Far East Cynic

As an extra added bonus-after completing a 4-5 year sea tour, the Navy will send some of you to an IA in  ( pick the hell hole of your choice):

The Navy announced this week that more than 60,000 sailors will be required to spend more time on sea duty.

“Since 2008, the number of sea duty billets has increased, while the number of shore duty billets has decreased,” Capt. Michael White, Navy Personnel Command assistant commander for Career Management, said in a news release.

The change affects 36 ratings, with the sea time being increased from anywhere between six months and two years. Those scheduled to rotate to a new duty station before March 2012 will not have their projected rotation date adjusted, according to the release.

Additionally, there are now 18 job ratings categorized as “sea intensive,” meaning sailors in those jobs can expect to spend more than one-half of their career on sea duty, the Navy said.

I guess getting rid of 14,500 IA’s to free up people for sea duty was just too hard for today.

Over the last couple of days I have been witness to one of those continuing conversations that can only occur in the one dimensional space that is the internet. You know the kind-that actually go back and forth reasonably well-until the zealot shows up. The zealot of course being that young guy, who hasn’t experienced much of life yet-but is sure he can tell someone 40 years older than him, how the world works and how fucked up he is. ( This is a true story-as Foggy is my witness!).

Now the proper thing to do, would have been to hit the delete key and go have a sandwich. But like a moth to the flame-because its about my favorite subject to attack- the tea party loons, I jumped in.

And now after two days, I can now definitely can confirm that-if these men are any example-our university system is in decline big time.

I’ve learned that:

The Interstate Highway system is unconstitutional. Really? ( How fucked in the head is that?)

Secession for Texas would be just fine because it would cut Texan’s taxes. Now mind you-how they are going to make good the hole left by the departure of the state’s biggest employer ( The US government) was blithely ignored. Same too with how Texas would pay for all the things that go with being an independent country-like an Army or an Air Force.

Madison and the Federalist Papers are Holy Writ. Any other historical commentaries are not worth the paper they are printed on. Oh, and those other 54 guys who signed the Constitution? Just strap hangers for James Madison. Never knew that before.

Judicial review and the power of the Supreme Court to strike down laws as unconstitutional is heresy. Same thing seems to be true with the idea of Judicial Precedent. Wow! Think of the money we could save not having to send lawyers to law school or electing or appointing judges! ( Unless it is striking down a law they didn’t like).

Re: Judicial review: Justice Marshall was a power hungry ego-maniac. ( I must have been sick the day they taught that in Constitutional Law class).

If you believe in a progressive income tax-you are automatically a socialist. Ergo, that great defender of imperialism and American Exceptionalism,Theodore Roosevelt, was nothing but Karl Marx in disguise. Wow. Who knew?

We’ve not crossed the barrier of Godwin’s law yet. But we have established a corollary hypothesis. If you defend raising tax revenue, or stick up for poor people who need health care-you will immediately and rather strongly be labeled a socialist. ( Even if you a practicing physician of 45 years experience and have forgotten more about insurance law than most of these pikers will ever know).

Any taxation is theft-there is no such thing as common contribution for the greater good.

Income inequality does not exist in this country. If a guy is rich, and if the top 1% have 40% of the nation’s net worth-it is because they deserve it more. Trying to regulate complex transactions for the purposes of protecting investors is an abomination against man and God.

There is nothing wrong with throwing 1 million people out of work-if it means the unions will get fucked in the process. (REALLY? How can anyone be that heartless and stupid?)

China is a better country than America because……..wait for it…………..” they have a better environment for business because there is no minimum wage, no labor laws, no EPA. no endangered toads, no Social Security and Medicare employer ‘contributions’ and no SEC. It’s the wild west over there, not unlike the US during the nineteenth century. We’re in decline because of a fat and lazy workforce, shrinking producing population, unchecked illegal immigration, and government strangulation by regulation.” ( That’s a keeper. I suspect the author of that statement has never set foot in China, nor has he seen the headlines that occur almost weekly regarding dead Chinese miners, flooded Chinese towns, poor villagers, Chinese killed in train wrecks, or killed by food poisoning, and corrupt Chinese officials-but other than that, Mrs Kennedy, the place is a true paradise.)

