Four walls can barely contain this much smart

If you think you've seen Chris Hayes all over the place the last few weeks, it's because you have. Over the last year, Hayes has been doing the Rachel Maddow Training Path gig of subbing for as many MSNBC hosts as possible. When he first started appearing on television, Hayes was a walking argument against drinking too much of the Official Coffee of Morning Schmoe, but as he's become more comfortable in front of the camera, his overcaffeinated bounciness has largely been tamed into a kind of youthful puppylike enthusiasm -- or at least it was until MSNBC gave him his own show, which premiered yesterday morning at the ungodly hour of 7 AM, and today at the almost as ungodly hour of 8 AM.

It's really kind of disingenuous for MSNBC to on the one hand recognize just how ferociously smart (and yeah, ok, cute) Hayes is, clearly want to flog the show enough to make even Joey "Dead Intern" Scarborough have a REAL progressive on as a guest instead of calling that unctuous tool Mark Halperin one; and on the other hand bury him at a time when almost no one in his target audience is awake yet. But if you are one of our younger readers, and you don't yet have a DVR, get one. Or watch online. But even if you are older than the target audience, which I am, it's really worth your while to get up early and see what a Sunday morning news talk show can be when it's NOT completely populated by Beltway dinosaurs who have been spouting the same relentlessly wrong and misguided conventional wisdom for decades. I mean seriously -- does anyone still actually care what George Will says, or Cokie Roberts, or Doris Kearns Goodwin? It would be one thing if these people were using a lifetime of observation of Washington to provide insight and perspective into what's going on today. But if you've watched what Driftglass so charmingly and accurately calls the Mouse Circus lately, you've no doubt wanted to stick an icepick in your own eye and lobotomize yourself just to make Teh Moronic Platitudes stop.

It's clear that unlike conventional Sunday gasbag shows, which parade out the same Republicans week after week, followed by a panel of irrelevances primly having the vapors over President Obama daring to question his Republican Overlords, Up with Chris Hayes (a title which both snarks at and embraces Hayes' chirpy, bouncy overcaffeinated chipmunk persona) is going to be light on guests, perhaps because there are few political figures who are going to be willing to put on full makeup and go into a studio for a 7 AM live interview with a guy who sounds like he's been up all night drinking Starbucks and fueled by the tray of pastries prominently displayed on the interview table, still has another six hours in him. Still, Hayes managed to score an interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for his debut show, which was followed on Sunday by an expression of frustration to his special guest and BFF Rachel Maddow (who was resplendently geeky in full Nerdy McNerdlington regalia) at how you can't get these people to say anything beyond their talking points.

The panel looks like it's going to consist of a few young think-tankers and high-end bloggers, one libertarian-leaning conservative, and a token Old Guy. Saturday's panel consisted of the ubiquitous MSNBC correspondent/HuffPo political blogger Alex Wagner, liberal comic John Fugelsang, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, and American Conservative blogger Michael Dougherty. Sunday's panel included the equally overcaffeinated frequent Real Time with Bill Maher guest Reihan Salam, the aforementioned Rachel Maddow, New York Times correspondent and former Salon writer Rebecca Traister, and Pam Spaulding lookalike Heather McGhee of Demos. The Old Guy role was played today by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY-8) who surprisingly didn't seem at all out of place, perhaps because he is not among the gasbags to be invited to the Mouse Circus.

There's a ridiculous amount of content packed into these four hours of weekend television, which often seem paced as if they are running at 78rpm in a 33-1/3 rpm genre. But especially when you watch Chris Hayes banter with Rachel Maddow and his young panel, it makes you remember what intelligent political discourse used to look like, before Sally Quinn came along and conducted the unholy marriage between Washington politicians and the journalists who cover them. And as a special bonus? The show is executive-produced by original Morning Sedition producer Jonathan "Smartypants" Larsen.

Watch. Enjoy. You just might explode from an excess of smart:

Labels: Chris Hayes, punditry, Rachel Maddow, smart people

This needs no further comment from me:



(via)

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, just another outrage, right-wing hatemongers, Ugly Americans

There's no good news for Democrats ANYWHERE.

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy has died:

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, suffered a heart attack and died late Friday evening, sources confirm to ABC News. She was 51.

