Hark! A Ranking of Nirvana Albums (w/ Update)

Nothing ages a Generation Xer faster than the realization we've grown into Baby Boomer levels of nostalgic anniversary awareness.

For example, waking up the last couple of months to realize that two of the albums that truly defined our generation - Pearl Jam's Ten and Nirvana's Nevermind - have reached their 30th year anniversaries.

(Suddenly, all the hair turns white or falls off) (A wheelchair appears and knocks the Gen Xer into the seat) (one of those giant megaphone cones that people used before the invention of hearing aids shows up as a prop in one hand) "What's that sonny? 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' is on the radio? TURN IT UP! Not because I can't hear it mind you, actually yeah it's because I can't hear so good anymore..."

I kid. Most of us Xers are still able to hear things at high decibel output as well as operate heavy machinery, trust us.

Still, the reality that it's been thirty years since the great generational awakening - the moment in the early 90s when we (speaking as a White Boy) as a demographic moved into early adulthood and our own decision-making, away from the gaudy, glamor-filled, gleaming 80s - when our musical tastes moved into the more cynical and caustic Grunge movement (or the more cynical and caustic Gangster Rap movement with the rise/fall of NWA and their spinoffs Ice Cube/Dr. Dre). Our tastes in cinema and television were also turning darker, but into their own elements that would require other deeper essays to express (you could glance at my take on the Matrix anniversary for an idea how our worldview affected movie-making even by 1999).

It seems funny that the spearhead of this shift were bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney - well-regarded bands in their own right whose Seattle Sound was turning attention away from L.A. hair metal - but it was the "debuts" of bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana that launched Grunge into the upper atmosphere to turn a status-quo music industry on its head. And while Pearl Jam's Ten is considered a masterpiece in its own right, we still look to Nevermind as the cultural keystone, the one big thing that shattered standard operating procedures and sent a lot of record label studios across the planet looking for the next Nirvana to feed off the growing Grunge scene.

As for Nirvana the band itself, I had already written a few words about that when I wrote about their frontman Kurt Cobain. Lyricist, guitarist, singer (more like screamer on half the songs), Cobain was the essential man of the lineups. Alongside bassist Krist Novoselic, the two would go through a cycle of drummers - notably Melvins' drummer Dale Crover, and Chad Channing which whom they recorded their first album Bleach - before hooking up with Dave Grohl (who impressed the two when they saw him drum for another local band Scream). That was the lineup that ended up recording Nevermind... and entering music history forever.

I still can't fully explain to you the impact Nevermind had on the cultural landscape. It was like overnight the bright neon shininess of the 1980s was turned off and the half-lit moodiness of the 1990s dominated every media outlet. Lyrics about mental health, dysfunctional relationships, coping with an uncaring world started showing up even in pop songs.

But it wasn't all doom and gloom. A weird sense of whimsy was still on display, a kind of haphazard "well, we gotta live with this" mentality came through all the weirdness. 

Not to mention the sudden dominance of flannel shirts in the fashion stores.

And as I wrote, that whole moment... just seemed to last that moment. By 1994, Cobain had become jaded and cynical enough, burned out by the sudden celebrity status, and strung out by his bad drug habits, that he took his own life in April and sent whatever made up the Grunge movement into its own death spiral. In some respects, the hard rock scene never fully recovered (the musical landscape is now covered with pop divas and hip-hop).

The impact of Nirvana's brief moment upon the global stage can't be overlooked: Reflection and Respect must be paid. So into that, I bring you another ranking of albums by a band I follow, and so Hark upon this friends.

Given the shortness of Nirvana's actual existence and the few studio albums they released during Cobain's lifetime, there isn't a real way to rank one album greater than another. So I present this brief listing in chronological order.

Ranking Nirvana Albums

Epic to Epic

Title: Bleach

Reasons: Nirvana's first album in 1989 was an Indie release via a local (Seattle) label called SubPop, which had also been instrumental in 'finding' other Seattle bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney that were key to the emerging Grunge scene. Recorded with drummer Chad Chadding (with previous drummer Dale Crover on several earlier recorded songs), Bleach's overall sound is one of distorted, fast-riff guitar noise over incredibly simplistic lyrics even by Cobain's usual standards (Kurt later admitted he wrote the lyrics in a rush right before studio time and was in an angry mood when he did). Pressured into conforming to what the early Grunge sound was like in the Seattle scene, the album was meant to be a shift away from Nirvana's original output. That attempt didn't work. Even in this full rookie effort, you can see the style Nirvana will get noticed for: Punk-earnest lyrics mixed with hard-rocking up-tempo beats and working with a distorted noisy grind that harmonized into its own. 

After the band got big (and after Cobain left us), the re-releases for Bleach included several other songs such as “Big Cheese” and “Downer” to fill out the history of Nirvana's rise from SubPop to everything. 

Epic Song(s): About a Girl, Negative Creep
Great Song(s): Blew, Love Buzz, Scoff, Swap Meet, Big Cheese
Good Song(s): Floyd the Barber, School, Downer

Title: Nevermind

Reasons: I catch myself using the phrase “blew the doors off everything” when describing certain albums, like the Beatles Please Please Me (and Rubber Soul, and Revolver, and Abbey Road, and...), or U2's Joshua Tree, or Van Halen's self-titled debut. But that's because those albums DID hit the world like a storm, with an impact that other artists couldn't ignore and with a sound or voice we've never heard before.

Nevermind was such an album. For the entire music industry, this was a Before/After break in their history.

Starting with recordings with SubPop on their next album, Nirvana shifted gears when Chadding left forcing Cobain and Novoselic to find another drummer, which ended up with Dave Grohl when his band Scream had recently broken up. With Grohl in place, Nirvana then shopped for a new studio when SubPop was facing financial difficulties, ending with the DGC label under Geffen Records. With that settled, they got the album completed by June for release a few months later. Unhappy with the initial recordings, the band and producer Bruce Vig brought in more professional help to smooth out the takes, which ended up making the album sound much like the current “hair metal” bands of the 1980s. Ironically, this may have helped the album reach more audiences.

