What You Can Do About The “Ground Zero” Mosque

I’ve written this post several times now and deleted it. The manufactured Ground Zero Mosque controversy is not worth talking about, in so many ways. Like Manish, I figure that ultimately “nobody is repealing the 14th Amendment, Muslim-bashing will simmer down after midterms and so on. This is just politics as bread and circuses. Anything to turn the crazybase out and avoid talking tax cuts for the rich.”

Law-abiding Muslims and browns in turbans are vilified in the process, justice is shattered once again, Harry Reid still hasn’t found a spine and the dissonance hurts ears and brains alike, but Fear & Loathing is an ancient Washington game. And fools rush in … Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me … you get the picture.

A new episode of Rescue Me airs tonight. For those of you don’t watch the show, here’s a quick rundown: Denis Leary plays a New York City firefighter whose alcohol-drenched and dysfunctional family life is thrown into a serious tailspin in the years following 9/11. There’s life and then there’s trauma. You get over both, if you’re lucky. Two weeks ago, the show introduced a firefighter from another house; Pat Mahoney is dying of cancer he came down with after working in the rubble of the World Trade Center in the months following the attack. The character Mahoney is symbolic of many firefighters, police officers and relief workers who have developed blood cell cancer from inhaling benzene and other toxic chemicals during the search and cleanup.

Ground Zero is hallowed ground. I know, I was there. In 2007, long after the last piece of rubble was taken away, D and I stood at the corner of Washington and Liberty Streets in Manhattan’s financial district and stared into the crater, past the hole. I thought my heart could shatter no further after Kuwait, 9/11/2001 and The Storm, and yet whatever remained was shredded.

Can you look at a picture or hear or watch footage from that day without fighting the urge to lose it, tear your clothes and run screaming into the wilderness? Not I.

But it shouldn’t turn us into animals, into barbarians. Barbarians who tout our nation’s freedom of religion on one hand and, on the other, deny it to a group of Americans who want to build a religious and community center in a former Burlington Coat Factory building three blocks away. Savages who blessed the launch and nourishment of two disastrous wars using 9/11 as a launchpad. And the worst, most hideous act of all: referring to Ground Zero as hallowed ground and then turning around to deny vital monetary aid to 9/11 first responders under the pretext that it “creates a massive new entitlement program, exposes taxpayers to increased litigation, and is ‘paid for’ with tax increases and potential job losses.”

If anyone should have their citizenships revoked, it should be these asshole politicians we put in power, who would rather play with the lives of real American heroes and their families, only prolonging the greatest mass murder in American history for their own gain and not helping heal it. Furthermore, instead of loudly bringing up these inconsistencies and injustices, We The People more often tuck our tails and watch the moral-relativist ball tossed back and forth between two parties who purport to work for America. Barbarians and animals.

Would you like to keep Ground Zero truly Hallowed instead of using just the word over and over again until it loses its meaning? Want to put that America F**k Yeah sentiment to good use beyond linking to a favored opinion on your Facebook wall? Here’s what you do:

- Donate money at any time to the Fire Fighter Cancer Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 2830, Wilmington, DE  19805

- Team up with your local fire station for the Save Our 9/11 Survivors program, to “help raise funds to provide 500 air purification units that will help ailing responders breathe clean air, avoid secondary infections, and suffer less. Please organize fund raising activities to help your brother & sister responders and send donations by 9-11-2011 (10th anniversary).”

- Stop watching the greedy hate fomented in cable news and reading that which raises anger and self-righteousness as well as your inactivity. Your patriotic bravado followed by no positive action does nothing for the people who are living and dying the real fallout of 9/11.

- Write your congresspeople and political action committees and ask them what the hell they are doing anyway. Soaking in their pre-packaged tea or beer or whatever it is today is what they want you to do. Get away from it. Break truly free.

- And stop fearing. Fear is the mind killer. Think. Be decent. Be American. It’s about time.