In 2002, Kara Kennedy, the oldest daughter of Ted and Joan Kennedy, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

With her father’s help, she found a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who removed a portion of her lung as part of the treatment. Five years later, her mother told the Boston Globe that Kennedy was cancer free and was running five miles a day.

“My daughter was my best friend,” Joan Kennedy said today. “She stayed with me all summer long in Hyannisport. … We had a wonderful summer together.

“She was beloved by everybody who knew her. She was beloved by all of her cousins,” she said. “So many people have been calling me today and it makes me feel good to know how much everybody loved her.”

In August 2009, Kennedy gave a touching reading of Psalm 72 at her father’s funeral at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston.

Ted Kennedy often prayed at Our Lady in 2003 while his daughter was being treated for lung cancer at the nearby hospital.

Kara Anne Kennedy was born February 27, 1960. She has two siblings, Teddy Jr. and Patrick, the former congressman.

She was a graduate of Tufts University and was a producer for VSA arts, a non profit organization founded by her aunt Jean Kennedy Smith.

She was also on the board for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome along with her cousin William Kennedy Smith.

Previously she was a producer for the television program Evening Magazine at WBZ-TV in Boston.

She was married to Michael Allen, a professional sailor, in 1990 and they had two children, Grace and Max.

Kara Kennedy was one of the rare people who survives for more than five years after being treated for lung cancer. Word is that she died suddenly at a Washington-area health club. A heart attack is suspected.

And Eleanor Mondale, daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale, has died at the same age. Mondale had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2005, which recurred in 2008.

It's one thing to look at data from clinical trials of cancer treatments to try to solve a system problem. It's quite another when you realize that this data is about actual, living people. And a double-whammy like this makes us realize what a long way we are from combating this disease.

Labels: Democrats, obituaries

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about the Obama Administration's political people thinking that they know best in the face of all evidence that their boss' presidency is crumbling around him is how vulnerable we all are to this Administration's blind hubris.

Ian Milhiser at Center for American Progress writes about what this country will look like under Tea Party doctrine, and even Americans who support the Tea Party now will be in for a very rude and unpleasant awakening when they see what it looks like:

In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.

At least, that’s what would happen if the Tea Party succeeds in its effort to reimagine the Constitution as an antigovernment manifesto. While the House of Representatives pushes Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out Medicare, numerous members of Congress, a least one Supreme Court justice, and the governor of America’s second-largest state now proudly declare that most of the progress of the last century violates the Constitution.

It is difficult to count how many essential laws would simply cease to exist if the Tea Party won its battle to reshape our founding document, but a short list includes:

• Social Security and Medicare
  
• Medicaid, children's health insurance, and other health care programs
  
• All federal education programs
  
• All federal antipoverty programs
  
• Federal disaster relief
  
• Federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs
  
• Child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections
  
• Federal civil rights laws
  Indeed, as this paper explains, many state lawmakers even embrace a discredited constitutional doctrine that threatens the union itself.
  

What’s at stake

The Tea Party imagines a constitution focused entirely upon the Tenth Amendment, which provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—which is why their narrow vision of the nation’s power is often referred to as “tentherism.” In layman’s terms, the Tenth Amendment is simply a reminder that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations—and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress’s authority.

Social Security? Gone. Medicare? Gone. Medicaid? Gone. Education? Subject to the whims of communities, some of which will send a generation of children out in a world of technological advancement believing that a giant man in the sky created the world in six days and refusing all evidence to the contrary. E coli in your child's hamburger and salmonella in his lettuce and unregulated pesticide residue in the tomato slice?? All A-OK in Tea Party America. Hurricane destroy yourself? It's your own fault for not living in a stronger house. You're on your own. You don't get your paycheck this week? Tough luck. Neighbor leaving threatening letters in your mailbox because he doesn't like people of your religion or race or sexual orientation? Too bad, you have no federal protection, and if the local police hate you too, you are shit out of luck.

That's Tea Party America -- a mean-spirited, venal, hateful, place of raw social Darwinism; a highly ironic condition given the penchant of Teabaggers to call themselves "Chritians" -- so-called Christians who have obviously never read the Sermon on the Mount.

And yet here we are, with a Republican frontrunner who makes George W. Bush look like Mother Teresa by comparison, and an incumbent Democratic president and a campaign team who utterly refuse to look at how dispirited the people who voted for him are. And so it is highly likely that on January 20, 2013, we will be living in a nation that even those who profess to support the Tea Party agenda won't even recognize. And it will be too late.