Nevermind arrived on the scene in late 1991 at a moment when reforms in album sales tracking – which had been over-promoting pop sounds like Madonna and Michael Jackson at the expense of little-heralded rock bands that people did listen to – opened up the chances a lesser-known band could see better sales numbers to encourage more radio play, meaning more listeners to notice them creating a nice cycle of positive reinforcement. Combine this to a shift in what audiences – Gen X – wanted to hear towards college/alternative style sounds (why yes, we WERE in college or heading there at the time), and that all turned this album from a minor introduction into a global phenomenon. Sales overwhelmed the expected best-sellers for that year, and carried over in 1992 as the Grunge movement crossed over to other similar bands with their own seminal releases. What was expected to sell about 200,000 copies ended up selling 1,000,000 (Platinum level), and then 2x Platinum, and then... well, by then everyone heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

As mentioned before, Nevermind brought with it a punk mentality in the lyrics with a more up-tempo yet melodic sound. Influenced from Ramones to the Pixies to R.E.M. (the Alpha and Omega of College Sound), the emphasis was less on the distorted guitar noise (you can still hear it on “Breed,” “Lithium,” and “Endless Nameless”) and more on basic guitar chords that could shift from stanza to stanza. Cobain's anger in most of the song lyrics seemed more inward, cynical and self-deprecating, but offered with a grin as though no harm done (If we only knew...). 

As far as great albums go, Nevermind is still an uneven work where some songs fall flat where others shock you with how high they can rise: not fully polished like Joshua Tree or Revolver or any of the other respected masterpieces, but arguably more impactful with the songs that do reach you hitting you years after you've heard them. For a generation, what Cobain expressed in this album reflected a lot of the anger, cynicism, despair, and hope we had for ourselves.

Epic Song(s): Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come As You Are, Lithium, On a Plain
Great Song(s): In Bloom, Breed, Polly, Drain You, Something In the Way
Good Song(s): Territorial Pissings, Lounge Act, Stay Away

Title: Incesticide

Reasons: When Nevermind turned into a behemoth, the record studio DGC/Geffen reached out to grab anything Nirvana that they could repackage to sell while the Grunge going was great. This meant regional EP (extended play mini-albums) released overseas, Indie singles, and unreleased demos and cover songs saved to tape somewhere. The result was this, a compilation album of every leftover that could get repackaged as Filet Mignon. 

As a result, it's not the best-sounding album released while Cobain was alive, but it does provide context and understanding of how his lyrical style developed and how the band's overall sound evolved. This is arguably the hardest album to listen to, not because of any lyrical dissonance – this is Nirvana/Cobain, it's ALL lyrical dissonance! – but because a lot of these songs were not released earlier for a reason (okay, Kurt, you like feedback, we get it...).

Epic Song(s): Aneurysm
Great Song(s): Sliver, Son of a Gun, Aero Zeppelin
Good Song(s): Dive, Stain, Been a Son, Hairspray Queen

Title: In Utero

Reasons: The follow-up to a breakthrough album, Cobain and his bandmates were caught in a moment where expectations were greater than they'd ever known. Pressured to release an album to sell to the masses yet trying to stick to their own artistic bents, Cobain in particular wanted to push back against those expectations to make an album he'd respect. In some ways, the sound self-sabotaged by going back to the earlier distorted noise prevalent in Bleach: A rawness to the chords, an uneven rhythm to the backbeat, more of Cobain screaming into the void. The lyrics and attitude matched the noise: Songs like “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” (an obvious punch-back at how the music industry was over-hyping the band and the Grunge scene) were anything but friendly for radio play.

Even with that, In Utero impressed the fanbase and sold well, extending the band's fame. In spite of the distortion, traces of melody still got through. The simple direct wording of Cobain's lyrics still expressed complexity of emotions. Fans got “All Apologies” and “Dumb” and understood where the self-deprecation was coming from. This isn't as fun to listen to as its predecessor, but it's just as self-reflective, and in some regards more haunting because of what came after. 

Epic Song(s): Heart-Shaped Box, Rape Me, Dumb, All Apologies
Great Song(s): Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle, Very Ape, Pennyroyal Tea
Good Song(s): Serve the Servants, Milk It, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

Title: Unplugged in New York

Reasons: Added to this list as one of Nirvana's final recordings, done when the band performed for MTV's popular “Unplugged” series of acoustic performances by artists of the day in November 1993. With Cobain's death in April 1994, this concert became one of the last that we knew Cobain had done, and so an album was crafted from the broadcast and offered as the swan song to Nirvana as a band (the two surviving members Novoselic and Grohl wisely broke up, knowing any attempt to continue would be demeaning of Cobain's memory). 

Anyone listening to this album will likely know this backstory, and likely will listen with an ear to seek out clues to every haunting, haunted song performed here. There is still a beauty to this work: Away from the loudness that the studio albums and normal live shows go for, this album is more low-key, focused on the melody, played at a more reflective, introspective pace (It still has distortion because Cobain could not go full acoustic and had brought an effect pedal as a “security blanket”). Covering all parts of Nirvana's brief history, with soul-stirring versions of “About a Girl” all the way up to an orchestral-like “All Apologies,” and intermixed with cover tunes - mostly from the band The Meat Puppets, some of whom were backing instruments on this concert - that the band enjoyed playing, the Unplugged album remains with us like a ghost, reminding us of the musical potential the band had, especially Kurt... 