Liberals don’t honestly believe anything in their hearts, they are always after something.

Greed is good, its natural, and its the grease that keeps the wheels of commerce turning. Unrestrained greed that causes people to lose 20-50% of the value of their 401K’s? That’s even better.

And of course, the usual Randian “truths” are thrown in their for good measure:Fannie and Freddie caused the housing crisis, the Community Reinvestment act was never a well intentioned to get more people into housing, Clinton was the source of deregulation-not Bush. And his actions were in no way responsible for the lax enforcement of US banking laws. The wars had nothing to do with the problems with the economy or the deficit. ( All factual evidence to the contrary).

Oh, and here is another keeper: ” If Bush and Congress had done nothing about the financial crises when it hit-the recession would be over now and it would be growth city.” ( paraphrase of a much longer-but equally stupid sentiment.)

And of course the overriding truth-the holy of holies-IT IS ALL OBAMA’S FAULT. A Congress filled with unreasonable men and women, elected by an increasingly stupid or apathetic electorate ( where 50% can’t even be bothered to vote) had not a damn thing to do with the problems we now face.

I write about this for one particular reason: if what you read above does not frighten you to your very core-that so many people could be so insane at the same time-then you are just utterly fucking blind.

This is sad. These people really believe these things. They believe it, like they believe the sun will come up tomorrow. They have no doubts whatsoever-even when presented with facts that prove them wrong. To borrow a line from John Cole’s place: “How do you have a sensible policy debate with people who reject basic facts? It’s like trying to debate members of a cargo cult- the modern GOP carry the crosses but have no idea what it means to be Christian. They talk about free markets, but have no understanding of economics. Just say deregulate and tax cuts a lot, and MAGIC WILL HAPPEN. The cargo cult analogy is closer than many of us are comfortable admitting, and our media has decided to just cover their eyes and pretend that it’s just two sides of the same coin. It’s crazy.”

Second, for me at least, it exposes a really ugly truth about out tea swilling, so called “friends”; what I think is most disturbing about the tea party, is that, under the guise of patriotism-they have been enabled to take truly morally reprehensible ideas, things that 10 years ago no one would have had the gall to utter-and main streamed them. Fuck over Grandma? Sure-she was asking for it, that’s what she gets for being a moocher and collecting her Social Security. Ask the rich to pay their fair share? Goddamn Socialist. Thief! Class warfare! Robbing from the rich to give to welfare mommas in Cadillacs. ( Never mind that today’s welfare queens wear 3000 dollar Brooks Brothers suits and run investment banks).

It also proves why Fox Noise is so effective. Spout the same lies over and over again, and ensure you have a blond with big tits and a nice ass on the screen-and people will think its true. ( Candy Crowley need not apply to Fox News).

And yet, these same people will go to church on Sunday, pat them selves on the back and congratulate themselves on what good followers of Christ they are. And they wonder why I have my doubts about the fairness of the Gospel. Where does it say in the Sermon on the Mount, “Fuck the poor”? I must have missed that verse.

And people wonder, why I am pining to go back overseas. If this doesn’t answer your question-you lost the ball after kickoff.

Well, the march of time continues to rush forward. I have to give my company a summary of my course of action tomorrow-so that they can do the things they need to do. Like  my immediate coughing prognosis, the course I have decided upon looks cautiously optimistic, but still very much uncertain. I will only believe its true-when it has come to pass.

As for my physical condition, I am doing somewhat better. I have less coughing spells, but when they do happen-they still can be utterly frightening. The good news is that I am getting through the nights now with only one instance of feeling like I am being water-boarded. This is in contrast to the four or so when this started. I finish my antibiotics today, and will consult with the doctor this week as to whether more are required. I went Thursday and completed a baseline physical to establish my self as a new patient. There is something to be said for the smaller size of women’s fingers. .

I must be sick. I have not had a drop of alcohol in over two weeks. I don’t feel like having any either. That sucks.

I had a quite a scare yesterday. A hard fit came over me at breakfast-so much so that I went down for the count sending Frosted Flakes and milk flying. Scared the hell out of both me and the S.O. since then-I have taken to trying to eat like an old man, eating very slowly and not talking while eating. Damned unsociable-but it appears to work.  Twenty years of shipboard eating habits are hard to undo in a week however. ( Those who know-know. Brief finished-and eat in 15 minutes prior to manup). I could not do that today-if my life depended on it. ( Actually I feel like my life depends on doing the opposite).

