Last Thursday night.

Turn your speakers up.

How they do em.

Perfect T over T.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:01 PM | Comments (175)
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It's a simple idea, but it seems to have been forgotten.

9/11 was not a call for understanding, nor an invitation to self-examination.

It was a premeditated slaughter, a massacre.

Three years ago our country dozed off. We thought that if we elected a man who talked nice to our enemies (take a look at what candidate Obama said about unconditional talks with North Korea, Iran and Venezuela) and pronounced “Pahk-eee-stahn” like a local we’d somehow steer clear of terrorist attacks. The fact is the world is much more dangerous now than it was three years ago. We are less popular in the Arab world than before we hired citizen of the world Obama to be our Commander-in-Chief.

And as President Obama implores Americans to heed the call of 9/11 and volunteer at a soup kitchen, our enemies are plotting their next devastating attack on us.

9/11 was a declaration of war. We answered. Then we turned our back. What will happen next?

The issue is often falsely phrased as a discussion between those who "want peace" and those who "want war."

We all want peace.

But then, we all would also like to never grow old and die from age or disease.

We "want" many things.

But adults generally recognize that the question is usually less about what we "want," and more about the situation we actually find ourselves in. Children, not adults, tend to simply bleat about the things they "want."

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (205)
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Rather than putting up a long, maudlin post on 9/11 I thought I'd let these collections of photos do the talking for me.

Iconic 9/11 Pictures from Life Magazine

9/11 Scenes Then and Now

Posted by: Maetenloch at 12:36 PM | Comments (126)
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Not only Krugman, writing about the "Years of Shame" post-9/11, but also the anti-conservative liberal the media loves to quote as a conservative, Kathleen Parker.

An America that no longer knows itself

The legacy of 9/11 canÂ’t be fully measured even now, but perhaps the most damaging aspect can be found in our national discourse.

Taking the long view, it is possible to see the roots of today’s political dysfunction — the hate, fear, anger and resentment — firmly planted in the soil at Ground Zero.

Did Osama bin Laden envision such a thing when he plotted the attacks? Probably not. He might have imagined that we would retaliate, and this would cost us lives and treasure. But he couldn’t have known that we eventually would lose our common sense of who we are. This has been the big surprise of 9/11 — an ongoing, self-perpetuating act of American self-destruction.

Something was unleashed 10 years ago that bears our scrutiny. It wasnÂ’t only evil, though the attacks were certainly that. The event was so cataclysmic and horrifying that it caused a sort of emotional breakdown in the American constitution. Simply put, it damaged our collective soul and seems to have released a free-ranging hysteria that has contaminated our interactions ever since.

No matter how many prayers uttered; no matter how many hands held or pledges made; no matter how many bombs dropped or coffins draped. A nation cannot heal itself without self-awareness. On this score we have fallen short. We seem not to want to recognize that we donÂ’t have a problem; we are the problem.

Putting it bluntly, Sept. 11 caused us to go temporarily insane. Being for or against the war, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, divided us as wars do, but this time was different. Friendships ended, marriages suffered, people crossed the street to avoid those with whom they disagreed. Ten years later, we are still at war. Tack on the global financial crisis, stagnant unemployment, the further dissolution of trust in our institutions, and we have all the ingredients for moral panic.

And now, alas, another election season is upon us with all the froth and spittle we love to loathe. President Obama understands that the nation has a psychological problem, but no president in his right mind can afford to speak publicly of such things. If Jimmy Carter was brought down by his “crisis of confidence,” a.k.a. “malaise,” speech, imagine if Obama, who already suffers an image of elitist condescension, mentioned that the nation could use a little time on the couch.

We stumble at last upon a purpose for columnists — to say that which no one else dares.

Note that Parker writes in her typical passive-aggressive way, and a superficial reading might suggest she's saying "a pox on all houses." But her previous history suggests to me she has a firm idea about which people went "temporarily insane," and which people remained steadfastly the voices of reason.

It's interesting, to me, that neither Parker nor Krugman feel the need to pretend they supported the War in Afghanistan any longer. This used to be a standard trope of the left, to feign support of one war to prove one's general credibility on the subject; they've now dropped that act, and no longer parse between Afghanistan and Iraq.

They don't quite confess the truth, but they no longer bother with the lies they once told. And, by the way, Miss Parker -- since you're casting about for some purpose for columnists that may make them seem more important than they are, confessing that truth that none on the left dare mention would more useful.

For a certain dominant strain of liberalism -- the liberalism of the bien pensant class -- the most attractive element of the creed is the self-deception. The self-deception I write of the moral vanity of supposing, by mere embrace of a political creed, that all "hate" and lizard-brain desire for vengeance has been purged from their minds.

Hatred has lived in the heart of men for 40,000 years. It is a natural response to the evils of the world. To say it is "natural" does not suggest it is good (despite the bien pensant's unexamined assumption of Rouseau's daffy conception of man as an untainted, virtuous angel absent the corrupting influence of society). But it is natural, in the sense of instinctual and innate.