Epic Song(s): About a Girl, Come As You Are, The Man Who Sold the World (Bowie cover, and oh was Bowie pissed afterward because clueless Nirvana fans kept thinking he had covered them), Dumb, Polly, Plateau (Meat Puppets cover), Lake of Fire (Meat Puppets cover), All Apologies
Great Song(s): Oh Me (Meat Puppets cover)
Good Song(s): Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Lead Belly cover)

And... that was it, everyone. Nirvana in a brief moment of our lives.

“Fuck you all, this is the last song of the evening.”
- Cobain before singing Lead Belly's “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” on Unplugged.

Update 7/20/22: This was one of the five articles submitted to this 2022 Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards, and good news it's passed the Semifinalist stage to try for the Finalist judging next. Nice new logo from FWA to go along with the news... 

Update 8/12/22: I am happy to report this article survived the Finalist round! Now, from what I learned the first time I reached this spot, this does not guarantee a top three finish. There can be 5 other blog articles that reached this level, there could be 10 or 20. But there is still a good chance this could win first, second, or third prize in the Nonfiction - Blog category. So now I have to show up at the banquet... Also I get this FWA Finalist logo.

A Brief Example of How Republican Posing for Wingnut Cred Is Getting Them Killed

If you want an example of how the Far Right are publicly exposing themselves to COVID-19 in order to show off their wingnut bona fides, look no further than the Florida Republican Party leadership, like this guy in Hillsborough literally dying for no sane reason THE GRAND FAR RIGHT NARRATIVE (via Brooke Lee Howard at the Daily Beast (paywall)): 

Just a day after testing positive for COVID-19, a Florida Republican official who battled against mask mandates, attacked the vaccine, and railed at CDC officials has died in Tampa.

Gregg Prentice, who was 61, led the Hillsborough County Election Integrity Committee—and his sudden death has sent the local GOP scrambling as it no longer has access to essential campaign finance software without his help.

In a Sept. 14 letter to the Federal Election Commission, the Hillsborough County Republican Executive Committee reported it might not be able to file its monthly financial reports as required—because only Prentice knew how to do it.

“Gregg’s software converted data from our Quickbooks software to supply the information needed by the FEC,” it states. “Unfortunately, Gregg passed away suddenly from Covid-19 on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Gregg did not share the software and instructions with our officers. We will have to enter the August data manually, and according to the information we have received from our FEC analyst, Scott Bennett, we may likely have to re-enter the data from our first 7 months of 2021...

Just to point out, aside from Prentice foolishly dying from a pandemic he could have avoided with a cheap (FREE) available vaccine, the local party organization did not plan for emergencies like this to have Prentice train somebody else to be a backup, even for situations where Prentice could have been away on vacation for Christ's sake, nobody planned for that, can I just keep yelling at the idiots in charge of this clown factory or something I MEAN JESUS... 

(calms down)

And that is just one example of a Far Right True Believer (tm) buying into the wingnut Narrative against vaccination and masking so much that he/she/they DIE FROM COVID because of ignoring the science on this.

There's an entire Reddit thread - the Herman Cain Award, an off-shoot of the Darwin Awards it looks like - that documents each and every vocal opponent of safe vaccination and protective masking policies who die from their own angry ignorance.

It's not particularly funny, other than the bleakest way. It shouldn't count as Schadenfreude, because there's no malicious joy to have from people - even these fools - dying in a way that will be a burden and a grief to those who did love them.

If anything, there's a bit of horror attached to all this, because if you read down through Howard's Daily Beast article, it gets into Prentice's friends jumping onto the QAnon Anti-Vaxxing Conspiracy bandwagon accusing the Tampa hospital of "forcibly intubating" Prentice right away and how THAT killed him instead of the COVID. We're getting more and more of the wingnuts out there buying into the accusation that the virus is an engineered bio-weapon and that hospitals are intentionally killing patients "to justify illegal mandates against our freedoms." 

Christ. This is the kind of "virtue pandering" that's going to get doctors and nurses killed...

These Things Go Through Your Head When There's a Man On Your Back

(Blog title stolen from Tori Amos, who suffered this hell)

As I followed the stories coming out of the Congressional testimony by our women's Olympic gymnasts about the years of sexual abuse they endured, the thing that horrified me most wasn't their ordeal at the hands of their rapist (and what they suffered WAS/STILL IS HORRIFYING).

What horrified more than THAT was the ordeal those women suffered at the hands of the legal authorities who failed to protect them, and worse failed to believe them (via Ailsa Chang, Vincent Acovino, and Justine Kenin at NPR): 

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ALY RAISMAN: It disgusts me that we are still fighting for the most basic answers and accountability over six years later.

CHANG: That is Aly Raisman, who, along with three other Olympic Team U.S.A. gymnasts - Simone Biles, Maggie Nichols and McKayla Maroney - told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI mishandled its investigation of Larry Nassar. Here is Simone Biles.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SIMONE BILES: To be clear - sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Take your time.

BILES: To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar. And I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.

CHANG: McKayla Maroney said the FBI did not report her abuse for 14 months and falsified her testimony when they did.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MCKAYLA MARONEY: Let's be honest. By not taking immediate action from my report, they allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year. And this inaction directly allowed Nassar's abuse to continue. What is the point of reporting abuse if our own FBI agents are going to take it upon themselves to bury that report in a drawer...?

Let's repeat that part: Maroney accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of falsifying her testimony. They not only ignored what she said, they altered it so that everyone else wouldn't believe it.

And it allowed sexual predator Larry Nassar - now serving essentially life in prison for numerous counts of sexual criminal conduct - to keep assaulting young girls while that "investigation" did nothing.

It's as though law enforcement still hasn't figured out the one common thing about rapists and sex predators: THEY DO NOT STOP AT ONE VICTIM. Rapists and assaulters and stalkers and pedophiles will not stop until stopped. The second the FBI had reports from multiple women that Nassar was a threat, THEY SHOULD HAVE STEPPED IN. Someone in charge should have made efforts to separate Nassar from his source of victims.