Work-wise, I keep feeling like things are going to come along and blow up in my face-but I don’t know why. Particularly because I think I have a path forward, and it seems a good one. There are some challenges in executing it-but nothing that can’t be overcome with a little diligence. ( and improved health).

I am nursing a fair amount of stress right now-and also a LARGE amount of anger at the miserable creatures who created this position for me. The lies that have been told to justify what they have done to so many people are numerous. The sad part is, they appear not to care about the damage done. Nothing will change here till the man at the top is gone.  However-committing to a course of action seems to have settled me down a bit. Still about ten unknowns, however, that have to fall into place. Until they do-its not a done deal.

If you want some insight to the contracting strategy used by the worst agency in the Federal Government, look here for yourself:

But on the plus side-the weather is nice, I’ve got food in the pantry-and hope for the future. A lot of people in this world don’t have those things. So I will count myself as a lucky man.

Tiger Woods takes on three Japanese women at once! ( As only Tiger Woods of late can). How embarrassing will it be if he gets his ass kicked?

Tiger Woods, who barely qualified for his own charity tournament, has announced that he will compete in a charity golf event in Japan on November 1 against three top women.

“Challenge! Tiger Woods” will be staged at the Masters Golf Club in Miki City, where the Japanese LPGA’s Ladies Masters is contested, with Woods playing nine holes against JLPGA Tour members Miho Koga, Shinobu Moromizato and Rui Kitada.

Woods took part in a 2006 charity event at the same club to help boost the development of youth golf in Japan.

The three Japanese prefectures most devastated by earthquakes and the tsunami last March will each receive Y45 million ($570,000) in donations from the event to fund relief efforts.

Woods will return to US PGA action October 6-9 at the Frys.com Open in San Martin, California, and travels to Asia before joining the US team in trying to retain the Presidents Cup against an International side in November at Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

Woods fell three spots to 49th in the world rankings released on Monday, but remains eligible for the Chevron World Challenge charity event he will host December 1-4 at Sherwood Country Club in Southern California.

The annual event to benefit Woods’ foundation is limited to players ranked in the top 50 in the world as of Monday after a deal two years ago that allows world ranking points to be offered at the tournament.

That limited the Challenge to two sponsor exemptions for top-50 players.

The doctor saw me last Thursday. And I saw her. ( I have now formally abandoned my previous doctor-for reasons I will soon explain). The S.O. dragged me to her doctor-after three days where I was not getting better, just coughing and coughing-so hard I ended up on the floor, and I don’t remember how I got there.

The doctor did a battery of tests, including sticking a swab up my nose almost into my brain ( at least it felt that way). Want to know why? Because she suspected I might have pertussis.. That’s right, disease you are vaccinated against in childhood, but evidently the Navy neglected to give me a booster shot for in my 40′s. The doctor felt she needed to test for it when she heard I had gotten back from Eastern Europe. And she was right.

As a result I had a nice chat with a public health professional who informed me the disease is making a comeback in the US and around the world. Part of the US problem has been the solid group of folks who have taken to not vaccinating their children due to fears of autism. Whatever the reason,  I am stuck with it now. And it takes a while to heal. ( probably 5-6 weeks). The doctor said because they found it early-the course of antibiotics I am on should significantly lesson the symptoms, but at the same time I am going to have to also let this thing run its course. The fact that I am under more than a little stress right now figuring out which future outcome I will be walking down-does not help matters much.

According to the public health guy-it could have come from anywhere: being in a taxi with someone who had it, the subway, even just spending 10 hours breathing recycled air on the plane. ( Although the doctor thinks based on timing, I probably picked it up in Romania).

I was very concerned about the S.O. she has been around me since I got home. She has no symptoms-but the doctor put her on antibiotics as a preventive measure. Which is what you are supposed to do. According to the guy, I’ve got about two weeks of hard coughing, which gets worse at night. Then I should see it gradually decline and I will get better.