August 17, 2010 | culture-society-history, government, media, wtf | 4 Comments »

Foundation Of Government

“Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.” - John Adams

Newt Gingrich knows the difference between a theocracy and a secular republic and, hence, exactly what he is doing when he says, “I find it very offensive to get lectured about religious liberty at a time when there are no churches and no synagogues in Saudi Arabia and when no Christian and no Jew can walk into Mecca.”

Gingrich and I are thus united in our perception of the Fox News audience. It may be time for a career change.

August 4, 2010 | government, media | 2 Comments »

Day 106 The Oil Hasn’t Vanished

The oil has not vanished.

I repeat: The oil has not vanished. The Gulf of Mexico’s summertime dead zone is twice as big as last year’s.

Think about it: How can 206 million gallons of crude vanish in 19 days? 205.8 million gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico = 2.37 million gallons per day over 87 days. Reported average use of Corexit is 3,365 gallons per day over approximately 92 days (sometimes more, illegally, and scientists question its effectiveness beyond the surface). You do the math.

Update: Businessweek reports that 800,000 barrels (33.6 million gallons) of oil have been skimmed or burned by BP to date. That’s 16% of the total oil released into the Gulf. Keep going with the math.

Because someone keeps asking, here’s why static kill and bottom kill are both required.

Kenneth Feinberg is an insult. And so is every politician “working” for the Gulf Coast: Oil Disaster Boon to Gulf Politicians. Every last one: Menendez negotiating behind the scenes to come to a compromise on oil spill liability language.

But, let’s please continue fighting amongst ourselves.

August 3, 2010 | energy, environment, government, louisiana, we are not ok, wtf | No Comments »

Groundhog (Choking On Oil) Day

Oil-related catastrophes simply refuse to leave me alone. I mean, WHAT.

840,000 gallons of oil from a corroded Enbridge Energy pipeline have leaked into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek this past week. More specifically, “The oil is moving from Talmadge Creek into the Kalamazoo River, which flows from near the city of Battle Creek into Lake Michigan.” Swell.

Edward Vielmetti, friend of New Orleans and lead blogger at AnnArbor.com has been doing yeoman’s work staying on top of the story and associated political foibles as it unfolds. Follow Ed on Twitter for up to the minute information. For more, I suggest you follow Canadian news on this story because a) Enbridge Energy is a Canadian company and b) there’s a certain sheen, shall we say, to the quality of FoxMSNBCNN reporting: CBC News says 3.7 million litres while CNN says 19,500 barrels. Been there, done that, right?

Some other things that ought to sound terribly familiar to Gulf Coast residents. Here’s #2: Michigan oil spill: U.S. warned Canadian company about pipeline monitoring

3) Expect the same old disheartening song and dance from the Yankee right. The Michigan Messenger reports:

State Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland) has introduced legislation in the State Senate to lift a cap on costs oil companies have to pay for clean ups associated with their pipelines.

Anderson told Jack Ebling on WILS 1320 AM radio Wednesday that right now, state law caps the damages a company is liable for at $15 million.

But the Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, adjourned for a mid-summer break without acting on Anderson’s legislation.

“They chose to do nothing with it,” Anderson said. “They passed a resolution that called on officials from the federal government to the locals to do all they can. That’s nothing but talk.”

3a) Chicago’s Mayor Daley: Michigan oil spill worse than Asian carp so “Michigan better do something about the investigation, the criminal and civil investigation. Who’s paying for it, and who had the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, because it’s flowing into Lake Michigan.” Blarghblarblar.

And 4) @Enbridge_PR “Lake Michigan is not as big as the Gulf of Mexico, but we’re gonna try to beat those filthy Brits at their own game! @bpglobalpr” Right down to the fake Twitter account.

Wake me up when it’s all over, ferchrissakes.

July 29, 2010 | energy, environment, government, media, midwest, we are not ok, wtf | No Comments »

HST On Khadafy

The release and repatriation to Libya of the PanAm Flight 103 bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi, put me in mind of several paragraphs of Hunter Thompson’s Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the 80s which came out in 1989. Thompson would have turned 73 on July 18th. Another birthday, same old shame and degradation almost a quarter century later right down to the key players. Sometimes I wonder if Thompson checked out due to sheer boredom.