To truly purge oneself of hatreds and a thirst for retribution would require the majority of a lifetime in philosophical self-denial and religious (or at least metaphysical) devotion and training. As a monk, whether a Western monk, giving his heart to god, or an Eastern monk, training himself to abnegate the self and its selfish passions in favor of a harmonic synthesis with the universe itself.

And yet, for the bien pensants, they seem to imagine they've accomplished this great feat simply by mouthing support of the Civil Rights Movement ("You know, if I were alive then, I'd've been a Freedom Rider") and by thrownng scorn and venom -- hate, in other words -- at those who show the temerity to disagree with them.

With all due respect: I'm absolutely certain this purging of hatred from one's heart is a much more difficult undertaking than the bien pensants imagine.

They profess to hate hate itself. That, for a start, indicates necessarily a more comfortable relationship with the emotion of hate than they generally acknowledge. But this is all for the purpose of constructing a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too loophole, in which they can both hate hate, and yet may indulge, freely and without shame, in the emotion of hatred, so long as they can contrive a pretext for it.

And that pretext is always the same: Yes, they do hate. But those they hate are themselves hateful, so indulging in hatred is not a shameful act, nor a hypocritical one, but in fact a necessary and good campaign against hate.

But this is all, obviously to anyone standing outside this "because I said so" mock-philosophical loophole, just a bit of psychological transference. Those of us not smitten with this Only Hate Hate Itself dodge can admit we hate. We may not be proud of it, and may question ourselves when we give license to it, but we can in fact admit this ugly emotion lives in our hearts.

And we can admit then that we do in fact hate the murderers who killed 2,996 on 11 September 2001, and we hate their allies, and we hate those who dance in the street at the thoughts of men on fire plummeting a quarter mile through the air to their deaths.

But to the bien pensants, this won't due. This sort of hatred is base, and crude, and obvious; lower working class, is what they would really call it, if they had the supposed courage Kathleen Parker imagines they do in speaking uncomfortable truth. Not Quite Our Class, Dear, as the old saying goes, lacking in manners and savoir faire (knowing how to "do," and by "do," we mean comport oneself with the expected manners and opinions of the privileged class).

And what does a bien pensant in good standing about these these uncultured yobbos who feel no twinge of class-inculcated shame in hating mass-murderers?

Why, you hate them, of course. For what else can a good bien pensant, who has purged all hate from his heart by simple act of subscribing to Mother Jones, do when confronted with some benighted hatred, but to pour enlightened hatred on it?

We have never really been arguing about whether we should go to war, or whether we should hate. The only contention of these past 10 years has been whom we should go to war with, and whom we ought to hate.

The bien pensants are quite insistent that we must not hate some External Other who serves as a bogeyman exciting our darker passions.

Rather, they urge, we must direct these darker passions at an Internal Other, the vast majority of Americans who do not consider themselves a type of latter-day digital order of Jesuits.

Apparently we all have the right basic emotional take on things; some of us have just chosen the wrong bogeymen to fear and hate.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (278)
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I sidebarred this shortly after it started making the rounds this morning, but Larry O'Connor at Big Journalism had a good idea that we can take to the next level.

If al-Krugman won't open his comments, why, I guess we should just open ours. Let 'er rip, morons. Andrew Breitbart has faith in you. Don't let him down!

Update: For those of you who may think that something this stupid and outrageous must be a hoax, its validity has been confirmed by Krugman's own standard.

So if you see me quoted as saying something really stupid or outrageous, and it didnÂ’t come from the Times or some other verifiable site, you should probably assume it was a fake.

Posted by: andy at 09:40 AM | Comments (365)
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The best thing about football here is that is ain't gonna be a hunnert degrees in Texas. For much longer.

Started out this week with Green Bay dismantling the Saints, which looked a whole lot to me like two decent offenses against two crappy defenses, one slightly less crappy than the other. But points is the objective, ain't it?

Get your picks in, if you haven't already. I'm already stunning the field with my stupid New Orleans upset special.

I'm a football genius.

Also, it seems like maybe I could forego the cheerleader pic today.

...

Nah, I wouldn't do that to you.

more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:50 AM | Comments (388)
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Jake Tapper confuses me with this bit. Seemingly opens with a rise above partisan hackery, but then descends firmly into it.

That’s because the issues brought to the forefront of the political debate — the importance of national unity, the wisdom of going to war in Iraq, the balance between liberty and security — are ones that the then-University of Chicago constitutional law lecturer found so compelling, he felt a renewed need to influence that debate. In short, 9/11 in many ways compelled Barack Obama to become a national leader.

On the word of "sources close to the President", the 9/11 attacks hastened Obama's "sense of urgency" to emerge upon the national stage.