So let this be a warning to you. If you are in mid-life and have not had a booster shot, ask your doctor about it. According to the CDC adults should get a booster shot every ten years. For the life of me-I don’t recall getting one my entire time in the Navy-and I got shots for just about everything.

Which brings me to my doctor. I went to see him-complaining of what was wrong with me. He just dismissed it as a viral infection and said I would have to fight it off on my own.  Even though I had the same symptoms as I had three days later when I saw the S.O.’s doctor. I’m done with him. And while its not a good idea to have the same doctor as the S.O.-for now it will have to do.

UPDATE! It is 2AM-and I am up when I should be sleeping. Why? Because if I lay down-its only a matter of time before I up doubled over the bed afraid I am drowning. I now know what it feels like to be waterboarded, I think.

This blows! I actually coughed so hard I got hypoxic-for some reason if I am sitting up, hunched forward, I don’t cough as much. Nights are so much worse than days.

Paul Ryan as CEO of a major multi-national corporation:

Splits Romania into two distinct regions. North and West of them-you are in Transylvania. Go South and East or West-you are in a flat region that resembles Kansas.

But in the moutains-one can forget the noisy bustle of Bucharest, and also the heat of that city. Thus when I went to Sinaia during this last trip-I took some pictures:

The view from the top of our 1800 meter climb:

Because it was so much cooler up here-King Carol I built a castle here: Peles.

You can see the rest of the moutain pictures here

One of my favorite pictures of the S.O. Can you guess where it was taken?

The S.O. dragged me to her doctor yesterday. It confirmed for me why I need to change doctors. First they found that this a bacterial infection of my sinuses. Thus my head feels like it is going to explode when I cough-which is a lot. (Much to the chagrin of my co-workers). So after a battery of X-rays, blood tests and an thorough examination. I am now taking anti-biotics and sleeping a lot.

Problem is-it appears the S.O. is coming down with the same thing. Two of us sick at the same time is not a bright prospect to think about. Neither one of us is in shape to take care of the other.

This weekend ought to be fun.

So I will steer you to the rather scathing indictment of Rick Perry, my Canadian Counterpart penned a couple of days ago. Its great-analyzing in detail why Perry and his retarded followers are the really deluded people they are:

Modern Republicans aren’t conservatives: They’re liberals with even more inhuman priorities. They differ from Obama only in how they want to funnel the public lucre to Wall Street kleptocrats. The current president wants to directly subsidize the criminal cocksuckers, whereas idiots like Sarah Palin want to do it through the fucking tax code. Today’s welfare queens are wearing $3,000 Brooks Brothers suits. Or they’re farmers. But they’re all welfare queens, and the GOP wants to be their sugar daddy.

Which brings me to Rick Perry. Governor Perry might be the perfect Republican, full to the brim of what people imagine Ronald Reagan was, while remaining woefully ignorant of his actual record as both governor and president. Perry, like the overwhelming majority of modern Republicans, isn’t just at war with science, he doesn’t cotton well with math and history, either.

Rick is a Texan, who like most of his kind pretends to be more American than anyone else, all the while nurturing a healthy secession fetish that most reasonable people would consider treasonous. Your average balanced adult would recognize this as schitzophrenic, but, luckily for Perry, psychitary is a science, and science is something that Republican primary voters see as demonic and something that should be stuff in a well, if only they could find a well big enough.

The Governor has openly mused about seccession at least four times in the last two years, which has to be a post-Jefferson Davis record. I’ve read more than my share – and yours – about the life and career of George Wallace, and I can tell you that he never considered secession an option, even as he battled to preserve the evil of Jim Crow in Alabama. More importantly, despite running four times, Governor Wallace was never considered a frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination.

He also has our tri-corner hat wearing “friends” described pretty well too-and in the process exposes the truth about what a thug Rick Perry really is:

What Republicans and Tea Partiers are too awesomely stupid or desperately dishonest to tell you is that the Ryan Plan basically does the same thing to Medicare, except that it limits coverage instead of expanding it. If anything, the Ryan plan is more inflationary to coverage costs than even ObamaCare is because the lack of an individual mandate doesn’t broaden the coverage pool and minimize the risk to insurers. Facts are annoying things, which is why simpletons like Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are so popular with the GOP’s fuckhead base. They simply make up their own facts and intellectual misfits celebrate them for it.