So here we are, those of us still living in the reality-based community, with a choice of voting for an inept, out-of-touch president who has sold us out to the Republicans at every turn, or a very dangerous theocratic sociopath. Just how dangerous remains to be seen.

Labels: Barack Obama, cluelessness, damned if you do and damned if you don't, Democratic sellouts, Rick Perry

All you have to do is say "ACORN!" and wingnuts go into a frenzy:

A non-existent organization that previously helped poor people "destroy the country" by voting could get up $15 billion in taxpayer money under Obama's jobs bill, according to conservative columnist Matthew Vadum.

Vadum, who previously wrote that it was "profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country," writes that a draft version of the jobs bill "makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding."

"Section 261 of the bill provides $15 billion for 'Project Rebuild.' Grants would be given to 'qualified nonprofit organizations, businesses or consortia of eligible entities for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed-upon properties and for the stabilization of affected neighborhoods,'" Vadum writes.

"Radical groups like ACORN won't get the whole $15 billion, though, because they will have to compete with state and local governments for the money," he continues.

This is all, of course, contingent upon the fact that ACORN exists. Which it doesn't.

Nevertheless, be on the lookout, says Vadum. "Like the T-1000 in "Terminator 2" ACORN can be slowed down but it will just continue to regroup under different names, and operate out of the same offices," reads the caption on the photo in his story.

One can only imagine what they do when the oak trees start dropping their squirrel food in the fall.

Labels: ACORN, batshit crazies, boogeymen, right-wing hatemongers

I guess he just looked sane when compared to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Because what else other than batshittery explains this:

Mitt Romney yesterday praised former Vice President Dick Cheney, saying he would seek a running mate who shared many traits of longtime, and often controversial, political figure.

At a town hall meeting in a retirement community in Arizona, Romney was asked whether he would name a Tea Party person as his vice presidential nominee. He didn’t answer directly, instead saying that his “overwhelming critera” was that they be ready to become president.

“I think it was last weekend I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues -- following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world,” Romney said, according to MSNBC . “And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States.”

“That’s the kind of persona I’d like to have – a person of wisdom and judgment,” he added.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, batshit crazies, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney

Yes, Americans who do not buy health insurance must take the consequences of their actions, according to Ron Paul. What he didn't tell you is that part of that "taking the consequences" is leaving behind $400,000 in medical bills for your family to pay:


Once again, I ask you: Exactly what of this (and like the Carlin clip about how you're not in the club, I'm going to post it as many times as I have to), is not true?

Labels: And people want this lunatic to be president?, batshit crazies, Greedy Republican Bastards, Ron Paul

I still think that the Money Guys who ran the Republican Party are going to rally behind Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, who has demonstrated again and again that he's for sale for the right price, is someone with whom the Money Guys thought they could do business, but the only deity the Money Guys worship is Mammon, and Rick Perry can't necessarily be relied on, since he refuses to tone down the religious batshittery even to run for president.

I realize who his audience was here, but this is 100% consistent with his Apostolic Reformation beliefs.

One can only wonder what those Americans who are not Christian face under a possible Perry presidency after seeing this (emphasis mine):

Perry said Americans need more Christian values in general. “It is important that [Christian leaders] stand in the pulpit every day and defend those values, those Christian values,” Perry said. “America is going to be guided by some set of values. The question is going go to be: Whose values?”

The Texas governor said he believes America will be guided by “the Christian values that this country was based upon.”

And if you don't subscribe to Perry's notion of Christian values? Who knows? He's already perfectly comfortable with executing those who have done no wrong.

Labels: batshit crazies, Christian Dominionism, Christofascist Zombie Brigade, dangerous religious freaks

I guess the Republicans don't want to deal with all that Supreme Court nonsense in the unlikely event that the popular vote in 2012 is close:

Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election—not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. That's not all: There's no legal way for Democrats to stop them.

The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college. Every political junkie knows that the presidential election isn't a truly national contest; it's a state-by-state fight, and each state is worth a number of electoral votes equal to the size of the state's congressional delegation. (The District of Columbia also gets three votes.) There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs; win 270, and you're the president.

Here's the rub, though: Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes—one for each of the state's two senators—would go to the statewide winner.)

