Jerking ourselves off day
Jingo hells, jingo hells . . . happy Rudy Giu911ani Day!
This screenshot from this morning’s Strib. How, pray tell, do you add “politics” to the most politicized holiday this side of Hitler’s birthday?
The NYTimes says, “The rebirth of ground zero honors the victims.” Ground Zero has been reborn? What? From the dust and ashes like a giant Clayface? Or from leftover girders and metal scraps à la Metallo? Last I heard Ground Zero was still one big giant clusterfuck because that much prime real estate in Manhattan is to be coveted and developed, not eulogized and turned into a fucking shrine to America’s black eye.
Tons of thumbsuckers today, but I doubt you care anymore than I do. Whatever connection you may have to 9/11, it’s yours, and you’ve already worked through it. Our nation? Not so much. Not so long as politicians and hucksters and Faux journalists have anything to say about it.
Today, just like every 9/11 Day, the password is DOUBT, the tone is UNCERTAINTY and the gospel is FEAR. Republicans, propagandists and haters all want you to BE AFRAID.
This is the L.A. Times saying BE AFRAID. Don’t be afraid. Be disgusted. Be disgusted by how easily led we are. When hillbillies from Afghanistan can yank our chains, it’s one thing. When those chains stay yanked nine years later, well, I for one think the hillbillies have allies in the Republican party and corporate news media.
Tim Rutten would add the present administration to that list, and I don’t think I’d care to argue with him. All I really know is that the truth is still out there. [Juan Cole with some of the missing truth] [James Fallows on Resilience, not Fear]
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“Out of nothing — out of taking your next step — just rows of tracers, (rocket-propelled grenades), everything happening out of nowhere,” he said.
Bullets slammed into [Staff Sergeant Salvatore] Giunta’s armored chest plate and his backpack. Several of his comrades were immediately wounded, and his squad was split in half.
The White House announced Friday that Giunta would receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top military award, for what he did next.
With Taliban fire continuing to pour in, Giunta jumped up and led two other soldiers forward to save trapped soldiers. He threw hand grenades, fired his rifle and charged at two Taliban fighters who were dragging away his grievously injured friend, Sgt. Josh Brennan. Giunta killed one of the insurgents and wounded the other. Then he started providing first aid to Brennan.
Salvatore Giunta is not a traditional Iowan name.
Actually, I think it’s Italian but that’s just Euro speak for Mexican. This Giunta graduated from Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids and his dad is named Steve. I don’t know where Salvatore was born but if you think it’s important to know, you’re not half the American he is.
Without immigrants this country would be a pile of racist Southern-fried Anglican shit. I don’t care if Sgt. Giunta is first, second, or third generation — or an anchor baby. He’s got the right stuff, something a lot of 8th generation, oxycontin-popping crackers can’t claim.
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Tuesday is Christine O’Donnell Day in Delaware. Lisa Murkowski is weighing a write-in campaign in Alaska.
The Tea Party is the clusterfuck that just keeps on giving. Even in states where their candidate lost, it was usually to a Republican even more inarticulate than the teabaggers. Chuck Grassley, frinstance:
“What my opponent stands for is – I’ve read almost everything she’s said during this campaign, out in her county meetings, wherever she’s been – just to destroy jobs,” Grassley said Friday during the taping of an Iowa Public Television show on politics….
Grassley said that Conlin supports taxing energy through “cap and trade” (a way to limit industrial greenhouse-gas emissions), shutting down offshore drilling and letting tax cuts expire for people in the top 2 percent of income earners.
“That’s a job killer,” said Grassley, a 30-year Republican senator who is seeking another six years in office on Nov. 2.
No, the ellipses do not represent anything that would help make sense of that gibberish. If you don’t listen to talk radio or watch Fox News, you have no prayer of figuring out what the fuck Chuck’s talking about. Unlike many post-Reagan millionaires, Conlin didn’t get rich by laying people off or off-shoring American jobs or, like Grassley, by authoring legislation to incentivize layoffs and offshoring (thereby “earning” millions in campaign contributions).
In other good news, the IRS is going after the Chamber of Commerce for, loosely speaking, being a bunch of ledger-swapping, lawbreaking, asshole cheating motherfuckers. Nonprofits, not-for-profits, churches — you name the org, if they fuck with politics, tax the bloody hell out of them. Money dilutes the power of our votes as surely as Fox News dumbs down our national discourse.
Also:
Scott “boxing gloves” Walker’s primary is coming up in Wisconsin
Minerva, Ohio’s Phil Davison’s video freakout
Talk radio at the Fair [from the Franken archives]
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Public education is bankrupt but government keeps subsidizing private colleges. Welcome to the brilliant world of how Republicans fuck up everything.
See also David Sirota on neoliberal bait and switch.
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World:
India develops a business “class” to replace the old caste system (but it’s still a caste system, and it’s still based on business fucks being more important than workers or community leaders)
When only patent outlaws (i.e., India’s business class) are allowed to manufacture generic drugs, quality issues happen
“Sexual abuse of children reached all parts of Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church, and it drove at least 13 victims to kill themselves, a report released Friday said” (remember, not always, but just often enough to make a difference: abstinence leads to depravity)
Even the L.A. Times thinks the settlements endanger peace and that “construction undermines security by inflaming tensions, sowing mistrust and threatening the success of negotiations”
Tony Blair plagiarized a phony scene from The Queen in his autobiography (scriptwriter admits he made the scene up, yet there it is in A Journey)
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I freaked last night when I saw that Bloglines is shutting down come October, but then I migrated all my links to Google Reader in less than five minutes (I already had an account).
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Etc.:
Planned Parenthood stepping up because government’s too broke to do its job (and this is a job that we need to have done — this is about our quality of life, not theirs)
Dick Cavett gets high on the improbability of existence (if you have some of what he’s smoking, I’d sure like some)
Vancouver’s version of the angry note left under the stop sign runner’s windshield wiper
9th Circuit rules that you don’t own any of the software you paid exorbitant prices for because you only licensed it (ditto this content which at any time I have the right to take back [either through mind-wiping drugs or neurosurgery, your choice]) (next up: you owe the software companies big time for their share of any money you made while using their software)
Bill Kling to give up MPR CEOship next summer (I don’t think that means he’ll stop getting paid because, after all, MPR has never been public radio, it’s the Klingdom and don’t forget it) [Romenesko's take (and my comment)]
Scab labor’s brilliant nuclear plant safety record
Confederate flag burning DOA? (I’m still trying to find one to burn!)
USA vs. Lithuania at 11 am CDT!
I’ll take the mind-wiping drugs, please.
jingo bells, jingo bells, jingo all the way.