Hoffmania's got it, so rather than filch it from him, why don't you go over there and say hello?

I'm of the firm belief, as I've posted before, that no matter how cool you think you are, and no matter how up to speed you are on pop culture, if you are over 50, the under-30 set is going to view you as an old fart. I mean, I like John Mayer, so how cool can I possibly be?

I'm not much of a fan of Gnarls Barkley, though that song that was in heavy rotation on WXPK 107.1 FM for a while has been known to stick in my brain. But I'm a sucker for retro-style videos. I may be the only person in the world who actually LIKED Lou Bega's Mambo #5, though it wasn't so much that I liked the song, it was for the cool vintage jazz footage in the video.

I found this new Gnarls Barkley video at Pandagon, and I agree with Amanda: it is deeply amusing. And that Motown bass line filched from old Supremes records is really, really hooky, isn't it? I would also add that it's not easy to cram 80 years of music and popular culture into a 4:13 video. And yes, that is Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell (whose name I always seem to forget, my brain opening the folder marked "Harry Dean Stanton" for at least 30 seconds before I get it right) doing the Ken Burns-style narration:

If you thought the job market was bad, despite Captain Codpiece's trumpeting of his job creation record, your perceptions were right. As part of the Republican systematic and deliberate eviscerating of the middle class, an economy has been created in which most of the new jobs are in health care:

Sure, housing has been a bonanza for homebuilders, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. Together they have added more than 900,000 jobs since 2001. But the pressures of globalization and new technology have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor market: Factories are still closing, retailers are shrinking, and the finance and insurance sector, outside of real estate lending and health insurers, has generated few additional jobs.

Perhaps most surprising, information technology, the great electronic promise of the 1990s, has turned into one of the biggest job-growth disappointments of all time. Despite the splashy success of companies such as Google (GOOG ) and Yahoo! (YHOO ), businesses at the core of the information economy -- software, semiconductors, telecom, and the whole gamut of Web companies -- have lost more than 1.1 million jobs in the past five years. Those businesses employ fewer Americans today than they did in 1998, when the Internet frenzy kicked into high gear.

ATTITUDE SHIFT
Meanwhile, hospitaL administrators like Steven Altschuler, president of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, are on a hiring spree. Altschuler has added the equivalent of 4,000 new full-time jobs since he took over six years ago, almost doubling the hospital's workforce. To put this in perspective, all the nonhealth-care businesses in the Philadelphia area combined added virtually no jobs over the same stretch.

Altschuler plans to add 3,000 more employees over the next five years as the hospital, one of the nation's leading pediatric centers, spends $1.7 billion to expand. Next up is a new 1.2 million-square-foot research facility that will be packed with well-paid scientists and support staff. "Health care is the major engine for the economy of the city of Philadelphia," says Altschuler.

The City of Brotherly Love is hardly alone. Across the country, state and local politicians, desperate for growth, are crafting their economic development strategies around biotech and health care. California will pour $3 billion into stem cell research over the next 10 years, and other areas are on the same path. "Our downtown business leaders and politicians have traditionally considered health care as a cost center, not as an economic engine," says Baiju R. Shah, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who runs Cleveland's BioEnterprise, a nonprofit founded four years ago to stimulate the local health-care and bioscience industries. "But people are waking up."

What they're waking up to is the true underpinnings of the much vaunted American job machine. The U.S. unemployment rate is 4.7%, compared with 8.2% and 8.9%, respectively, in Germany and France. But the health-care systems of those two countries added very few jobs from 1997 to 2004, according to new data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, while U.S. hospitals and physician offices never stopped growing. Take away health-care hiring in the U.S., and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher.

Add in the people who have simply stopped looking for work and have exhausted their unemployment benefits, and the U.S. unemployment would probably be approaching 10%.

So why is this a problem?

The U.S. could eventually pay a big economic price for all these jobs. Ballooning government spending on health care is a major reason why Washington is running an enormous budget deficit, since federal outlays for health care totaled more than $600 billion in 2005, or roughly one quarter of the whole federal budget. Rising prices for medical care are making it harder for the average American to afford health insurance, leaving 47 million uninsured.

Moreover, as the high cost of health care lowers the competitiveness of U.S. corporations, it may accelerate the outflow of jobs in a self-reinforcing cycle. In fact, one explanation for the huge U.S. trade deficit is that the country is borrowing from overseas to fund creation of health-care jobs.

There's another enormous long-term problem: If current trends continue, 30% to 40% of all new jobs created over the next 25 years will be in health care. That sort of lopsided job creation is not the blueprint for a well-functioning economy.

The Business Week article cited above tries mightily to put lipstick on this particular pig. And of course the concern is how best to eviscerate the health care workforce once they get done funnelling everyone who's been laid off into that particular area:

The real question, then, is whether it is possible to restructure the health-care system to provide equally good care with fewer workers. The answer is yes, say some experts. "What we have consistently found is that the supply of physicians, except at the low end, has rather little influence on patient outcomes," says David Goodman, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School who started his career as a pediatrician in a rural county in Northern New Hampshire. Jonathan Weiner, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, agrees: "I am absolutely certain that we can provide quality health care with fewer doctors."

Then the old "magic bullet" of IT is mentioned:

But both sides can agree that more spending on information technology could reduce the need for so many health-care workers. It's a truism in economics that investment boosts productivity, and the U.S. lags behind other countries in this area. One reason: "Every other country has the payers paying for IT," says Johns Hopkins' Gerard Anderson, an expert on the economics of health care. "In the U.S. we're asking the providers to pay for IT" -- and they're not the ones who benefit.

Breakthroughs in technology offer other enticing possibilities for making health care less labor-intensive over the long run. Hakon Hakonarson just moved from Iceland to start up the new Center for Applied Genomics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Hakonarson's group is using cutting-edge automated technology to analyze hundreds of DNA samples from hospital patients and their parents per day, something that wasn't possible until recently. His aim is to collect enough data within a short period of time to understand the genetic causes of childhood diseases and determine which children will respond best to which drugs. "If we go at this pace," says Hakonarson, "we will have something very powerful to analyze before yearend." The eventual result could be better, cheaper treatments, with fewer expensive side effects.

