Five years later

People keep talking about how the world changed on 9/11.

It didn’t. The world was filled with terrorists, and bombs, and people living in fear, and attacks on home grounds. The world remained exactly the same. Only our perception of it changed. We became both of and in the world.

It’s five years later. Anyone feeling safer?

I also find it interesting that the Democrats have surrendered the moral high ground in terms of TV presentation. Here the GOP managed to get the Reagan biopic banished to cable because they didn’t like the way it presented their political saint, and now the Democrats managed to get the miniseries on 9/11, based on the findings of the bi-partisan committee, re-edited so that it wouldn’t seem as if President Clinton was too distracted by Monicagate to go after bin Laden…except I find it difficult to believe any reasonable person could think that the harassment over Lewinsky didn’t impede Clinton’s effectiveness on any number of levels.

Quick, kids. There’s some history. Let’s rewrite it.

PAD

268 comments on “Five years later

  1. Rex, you are so dámņ right. My wife and I are both truck drivers. Her employer spent the five weeks from the time she announced her pregnancy to the day our doctor said enough trying to force her out.

    Two things working for us. Since her leave is a medical situation, we are still covered by her benefits. My employer is really great. When I say time to go home, I go home. The customer service rep is giving us loads of baby stuff she doesn’t need anymore.

    I know we can do this, I just sometimes wonder HOW?

  2. “By the way, I am currently visiting my sister in Burkley, and I find all the homeless + all the talk of mugging etc. to be much more scary than my country.

    this is much like terrorism in that the fear is disproportionate to the risk.

    you being scared to go out on the street there because someone might mug you would be like me being scared to go out on the street in Jerusalem because someone might blow me up.”

    I’m not actualy afraid to go on the streets. I’ve walked quite a lot this visit. The strange thing is that it is the locals who keep talking about crime all the time, whereas in Jerusalem it is usyally the guests who are nervous.

    I do find the large number of homeless troubling, but not scary. We have them in Jerusalem, but not in such quantities.

  3. “Actually, isn’t their current tactic trying to pretend that they never explicitly tried to connect those dots?”

    Most accurately, I think, is that the current strategy is to try to connect non existant dots that only they can see, and that only they can connect, that we only need to know about around election time, and that’s why we should trust them.

  4. > I guess, short of the fear generated by 9/11, I don’t see how Bush could have gotten the authority to invade Iraq.

    So? He didn’t anyway. The U.N. sure didn’t give it to him.

  5. I know we can do this, I just sometimes wonder HOW?

    Trust me, I have come to accept that men have no idea just how little they know until they’re given a baby to take care of. 😛

    On the bright side (for father AND mother), it’s amazing just how often you can get away with playing the “First-Time Parent” card. Most of the time early on, when people would ask us what else we needed, we’d just slap the card on the table and say, “We don’t know.”

    Also, I was amazed at how quickly the “Me Man, me provide for family” macho bull went out the window. Yeah, I work hard to bring in a paycheck, and am happy to do so, but very early on, I decided that I’m not too proud to realize that happy grandparents (especially first-time grandparents) are GENEROUS grandparents. 😉

    Well, I suppose that’s enough blithering on about parenthood (Not to mention enough thread drift) for the time being.

    -Rex Hondo-

  6. >Have any of the other Canucks read Michael Coren’s argument for the use of nukes in Iran to end that little situation? Please tell me you find the idea a tad ludicrous.

    I mentioned his piece earlier, though not by name.

    The problem with it is that much of what he does say makes perfect sense. The idea of allowing Iran to complete a nuclear weapons’ program is just unacceptable. I’ve seen people respond with “so what? The Soviet Union has had nuclear weapons for decades and haven’t used them.” And that’s true, but irrelevant. The USSR weren’t suicidal fanatics, which we KNOW Islamic extremists (such as the loons running Iran) are known to be. BIG, dangerous difference.

    That said, it doesn’t mean I think we should start arming the tactical nukes for immediate use. But neither can we afford to the consequences of the Iranian leadership getting their hands on such destructive toys. Anyone have a viable, demonstratably effective means of dealing with this problem which won’t make things even worse? I’m open to suggestion.

  7. Other tangent, got to hear the baby’s heart beat today. Apparently I grinned like a goof.

    Congrats, Manny!

    We first heard the heartbeat a month or so after “The Return of the King” came out. (We found out Lisa was pregnant the night it opened, for reference.) So we hear the heartbeat, and Lisa turns to me almost immediately and says, “Drums … in the deep.”

    God, I married well.

    Rex:
    Also, I was amazed at how quickly the “Me Man, me provide for family” macho bull went out the window. Yeah, I work hard to bring in a paycheck, and am happy to do so, but very early on, I decided that I’m not too proud to realize that happy grandparents (especially first-time grandparents) are GENEROUS grandparents. 😉

    Oh, HÊLL yeah. Katherine is the first grandchild on both sides, so we’ve been very very happy with grandparents. (My mom has also been awesome for babysitting whenever she’s in town; she lives a couple of hours away, but since both Katherine and her other grandchild are just ten minutes’ drive from each other she likes to come down once a month or so.)