Yet no one did.

When the FBI did investigate, it turned out they repeatedly mishandled information and failed to follow their own agency's policies. To quote the internal DOJ investigation:

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required. We also found that the FBI Indianapolis Field Office made fundamental errors when it did respond to the allegations, failed to notify the appropriate FBI field office (the Lansing Resident Agency) or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar.

After eight months of inaction by the FBI Indianapolis Field Office, the FBI Los Angeles Field Office received the same allegations. The OIG found that while the Los Angeles Field Office took numerous investigative steps, it too failed to notify the FBI Lansing Resident Agency or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar. The FBI Lansing Resident Agency did not become aware of the Nassar allegations until after the Michigan State University Police Department (MSUPD) executed a search warrant on Nassar’s residence in September 2016, following the MSUPD’s receipt of separate complaints of sexual abuse by Nassar, and discovered child pornography at Nassar’s residence. During this period from July 2015, when the allegations were first reported to the FBI, to September 2016, Nassar continued to treat gymnasts at Michigan State University, a high school in Michigan, and a gymnastics club in Michigan. Ultimately the investigations determined that Nassar had engaged in sexual assaults of over 100 victims and possessed thousands of images of child pornography, led to his convictions in federal and state court, and resulted in Nassar being sentenced to incarceration for over 100 years...

The specific findings of the report include:

Officials in the Indianapolis Field Office violated numerous FBI policies in handling the Nassar allegations. Specifically, officials in the Indianapolis Field Office:

* failed to formally document a July 28, 2015 meeting with USA Gymnastics during which the FBI first received the allegations against Nassar;

* failed to properly handle and document receipt and review of relevant evidence, i.e., a thumb drive provided by USA Gymnastics President Stephen D. Penny, Jr.;

* failed to document until February 2017 an interview of a gymnast that was conducted on September 2, 2015, during which the gymnast alleged sexual assault by Nassar; and failed to transfer the Nassar allegations to the FBI Lansing Resident Agency, where venue most likely would have existed for potential federal crimes.

Indianapolis Field Office Special Agent in Charge (SAC) W. Jay Abbott and an Indianapolis Field Office Supervisory Special Agent (Indianapolis SSA) made false statements. Specifically, we concluded that the gymnast interview summary that the Indianapolis SSA drafted in February 2017, 17 months after the interview took place, contained materially false statements and omitted material information. We further concluded that the Indianapolis SSA made materially false statements when twice questioned by the OIG about the victim interview. In addition, we concluded that Abbott made materially false statements during his OIG interviews to minimize errors made by the Indianapolis Field Office in connection with the handling of the Nassar allegations.

Abbott violated FBI policy and exercised extremely poor judgment under federal ethics rules when he, without prior authorization, communicated with Penny about a potential job opportunity with the U.S. Olympic Committee, an entity with which Penny had professional connections. Abbott communicated with Penny about the potential job opportunity while the two continued to discuss the allegations against Nassar and while Abbott took an active role in conversations about the FBI’s public statements regarding USA Gymnastics’ handling of those allegations. Abbott should have known—and we found that he in fact did know—that this conduct would raise questions regarding his impartiality. Further, Abbott applied for the position with the U.S. Olympic Committee, and then falsely denied that he had done so when questioned by the OIG on two separate occasions...

Jesus Christ.

That the Department of Justice let these men retire or simply fired from their jobs is part of the overall mishandling of this situation. These men should be charged for their active crimes of falsifying statements and their own lies.

All because of what? Why the hell did the FBI - and nearly every other agency involved in this nightmare - screw up, at some points intentionally?

Because too many men in law enforcement, too many men in power, simply don't treat rape as a serious matter.

Just look at everything else out there where our legal system is failing rape victims and women in general:

• Preferential treatment to male suspects, especially when those suspects are celebrities, men of wealth, and men of power. Hi, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, and too many politicians and millionaires to count. Those men only answered after decades of people in authority looking the other way couldn't afford to look away anymore... and even then the likes of Cosby got out early because a DA screwed up an earlier plea arrangement.
• Rape kits left untested for years if not decades, reducing the likelihood of catching rapists who keep raping while the evidence to stop them degrades into uselessness.
• Investigators who harass, confront, and mishandle rape victims and assault accusers in ways that convince rape victims they'll never be believed in court and never see any justice served.

Even with rape as an act of violence, not only physical abuse but emotional abuse and spiritual abuse, and everybody who can do something to stop it - the cops in charge, the attorneys in charge, the judges in charge, the juries empaneled - keep acting like they want to handle anything else. That it's not worth their time, that the rape was "miscommunication" or that the woman "asked for it" with her clothes, her hairstyle, her drunken state, her demeanor, her bitchy attitude, or the shape of the moon that night.

Again, the word here. Horrifying.

One of the other shocking things is how little research into rape accusations there's been. Nothing to clarify or confirm the reality of how many rape victims there are, and if the allegations are valid (given how so many cops and DAs worry that rape victims are "ginning up" their stories for revenge or blackmail). If there's been any research, it keeps getting overlooked: There was one case study in 2010 done... which found only 8 percent or so of rape allegations were false. That meant 92 PERCENT OF RAPE ALLEGATIONS WERE REAL... and yet our legal system still treats rape like it's hearsay and we barely see any rape charges filed at all. Until it's too late and there's more victims piled up to make the "hearsay" into "Oh God they were telling the truth all along." 

Yes, there is due process. Yes, there should be steps to ensure the accused have their defense and day in court.

But for the love of God, the victims deserve due process too, the victims deserve their day in court to see justice served. If you're a cop or a lawyer or a doctor or a school administrator or a teacher or a social worker and someone's telling you they're a victim of assault or rape, you have the moral obligation to trust them and take the time to find out and make the effort to ensure rape doesn't happen again.