This could cost Obama dearly. The GOP controls both houses of the state Legislature plus the governor's mansion—the so-called "redistricting trifecta"—in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state's congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats.

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for winning the state. Since Obama would lose 12 electoral votes relative to the winner-take-all baseline, this would have an effect equivalent to flipping a medium-size winner-take-all state—say, Washington, which has 12 electoral votes—from blue to red.* And Republicans wouldn't even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.

You have to give the Republicans credit for initiative and ingenuity. They always seem to find a way to work the system to their advantage. In this case, however, I just don't think it's necessary. So many voters who came out for Barack Obama in 2008 are so dispirited that they're unlikely to even show up next year in sufficient numbers to neutralize Republican efforts like this, or vote suppression laws, and the other shenanigans they've been up to since 2012 to ensure Republican victories at the ballot box. The only questions remaining now are whether the Money Guys or the Teabaggers will get to pick the Republican nominee, and whether the Republican president that's going to be elected next year is going to be named "Mitt Romney" or "Rick Perry", or who knows, perhaps, even "Jeb Bush."

Too bad the Republicans don't realize they already have a Republican president. His name is Barack Obama.

Labels: 2012 election, election shenanigans, vote suppression

A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.

-Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1918)



NAACP:

Troy Davis is running out of time. On September 21st, the state of Georgia is set to execute Davis for murdering a white police officer, despite the fact that seven out of nine witnesses have recanted and the judge called his own ruling "not ironclad."

Other witnesses have since come forward with conflicting accounts of the crime, and even pointed towards another man as the killer. And perhaps most shocking, there was never any DNA evidence linking Troy to the crime.

There is too much doubt to execute Troy Davis, and it is up to us to make Troy's voice heard.

Start now by sending a message to the Georgia Paroles Board, which has a final hearing for Troy on Monday, September 19. Tell them there is too much doubt to execute Troy Davis.

Change.org:

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

My brother, Troy Davis, has been on Georgia's death row for 20 years despite strong evidence of his innocence. His execution date is now scheduled for Wed, Sept 21. He has a hearing in front of the GA Board of Pardons & Parole two days beforehand.We need to tell the Board strongly and clearly: There's too much doubt to execute Troy Davis!

The case against my brother Troy consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. Since then, seven out of nine witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony.

Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis. Here is what one had to say:

“I got tired of them harassing me, and they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear. I told them that Troy told me he did it, but it wasn’t true."

We need to tell the Board strongly and clearly: There's too much doubt to execute Troy Davis!

Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, we must all agree that the guilty party is the person who should be punished for crimes committed. Punishing innocent people certainly happens, but the death penalty should never, never be applied when doubts about guilt exist.

Please sign one or both of these petitions. What you say, what you do, matter.

Crossposted at Poor Impulse Control.

This is what happens when you do the bidding of Republicans. You can outdo even THEIR presidents and they still treat you as if you're Karl Marx.

Eleanor Clift:

Obama has invested so much time demonizing the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich that he has obscured the true narrative of his presidency. Class-war rhetoric aside, Obama is one of the most prolific tax cutters in recent history, with a record that puts him squarely alongside that of George W. Bush.

Crunching the numbers at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, analyst Michael Linden found that if one compares the cost of tax cuts in just the first four years of Bush’s term (2001–04) to the first four years of Obama's (2009–12), Obama’s tax cuts are bigger. The value of the Bush tax cuts were about $475 billion in those first four years, or about 1.1 percent of GDP. Obama’s total about $1 trillion, or 1.6 percent of GDP.

Obama has cut taxes to lower levels than Bush did, says Linden. This is because, of course, Obama thus far has extended all of the Bush tax cuts and then cut taxes on top of that. His original stimulus bill in 2009 had $290 billion in Making Work Pay tax cuts. His speech Thursday night before Congress advocated for another $175 billion in payroll tax cuts, which come on top of $110 billion from last December’s budget deal. Speeded-up expensing for business adds another $10 billion or so.

All in all, Obama is responsible for many billions in tax cuts, yet the popular perception is that he has raised taxes.

Because he has sat silently by while allowing Republicans to call him whatever they want. But of course he can't fight back, that would be unseemly and not in the spirit of Washington comity.

The logical response to this is that obviously tax cuts don't work as economic stimulus and it's time to stop doing it. But that would require courage.

