Welcome to the Sunday evening Labor-Day-weekend open thread.
Ever wonder how Labor Day came about? PBS Online has a short history. Unsurprisingly, it was born out of a labor dispute, a strike, and an unpopular President who was facing an uphill battle in his re-election campaign.
Labor Day is notable in my personal history as being the weekend I'm most likely going to suffer some kind of automotive situation that involves calling a tow truck or a locksmith or some other tradesman who's charging triple his regular hourly rate due to the holiday.
The week that was:
Hurricane Isaac hit Louisiana and the Gulf Coast almost exactly 7 years after Katrina, causing, unsurprisingly, a lot of very costly damage, mostly in Southeastern Louisiana.
Some Republicans got together in Tampa, or so I've heard. Paul Ryan established himself as a lying liar who lies, including about his track record. Clint Eastwood made a fool of himself and started yet another new Internet meme. I suppose Mitt Romney also did or said something dumb or offensive, too, but quite honestly I wasn't paying attention. I'd rather dig my eyes out with a rusty grapefruit spoon than watch an American political convention. Any political convention.
Other tidbits from the news:
Desmond Tutu has called for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to face prosecution at the International Criminal Court for their role in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
North Korea and Iran are becoming friends.
Facebook (or as I affectionally call it, FFB) shares have fallen to a new low. Cue the schadenfreude.
Yes, Virginia, there really is an Internet Cat Film Festival.
And how was YOUR week?
Comments
an internet cat film festival?!? :D
how cool is that!
and Isaac was nasty. there are still evacs going on due to rivers cresting... my little area finally got full power restored this afternoon... :o
Um, hello. Right on time.
Stutter stutter, you see, I forgot to check. But then a person told me a very sensible thing, which is that two pieces had just published, so it was better to wait, so that's actually why I waited, and not that I just forgot.
I kind of want to post a cat video, yet there are certain associations that make that difficult to do. I found it very funny.
Oh, great. That is the cat video
I'm going to post it here. Henri, the existential cat.
Love it.
I have one of those cats, actually it's my daughters. It likes to meow and walk toward me when it sees me and then just as I bend down to pet her, she veers away. Every frigging time. She just likes to fuck with me.
now that's funnuer than hell! :D
.
Not surprisingly,
Henri, le Chat Noir lives in Seattle. It's the weather that gets him down.
Why are Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc. considered
war criminals and Obama, Biden, and Clinton not? Because they lied about the WMDs? Because the Iraq war was so costly (in many aspects)? It was still a country with an evil dictator who was allegedly slaughtering his own people and was allegedly helping spread terrorism across the region. Like Gaddafi and like Assad. What about Afghanistan and Pakistan? Bush and Cheney can be war criminals because of Iraq but get a pass on Afghanistan and Pakistan, as Obama has from the start of his term? What about the drones wars killing women and children across Africa and the Middle East? What about the bullshit war on terror? Tutu is right, war criminals are war criminals whether in Africa or western countries. But he didn't go far enough.
Considered by whom?
By the Europeans? Because they despise George W, and like Barack O, plus its a lot easier to find a retired President from the other wing of the President's party to be guilty of war crimes than the sitting President.
A heartwarming but sad story
Braithwaite father and son rescue about 120 from Hurricane Isaac's floodwaters
Yeah, that means many died, most likely
This made me think of Zeitoun. Everyone with an interest in politics in America should read that book. It is the clearest, most poignant expression I have seen that civil rights are as good as dead in America. The other point illustrated is that the government views the people as an enemy--they take their role in an emergency to be to protect valuable things from the people. Anyway, it's a spell-binding bitter story of one man in his canoe helping people in his neighborhood after Katrina until official forces with precious little interest in saving anyone carted him away. Almost surely one elderly person he was feeding died. They paid no attention when he told them where the house was. That story really brought Zeitoun back. by Eggers, who is a good guy.
testing-11-12-13
is this thing turned on?
Yes, a little slow today... holiday, I guess.
There is a new open thread up now, plus Adam Siegel wrote a great piece.