And you think those IT jobs are going to be created in the U.S.? Keep dreaming. All of this data, all of the information systems designed to collect and analyze this data will be built in Bangalore. And when the system has spit out healthcare workers, where will Americans work then? Fast food restaurants? And what happens when Americans can't even afford the McDonald's hamburgers they sell?

One reason to vow never to allow another Bush to be president is that maybe then we can finally be rid of all the old Iran/Contra crooks who keep popping up.

It looks like we're about to embark on Iran: Iraq II, Nuclear Boogaloo:

In an echo of the intelligence wars that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a high-stakes struggle is brewing within the Bush administration and in Congress over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program and involvement in terrorism.

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July.

The struggle's outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.

President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but he hasn't ruled out using military force.

Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they've been told that plans for airstrikes - if Bush deems them necessary - are being updated.

The leader of a Persian Gulf country who visited Washington recently came away without receiving assurances he sought that the military option was off the table, said a person with direct knowledge of the meetings.

"It seems like Iran is becoming the new Iraq," said one U.S. counterterrorism official.

[snip]

Some officials at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department said they're concerned that the offices of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney may be receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles, including a discredited arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Officials at all three agencies said they suspect that the dubious information may include claims that Iran directed Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, to kidnap two Israeli soldiers in July; that Iran's nuclear program is moving faster than generally believed; and that the Iranian people are eager to join foreign efforts to overthrow their theocratic rulers.

The officials said there is no reliable intelligence to support any of those assertions and some that contradicts all three.

Ghorbanifar....Chalabi....it's always the same crooks who show up to provide "evidence" that plays into what THEY want. Our government is being played for fools -- and their lust for more Middle Eastern blood is so strong that they don't even see it.

(hat tip: Talking Points Memo)

You know how the Bush Administration loves to tout that home "ownership" is at an all-time high?

Here's why that's so, and why it's not going to be the case much longer:

• 32.6% of new mortgages and home equity loans in 2005 were interest only, up from 0.6% in 2000
  
• 43% of first-time home buyers in 2005 put no money down.
  
• 15.2% of 2005 home buyers owe at least 10% more than their home is worth.
  
• 10% of all home owners have no equity in their homes
  
• $2.7 trillion in loans will adjust to higher rates in 2006 and 2007.
  
• 70% of borrowers who took out pay-option ARMS in the past year have loan balances larger than their initial loan.
  
• Homeowners face higher payments as mortgages are reset. Generally, monthly payments rise between $200 and $500 depending on the size of the mortgage.
  
• According to Reality Trac, August foreclosures were up 23% over July and 53% over a year ago.
  
• The number of homes for sale is at record highs, and inventories are 59% higher than a year earlier.
  
• New home sales are down 22% and existing home sales down 11%.
  
• The NASB housing market index has recorded an all-time decline.
  
• The housing affordability index is at a 15-year low.
  
• The house price-to-income (rents) ratio is off the charts. According to HSBC, in 18 states accounting for over 40% of national home values, the price-to-income ratio is 3.6 standard deviations above the mean.
  
• The OFHEO index of house prices deflated by the consumption price deflator has soared to a record high of 350 from 250 in 2001. From 1976 to 1996 it never was above 220.
  
• According to the NAR the year-to year prices of existing homes are now flat. A short time ago they were rising at a yearly rate of 16%.
  
• Nationally, home prices have not declined on a year-to-year basis since 1933. Recently, however, prices have been dropping in the North East, West and Mid-West.
  
• Sales incentives are now estimated at 3% to 7% of selling prices.
  

Although new housing starts directly account for only 5% of GDP, the indirect effects are far greater. Some studies show that the housing industry and all its related activities have accounted for 30% to 40% of the entire employment growth in the current cyclical expansion. In addition it has been well demonstrated that mortgage equity extractions have been a cash cow providing home owners with hundreds of billions of dollars that have gone into consumer spending. With housing already in a hard landing, it will be extremely difficult to avoid a hard landing in the economy as well.

One-third of home buyers took interest-only mortgages last year, and almost half put NO money down. That's one hell of a lot of people with zero equity in their houses. Many of them will not be able to refinance because their homes are now worth less than what they owe, and they won't be able to afford the adjusted payments. And if you think you're sitting pretty because you bought before the craziness, or you have a low interest rate, or you have a relatively low mortgage balance, guess again. Because when all that home equity cash is yanked out of the economy, and all the remodeling stops, this country is going to take one whopper of an economic hit.

(hat tip: Northern New Jersey Real Estate Bubble)

Watch this extraordinary exchange between NBC's David Gregory and Captain Codpiece in the Rose Garden yesterday:



A clearer version is hosted at Crooks and Liars, here.

First of all, notice how Bush disguises his lust to have torture codified in law as some sort of moral high ground designed to protect intelligence officers. Note also how Bush once again resorts to "Let me finish" when no one is interrupting him -- indicating that he's still having the responses fed into his ear. Then he undergoes a near-meltdown right in front of the press.

This is a fascinating piece of footage, because this is George W. Bush in a nutshell. First he shows the surface "charm" that presumably has led so much of the press to give him a free pass until recently, with his curiously homoerotic remark to the strapping Gregory that he "looks beautiful today." I don't know a straight guy who says that to another guy, do you? But since this remark occurs when Gregory is in the embarrassing position of being entangled in his own microphone wire, it's designed to gain Bush the upper hand. It doesn't last long, however, and the longer Bush's incoherent response goes on, the more clear it is that he's becoming unhinged, the mask starts to drop, and we begin to see the gargoyle that lurks behind the towel-snapping mask.

Now check out this footage from the same news conference at Crooks and Liars. It looks like his prompting isn't working quite right, as he cocks his head and hesitates at certain points. And if you don't get a cold and nasty chill up your spine when he jokes about the press calling the NSA wiretap program the "illegal surveillance program", followed by his now-infamous Beavis laugh, you aren't paying attention. As John notes at C&L, when Bush uses that laugh, "you know you're on to something."