Labels: Barack Obama, taxes, wussy-ass Democrats

Let's face it. We all know just as sure as we're sitting here that Barack Obama's "jobs bill" is going to be gutted by the house so that it includes nothing but tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the Senate will mewl ineffectually, and it will go to Obama's desk as a tax cut bill, where he will sign it and tell us that it's a bipartisan triumph. We've read this script so many times before it's a wonder that they don't just skip the kabuki theatre and go right to the mass execution of everyone who isn't a CEO.

So it's not like many of us see voting Democratic as any kind of an alternative or brake on the sheer meanness that is today's Republican Party.

But some of the reactions of the teabagger audience at last night's Clown Car Debate O'Hate makes us fearful for what a nation under someone like Rick Perry is going to look like.

Here the audience applauds the idea that if someone doesn't, or can't afford to, buy health insurance, we should just let them die if they get sick (and remember...these people also tend to regard themselves as "pro-life" where feti are concerned):



I only wish Blitzer had then asked the question again with the person in need of emergency care being a child.


I don't want to hear anyone complaining about when Alan Grayson said the Republican health care plan was "Don't get sick, and if you get sick, die quickly." There's nothing he said that wasn't true.

And this crowd is ready to string Ben Bernanke up from a tree:



And here's the debate in only 100 seconds of your time, for those of us who felt that the remaining time in our lives is too valuable to spend listening to the ravings of the insane. Note the opening montage, in which CNN treats the campaign for leader of the free world as if it were WWF wrestling:



And one of these people will in all likelihood be the next president.

Gee, thanks, Mr. Obama. Thanks for nothing.

(TPM liveblogged the whole thing, intrepid souls that they are.)

Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, We Are So Screwed

Today is the tenth anniversary of the most horrific attack on American soil. On September 11th, 2001, four planes crashed into both towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, PA. A recent poll asked thousands of Americans how they will observe the 10th anniversary of a series of attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3000 people. What are the top 10 answers?

10) Hoping for some 9/11 nookie by crying in front of girls at somber candlelit ceremony.

9) Distending our waistlines with dead, barbecued animals as long as beer cans are clinked together at least once to remember the victims.

8) Being extra hypervigilant of anyone wearing cloth on their heads, including that black guy down the street with the 'do rag.

7) Watching bands, choirs, military honor guards and giant flags before baseball games and players chewing gum, spitting and scratching their crotches.

6) Shouting at the television, "Fuck you, bin Laden!"

5) Listening to Alex Jones podcasts about how the Pentagon wasn't struck by a hijacked plane but the Bilderberg Group in the name of the New World Order.

4) Planning on voting for the Republican presidential candidate who looks the least guilty over 9/11.

3) Nothing. Saddam's dead. We've defeated terrorism. Can't we just move on and pretend like nothing's changed?

2) Watching news file footage of the planes hitting the north and south towers and hoping that, for once, they'll miss.

1) Thanking God, Bush and Cheney that we're still the land of the free and the home of the brave between terror alerts and having our privacy invaded by stadium security, Homeland Security, the TSA, NSA and local, state and federal law enforcement.

PROLOGUE

It is the mid-1980's, perhaps 1985. I'm stuck in a kind of employment limbo, working in a department where I'm a member of the Newspaper Guild. This wasn't my choice, but it's a Guild department. I'm basically pro-union, but in this case the union is blocking my advancement. You see, I'm an administrative assistant, and my supervisor wants to promote me into an entry-level marketing management position. He plans to replace me with another Guild position, but the shop steward will have none of it. I have to remain in the union, which means I can't be promoted. This is the first real chance I've had at emerging out of Sociology major secretarial hell and it's being taken away from me because the Newspaper Guild wants the few dollars in dues it gets from me and the headcount.

So on this particular day, I'm sitting in the lobby of a large brokerage firm, waiting for an interview for yet another administrative assistant job. I'm figuring that if I'm going to be stuck doing this, I'm going to do it in a company where I can at least make some decent money. If I'm going to be a chump, I at least want to be a well-paid one.

The interviewer is late. I'm just as glad, because the company is located in the World Trade Center, and I've just come up two sets of elevators to get to its offices...and I'm a little freaked out, because those shaky elevators are the scariest experience I think I've ever had.