    I’ve never bought into the “me man, me provider” bit anyway. Admittedly, I’ve usually been making more money than Lisa, but that’s just because she stayed in grad school a lot longer than I did, and grad school and/or postdoc wages are generally pathetic, even compared to a teacher’s salary.

    Now that she’s a professor, we’re virtually equal — I think she’s marginally behind me at the moment, but given pay scales will pass me in a few years. This does not strike me as a bad thing — maybe I can eventually be a kept man. 🙂

    TWL

  8. > I guess, short of the fear generated by 9/11, I don’t see how Bush could have gotten the authority to invade Iraq.

    Star wolf: So? He didn’t anyway. The U.N. sure didn’t give it to him.

    Since when do we need the UN permission for anything? We are a sovereign nation that looks out for our own interest. If there is even the tiniest threat to us, we sure don’t need the mighty UN’s permission to defend ourselves.

    Joe V.

  9. “Since when do we need the UN permission for anything? We are a sovereign nation that looks out for our own interest. If there is even the tiniest threat to us, we sure don’t need the mighty UN’s permission to defend ourselves.”

    Joe, you’re killing me here. IRAQ was NEVER a threat to the U.S.A.

    We didn’t invade Iraq to defend Amerika, we invaded it because…because…because… hmmm, still haven’t heard a real reason why we forced a regime change of another sovreign nation…

  10. “I can certainly agree that the partisan harrassment of Clinton likely hampered his effectiveness. We can only ponder what might have been accomplished during his presidency if the Republicans had cared to work together with Clinton for the greater public good.”

    This is insulting to everybody. I think it’s being charitable to assume or act as if everyone in government really is working for the greater good for all of the citizenry. Let’s assume that they are. The very simple fact is that Democrats and Republicans, those of the left and the right both disagree on how to achieve the greater good. That’s even assuming that differences in personal, political and moral philosophies allow the respective politicians in those two disparate groups to agree what exactly the greater good is.

    So you’re saying, ‘if only they lacked personal conviction so they would be able to set aside their own core principles in order to make some higher abstract acheivable’

  11. I also don’t believe that Clinton cared as much for the public good as he did about A) being President B) having a “legacy” (something akin to having a nice epitaph but you’re alive to see it) and C) getting tail.

    Assuming he did care that much for the public good… no, I can’t make that leap. That sort of rose-colored glasses is not something I will done for Oval Office adultery. If the first goal is the public good then…. ah what do I know about adultery? I don’t know if it would distract from my chosen dedication or not.

    Still, I can’t be doing unspeakable acts to blue dresses and run the free world, can I?

  12. “by not offering an alternative or by challenging the Bush party line.”

    I think the Democrats do a fine job challenging the President’s line. I think they do a terrible job offering up anything resembling a sensible reason for doing so.

    I can think of some sensible reasons for doing so. But they’re too right-wing for Democrats or most Republicans.

  13. I also don’t believe that Clinton cared as much for the public good as he did about A) being President B) having a “legacy” (something akin to having a nice epitaph but you’re alive to see it) and C) getting tail.

    Well, you know, the above applies just as easily to Bush as Clinton. Well, except for C).

    The funny thing is? Clinton’s legacy is going be a helluva lot better than Bush’s.

  14. “We didn’t invade Iraq to defend Amerika, we invaded it because…because…because… hmmm, still haven’t heard a real reason why we forced a regime change of another sovreign nation…”

    Syriana, anyone?

  15. Since when do we need the UN permission for anything? We are a sovereign nation that looks out for our own interest. If there is even the tiniest threat to us, we sure don’t need the mighty UN’s permission to defend ourselves.

    You don’t need permission to defend yourself, and if Iraq had a)attacked you, and b)had the first dámņëd thing to do with 9/11, no one would have a problem.

    You need the UN’s permission because you are a member. Because you insist that the UN do what you want it’s members to do.

    If you don’t want the responsibility, leave. Otherwise, suck it up Bubba.

  16. Tim as a kept man–at LAST your master plan reveals itself, you vile schemer!

    Manny–two HUGE pieces of advice. Do EVERYTHING for your wife, and make her feel like you understand that you have absolutely no clue as to what she’s going through and that you know that guys got off easy in this deal. Second, if your wife’s doctor is a guy, pull him aside before the delivery and make sure that under NO circumstances should he deliver the baby, look at you, and tell you that you do good work. If Stace hadn’t been pretty much numb from the neck down with various organs out of their normal places, both me and that doctor would either be dead or falsettoes.

    Not sure if I want to get into the whole presidential legacy thing, but the thing that strikes me is that Clinton seemed (to me, at least) to be looking out more for all of us and our international image than Bush has done. Not sure that I can make the connection that Blue Spider made above. Don’t really care what or who Clinton was doing in the Oval Office. That’s between him and his wife, none of my business. Still not sure how all that became public or why anyone gave a crap. No matter how much time he and Monica spent together, I’m FAIRLY sure that there was time to do other things in the office. Clinton should be remembered for more than Monica Lewinsky. I’d LOVE for Bush to be remembered for more than the Iraq war, but right now, I can’t think of much.

  17. Something interesting about the Department of Homeland Security. You can’t call them after business hours. They do have an e-mail link on their site, but not for reporting suspicious type activity.

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