One of these days, Bush is going to completely melt down on camera. He appears to be near a breakdown right now, as the "successful war presidency" he wanted so badly seems to be collapsing all around him. He's enjoyed having a cowed press that's allowed him to stay in his bubble for five years, and he does not take kindly to being confronted. The more he's confronted, the more he's likely to let the gargoyle out.

Digby has more. And Tristero says no one in the press dares to:

Folks, many people have made the mistake of misunderestimating Bush again and again. He can't be that stupid. He can't be that vindictive or violent. He can't be that immature. He can't be that incapable of remorse or that messianic and delusionally religious.

It's time to face the fact that Bush is all these things and many more. He has been consistent from the earliest days of his regime - consistently incompetent, delusional, and violent. He does not bluff. He does exactly what he wants to do. And there is nothing he wants more right now than to use nukes on Iran. It's not merely because he's a kid with a cool popgun, but one shouldn't misunderestimate his impulsiveness and immaturity. It's also because he, and the other rightwing lunatics genuinely believe that since 1945, liberals have severely crippled America by making such a big deal out of nukes. By all means, check out Curtis Lemay's "America is in Danger" for an historical example (late 60's) of this delusion. How are we crippled? Well, according to them, by refusing to use nukes, America fights bloody prolonged conflicts that are difficult to conclude with decisive victories.

Bush and his pals wants to save America from liberals that will once again deny America a critical victory, crucial to its safety and security. Bush wants to break the nuclear taboo.

[snip]

Okay, enough, I've done my posts on this issue for quite a while. Frankly, it is exhausting to play nuclear Cassandra and terribly painful to watch the same patterns of denial and disbelief play themselves out again. But I also understand how it must sound to the unconvinced among you. It sounds like I've gone overboard, succumbed to the delusional paranoia I'm warning you against. I am quite aware that it really is hard to keep in the forefront of one's mind that Bush and Co. really are nuts enough to use nukes in Iran. And Christ, I hope I'm crazy. But I look back at what he's done over the past five years - one utter catastrophe after another, the unspeakable, pointless violence - and I am very alarmed.

Just do me a favor, okay?

When Bush is out of office, in January 2009, and the nukes haven't fallen (and btw, everyone sane and knowledgeable agrees that none are coming our way from Iran by then) let's laugh together at tristero's ridiculous terror over the essentially harmless, befuddled fake cowboy George W. Bush was. But until then, please humor me and treat Bush as a very serious...concern... and work to put as many legislative and legal restraints on his wanton presidency as we can this fall.

It's still not 100% clear whether Bush is simply the sock puppet for the real lunatics, or if he's a full-pledged member of the wacko club that's currently running the government. And I'm not sure which one is more terrifying. But of this I have no doubt whatsoever: Bush is a man wanting desperately to finally shake himself free of his role as Designated Family Shithead -- and he's realizing, despite his protestations to the contrary, that he's fucked up again. Combine this with what often appears to be a severe sexual confusion, his religious mania, and a lack of curiosity that makes him susceptible to any lunatic notion that plays into his own personal emotional baggage, and we have a very dangerous situation on our hands. Yesterday Bush told us that the terrorists WILL come back. And he's in a position to know. And when they do, how do YOU think he'll respond?

Buzzflash asks the question:

If you are a guest on the "Tonight Show," you wait your turn with Jay in the famous Green Room. It’s the holding area for America’s spinning wheel of chattering celebrities.

But, of course, speculation abounds that the Pakistan peace agreement with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Afghan border region is really a way to trap Democrats into blaming Bush for not capturing Osama – and then producing him the week before the election.

To support this line of thinking – and it is only the stuff of political chattering – this might explain why Bush is back to his tough talk about smoking out Osama, after telling the press awhile back that he didn’t know where bin Laden was and "didn’t think about him much."

Of course, during the 2004 election, there was the same speculation that Bush’s Islamic alter-ego might be awaiting "capture" in one of the CIA "holding tanks" in Eastern Europe. All the Bush Administration could produce, however, was a bin Laden video tape that not surprisingly aided Bush in his "re-election" efforts. Because Bush and Osama need each other to galvanize their constituencies.

So, let’s put this one out to BuzzFlash readers.

Can you predict the October surprise?

Is Osama going to suddenly be "captured" in a pre-arranged "daring raid," which will turn out to be staged, because the Busheviks have had him in custody for sometime, just waiting for the midterms?

Or will there be another October surprise?

HR 2679 is now out of committee, and is about to enter into debate on the House Floor. This bill, officially called the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, is designed to protect the Christofascist Zombie Brigade and other Dominionist morons from being sued in the event they, oh, say, call your kids Christ-killers in school, proseletyze them, and harass them if they don't convert:

To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney's fees.

Full text here.

You think these people aren't serious about turning this into a "Christian Dominion"? Guess again. You vote Republican, you're voting for this stuff.

Looks like Captain Codpiece may not get the absolute dictatorship he wants -- and it's his own team who's going to keep him from getting it:

President Bush and Congressional Republicans spent the last 10 days laying the foundation for a titanic pre-election struggle over national security, and now they have one. But the fight playing out this week on Capitol Hill is not what they had in mind.

Instead of drawing contrasts with Democrats, the president’s call for creating military tribunals to try terror suspects — a key substantive and political component of his fall agenda — has erupted into a remarkably intense clash pitting some of the best-known warriors in the Republican Party against Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership.

At issue are definitions of what is permissible in trials and interrogations that both sides view as central to the character of the nation, the way the United States is perceived abroad and the rules of the game for what Mr. Bush has said will be a multigenerational battle against Islamic terrorists.

Democrats have so far remained on the sidelines, sidestepping Republican efforts to draw them into a fight over Mr. Bush’s leadership on national security heading toward the midterm election. Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s approach.

It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as monumental as the politics.

On one side are the Republican veterans of the uniformed services, arguing that the president’s proposal would effectively gut the nearly 60-year-old Geneva Conventions, sending a dark signal to the rest of the world and leaving United States military without adequate protection against torture and mistreatment.