So I wait. And I wait. And I wait. And about an hour goes by. Finally I remind the receptionist that I have an interview scheduled. She checks with the manager with whom I'm supposed to meet and then extends his apologies, that he has to cancel for today but that I should make another appointment with the receptionist to come back for the interview later in the week. I'm peeved that I've wasted all this time, and I've also realized that there is absolutely no way I can handle dealing with those elevators every day. I tell the receptionist that I will have to call back to set up the appointment, knowing full well that I have no intention of doing so.

The company's name is Cantor Fitzgerald.



I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 with a sense of dread. Today was the day I was traveling with two colleagues to Bethesda for a training course on FDA compliance in clinical trials. And I absolutely did not want to go. My reason was silly -- the other two colleagues I was with were very friendly with each other, and I just knew I'd be the odd man out. I felt as if I were back in high school and for some reason I had to go somewhere with the pretty, popular girls and I just knew that they were going to make my life miserable. It was ridiculous, as they'd never treated me badly and I was moderately friendly with both. But still -- I dreaded this trip in a way that I hadn't dreaded anything in years.

The phone rang at around 8:15 AM. It was Mr. Brilliant calling from LaGuardia. He'd just landed after the flight he'd been booked on the previous night had been cancelled due to a thunderstorm in Durham, North Carolina. He just wanted to let me know he was on the ground safely and would be headed right to work. We do this when we fly and land safely. So I went ahead and got dressed and headed into work.

We were supposed to leave for DC at around noon. Just after 8:45, one of my colleagues came into my office and said, "A small plane just hit the World Trade Center." It was the kind of gruesome news that one hears every morning on the local news, where If It Bleeds, It Leads. I don't recall exactly how I found out about the second plane, but I turned on the AM radio in my office and it became clear very quickly that we were dealing with some Very Big Stuff. It didn't hit me until the towers fell just HOW big it was, because I remember thinking until about noon that we could probably still get to Bethesda by car even though air travel was grounded by then.

When I heard that one tower and then another had fallen, it was unfathomable. Internet news sites were inaccessible, first because of the traffic and later because Verizon's infrastructure was buried under tons of rubble. TVs were set up in the big meeting room for those who wanted to watch what was happening as it unfolded. I don't even remember feeling afraid, though I did think "This must have been what it was like to hear about Pearl Harbor on the radio."

CONTEXT

The eight-month-old presidency of George W. Bush hadn't exactly had an auspicious beginning. Installed in office by a questionable Supreme Court decision, he didn't exactly have a lot of political capital in reserve. There were people like me who viscerally loathed everthing about the man, but except for the most rabid knee-jerk right-wingers, there was a sense that this would be a troubled presidency.

A month after his inauguration, a Navy submarine collided with a Japanese fishing vessel. It later came out (though it was little reported) that two civilians were at the controls of the submarine when it surfaced and hit the fishing boat. It was not unusual for civilians to be granted these kinds of "goodwill trips" on Navy subs, but a third of these civilians were Texas oil men, which at least created an appearance of a "Lincoln Bedroom on the seas."

Then ten weeks after Bush's inauguration, a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet, made an emergency landing, and its crew was taken into Chinese custody. Relations with China had been under strain for that entire time because of the Bush Administration's stand on Taiwan. The incident ended with a carefully worded apology to the Chinese government by the Bush Administration, one which outraged the right wing of Bush's own party but which in contrast to the recklessness we would see later, served to defuse what could have been a major diplomatic crisis.

The controversy surrounding Bush's election only escalated during the summer of 2001 -- one dominated by reports of shark attacks and prurient interest in the disappearance of a young Washington intern linked to California Congressman Gary Condit. By August 10, 2001, Bush had already spent 54 days -- one-quarter of his time in office -- on vacation, fueling speculation that Vice President Dick Cheney was doing most of the work. It was, of course, during this vacation that the infamous August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing was angrily brushed off.

On September 10, 2001, this issue of Newsweek hit newsstands and mailboxes all over the country:



The cover article was an excerpt from author David Kaplan's book The Accidental President, which took a look inside the Supreme Court decision that gave Bush the White House, and revealed for the first time just how close Al Gore had come to prevailing. Bush's approval rating stood at 51% in a Gallup poll taken September 7-10, 2001. These days a 51% rating is regarded as a good polling number, but in the aftermath of Bill Clinton never going below 56%, even during the Lewinsky scandal, these were not perceived as good numbers for a new president.

And then the day turned over to the eleventh of September.