My reasons for hating Rick Perry are many for they are legion. Firstly, his public talk of secession makes him little more than a fiucking traitor who, in more honest times, would have been hanged. Second, I believe that he murdered an innocent man – Cameron Todd Willingham – and spent years covering it up, undermining my faith in the death penalty in the process. Third, he’s a creation of Karl Rove, and Rove has never elected a candidate that didn’t go on to destroy everything he touched. Fourth, Governor Perry actually personifies the Republican elevation of stupidity into a goddamned virtue. Palin and Bachmann are, if nothing else, highly fuckable, which can’t be said of Perry.

Not that it matters much. Rick Perry isn’t going to be the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney is. It’s Romney’s turn, and that’s just how the GOP has operated since the days of Eisenhower. If Romney doesn’t get the nod, he’d be the first runner-up from a previous cycle to not get the nomination since Bob Taft in 1952. The fact that Romney is a soulless whore of the Giuliani mold and destined to have his ass handed to him by Barack Obama is incidental.

In a lot of ways, that’s too bad. The Republican Party needs to flush this nonsense out of their systems with a Goldwater scale electoral blowout every so often. It brings them back to reality.

That’s not to say that Barry Goldwater would be a Tea Partier today. He was the furthest thing from it. He was for a small government across the board, including on moronic social issues that he mostly stayed the fuck away from because he understood that homosexuals are not the business of the federal government. He hated the Chritianist busybody motherfuckers that embody the Tea Party with a fury that no subsequent Republican imagines even existing today.

And that is why I will continue to mock our Galtian Overlords at every opportunity. Now if you will excuse me-I have to go barf up a lung.

For the term “Galtian Overlords”-which I was asked to define today. Now I would assume that anyone who has been around the last few years would understand the reference, but considering the state of decay of America’s educational system and our news outlets ( with a few great exceptions) may be not.

So here is a the term well defined for you:

The letter:

Help — what does “Galtian Overlords” mean? I mean, I get who you’re talking about, but what is the reference to?

Thanks,

Rosalind

Our response (before we’d had any coffee, mind you):

Dear Rosalind,

In the children’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, there is a running refrain among the characters that goes like this:

“Who is John Galt?”

John Galt is, it goes without saying, a superhuman business genius extraordinaire. He also lacks any sense of civic duty, being a man-child narcissist of the first order. Anyway, long story short, ever since Barack Obama was elected president, there have been empty threats from various right-wingers and libertarians — people who think rather too highly of themselves — about “Going Galt.” To wit, dropping out of society and keeping the spoils of their hard-earned labor all to themselves. Many of these people don’t seem to realize that the rest of the country doesn’t give a fuck about their empty threats, and yet the threats have continued. “I’m going Galt, and I’m taking away my productivity, and let’s see if society can survive without me, harrumph!” To which America replies with a shrug. “Go ahead,” says America, “see if I give a flying fuck about you selfish assholes.”

So that takes care of the “Galtian” part. “Overlords” are overlords. “Our Galtian overlords” is, then, something of a joke. We make fun of selfish rich people with visions of grandeur, because we know full well that Ayn Rand and her characters are mostly idolized by disaffected high school students, not anybody who matters (because, you know, most people grow up, their acne clears, and they free themselves from their solipsistic bubbles). That said, there are indeed rich man-children who consider Rand to be a good writer and a deep thinker. Some of them have gotten press attention. Last summer, in the wake of the passage of Obamacare and at the height of the silliness, many outraged fellow citizens were warning that they might “Go Galt,” and that America would be doomed were they to do so. (These people did not, apparently, realize that with an unemployment rate of 10%, there would be plenty of qualified candidates to fill their positions once they’d left — again, the trouble with narcissism.)

“Our Gatian overlords,” then, are the acolytes of Ayn Rand, whose lack of self-awareness and inflated sense of self-importance (thinking that if they alone don’t pay taxes, America is screwed, e.g.) are symptoms of a larger cultural decay and a shirking of civic responsibility. They are the kids on the playground who always hogged the kickball — and moreover they are the kids who went running to the teacher if somebody else deigned to hog it, for even just a moment, because “THAT’S NOT FAIR, I’M BETTER THAN YOU!!!”