On the other are the Bush administration and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate who say new tools are urgently needed to pursue and interrogate terror suspects and to protect the covert operatives who play an increasingly important role in chasing them.

McCain's agenda is as clear as day -- he does NOT want to have to run in 2008 on a torture platform, and while he's still willing to have a cuddle puddle with Bush, he doesn't want to be branded in 2008 as "the guy who dismantled the Geneva Conventions," especially since he himself was tortured in Vietnam -- a fact that the Bush campaign didn't hesitate to use to question McCain's sanity in the 2000 primary race.

Warner's and Graham's motivations are somewhat less clear. But for McCain, the stakes are huge. If he can win on this one, not only does he position himself nicely for 2008, but he puts himself in an unusual position of power for the remainder of Bush's term.

Hooray for Avenue Q, which has broken a 62-year-old record by becoming the longest-running show at the Golden Theatre.

If you live in the New York area, or are planning to visit New York soon, do not miss this show. With the most singable score since Frank Loesser, enough snark to satisfy even the most cynical among us, but with not a mean bone in its body, and even a good dollop of explicit puppet sex (which gives a new dimension to the concept of the foursome), it's nice to see something this quirky do so well.

(Hat tip and more NY theatre news: ModFab)

Jay's own favorite Congressional candidate, Rich Sexton, was featured on The Colbert Report's "Get to Know a District" segment Tuesday night. The video is now up at YouTube, but through the miracle of that intarweb thingie (™ Mary Ann), you can see it right here. Watch Sexton's face as he tries mightily to not laugh. Clearly, this is a candidate who gets the joke:

This is very scary stuff:

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

[snip]

Bush has been careful discussing the battle with terrorists in religious terms since he had to apologize for using the word "crusade" in 2001. He often stresses that the war is not against Islam but against those who corrupt it. In his comments yesterday, aides said Bush was not casting the war as a religious struggle but was describing American cultural changes in a time of war.

Bullshit. When you look at the way Bush speaks in Dominionist code in his speeches, and his framing of what he calls "Islamic fascism" as "evil" rather than "criminal", he lets both his Christianist followers and the rest of us know that in fact he really DOES regard this as a Christian crusade and himself as God's own anointed instrument.

Remember when Ann Richards, impeccably dressed in a blue suit with her equally impeccable silver coif, drawled her way through the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic Convention that was equal parts homespun charm and ascerbic wit? Was there anyone watching who didn't immediately wish she was their grandma?

Richards, who died yesterday at the age of 73, was the kind of colorful character that the Democratic Party has been sorely lacking in recent years. From her shoot-from-the-hip style of speaking to her passion for motorcycles to her straightforward and honest discussion of the alcoholism she battled during the 1980's, Richards was the kind of genuine article that we just don't see anymore.

Richards was ousted as Texas governor by George W. Bush in 1994, after a campaign which featured Karl Rove floating a rumor that she was a lesbian and one of Bush's operatives criticizing Richards for appointing "homosexual activists" for state jobs.

The loss of Ann Richards, who unfortunately hadn't been seem much in recent years, may mark the last breath of the larger-than-life Democratic character, leaving us in a wasteland of DLC operatives, who have forgotten that speech nearly 20 years ago:

Now, I'm going to tell you, I'm really glad that our young people missed the Depression, and missed the great big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders that I knew.

Leaders who told us when things were tough, and that we would have to sacrifice, and these difficulties might last awhile.

They didn't tell us things were hard for us because we were different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.

They gave us Social Security. And they told us we're setting up a system where we could pay our own money in and when the time came for our retirement, we could take the money out.

People in rural areas were told that we deserved to have electric lights, and they were going to harness the energy that was necessary to give us electricity so my grandmama didn't have to carry that old coal oil lamp around.

And they told us that they were going to guarantee that when we put our money in the bank, that the money was going to be there, and it was going to be insured.

They did not lie to us.

[snip]

And as I look at Lily, I know that it is within families that we learn both the need to respect individual human dignity and to work together for our common good. Within our families, within our nation, it is the same.

As we sit there, I wonder if she'll ever grasp the changes I've seen in my life. If she'll ever believe that there was a time when blacks could not drink from public water fountains, when Hispanic children were punished for speaking Spanish in the public schools, and women couldn't vote.

I think of all the political fights I've fought, and all the compromises I've had to accept as part payment.

And I think of all the small victories that have added up to national triumphs. And all the things that never would have happened and all the people who would have been left behind if we had not reasoned, and fought, and won those battles together.

And I will tell Lily that those triumphs were Democratic Party triumphs.

Yes, Ann, they were. Somehow the craven, move-to-the-right Democratic Party of today has forgotten this.

The country is full of Diebold ATMs that take your requests for cash withdrawals and spit out money. They accept your deposits, which are then dutifully deposited to your account. You don't even think about it, because these systems are almost 100% bulletproof.

And we're supposed to believe that they can't make a voting machine that's at least tamper-resistant?

Yet it seems they can't:

A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines.

In a paper posted on the university's Web site, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines.

The marketing director for the machine's maker — Diebold Inc.'s Diebold Election Systems of Allen, Texas — blasted the report, saying Felten ignored newer software and security measures that prevent such hacking.

"I'm concerned by the fact we weren't contacted to educate these people on where our current technology stands," Mark Radke said.

Radke also question why Felten hadn't submitted his paper for peer review, as is commonly done before publishing scientific research.

Felten said he and his colleagues felt it necessary to publish the paper as quickly as possible because of the possible implications for the November midterm elections.

[snip]

Felten and graduate students Ariel Feldman and Alex Halderman found that malicious programs could be placed on the Diebold by accessing the memory card slot and power button, both behind a locked door on the side of the machine. One member of the group was able to pick the lock in 10 seconds, and software could be installed in less than a minute, according to the report.

The researchers say they designed software capable of modifying all records, audit logs and counters kept by the voting machine, ensuring that a careful forensic examination would find nothing wrong.

The programs were able to modify vote totals or cause machines to break down, something that could alter the course of an election if machines were located in crucial polling stations.

