While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and the dying. — Erich Maria Remarque, “All Quiet on the Western Front”
I didn’t have much to say on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and a decade further on down the road I feel even less inclined to hold forth on the topic. A bunch of people got dead, maimed, or insane; another bunch got rich, famous, and powerful; and the rest of us went shopping.
Did we learn anything from the attacks and what Charlie Pierce calls “our blind, feral response?” Doubtful. We check the rear view every 10 years or so, but that’s just reflexive, like glancing at a TV as you pass.
Anything good on? Nahhhhhhh. Same ol’, same ol’. Hey, who wants to go to the mall?
Green now, sure, but the gold is just around the corner.
Don’t let the green leaves fool you. It’s September out there. Sixty degrees at 8 a.m. in Albuquerque, and Old Man Gloom goes up in smoke at 9 p.m. tonight in Fanta Se.
Speaking of burns, approximately nobody, save the Volk wearing their MAGA hats a couple-three sizes too small, was surprised by Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece in The Atlantic describing Adolf Twitler’s thoughts on the “losers” and “suckers” who died for their country instead of blackjacking it in some dark alley and going through its pockets.
Charlie Pierce has some thoughts of his own regarding the Good Soldiers who continued to work for the craven sonofabitch, knowing full well that this is how he sees them and theirs.
They took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to hold their tongues until they could get a book deal as a reckless vandal takes the Republic down, brick by brick. Of all the people whom history will account as being complicit in the attempted demolition of constitutional government, I rank them ahead even of the invertebrate Republicans in the United States Senate.
Sixty days until we get a chance to start rebuilding the Republic. It seems like an eternity.
The impeachment inquiry has gone public, but I plan to resist the temptation to follow it extensively here, like a starveling coyote trailing a garbage truck.
My reasoning is that we’ll all read, watch, and hear a lot more than we care to elsewhere. Charlie Pierce is on the case, and I urge anyone who wants the bird’s-eye lowdown on this caper, whatever that means, to become a card-carrying member of his Shebeen.
Also, I imagine that we’re all mostly on the same page here — that the White House has become the Shite House, and that it’s turds all the way down. So I plan to preach to the choir only when I have some fresh take on the revelations.
Eternal vigilance, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
After the briefest of discussions …
“You wanna watch the debate?”
“Nah. You?”
“Nah.”
… we decided against encouraging further silliness from NBC and the Democratic National Committee.
Finding some way to watch would have been a pain in the ass — we don’t have cable, and can’t get much of anything over the air without a rooftop antenna — and then there would have been the actual watching, which, ick.
Charlie Pierce found Tim Ryan full of the bafflegab, Elizabeth Warren on her game, Beto O’Rourke so light of weight that he “spent the evening looking as though he had to be tied down to keep from floating out the door,” and Julián Castro “the one Texan who knew what he was talking about.”
Kevin Drum found Beto “talking in platitudes,” Castro “clear and well-briefed,” Warren “OK for now,” and John Delaney “very annoying.” He also found the general unwillingness to discuss climate change an indication that the candidates “were afraid of saying something that will be interpreted as asking people to make an actual sacrifice.”
Mother Times and the WaPo (that would be a great band name, no?) are awash in the usual morning-after hooey about “divisions among Democrats,” and who “won” and who “lost,” if that’s your idea of a good time.
Meanwhile, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) remains on the alert. He remains convinced that the Revolution will not be televised.
The February wind was making the clouds skate around all over the sky yesterday.
The State of the Union (El Rancho Pendejo Edition) is as follows:
Herself is now working 10 hours a day, four days a week, so as to have a three-day weekend each and every week.
I am working not quite so much, my career having developed a slow leak at the potholed intersection of Bicycle and Journalism.
Trail time: When the bike is leaning up against the rock I’m probably not going to fall off of it.
I have a cartoon to draw for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and a review to finish for Adventure Cyclist, and beyond that it’s anybody’s guess. Terra incognita. Here be dragons. All hope abandon, ye who scribble here.
Speaking of hope abandoned, I can’t wait to see the ratings for last night’s comedy special from Capitol Hill. Knowing that Charlie Pierce would be on the case, we gave it a miss, reasoning that if we want to watch a loon pretending to be president we can always dredge up some old “SNL” footage of Chevy Chase playing Gerald Ford.
Instead we caught up on “Crashing,” the Pete Holmes thing on HBO. It’s only so-so — Marc Maron and Bill Burr are more my style, when ol’ Freckles isn’t raving about ball sports — but you get to see some funny cameos by twisted comics like Dave Attell and Jeff Ross.
Beforehand I engaged in wheel sport, taking a quick out-and-back spin on the Voodoo Nakisi, which has been neglected while I review the Jamis Aurora Elite. My mad trail skillz have atrophied, and I was dabbing on sections a fat 4-year-old could handle on a balance bike, but it sure beat working. It beat not working too.
Mad Blog Media 