And yet here we are, finding more evidence our cops and investigators and administrators don't give a rat's ass.

Some of them deserve to be in jail as long as the rapist will be, for letting him flourish and rape again while they fiddled.

And what point will women trust this legal system that DOES NOT TRUST THEM?

It Was Going to Be a Beautiful Day

It's a beautiful day, the sky falls/
And you feel like it's a beautiful day/
It's a beautiful day/
Don't let it get away...

- "Beautiful Day," U2

The first thing I remember about September 11 was how clear the skies were, how blue it was that morning even in South Florida. I had gone to the Main Library in Ft. Lauderdale for a meeting with other tech lab librarians to set up training materials for a new interoffice email/calendar software (Groupwise) the county library system was signing up to use.

One of the librarians came late to the meeting. She brought word about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City. We immediately thought it was a tragic accident. I considered the weather up in the northeast might have been foggy or rain-filled for something like that to happen. As librarians we all knew our trivia, and noted there had been a plane crash hitting the Empire State Building back in World War II due to bad weather.

I didn't find out until later that the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States had clear blue skies. I found out after that training meeting that a second plane hit the second tower. We all found out what was going on as the day got worse.

It was going to be such a beautiful day...

The Irish have been coming here for years/
Feel like they own the place/
They got the airport, city hall, concrete, asphalt/
They even got the police/
Irish, Italian, Jews and Hispanics/
Religious nuts, political fanatics in the stew/
Living happily not like me and you/
That's where I lost you...

- "New York," U2

That day remains such a gut-punch to those who lived through it that the emotional scars won't ever go away for us. One of those national traumas - like hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor - that cut across everything: If you were an American, regardless of gender or age or ethnicity or religion or even politics, you felt the blow in some way.

From Bob the Angry Flower webcomic, by Stephen Notley

Sad thing was, whatever that moment of grief was that united us as Americans, it didn't last. A number of us turned right back into our partisan (and racist, and sexist) opportunistic ways. We had the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson pin the blame of 9/11 on "abortionists, gays, and feminists" to fuel their culture war bullshit.

We had the Neoconservatives jump up in eagerness to send us all off into their interventionist wars in the Middle East. While going into Afghanistan made sense - where the 9/11 culprit Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts were hiding - in our rage and revenge we got dragged into another quagmire of a decades-long occupation that only ended last month to tears and further political recrimination. And by 2003 these Neocons made it worse tricking us into an Iraqi invasion/occupation that shredded our international standing and broke our military.

Saddest of all, in spite of the moment's call for us all as Americans to unite as one nation, our racism and fear created an increase in anti-Muslim anger that led to increasing persecution and violence towards anyone even looking Muslim. That rage fueled the rise of trumpist-backed anti-immigrant bashing that is tearing apart our national heritage of immigration as a global beacon of opportunity and liberty.

Whatever unity we had in the wake of the Twin Towers falling was gone the second our rage got the better of us.

We haven't seen many beautiful days since 9/11, have we...

And love is not the easy thing/
The only baggage you can bring/
And love is not the easy thing/
The only baggage you can bring/
Is all that you can't leave behind...

- "Walk On," U2

Recovering from the trauma of 9/11 is an ongoing thing for a lot of people. Many of the survivors from Ground Zero itself - and the families who lost loved ones there and at the Pentagon plane attack and those on Flight 93 - have to carry their guilt and sorrow to the end of their days. The rest of us who stood on the sidelines watching the tragedy unfold have to come to terms with the unresolved anger we've felt that has now branched out into waves of violence and recrimination towards ourselves.

The culture wars that Falwell and Robertson and others had been pushing on 9/11 have pretty much consumed the mental state today of a Far Right evangelical Republican Party, to the point where the biggest threat to our nation's safety isn't overseas terror groups like ISIL it's homegrown groups like Proud Boys. Our rage has gotten, is getting the better of us as Americans, and even in our remembrances of that tragic morning it's going to take a lot of letting go for us to move on into days that could be beautiful again...

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind...

(Requiem to those we left behind)

(With thanks to Infidel for adding this to his Sunday blog wrap-up)

Biden FINALLY Escalated Against the Wingnuts

There's no other way to describe this: I think Joe Biden has gotten tired of your shit, you anti-masking anti-vaxxing GOP wingnuts (via Alana Wise and Tamara Keith at NPR):

President Biden on Thursday unveiled a series of steps to combat the newly surging pandemic, including the announcement of a forthcoming federal rule that all businesses with 100 or more employees have to ensure that every worker is either vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing for the coronavirus.

"We're in a tough stretch, and it could last for a while," Biden conceded, as the delta variant of the coronavirus has caused cases, hospitalizations and deaths to rise across the country. But, he added: "We can and we will turn the tide on COVID-19."

Speaking from the White House, Biden said the new emergency rule for private sector employers, which will be issued by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, would apply to 80 million workers...

The Republicans, of course, want to be the babies throwing a conniption:

The Republican National Committee on Thursday night announced its plan to sue the Biden administration.

"Forcing main street to vax or pay a fine will not only crush an economy he's put on life support—it's flat-out un-American," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote on Twitter. "To Joe Biden, force is more important than freedom. Americans won't stand for it..."

These Republicans, by the by, are the same sons-of-bitches who are pushing anti-abortion laws that would deny the freedoms of women who need to make their own medical choices.

The Republicans are also ignoring - because they've been ignoring the majority of Americans for decades now - that a sizable number of  Americans who are vaccinated and trying to fight a COVID pandemic are supporting stronger mandates and health safety in workplaces and schools.

I'm with John Cole on this:

I am tired of screwing around with these fucking imbeciles, I’m tired of loosing innocent people, I’m tired of destroying our medical community and wasting resources on idiots who refuse to get vaccinated, and I am not interested in watching my health insurance go through the fucking roof because of Y’All-Qaeda’s refusal to vaccinate. I am well beyond the No Fucks Left to Give stage, and am in favor of enacting sweeping regulations and letting the courts sort it out. Go overboard, let corporate America go half way to cover their asses, and even if the shit gets struck down, we’ll have advanced the ball.