It was also possible to design a computer virus to spread malicious programs to multiple machines by piggybacking on a new software download or an election information file being transferred from machine to machine, Felten said.

"I think there are many people out there who have the type of technical ability to carry out the sort of attacks we describe here," he said.

Felten said hacking dangers could be mitigated with better software, more restrictions on access to machines and memory cards, and paper receipts verified by the voter.

Radke said Diebold already has implemented many of those things.

Except that a) there's no assurance that states have implemented any of the so-called fixes on their existing machines, b) as recently as August, the latest versions of Diebold Machines were revealed to be BUILT TO BE EASILY BOOTED FROM ANOTHER DEVICE; and c) Not a week goes by that we Windows users aren't alerted to a new patch. Do you honestly believe that Diebold has fixed ALL the problems?

This is what worries me about the November elections. Every day we see new poll numbers from important races on Daily Kos. But as far as I'm concerned, any race with a single-digit Democratic lead is going to end up Republican when we wake up the morning after Election Day. You heard it here first.

Sorry.

But what else can you call a thread directing you to Brian Darr's Friz Freling-a-thon?

Friz isn't my favorite denizen of Termite Terrace; that honor goes to the great Tex Avery and his disciple Bob Clampett. But at least until you get to Robert McKimson, the charms of whose work escape me, all of them belong in the animation pantheon.

Southern women have decided they've had enough of worshipping at the altar of the Almighty Codpiece:

In 2002, terror-struck married women with children supported Republicans over Democrats by a 17-point margin (53 percent to 36 percent). In 2004, 56% of them backed Bush -- validating the president's arduous pursuit of MILFs (Mothers I'd Like to Frighten).

But now, fed up with Bush's broken promises on Iraq, these security moms are telling pollsters they are more inclined to vote Democratic than at any time since the 9/11 attacks. According to a Pew Research Center study, they currently favor Congressional Dems by a 12-point margin (50 percent to 38 percent).

The bloom is also off the presidential rose with Southern women, a key Bush constituency in 2004 when 54 percent of them swooned for him. Now, 60 percent of them say they are planning to vote for a Democrat in November. This deep-in-the-heart-of-Dixie dissatisfaction is being fueled by disenchantment with Iraq. Only 32 percent of female voters in the south approve of Bush's handling of the war.

I think women are also smart enough to realize that Bush can't keep this war going on forever, let alone expanding it, without additional cannon fodder. And they're putting together that it may very well be their sons that are conscripted.

This week I've been listening to some old Morning Sedition shows that I've kept on CD for posterity. What strikes me about these shows from late 2004 is a) just how much I still miss this damn show, the cancellation of which is perhaps Air America's biggest blunder to date, exceeding even the way they fired Mike Malloy; and b) how the conversations about the Iraq war could be taking place now.

One of the things I miss most about the show are the insights into the Iraq situation regularly provided by Time's Baghdad bureau chief, Michael Ware. Ware was always compelling to listen to, partly because he sounded incongruously like Steve Irwin, and partly because no matter what crap the Administration was dishing out, he could always cut through it.

Ware was on Wolfie Blitzer's Situation Room yesterday, and while John Amato doesn't have video up, he does have a transcript.

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, I mean, to be honest, I’m
quite stunned that people are so surprised by this report. I mean, the
situation has not deteriorated. It’s been like this for over a year,
perhaps even two.

I mean, it can still be reclaimed. I mean, it’s not always lost. And I
think people who suggest that fail to understand the true dynamic. But
certainly what the Marine general in charge of Al Anbar said tonight on
the conference call is he admitted for the first time that right now,
today, through the combination of the U.S. and/or Iraqi forces, he does
not have enough troops to win against the al Qaeda insurgency.


His mission is to train, he said. If his mission was to change and that
to be to win, then his metrics, his troop numbers would have to change.

This is not new. Al Qaeda has owned Al Anbar for quite some time. And
the soldiers out there are being left out there undermanned just to hold
the line. They’ve been screaming for more troops for at least a year
and a half — Wolf.

BLITZER: But it seems like the U.S. military has put a priority, as you
know, Michael, on getting the job done in Baghdad and the surrounding
areas of Baghdad. That’s where they are bringing reinforcements.
That’s where they are moving troops. And they are sort of relegating
the Anbar Province out in the west, which is a huge part of Iraq, to a
lesser priority.

Is that accurate?

WARE: That’s certainly what I’m being told by senior military
intelligence officials. They are saying that Al Anbar and Ramadi
(INAUDIBLE), like a saw, as long as we win Baghdad. But that’s very
shortsighted.

I mean, if this is the global war on terror, President Bush put Al Anbar
in the center of the war on terror. And they are undermanning it.

I mean, this is making al Qaeda stronger, not weaker. This is giving
them the oxygen they need to breathe...

More here.

Despite the perception of one of my neighbors that I'm one of those "computer weirdos", and despite the rather comical phone coversation yesterday in which I had to talk someone character-by-character through putting an anchor tag around a hyperlink, I don't regard myself as a techie. The development environment at my place of employment is Cold Fusion/SQL Server running on Windows IIS. I've never touched Unix or open source at all.

Until now.

I'm working as a volunteer on a very exciting grassroots project that I'm not at liberty to discuss at further length at the moment, and be very afraid, for I'm what passes for a web expert. I'm going to be using CivicSpace, which is essentially preconfigured Drupal, which is in turn open source content management system software. Sites like TPM Cafe, Music for America, and many local grassroots organizations use CivicSpace.

So I'm leaping into the pool, I can sort of dog paddle, and I'm not wearing a lifejacket. So if any of you fine folks have experience with open source in general and Drupal in particular, and would be available to answer questions, please drop me a line at the e-mail address in the right-hand panel.

And if you know any reason why I should NOT host the thing at BlueHost, please let me know.

Further proof that nothing gets a wingnut all hot and bothered quite like death on a massive scale. When they aren't obsessing about gay sex, or bestiality, or women's uteri, wingnuts are spanking the monkey while viewing video of people at the World Trade Center jumping to their deaths on 9/11/01. I kid you not. I'm not going to link to the sick fuck who put the YouTube video on LGF, but punkass marc does, so if you don't believe me, go pay him a visit.