TINFOIL

Like everyone in the country, Mr. Brilliant and I were glued to the television set that night. We flipped from channel to channel to channel, our brains sponges for as much information as we could find. And that is when we saw Larry Kudlow on CNBC, grinning ear to ear and crowing about how the attacks meant an end to any talk of a Social Security lockbox. I turned to Mr. Brilliant and said, "Oh my God, they did it."

I'm not to now embark on an exhaustive examination of what happened and who benefitted that day. It's not appropriate today, I've talked about it before, and Will Bunch has already asked ten non-crazy questions that still warrant answers. But there is no question that the events that occurred ten years ago today saved an already-foundering presidency. Do with that what you will.


AFTERMATH: THE LOST

The day after the attacks, my neighbor ran up to me and told me that the husband of one of our neighbors was still missing. My heart hurt for her, as barely a year earlier she had lost her son in a car accident and now her husband, a Port Authority police officer, was missing. He was later confirmed among the dead.

Excerpt from E-mail from a friend, received on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 (initials changed from real names):

P's brother is still missing. It doesn't look good. He was on the 105th floor of the first building. My brothers are ok. D. works in a building behind the WTC. He was able to get a Ferry from the South Street Seaport. My father decided not to go to NYC yesterday. Say a prayer for P's brother. His name is R.

R. was never found. He was thirty years old.


WAR, PRESIDENTS, AND TRUST

The following Sunday, the Bergen Record included a full-page image of an American flag. I don't own a flag, but for a couple of days I put it in our front window. As the invasion of Afghanistan ramped up, I said to Mr. Brilliant, "I don't like him, I never will like him, and I sure hope he knows what he's doing, because he's all we've got." Even I, who starting in 2004 started blasting his already-tainted presidency regularly, was willing to put my trust in that president, because, well, he may be a schmuck, but in those first few days, he was our schmuck.


TEN YEARS ON

And now ten years have passed. It seems simultaneously like the blink of an eye and an entire lifetime. Aside from airport security and some economic setbacks and revivals, my own sphere has been little affected by the attacks. And for most Americans, if they really want to tell the truth, neither have theirs. This entire week has been an orgy of a weird self-congratulatory combination of picking open the wound again and enjoying the spectacle one more time. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to have lost someone ten years ago and once again be unable to open a newspaper without seeing a photograph of the Twin Towers burning with your brother, or son, or spouse, or sister, or father or mother inside.

My neighbor sold her house to her daughter, who now lives there with her husband and their baby -- a symbol of renewal in a household that knew nothing but fear and worry and sadness ten years ago. My friend's brother soldiers on but is still haunted by memories of having taken the train in to the city with R. that day and of calling him and telling him to get the hell out of there, let's go home...and then calling him for the last time and getting no answer. He and his wife, R.'s sister, have three children.

All over the New York metro area, the spouses of the dead remember. Some have remarried, some have not. Some have healed better than others. All over the area, those who were children that day have grown up. Life goes on.

Five years ago a friend of mine lost her daughter who had just turned 24. One of our colleagues said about the aftermath of a lost child, "You never get over it. But you find a place for it, and you go to visit it every now and then when you need to...or when you are able to." Some of the survivors of the dead, and the survivors among the first responders, have been able to find that place and close the door. Others are still wandering, lost, looking for a place to put it. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, those left behind tried to find heroism in the last moments of their loved ones. Some were heroes, trying to get others out and staying behind themselves. Some were just ordinary people who did nothing but go to work just as they always do. They are not heroes but victims. And there is no disgrace in that. The loss of the victims is just as tragic as that of the heroic. Only those left behind know that loss.

For years, the Ground Zero site was like a gaping wound in the heart of lower Manhattan. Today the memorial site will be opened to the families. The footage I've seen and the still photographs look so, well, RIGHT. The reflecting pools with their waterfall sides appear to demonstrate both the calm of healing and the continual tears of memory. We do so many things wrong, and yet Michael Arad, who designed and built this memorial appears, at least to me, to have gotten it right.




Today is not for politicians fighting the culture wars. It is not for religious leaders to try to score converts or demonize those who believe differently. It is not for posturing for the 2012 election. Today is for those who were there, for those who made it home, and for the families of those who didn't. It's for heroes and victims alike, and the people they left behind. Today is THEIR day.

Labels: 9/11