They are a scourge. They must be defeated.

All the best,

Tom O’Hare, editor

I have been very sick for the last few days. Coughing up a lung or two, and spending a lot more time on the porcelain than I care to. I’d be in bed right now-except the cough won’t let me sleep. Have been to the doctor twice-his advice of “it probably a virus and you’ll just have to work out of it” just didn’t sit well with me. Drugs-and lots of them please!

Add to that the general malaise of having to watch the news these days. So many things to be disgusted with so little time.

Lets start with the feigned outrage from the hypocrites right wing bloggers ready to take up pitchforks and burn Paul Krugman at the stake for his Sunday blog post.  And then when decided to revise and extend his remarks- it simply set these ignorant fools off a second time. As is the case for most of the red staters and aficionados of mil-blog land, they of course could not read what he actually wrote-much less understand it. They certainly seem to have forgotten a lot of the history.

Krugman’s timing was exceedingly poor-he could have waited a couple of days and posted the same thing. By posting it on 9-11 he knew it would set off anger, and he rightfully closed comments-especially when he would have to endure the bile that passes for “knowledge” among a certain set of ill informed readers.

Now if you read the preceding post by moi-I think I made it pretty clear, it is impossible to look at events of the last ten years in isolation. And the simple truth of the matter-like it or not, is that in our reaction ( or overreaction) to the events of that tragic Tuesday-we placed the nation pell mell on course that has done neither it, or the rest of the world, any real favors. An Afghan war that is going on for over decade, a foolhardy invasion of Iraq that accomplished little of benefit to the United States, killed a 100 times more people than were killed on 9-11, and left Iraq still a relative basket case; consider too, the total abrogation of Constitutional principles of freedom of speech, freedom from unreasonable searches, freedom from self incrimination and freedom from cruel and unusal punishment-all of which the country-led by guess who-tossed to the wind, quite casually and with malice aforthought. That does not even get into the overall economic effects of the wars-which can only be described as the equivalent of a self inflicted serious wound. And yea-there is a lot to hang your head down and be disgusted about.  The Grey Hair was the father of all this. Much as he and his minions-including the second worst SECDEF ever-try to explain it all away, they can’t. They brought this on the nation-and now most of our politics is about arguing over what is the right way to get out of the mess he created. If that is not something to be ashamed of-I don’t know what its.

But spare me the pious lectures and overwrought moralizing,  you morons. Especially from a group that will turn around and cheer morally reprhensible ideas like the death penalty and letting somone die due to lack of health insurance. Your cries about you hurt feelings fall more than a little short. Your morality is selelctive-as is you compassion. Its the luxury only selfish people can afford I guess.

 Similarly the execution of hundreds, while perhaps defensible politically and even morally (although I differ), is nonetheless a brutal, awful business. You don’t delight in it. And the same is true of torture. Even if you want to defend its use in limited circumstances, it remains an absolute evil, no humane person would want to do it, and no civilized person would brag of it or dismiss any moral issue with it at all. And yet that is what Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney have repeatedly done. They are positively proud of their torture record.

And it just keeps repeating. At the Monday night Tea Party debate, we heard more of the same drivel about any myriad of subjects. Bachmann reciting lies about the HPV vaccine-one of the few things Perry actually got right. All of the candidates blabbering lies about Social Security, which is actually relatively easy to fix-if we only had the gumption to look at the correct prescriptions ( and yes tax increases are in that menu-get over it stooges). Of course when it came to taxes in general they repeated the same lie we have been hearing for years: “tax cuts grow the economy”. Except when they don’t -like over the last ten years.

And of course there is the general reaction to the President’s jobs bill. I view it as too little too late, but even then its at least a start. Which is why our Galtian overlords are already sharpening their knives to chop the bill into little pieces. Do something about the economy? Not a chance. These pricks want it to get worse. They don’t care about the fact that poverty is now at its highest level, as is the number of uninsured. To the fat selfish pigs who wear tri-corner hats and whine about “moochers”, that’s a feature, not a bug-so long as it will get that damn guy in the White House out in 2012. So they can begin their own installation of an American theocracy-underpinned by war without end in 2013. I get so disgusted with these people-I want to reach through the TV and beat them.