(hat tip: Amanda)

This is getting scary....John Tierney seems to be developing some grey matter at last:

Once again he has beaten America at an American game: public relations. He may be sitting powerlessly in a cave, but his image is as scary as ever. He doesn’t even have to cut a new video. He released an old one last week, the equivalent of a fading musician putting out a greatest-hits album, only this one’s getting played every hour.

Last night, President Bush paid him homage by quoting his warning that America will face “defeat and disgrace forever” it if loses in Iraq. Bush himself called the war on terror a “struggle for civilization,” and said it was essential to ”maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations.”

It was just the kind of apocalyptic language favored by bin Laden, except that, for all his delusions, he might realize that American civilization is not really in jeopardy. Americans can try to copy him, but they don’t understand his rhetorical technique.

They continually misinterpret his equine theory of international relations: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” This is supposedly a reason America was attacked on Sept. 11 — it was perceived as weak for failing to respond to Al Qaeda’s earlier attacks — and why it can’t leave Iraq.

If we falter in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney explained to Tim Russert on Sunday, the war on terror will falter because people will say: “My gosh, the United States hasn’t got the stomach for the fight. Bin Laden’s right, Al Qaeda’s right, the United States has lost its will and will not complete the mission.”

But bin Laden knows something else the Bush administration hasn’t figured out: You don’t actually have to be the strong horse. You just have to look stronger. You can be weak, you can be pummeled in a fight, but as long as your opponent looks more scared than you, you can save face by simply declaring victory.

[snip]

Al Qaeda wasn’t a serious military threat to America, but it could play one on television. As Al Qaeda’s losses mounted and America recovered from the attack, bin Laden and his cohorts didn’t let the facts get in the way of their campaign to promote fear (and themselves). They hid in caves and proclaimed themselves champions.

America, meanwhile, accentuated the negative. Instead of declaring victory against terrorists after routing the Taliban and sending bin Laden into hiding, it invaded Iraq, reinvigorating Al Qaeda with a new tool for recruiting. Instead of putting the terrorist risk in perspective, Bush (with the full cooperation of Democrats and the press) set an impossible standard for making America safe.

“We’re on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront,” Bush said last week, “and we’ll accept nothing less than complete victory.”

When you define victory that way, when you treat one attack from a disorganized band of fanatics as a menace to civilization, you’ve doomed yourself to defeat and caused more damage than they could. You can’t completely stop terrorism, but you can scare people into giving up liberties, wasting huge sums of money and sacrificing more lives than would be lost in a terrorist attack.

When TIERNEY is starting to talk like this, Bush may have no choice but to bring in Bin Laden if he wants to save what little credibility he has left.

Was anyone else as offended by Bush's focus on Osama Bin Laden last night as I was? After all, this is the man who shrugged his shoulders back in March 2002 and said:

And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Let's give that clip another listen, shall we?



Last night, just as he did last week, he returned to his "dead or alive" tone of September 2001:

Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are still in hiding. Our message to them is clear: No matter how long it takes, America will find you, and we will bring you to justice.

And herein lies Bush's dilemma. Has anyone ever benefitted from an enemy as much as Bush has benefitted from Osama Bin Laden? It's no secret that the Bush family has benefitted mightily from its cozy relationships with Saudi oil sheikhs, including members of the Bin Laden family. It's a known fact that on the morning of the attacks, George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting with Osama bin Laden's brother, Shafig bin Laden, in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in D.C. the morning of the attacks. At the very least, there is enough to raise eyebrows about the cozy relationship between the two families.

Even if you want to buy the notion that Osama is the Bin Laden family's Designated Family Shithead and that none of the Bin Laden/Bush family connections mean anything, there's no denying that having Osama Bin Laden out there as a constant threat has benefitted the Bush Administration for five years. As long as Bin Laden is out there, Americans can live with the constant threat of another 9/11 looming over their heads, and they can look to their president to do whatever he must in order to "make them feel safer." This is why this president has been able to completely subvert the Constitution he was sworn to uphold, and no one has uttered a peep.

But right now it appears that his luck may have run out, even with Disney/ABC's attempt to help. According to a CNN poll released yesterday, the percentage of people who blame Bush for the 9/11 attacks has risen from 32% to 45% over the past four years. That's nearly half of Americans who believe that Bush had either "a great deal" or "a moderate amount" of responsibility for the attacks. Disney and the Bush Administration have been effective in their propaganda efforts, however, for 41% also believe that the Clinton Administration had either "a great deal" or "a moderate amount" of responsibility for the attacks. Unfortunately, no one asked how much responsibility George Herbert Walker Bush had for the 1993 attacks, which would have given us a better picture of how much Americans blame those in charge in the months leading into an attack when his name isn't "Bill Cliniton." Still, these numbers are astonishing.

The Bush administration has lost all credibility in terms of the fight against terrorism, because of its ill-advised and botched adventure in Iraq. Despite his beating of the Iraq drum again last night, and Cheney's and Condi's stubborn insistence on the Sabbath Gasbag shows that there was a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda despite ALL evidence to the contrary, his word no longer makes Americans dance. He needs to do something to keep the Democrats from taking control of Congress and embarking on a bunch of pesky investigations. It's clear that an October Surprise is coming; the only question is what that's going to be. At one point, it seemed clear that an invasion of Iran would be the surprise, but with Iran now willing to have talks with the EU and the U.S. over its nuclear problem, that is no longer a viable option. An invasion of Syria, despite today's attack on the U.S. embassy there, isn't going to resonate outside of thos stubborn Bush acolytes who still believe Saddam moved his WMD there.

That leaves only one option: the capture of Osama Bin Laden just in time for the election.

With Bush ratcheting up the rhetoric about Bin Laden over the last week, after three years of "not being all that concerned about him", and news reports that the path has gone "stone cold", does anyone doubt that the Admininstration knows EXACTLY where he is, and will bring him in or kill him at the most opportune time?