I am sick of this shit. Fuck your freedoms, get the vaccine, wear a mask, and shut the fuck up.

If the wingnuts want to fight this in the courts, so be it. Odds are they'll lose, because Biden's legal team likely worked on these mandates ahead of time to ensure even the Far Right judges out there would have to concede the need for emergency pandemic responses.

It will depend how soon these legal fights get resolved, but it better be quick because we are STILL GETTING SICK AND DYING OUT HERE, America.

Conservatives At War

Update 9/12: With thanks to Infidel for linking this to his Sunday's weekly blog wrap-up!

I'm not talking about the Far Right's obsessions with putting the United States into war zones in Afghanistan or Iraq or other places in the Middle East or Central America that would make them feel good about regime changing the rest of the world into their puppet states.

I'm talking about how everybody in the Far Right is so driven to be in a state of spiritual, cultural, economic, and political war with everybody else (and even sometimes within their own ranks as they fight a purity campaign against perceived RINOs).

Just try reading Rude Pundit, who keeps track of these things, documenting how the craziness of the Far Right fringe is now the Republican mainstream. Watch how the Far Right goes charging into school board meetings to scream and intimidate the boards over the simplest of pandemic measures like masking their own kids for safety, as though every little particle of FREEEEEEEEDOM is threatened by a cloth mask that can prevent the spread of COVID.

The entire political fight this year over masking, and vaccines, and the mad push to take "alternative cures" that are toxic just to "own the libs" is all part of a Contrarian effort by the Far Right: Not against Liberals but against an entire world where facts and evidence and expert analysis are in opposition to the wingnuts' ignorance-driven faith (and not faith in God, but faith in their own value, their dominance over the rest of us as God's Chosen Ones. Listen to them sometime, you'll realize they're not praising God they're worshipping themselves and their own greedy success).

Republicans crow about being the friends to Big Business but the second a company or twelve steps out of line they'll be threatening those businesses with retaliatory regs and investigations. The power leadership of the conservative party willing to wage war against billionaires all the while pandering to those same billionaires about defending their almighty tax cuts.

The Far Right hatred of immigrants - railing against the reality that our nation was built, is built, will be built by immigrants - is now condemning us to a cycle of sadism and cruelty towards those who need the shelter we ought to provide to those who want to become Americans just like the rest of us. All driven by a racial Fear Of The Other that opposes the faces of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Afghans, anyone else Not-White.

And the ongoing war against women - against their rights to live their lives and make their choices and be free of the chains that the Far Right would lock upon their bodies - turning darker and malevolent as Red states like Texas impose abortion restrictions so severe no woman could get a safe abortion, as well as threatening to unleash a bounty-snitching war between neighbors without oversight or control.

But this is where we are now, as a nation, isn't it? Even before trump forged deep rifts within the U.S. through his inept rage, even before the warmongering of Bush/Cheney, even before the Call to Culture War by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan in the 1990s, even before the callous shredding of social safety nets under Reagan, even before Nixon's paranoia, that conservative rage against the rest of the world was there. The Birchers and the anti-Fluoride nutcases may have been fringe, but they were patient, and let the rest of the conservative ideologies merge into their epistemic bubble of madness. Now it's all QAnon anti-vaxxing anti-immigrant anti-women anti-voting pro-insurrection madness, and it's all they live for.

It seems weird and sad and dangerous how one political faction in what's supposed to be a participatory democracy is driven to make sure there's no participation AND no democracy, only their hold on power. But this is where the Republicans and their rabid voting base are at now: fully aware of their own minority status in the demographic makeup of the United States, and terrified that they can't retain or at least share that power through concession or moderation.

So rather than redirect their energy, rather than come to terms with the reality that they should pander to the better angels of our nature: the Far Right would rather sink deeper into rage, and wallow in the delights of hurting others, and answer to their demons desperate to fight a war they can't win.

It must be tiring to be so angry and spiteful at the world every minute of the day, Republicans.

Then again, all that hate seems to keep you Republicans all warm at night.

And yet, all that hate is the kind of fire that will burn yourselves straight to Hell.

I'd pity you, wingnuts, but you honestly wouldn't understand why.

Blood In the Streets of Lakeland

No. No no no. This happened near here. This is in Lakeland. This is my metaphorical backyard (via Divya Kumar Tampa Bay Times (paywall)): 

A shooting north of Lakeland this morning left four dead, including a 3-month-old infant. An 11-year-old was shot multiple times. After two shootouts with deputies, the suspect is in custody after being treated for injuries.

At a news conference at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Grady Judd said Bryan Riley, 33, from Brandon, had no apparent connection to the victims...

Somehow, that shooter knew them, and knew them well enough to kill them with a firearm.

What we know about the shooter is that he served as a Marine overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, that he was honorably discharged but that he suffered from PTSD and may have been on drugs. His girlfriend talked about him providing security at an Orlando church and that he came back last week claiming "he could talk to God."

What we also know about the shooter is that he seemed armed to the tooth and body-armored for a fight, because he got into a firefight with county deputies before surrendering.

What we also know is that this sonofabitch - like so many others who committed mass shootings across this country nearly every day now - had easy access to firearms, and a willingness to use them.

We are at a point where we can't trust a single goddamned person with firearms. And yet, and yet, all because of a screeching, Russian-owned lobby group called the National Rifle Body Count Association, we live in a country that prizes the right to shoot anybody they like over the rights for the rest of us to peaceably assemble and, you know, NOT GET SHOT.

This level of violence will NEVER be normal.

This number of grieving families will NEVER be normal.

