
College football's back.

Women Protest Across the Globe August 25th
on Go Topless Day
And you missed that?

How the Republican Party lost its mind

Excellent article at Salon.

Now, in 2013, we have the politics that 50 years of this process have created. The Democratic Party has fewer conservatives than it once did, but is still a broadly coalitional party with liberal and moderate elements. It controls the coasts, has strength in the industrial Midwest, and is making inroads in the upper, more urbanized South and in Florida. It confronts a Republican Party almost wholly dependent on the interior states of the old Confederacy. (The party continues to win in the mountain and prairie West, but the region is too sparsely populated to provide any real electoral heft.) Because of its demographic weakness, it is more beholden than ever to the intensity of its most extreme voters. This has engendered a death spiral in which it must take increasingly radical positions to drive these voters to the polls, positions that in turn alienate ever larger segments of the population, making these core voters even more crucial — and so on. We have a name these days for the electoral residue produced by this series of increasingly rigorous purifications. We call it “the Tea Party.”
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Unfortunately, our government isn’t designed to function in these conditions. The peculiarities of our system — a Senate, armed with the filibuster, that gives Wyoming’s 576,000 people as much power as California’s 38,000,000; gerrymandered districts in the House; separate selection of the executive and the legislature; a chronically underfunded elections process, generally in partisan hands and in desperate need of rationalization — simply won’t permit it. What we get instead is paralysis — or worse. The Republican Party, particularly in the House, has turned into the legislative equivalent of North Korea — a political outlier so extreme it has lost the ability to achieve its objectives through normal political means (my em). Its only recourse is to threats (increasingly believable) that it will blow up the system rather than countenance this-or-that lapse from conservative dogma. This was the strategy it pursued in the debt ceiling debacle of 2011, and if firebrands such as Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have their way it will guide the party’s approach to the same issue this fall, and perhaps to government funding (including “Obamacare”) as well. Realignment and polarization have led us to gridlock and instability.

The relentless radicalization of the Republican Party since 1964 is the most important single event in the political history of the United States since the New Deal. It has significantly shaped the course of our government and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But this means it has also shaped the individual life of every citizen— the complex amalgam of possibilities and opportunities available (or not) to each of us. The conservative visionaries of the ‘50s and ‘60s wanted a new world. We’re all living in it now.

We have been for thirty years and it sucks.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou gets more of an assist on this one. That's OK. I've been a Linda fan even longer.

Thanks to Larry Privat.

"I wish I had another fifty years in me."

Robert Reich

A few days ago I had breakfast with a man who had been one of my mentors in college, who participated in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s and has devoted much of the rest of his life in pursuit of equal opportunity for minorities, the poor, women, gays, immigrants — and also for average hard-working people who have been beaten down by the economy. Now in his mid-80s, he's still active.

I asked him if he thought America would ever achieve true equality of opportunity.

"Not without a fight," he said. "Those who have wealth and power and privilege don't want equal opportunity. It's too threatening to them.They'll pretend equal opportunity already exists, and that anyone who doesn't make it in America must be lazy or stupid or otherwise undeserving."
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But have we really made progress? Inequality is widening. The middle class and the poor are in many ways worse off than they were decades ago."

"Yes, and they're starting to understand that," he said. "And beginning to see that the distinction between the middle class and poor is disappearing. Many who were in the middle have fallen into poverty; many more will do so."

"And, so?"

He smiled. "For decades, those at the top have tried to convince the middle class that their economic enemies are minorities and the poor. But that old divide-and-conquer strategy is starting to fail. And as it fails, it will be possible to create a political coalition of the poor and the middle class. It will be a powerful coalition! Remember, demographics are shifting. Soon America will be a majority of minorities. And women are gaining more and more economic power."

"But the 400 richest Americans are now wealthier than the bottom 150 million Americans put together — and have more political influence than ever."

"Just you wait," he laughed. "I wish I had another fifty years in me."

Me too, and even that may not be long enough. Dammit.

Old men try to turn back clock

This is specific to North Carolina but applies across the U.S.

Asheville Citizen-Times

What we’ve been witnessing at the General Assembly in Raleigh the past few months is the futile attempt by fearful, old, white men to hang onto the power and control to which they assume they’re entitled. These extremists imagine that if they can push women, gays, blacks and Latinos back to the status these groups held before the mid-20th century, they can hang onto their perch at the top of the pecking order.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against old white men. In fact, I am one. But I do take issue with any group, regardless of skin color, sex or age, that abuses its power in a deceitful and un-American attempt to keep others from experiencing the fruits of liberty — equal rights for all, the unfettered opportunity to vote, a quality education for all our children, clean air and water for every citizen. ...

I could go on.

If you look at the data, it’s clear that the demographic shift taking place in our nation will be the death knell of this Caucasian paternalism. [...]

Soon, please.

Thus, no matter how forcefully the Tea Party (née GOP) shamefully endeavors to suppress the vote, strip women of their rights, push people of color to the back of the bus and keep our children from developing the skills they need in the 21st century, the appalling efforts of our state legislators are doomed to failure in the long run.

I'm hoping it's the last gasp of the throwback mentality but I know it isn't.

It’s obvious from their strident protestations that most of these right-wing zealots imagine they are doing God’s work (though it’s quite clear they are actually following the marching orders of ALEC, the Koch Brothers and Art Pope).
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So we North Carolinians who are deeply concerned about our state’s current backward direction have choices to make: We can sit around for a decade or two while the old guys pass from the scene; or we can stand up for our values and vote the instigators of the most abhorrent state legislation in the nation out of office.

I wish there was a faster way, but that's how we do it, people.

"2010 NEVER AGAIN!"

Adelson Pays Out to the U.S. Government

The Daily Beast

Adelson’s casino company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., cut its losses this week when it agreed to pay $47 million to the U.S. government to settle a federal money-laundering investigation with ties to a Mexican methamphetamine cartel. In exchange, Obama’s Department of Justice agreed not to prosecute the company for failing to report suspicious activity on the part of Zhenli Ye Gon, a high-rolling customer whose shady money transfers ought to have alarmed casino compliance officials and been reported to authorities.

Known as “Mr. Ye” on the Strip, the Chinese businessman gambled at least $126 million from 2006 to early 2007—most of that at the Sands’s Venetian and Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip—prior to his arrest by Drug Enforcement Administration agents. A suspected money launderer with alleged ties to the violent Sinaloa cartel, Ye Gon currently faces potential drug-trafficking charges in Mexico. (Similar charges in the U.S. were dismissed.)

When Ye Gon’s home near Mexico City was raided in 2008, agents found approximately $207 million in U.S. currency. Some of the fat stacks of $100s were held in place by Venetian casino wrappers. In the non-prosecution memo in the case, Adelson’s company admits Ye Gon was “the largest all-cash, up-front gambler the Venetian-Palazzo had ever had to that point.”
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For his part, the usually loquacious Adelson is so far uncharacteristically quiet. The mercurial and litigious casino baron, whose profits from casinos in Triad-infested Macau have helped drive his personal net worth above $25 billion according to published reports, is suspiciously silent.

When he was busy trying to pave Mitt Romney’s path to the White House last year, Adelson was a veritable quote machine. Perhaps he figured sometimes it’s better to shut up and cut the check.

$47mil is about half of what Adelson flushed down the shitter to try to get Willard elected, or at least someone who could stop the investigation. It's a drop in the bucket but at least he's STFU.