Bin Laden is a huge chip to have to cash in, and it remains to be seen if the Republicans can still keep the population frightened enough to put up with further evisceration of their rights if he is not out there as the Designated Boogeyman. But for the Bush Administration, the priority is to keep Republicans in power in Congress for the next two years to forestall investigations. And a capture or killing of Bin Laden at the 11th hour may be the only way to do that.

Keith Olbermann, with his back to what Ray Nagin accurately called a hole in the ground -- a hole that is a grave, a sad place, a source of memories, but a hole just the same; a piece of land squabbled over by greedy bastards for five years now, refuses to allow George W. Bush to chew another bite off the corpses of those who died there.

This segment took my breath away. Watch it at Crooks and Liars, and read the transcript:

And lastly tonight a Special Comment on why we are here. Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.
And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However. Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this.
Five years later this space… is still empty.
Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country’s wound is still open.
Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
—
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field, Mr. Lincoln said "we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We can nto dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground." So we won’t.
Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
—
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation.
There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics.
It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President — and those around him — did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible — for anything — in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11.
—
Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero…
So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.
Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.
As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.
The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."
—
When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.

William Shakespeare wrote, "Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them." In speaking truth to power over these last two weeks, Keith Olbermann has achieved that greatness. He has shown us what journalism used to be, when names like Murrow and Sevareid and Cronkite made journalism an honorable profession.

On a day when we saw MSNBC.com fire Eric Alterman, Keith Olbermann's courage in holding this president to account on a day that others think seems to belong to him should not be underestimated. I now understand how Americans felt when they turned on their television sets and watched Murrow take on Joe MaCarthy.

Five years ago today was a day very much like today promises to be -- a bit warmer, perhaps, but a bright, late summer day. I was alone in the house because Mr. Brilliant, on a business trip to North Carolina, had been delayed overnight there because of severe thunderstorms. He called home right before I left for work to let me know that he'd arrived in LaGuardia and was on his way home.

A an hour later, all New York airports were closed.

I was supposed to go to an FDA validation class in D.C. that day. I had been dreading the trip, for no particular reason. I was supposed to go with two co-workers who were pretty tight, and I dreaded being the third wheel. But that didn't account for the DEGREE of dread I'd had for the trip, a dread I didn't understand.

Obviously, the trip never took place.

I was at work when I heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. "A small plane hit the World Trade Center", I was told, so I went back to work. Then the story became that it was a passenger plane, so I turned on the radio and went to the New York Times web site. After a while I lost my radio reception, and of course all the news site servers were overloaded, so we relied on reports from our network manager, who told us first when the first tower went down, then the second.

It seemed impossible. How could two 102-story towers just collapse? Needless to say, we were not going to D.C. that day.

I remember the Cuba Missile Crisis. I was in elementary school, so it didn't register, but I do remember the silly air raid drills where we would stand in the corridor with our arms over our heads to protect us from nuclear blast. But I never had the sense that the world was coming to an end that I had on September 11, 2001.

That afternoon, my workplace opened up the conference and turned on the TV, so people who wanted to see what was going on could watch.

As I've reported before, we were flipping channels that night and there was Larry Kudlow, grinning from ear to ear on CNBC and crowing happily that this meant and end to all talk about a Social Security lockbox. And I turned to Mr. Brilliant and said, "My God, they did it." I was referring to the Bush Administration.

The next day I received an e-mail from a friend. Her sister-in-law's brother was still missing. He was on a high floor of Tower One. I won't reprint his name because his family are fiercely private people, I don't know them personally, and they would not want to be identified in a public blog. When I got home the next day, I found out that a neighbor's husband was missing. He never came home either. She had just lost her son four months before in an automobile accident, and now this. A former co-worker of Mr. Brilliant's had a fiancé who was a New York City fireman. He was lost too.

For all that I smelled a rat right from day one, I felt the next day for the first time as if I wanted to fly a flag. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan. And then the story started getting holes in it, and I became one of the earliest believers, first in outright Administration complicity, and later in deliberate negligence. In some ways I liked it better when I was the only one who thought this way and everyone thought I was crazy. People don't think I'm crazy anymore.

Day after day, for the next few weeks, another photo would appear in the paper. At the same time as I read of more and more people in surrounding towns who had lost their lives, I felt almost guilty that I wasn't more directly affected. I didn't even go into New York until six months later. I never saw the flyers first-hand that were posted all over the place. This took place so close to where I live, and yet I was as far removed from it as if I had lived in Kansas. I felt as if I had no right to feel horror or grief or anything, when my own life was so comparatively untouched.

I think this is one reason I get so angry when I hear of people in the flyover states obsessing about 9/11 as a means of propping up their support for this president. I at least know that I have nothing to say about it. I didn't inhale the dust. I didn't see faces of my friends in the newspaper. Later on, when I read the complete list of casualties, I was relieved that NO ONE I had ever worked with was on the list. There's a certain amount of survivor's guilt in that, or at least a recognition that however much this event affected all of America, those of us lucky to have our husbands be on planes OTHER than those hijacked that day do NOT "own" 9/11 in the way New York residents and those loved ones of people who lost their lives do.

For much of my time working in New York City, I took the PATH train to the World Trade Center. I bought sport jackets for Mr. Brilliant at the Alexander's on the concourse. I have photographs that were developed at the Kelly Photo by the entrance to the E train. At one point I went to an interview for an Administrative Assistant position at Cantor Fitzgerald, but the guy was running late and I had to get to my then-current job. When they called to reschedule, I declined, because the elevators in the Trade Center freaked me out and I couldn't stand the thought of using them every day.

My most vivid memory of the World Trade Center was during game 6 of the 1986 NLCS. I was standing at the top of the escalators down to the PATH listening to the game on my Walkman radio. When the Mets tied the game in the 9th, a roar cascaded through the corridors of the building like nothing I'd ever heard before. I also remember Sharon, the homeless woman who lived in the Trade Center in those days. She always had a rabbit or a cat as a pet, and her pets were always better cared for than she was. One time I saw her sitting on a blanket with her back against the token booth by the E train, a cat in her lap eating from a can of Fancy Feast. I think I gave her ten dollars that day.