Her Wings Are Cut

Her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.
-- Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Welp, the Republican War on Women jumped up a notch this morning when the Supreme Court in its infinite cowardice refused to stay or even comment on the law passed in Texas that pretty much denies every woman (in reality every poor and ethnic woman) her right to have an abortion.

If we can go into some detail about what Texas' law actually does, let's refer to Sarah McCammon at NPR:

The law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who helps a woman obtain an abortion — including those who give a woman a ride to a clinic or provide financial assistance to obtain an abortion. Private citizens who bring these suits don't need to show any connection to those they are suing.

The law makes no exceptions for cases involving rape or incest...

It bans abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detectable. That's around six weeks, which is before a lot of people know that they're pregnant. Other states have tried to do this, but those laws have been challenged by abortion-rights groups and blocked by federal courts again and again...

Anyone who successfully sues an abortion provider under this law could be awarded at least $10,000. And to prepare for that, Texas Right to Life has set up what it calls a "whistleblower" website where people can submit anonymous tips about anyone they believe to be violating the law.

"These lawsuits are not against the women," says John Seago with Texas Right to Life. "The lawsuits would be against the individuals making money off of the abortion, the abortion industry itself. So this is not spy on your neighbor and see if they're having an abortion."

In a federal lawsuit challenging this, a coalition of abortion providers and reproductive rights groups said the law "places a bounty on people who provide or aid abortions, inviting random strangers to sue them..."

When I heard the bit about the $10,000 bounty, I immediately flashed onto the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which also issued bounties on anyone deemed an escaped slave (which punished free-born Blacks) and penalties on Northerners who refused to help bounty hunters (which punished law officers into betraying their Black neighbors). This isn't the first time I made that analogy.

But this is appropriate analogy after all: This Texas anti-abortion law basically turns women into property, unable to have a say in their medical care or their ability to have families on their own terms.

The so-called Pro-Lifers, I've noted before, are not about the sanctity of life: If they were, they'd be foremost against the death penalty and wars of occupation (and they're not). The so-called Pro-Fetus people, I've noted before, are not about the fetus: If they were, they'd be pushing for more financial aid and improvements in pre-natal care, maternity leave from work, child care benefits, and increased food benefits to schools and families so that children won't starve (guess what, they're not).

No, the anti-abortion crowds have always been Pro-Judgment, willing to shame any woman they deem impure, eager to promote their own rage and anger towards other humans. Willing to promote a society where women earn less in wages, suffer more domestic violence, and are viewed mostly as breeding cattle stuck in generational cycles of poverty.

By passing a law that restricts abortion past an arbitrary deadline that no woman can keep - most women won't know it until they miss a menstrual cycle (four weeks at the most), and by then it would be too late to find a provider who would help - the Far Right are looking to deny women any say at all what happens to their own health. Pregnancy is NOT perfectly safe, and a lot of women could suffer - even die - if they're forced to carry a pregnancy their bodies can't handle.

By passing a law that refuses to respect rape / incest victims, they are forcing those victims to carry on a traumatic experience that would break their spirits if not their sanity.

By passing a law that allows ANYONE uninvolved in the direct affairs of that woman's life to earn monetary awards by simply snitching on them - even if the woman suffers a legitimate miscarriage, or even isn't pregnant - guarantees an abuse of that bounty system to where innocent women will be investigated and punished while assholes rack up easy payouts. That bounty system also punishes anybody pro-choice trying to help these women find ways to get out of state to where they could get the abortion they need to save their health and/or their sanity: a lot of social workers and doctors are going to become targets of unjustified persecution so that a greedy few stuff their wallets with false claims (and given the sadistic mindset of the state government enforcing all of this, the overseers of this system will likely ignore those false claims so they can "juke the stats" on their War Against Women).

This law - passed in the name of Christian morality - flies against the religious belief of Jewish, Hindi, non-religious, and liberal Christian churches. Who speaks for their First Amendment rights in this matter? Certainly not the Texan Republicans who pushed this law, or the rest of the Far Right Republicans nationwide who will look to craft similar laws in their own states to ensure their women suffer as well.

The only women who won't suffer in all of this are the ones who can afford to leave Texas (or any other Red state) for a place where abortion isn't restricted, and can afford to stay there for a year with family/friends so that nobody back home can accuse them of anything. In short, upper-income women (who tend to NOT be Black or Latina, hint hint).

To all the women in Texas about to suffer injuries to your persons because of a corrupt patriarchy that devalues women, these Far Right Bible-thumping hypocrites are trying to cut your wings.

Everyone else out here needs to fight back against those judgmental monsters. Every woman has a right to spread her wings to fly. 

Who Wins the Last War

War is over. If you want it.
- John Lennon

The United States is officially out of Afghanistan this night (via Scott Neuman and Deepa Shivaram at NPR): 

The last U.S. plane has departed Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced, marking the end of America's longest war and leaving the country's future in disarray and uncertainty under Taliban rule...

Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the last U.S. plane was now clearing Afghan air space.

"I'm here to announce the completion of our mission to Afghanistan, " he said.

More than 123,000 civilians were flown out by the U.S. and its partners, which McKenzie called "a monumental accomplishment." A U.S. official also said today that 6,000 people who self-identified as American were American. The official said the number of Americans left in Afghanistan is below 250...

Despite the end of military presence, McKenzie echoed other administration officials who have emphasized in recent days that diplomatic efforts to get more Americans and American allies out of Afghanistan will continue. U.S. officials have said Taliban forces, who now control Afghanistan's borders and air space, have been told that anyone who wants to leave should be able to do so peacefully...

Meanwhile, President Biden as Commander-in-Chief greeted the coffins of the 13 U.S. troops killed in Kabul by the ISIL last week during the evacuations:

On Sunday, the president attended a ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in which the flag-draped caskets containing bodies of the U.S. service members killed in last week's attack in Kabul arrived aboard a C-17 plane.

