FairAndUNbalanced.com

• News Corpse provides thoughtful insight contrasting how we saw the world, and how the world saw us, before and after 9/11/2001, then applies that to this season’s decisions.
   
• Bob Woodward documents each moment as Trump says troops who were killed are losers and those who weren’t are suckers. Woodward has the recordings. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit documents that Trump cares even less about the heroes who risked everything responding to the 9/11 attacks 19 years ago. She has the receipts.
   
  I’m old so I get confused. Does he think of those first responders as losers or suckers?
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, my president didn’t tell us that the pandemic was real and that it was dangerous, only because he didn’t want to cause a panic. Scottie, for some reason, seems a bit skeptical. Damn liberal Trump Derangement, no doubt.
   
• Frances Langum watches Fox News so you and I don’t have to go into therapy. This week the line is: There is nothing wrong with Trump trying to keep the nation from pandemic panic, just like in 9/11/2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani kept everyone calm.
   
  So a very unpanicked Frances calmly explains a few minor differences. Like Rudy held no press conferences insisting the attack never happened, and was just a hoax. Fox News. Lord, save us from the heathens.
   
• The Onion snaps the photo as my president finds a novel way to ensure that nobody in California panics as they are engulfed by flames.
   
• At jobsanger, we learn that, in talking about dead, wounded, and healthy troops, my president didn’t mean what we think he meant.

Continue reading “9/11, How Trump Stopped COVID Panic, Fire in the sky, Disrespecting Troops”

(Posted May 3, 2011)

What sort of individual would have offered thousands of innocent people the choice of burning to death in an inferno or jumping from buildings famous for their height? At first, bin Laden denied involvement in, or even prior knowledge of, the attacks of a decade ago. But videotapes of this comic book villain were soon discovered as he gloated in the aftermath, boasting that the attacks had exceeded his expectations. He only expected the topmost floors of the towers to collapse, he said on tape to a confidant. He and cronies dined and cheered as entire buildings fell, thrilled as those killed multiplied.

Just as Japanese Americans bore the brunt after Pearl Harbor, unjustly conflated with the militarists of the Empire of Japan, so Muslims became identified by many Americans as terrorists.
Continue reading “Reflections on the Death of bin Laden”

 

From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

My parents wheeled in the portable teevee and kept it running so if I woke up in the middle of the night there there would be someone there and I wouldn’t be frightened. Mrs. Peel was on when the fever broke and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Rigg was so much more than Mrs. Peel, and we should all be aware that she was the only Bond girl to get her man. But she’ll always be Mrs. Peel to me. She will be missed.

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Reprinted from Jan 23, 2009
 
In the made for television movie about the events leading to 9/11 that played over a year ago on ABC, much of the drama had to do with failure to stop Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks. You can see the frustration of the military people with the terrorist mastermind in their sights, as they wait for permission from Washington to pull the trigger. You can see the uncertainty as a sweaty Clinton bureaucrat hesitates, finally letting the opportunity go by. As the television drama demonstrates, Osama lived and so thousands died on American soil. It happened almost exactly that way.

Almost.

Except it was not Clinton’s people who backed down from attacking bin Laden. It was the Bush administration. ABC had turned research for the drama over to a conservative ideologue who made the conscious decision to turn history on its head. Bill Clinton was shown as weak and clueless. President Bush was shown as unflinchingly heroic.

With the harsh memory of that administration not even beginning to fade into merciful obscurity, the distortions of loyalists begin. Viral emails, occasional television commentary, radio and print, carry a repetition of the familiar tale. President Clinton was weak, indecisive, letting bin Laden go, and leaving President Bush to face the consequence of near criminal negligence.

In fact, President Clinton was mocked during his term by Republicans who thought his focus on terrorism was obsessive.
Continue reading “President Bush Inheriting 9/11”

 
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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

And he’s been patting himself on the back for the job he’s done ever since. That rat bastard.

190,000 dead Americans. Because he wanted to manipulate the press.

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From JoAnn Williams at Biased Unbalanced and Politically Incorrect:

It is a routine visit. Quick labs in and out. In was fine – out was a visit to the 12th level of hell; mask hell.

I discarded the mask I was wearing on the way to the parking garage. I did not want the ick it may contain following me around. I don’t drive with a mask on and there are extra masks in my purse and the car console.

Paying at the parking garage exit is always a pain as it requires manual dexterity that exceeds my grasp. I drive up to the credit card machine, slide in my credit card; nada, zip, credit card doesn’t work. A quick view in the rearview mirror indicates several cars behind me.

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From Nan’s Notebook:

From a Facebook post …

The question was asked why people continue supporting Trump no matter what he does. This was a lady named Bev’s answer:

“You all don’t get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence. They don’t give a shit what he does. He’s just something to rally around and hate liberals, that’s it, period. He absolutely realizes that and plays it up. They love it. He knows they love it. The fact that people act like it’s anything other than that proves to them that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.

If you keep getting caught up in “why do they not realize this problem” and “how can they still back Trump after this scandal,” then you do not understand what the underlying motivating factor of his support is.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

A job is a mutual agreement between employer and employee. Businesses have to compete like everyone else, and this includes competing for employees.

There is a myth perpetrated by minimum wage law supporters that without these laws, there would be a “race to the bottom” that would force down general wage levels. But this is demonstrably false. If it were true that “in a pure free-market economy business owners pay the workers as little as they wanted,” then the same principle would apply even under minimum wage laws: Most workers’ pay would gravitate down to today’s legal minimum wage.

But this is not the case.

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From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

Today I learned that Ted Cruz is a huge fan of The Princess Bride. He frequently quotes lines from the movie, and even occasionally has done impressions of characters from it.

However, apparently the actors have turned up Cruz’s torture machine to 50 by holding a reunion. In order to see the livestream of the event you can contribute (any amount) to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “Anything you donate will be used to ensure that Trump loses Wisconsin, and thereby the White House,” according to the donation page.

What ensued was a tweet volley between Cruz and Cary Elwes (who played Westley — and the Dread Pirate Roberts — in the movie).

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From Brooke Binkowski:

From a few months ago, but worth returning for the snark – Burr

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