… The accusation traced back to a five-year-old divorce file, and even then it was all circumstantial – a nest of gibberish, as they say in the trade … and not entirely unlike the gaggle of wild charges laid by Ronald Reagan against Col. Moammar Khadafy of Libya.

The colonel was whooping it up in Tripoli last week with a fast round of bear-baiting, breast-beating and unsettling displays of what is beginning to look like a genuinely perverse sense of humor, although not everybody saw it that way.

There were those in Washington, including some prominent Democrats, who saw the colonel’s behavior as the last stages of some deep and malignant craziness that might soon cause The End Of The World. Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, a traditionally flaky liberal with credentials suggesting some kind of awful mutation with the genes of Hubert Humphrey, Billie Sol Estes and a Stalinist camel driver from South Yemen, went on national TV to say that the time had finally come for Khadafy to be put to sleep. It was a call for a political assassination. “Maybe we’re at that point in the world,” said Metzenbaum, a longtime lobbyist for Israel, “where Mr. Khadafy has to be eliminated.”

Not even Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was willing to go that far – not even after the colonel discussed his plans for destroying the US 6th Fleet and perhaps every oil well east of Gibraltar in a lengthy personal discussion with Ted Koppel on “Nightline.”

In almost the same breath, however, he assured Koppel that he was absolutely sincere about inviting Reagan to come and visit with him in his tent and hash things out like real men. Koppel responded by inviting Khadafy to the White House, for a long lunch without George Shultz, and al Qaid said, “Why not?” He has never been west of England – and only there for six months, long ago, which he spent hunkered down in some vile basement flat in Brixton – but when Koppel asked him to Washington he seemed gratified. It was an “encouraging exchange,” as they say in the diplomatic business, and some even called it a “breakthrough.”

Indeed. And so much for TV diplomacy. Within 24 hours the colonel had shifted back to his Mr. Hyde mode and was calling Reagan a Nazi pig who should be put on trial for international crimes. He reverted to his earlier assessment of the president as a “stinking rotten crusader” and an “aging third-rate actor” who is even worse than his old movies, which are shown constantly on Libyan TV.

Khadafy also called for help in the form of a new International Brigade of volunteers to join terrorist “suicide squads” to wreak havoc all over the world, if the US attacks Libya.

Koppel had no comment and Shultz laughed all night in his office in Foggy Bottom, and Khadafy claimed he got 10,000 applications in less than 48 hours.

Who will our Hunter Thompson of 25 years from now be? Who will we read then to look back on what’s happening now in hindsight, horror interspersed with giggling fits and deja vu?

Update: It should be said that we could read HST 50 years from now and things will be the same with the names slightly changed. The man wasn’t particularly prescient, although he wrote for the ages; the reality is that America hasn’t fundamentally changed since the 1950s. As long as there is fear …

July 20, 2010 | books, culture-society-history, global, government | No Comments »

Day 88

Oscar The Cat reacts to this morning's presser.

Hard-hitting journalism: “Did you feel the earthquake, Mr. President?” I am not for Geology PR at all costs, even if deep fault reactivation on the eastern continental margin is hella cool.

BP halts Gulf oil flow for first time since April. Now waiting on test and seal of the dud well and the relief well to capture all flow from the reservoir. Does anyone have a good graphic of the intended relief/capture mechanism?

Gulf’s Artificial Islands Already Failing I was under the impression that engineers had a) thought about the islands’ long-term stability – wrong, and b) figured, “We’re screwed if we do or do not. Why not give it a shot?” Coastal scientist Len Bahr, who is quoted extensively in this article, will be an environmental panelist at the Rising Tide conference in New Orleans this year.

July 16, 2010 | energy, environment, geology, government, rising tide conference | 1 Comment »
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