This explanation of Obama's opposition to the Iraq war (for which there are reasons enough to argue, without casting him as some kind of jaw-set 9/11 hero), declaring (without evidence) that his burning desire to lead the nation was somehow born of his determination to "renew the debate" as a national leader.. is just silly in the extreme.

Rechurned nonsense, "the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, (it seemed to Obama), derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others.."

Are you kidding me? Please recall the suffering of and our inability to connect with the 9/11 murderers.

Mohamed Atta, a student of architecture from a middle-class family in Egypt, pilot of the first plane to hit the towers.

Marwan al-Shehhi, UAE, who was also fortunate enough to move to Hamburg and study.

Saudi Hani Hanjour, who was so downtrodden he was able to come to the US to learn how to fly, badly, and went home and couldn't get a job as a pilot.

And Lebanese Ziad Jarrah, the son of a wealthy family.

I could go on. I know the "inability to imagine and connect with suffering" crap were Obama's words, not Tapper's. Still, dude, you could show a little professional skepticism before repeating nonsense in your "Obama was Inspired by 9/11" stuff. Can I definitively prove he wasn't?

No I can't.

Do I believe for a moment he was?

No, I don't.

article via adamsbaldwin, on Twitter. Vid via LauraW, another skeptic.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:43 AM | Comments (99)
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There's a recent concept called a Technological Singularity. To oversimplify it, that's the idea that exponentially accelerating progress in Artificial Intelligence will lead a new world that we can't even begin to comprehend before it happens. The point I want to get across is that when we cross a singularity the stuff on the other side seems weird and incomprehensible based on what we knew before.

On Sept 11, 2001 we passed a cultural singularity. Imagine that you fell asleep on Sept 10 and woke up on Oct 10, 2001 and saw this newspaper front page.

In October 2001, I thought about that as I was looking at the front page of the LA Times (I couldn't find a good LA Times front page so the Mirror will have to do.) A man from Sept 10 would have no concept of the world shown on the Mirror's front page! Anthrax? Guys in bio-hazard suits? It's deliberate? The RAF is at war? Wait a minute - backing up US strikes?! Then the US is as war too! A terror war? Fourteen Pages of war coverage!?

This Mirror front page just has 2 stories. The LA Times front page I recall was mostly text and had story after story - None of which made sense to a Sept 10 person.

If you had looked at a paper from Jan 1942 (after skipping a month of existence) you'd see all sorts of stuff about the US involved in WW2 - but WW2 was already running hot a month earlier. The only real surprise would be that US was in it up to its neck.

I was born in 1956. The 9/11 attacks were the most shocking, impactful, non-personal* events of my life. Not the most important event (the end of the cold war, for example, was bigger) but the biggest change.

*I had a massive heart attack a month earlier. That was a personal singularity!

The famous Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times.". Here we are.

(published out of draft by Andy)

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:00 AM | Comments (46)
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Richard Drew, photographer for the Associated Press, took the single most important image of the 21st century. There were those at the moment who argued that taking such a photograph was sick, and onlookers demanded he turn his camera away. "Why can't you be a human being ?" When first published, it spawned thousands of angry letters to numerous newspapers decrying their decision to publish such a very obvious "seconds before death" image.

Photography has the power to capture a singular moment in time, with all its emotions, confusion, and harshness, like no other medium. Moments we may not want to remember are burned into our consciousness with a flash.

I was in a high school science class on 9/11. I remember hearing the announcement over the loudspeaker, then at a break to lunch, a classmate told me it was far worse than what I had overheard. He had been "lucky" enough to be at weight training, wherein a television tuned to CNN bore witness to the collapse of the towers. "People were jumping", he said. That stuck with me, but I simply couldn't comprehend that. In the muted chaos that ensued (I lived in Maryland at the time, and many of my classmates' parents worked in Washington DC), that conversation and that look just locked in.

As a painter, it is easy for me to visualize almost anything. But I had a hard time grasping what had happened. Even replays from earlier broadcasts didn't really kick it home. Then I saw Richard Drew's photograph. The magnitude of the sheer evil that had been brought upon my country was concentrated into a single unknown man, falling in frame in front of the twin towers that would soon join him.

I wonder how we can begin to really describe what we felt that day to the future generations too young to have seen it. You can try to put into words what it was like. You can show them video on YouTube of the towers falling, smoke billowing, people screaming. But there is nothing that has surfaced in the decade since that can summarize the initial feelings of all Americans like the image below.

A few years ago, Esquire magazine published an article by Tom Junod about the photographer who had snapped the picture and the quest to identify the falling man. I will close my post with Drew's photograph and Junod's words:

more...

Posted by: CAC at 03:30 AM | Comments (136)
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God, it was such a beautiful morning that morning. Just perfect. And not just on the east coast, but all the way to Los Angeles. So beautiful. Pristine. Like a gorgeous photograph. And the . . . insanity to come. God, how could we have known?

God, we have to win. We have to.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:11 AM | Comments (249)
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