I hate that ABC/Disney is trying to make political hay out of the anniversary of this tragedy. I hate even that CBS is running the Naudet brothers' excellent documentary about that day. I hate it because all over the tri-state area, and elsewhere, there are over 2700 families who have to watch their loved ones die again and again every fucking year in perpetuity, while talking heads in the media say inane, faux-empathetic things, and the Republicans in Washington use these deaths as a bludgeon to beat the rest of us into submission.

I'll quote Steve Gillard to close this, because as a New Yorker, he is far better qualified than I to do so:

When people get upset that New Yorkers don’t share their experiences, and this is just a fraction of what I remember and the only reason I’m writing about it is that I don’t want to be asked about it. Here it is.

But I will say this: my starkest memories of 9/11 are the year of funerals. Day after day, some family buried someone and it made the papers.

I hate the tourists who come to rubberneck at the hole. I hate them and wish they would go away. When I went down there one time, I saw people selling pictures of the towers on fire.

You know, people fell from them on fire. Alive.

The people rebroadcasting their 9/11 broadcasts are no better than vermin. Matt Lauer should be placed on a glue trap in the sun.

This doesn’t belong to America. It isn’t some grand national cause. It is a tragedy some get to live with forever. You can remember the dead, but because you became scared of brown people or of someone blowing up your mall or of airplanes, you can share in it. You cannot and if you were smart, you wouldn’t want to. No one should want to carry the burdens of another because they feel they should.

Bush used 9/11 to prove himself a man and, as he had his entire life, failed miserably, killing thousands in the process. The dead of 9/11 deserved justice, not torture and a pointless, losing war in Iraq. Not Rudy Giuliani making money off the one good day in his miserable life. They have gotten so much less than they deserved, with ABC piling on top.

So I’ll do what I do every year at this time, avoid anything to do with this and hope it ends soon.

It's another "Don't look at the man behind the curtain" moment:

The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world -- no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image -- has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

"The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence" that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone "stone cold."

But in the last three months, following a request from President Bush to "flood the zone," the CIA has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers and assets devoted to the pursuit of bin Laden. The intelligence officers will team with the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and with more resources from the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The problem, former and current counterterrorism officials say, is that no one is certain where the "zone" is.

"Here you've got a guy who's gone off the net and is hiding in some of the most formidable terrain in one of the most remote parts of the world surrounded by people he trusts implicitly," said T. McCreary, spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center. "And he stays off the net and is probably not mobile. That's an extremely difficult problem."

Intelligence officials think that bin Laden is hiding in the northern reaches of the autonomous tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This calculation is based largely on a lack of activity elsewhere and on other intelligence, including a videotape, obtained exclusively by the CIA and not previously reported, that shows bin Laden walking on a trail toward Pakistan at the end of the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when U.S. forces came close but failed to capture him.

[snip]

On the videotape obtained by the CIA, bin Laden is seen confidently instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie in undetected at night. A bomb dropped by a U.S. aircraft can be seen exploding in the distance. "We were there last night," bin Laden says without much concern in his voice. He was in or headed toward Pakistan, counterterrorism officials think.

That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts in the paramilitary division that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq, said Flynt L. Leverett, then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council.

Here's the bottom line: The Republicans and their mouthpieces at ABC/Disney, want you to believe their meme that Bill Clinton did nothing about Osama Bin Laden because he was too busy being blown by Monica Lewinsky. If they can succeed in that, maybe you won't look at how George W. Bush gave up on the Bin Laden search barely five months after the 9/11 attacks because he was focused on his petty family grudge against Saddam Hussein. For five years, we have have had to listen to a nonstop litany of 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 from these people. We have been called traitors if we questioned them. We have had to worry about having our phones tapped and our internet searches monitored. We have had to worry about future employees seeing our words against this president and refusing to hire us. We have been called un-American because we have wanted those responsible for the 9/11 attacks brought to justice.

And so we have George W. Bush -- a joke of a president, a man whose supporters want you to believe that his predecessor, hounded throughout his entire presidency by right-wing nutballs, was trying mightily to address the terrorism issue while Republicans were screaming "Wag the dog!" -- was somehow at fault for the 9/11 attacks. And so we have George W. Bush, who received a bulletin on August 6, 2001 -- a bulletin so urgent that CIA agents hand-delivered it -- said "OK, you've covered your asses now" because he was angry at having his vacation interrupted. And so we have George W. Bush, who despite the attempt of Cyrus Nowrasteh to rewrite history otherwise, is immortalized forever as sitting cluelessly in a classroom for seven minutes after being told the nation was under attack, while people jumped to their deaths rather than be burned alive.

Try as they might to rewrite history, the suits at ABC/Disney, and people like Cyrus Nowrasteh and the Christofascist Zombie Neocon Death Cultists who want to somehow change the past, know in their hearts that their guy -- the empty suit they have chosen to worship as a demigod -- is the one who REALLY dropped the ball, the one who REALLY has allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape, even while Ground Zero was still being emptied, even as the remains of over 2700 Americans who did nothing other than go to work were still being found. Because there's no escaping this: George W. Bush, after being faced with a direct attack on U.S. soil, allowed its perpetrator to get away. Is he that incompetent? Or criminal? Those are your choices.

Unlike the Bush-worshippers who insist on absolving him of all blame in underestimating the urgency of the threat, we Democrats don't blindly worship Bill Clinton. In fact, many of us think he was a very good Republican president. My beef with Clinton is not that he was "distracted" because he was having too much fun, because it's clear from the FACTS -- not Cyrus Nowrasteh's fantasies, but the FACTS -- that Clinton was able to compartmentalize enough to do his job while the witchhunt swirled around him. My beef with Clinton is that KNOWING how much he was hated by the right, and KNOWING that they were going to go after him with anything they could find, he essentially gave them the weapon with which they hoped to bludgeon his presidency to death. Bill Clinton isn't the first man in the world to think with his dick instead of his brain. But while that makes his a tarnished presidency, it does NOT make him responsible for the 9/11 attacks -- not matter how much Disney/ABC might wish it to be so.