Now that’s something to remember and mourn-especially as it plays out over the next 14 months.

Yes, I remember exactly where I was that day. I had been out and about and had just returned to the BOQ where I was living then. The S.O. called me and told me the World Trade Center had been attacked. I thought there was a mistake in translation somewhere. I flipped on NHK and then saw the truth-right about the time the first tower collapsed.

I know people who were working in the Pentagon that day. That was equally horrific as was the tragic loss of Flight 93 that day.

Jeffery Goldberg has expressed it well-”That is the crucial truth of 9/11. Osama Bin Laden had gathered to him men who were devoid of love, and who found in al Qaeda a vehicle for expressing their hatred of humanity. On the 10th anniversary of the murderous rampage committed by soulless men, we should remember the victims, and count our own blessings, and recommit ourselves to the suppression of evil and the protection of the innocent. ”

I will always remember and will never forget. But in doing so, it also means that I will never forget what came in its aftermath, much of which was-to put it bluntly-misdirected effort, in response to a unique event, the likes of which most of us had never seen before.

Its important, therefore, to look at 9-11 for what it is, a deliberate act of cold blooded murder. The fact that is so does not, however, provide a blanket absolution for the the myriad of flawed events that followed in its wake.  We have extracted our vengance for that horrible day a 100 times over.  The cost of doing so has been huge-and we will debate the wisdom of those subsequent decisions for years.

Guys like Dick Cheney, and George Bush and others-believe the horror of 9-11 gives them a pass on responsibility for flawed decision making subsequent to the event. I say no. The rat holes of the wars that have been pursued in the years following , and the very avoidable -and equally tragic-costs, cannot be just wiped away just because we were the victims on a particular day.

We can though, remember that day with honor-and vow to move forward into a better future than what those murderers tried to inflict upon us. All of our worlds changed that day-and I for one wish that day could be undone.  I want my world of September 10, 2011 back. But its never coming back.

9-11 will always be with us. But we can work hard to restore the world that once was before.

Comments are closed on this post.

Sitting in the lounge at Frankfurt, before boarding my flight back to DC fft Shopping Mall USA. Something will come to a head regarding my future situation next week, I am sure. Exactly how, I am not sure though. So I resigned to enjoy the good life before it comes to a screeching halt.

Which probably means I’ll get to see briefs like these:

My time here in Romania is almost done. I doubt I will be coming back here again. Its been three good trips here-I have most seen the mountains and Bucharest, not near all the country has to offer.

But enough. I’ve gotten to work and experience life in a European capital and that is more than I get to do in Shopping Mall USA, no matter which of my (insert bleak future prospects here) I end up in.

And as a bonus it has kept me from the lunancy that is American politics these days. Especially since Rick Perry entered the Presidential race. UGGH.

The man is George Bush on steroids. About as ignorant of how real economics works too. What I find most interesting is that , similar to Bush, Perry is backtracking on just about every major political pronouncement he has made in his public life-this so he can enthrall himself with the gang of douchebag tea party losers who now constitute the heart and soul of the modern Republican party.

But if you look hard enough-the facts are there to see about the man. You just have to have the courage to recognize them.

1) His so called “jobs miracle”

It is not really a miracle at all. Texas was just slower than other states to enter the recession, thanks in large part to high energy prices. ( A gift from his predecessor George Bush and his obsession with fighting worthless Arabs). But eventually Texas unemployment rose, at about the same percentage as the rest of the country, because the economy elsewhere had soured.

2) Texas has lower rates of default on housing.

That one is true-but only because Texas has much stricter laws than the rest of the states. It is the antithesis of Perry’s message about less government.

3) Texas has a lot of population growth.

Texas, like the rest of the south has a lot of military bases. So that makes for a lot of government work. Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed.

So the bottom line is Texas is just like the rest of the country, and no matter how many lies Perry tells now, it still does not change the facts of the situation.

And I won’t even touch his pecularly whacked out religious beliefs or his endorsement of secession. ( Didn’t we settle that 150 years ago?).

And next week I get to go back to all this fun and games again.