Biden stood with grieving families as honor guards in dress uniforms removed the caskets. He and first lady Jill Biden also met privately with family members of the dead.

Eleven Marines, one Army soldier and one member of the Navy were among the dead. In a statement Saturday, the president called them "heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our highest American ideals and while saving the lives of others."

"The 13 service members that we lost were heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our highest American ideals and while saving the lives of others," Biden said in the statement. "Their bravery and selflessness has enabled more than 117,000 people at risk to reach safety thus far..."

Those 13 troops return as the last official casualties of a twenty-year war and occupation of Afghanistan, started in response to the 9/11 attacks and perpetuated by a succession of Presidencies that had few honest solutions how to exit that nation without the Taliban retaking the place the minute we left.

And as the occupation of Afghanistan comes to its dark end, the recriminations have already begun, aimed at Biden's administration by a Beltway Media that can't remember its' own collusion with Bush the Lesser's administration that led us into that mess in the first place.

If there's any voices in the punditry taking a long historic look at how Afghanistan fell apart, one of them is David Rothkopf at The Atlantic (paywall):

Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement. Although Donald Trump made a plan to end the war, he set a departure date that fell after the end of his first term and created conditions that made the situation Biden inherited more precarious. And despite significant pressure and obstacles, Biden has overseen a military and government that have managed, since the announcement of America’s withdrawal, one of the most extraordinary logistical feats in their recent history...

In the days following the fall of Kabul earlier this month—an event that triggered a period of chaos, fear, and grief—critics castigated the Biden administration for its failure to properly coordinate the departure of the last Americans and allies from the country. The White House was indeed surprised by how quickly the Taliban took control, and those early days could have been handled better. But the critics argued that more planning both would have been able to stop the Taliban victory and might have made America’s departure somehow tidier, more like a win or perhaps even a draw. The chaos, many said, was symptomatic of a bigger error. They argued that the United States should stay in Afghanistan, that the cost of remaining was worth the benefits a small force might bring.

Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.

They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us...

Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul...

Let us be honest about this situation: The United States could not afford to stay in Afghanistan forever, could not afford to continue a low-scale occupation and brush war. Just as we could not stay in Iraq forever, just as we couldn't stay in Lebanon back in 1983 or even engage in places like Libya and Syria (which is in its tenth year of civil war). It turns out there are limits to what a superpower nation can do, and we seem to keep forgetting the lessons that should have reminded us of that.

For all the political and foreign policy realities that confront our nation every day, we have to remember that wars must end: Whatever objectives we had going into Afghanistan - revenge for 9/11 - could no longer justify our staying there. And while we are going to have to deal with the horror that the returning Taliban regime is going to punish women and rule by terror/fear, the threat of more war is not a feasible option. This is now a moment where diplomacy / money that is foreign policy can direct our local and global allies to push back against the Taliban's dark rule.

We need to acknowledge the losses we incurred in that 20-year struggle, the sacrifices of our soldiers and citizen helpers who did what they could to rebuild Afghanistan where our political will couldn't.

We need to review - with deep insight and focus - all the things our elected officials and generals did wrong the last 20 years, not just the last 4-5 with trump and Biden. We need to hold accountable the Warhawks of every Presidency from Bush the Lesser to Obama to trump to Biden who promised us many things and misread nearly everything. We failed to learn our lessons with wars like Korea and Vietnam and Iraq (both the first and the second), we dare not ignore this moment to learn where Afghanistan went wrong.

The only way we can win this last war is to make sure we don't screw up getting tricked or manipulated into the next war.

One Tweet Description Of How Bad the Anti-Vaxxers Have Gotten To Make the Pandemic Worse

Yes, it's gotten this bad:

 

This is how bad the idjits fighting against vaccinations are behaving: they are abusing a *horse deworming* medication so much that the horse med stores NEED A FCKING PHOTO ID OF YOUR HORSE. /headdesk #GetVaccinated #COVIDIsNotOver https://t.co/Ymr00K9woA

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) August 29, 2021

"Sir, I'm gonna need to see your driver's license and an equestrian certificate from Secretariat Junior over there before I sell you this highly toxic horse medication to you."

I can remember when common over-the-counter drugs had to get moved behind the pharmacist's counter because those drugs could be used to make meth. Now we're worried about horse deworming meds that CLEARLY STATE THEY ARE NOT MEANT FOR HUMANS.

All because some con artist out there posted something on social media that this Ivermectin stuff is an "alternative" to the dreaded mRNA vaccines. And if it's not this dewormer stuff, it'll be something else promoted as a quick solution cure, and then something else, and then something after that, everything EXCEPT the vaccines that work all because the Contrarian nature of the Far Right mindset can NEVER accept something the "libs" are pushing as "good".

Gods. Our species IS going to die out from partisan stupidity.

Quick News Tonight III: There's a Storm Comin'

Every year, between June to November, we got to cope with the hurricane season. We've had a couple of close calls, some tropical storms hitting the United States, but this weekend there's a big one acomin' with Ida. Here's some more detailed info via Kevin McGill and Janet McConnaghey from the AP Newswire:

Ida intensified rapidly Friday from a tropical storm to a hurricane with top winds of 80 mph (128 kph) as it crossed western Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida would strengthen into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph (225 kph) before making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast late Sunday.

“This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren’t prepared,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott said during a Friday news conference with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The governor urged residents to quickly prepare, saying: “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to be to ride out the storm.”

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered a mandatory evacuation for a small area of the city outside the levee system. But with the storm intensifying so much over a short time, she said it wasn’t possible to do so for the entire city. That generally calls for using all lanes of some highways to leave the city...

This is really catching the area at a bad time, not just because of the COVID pandemic overfilling hospitals facing power outages and storm surges.

This is an anniversary of the last big storm that blew threw New Orleans and left the worst damage a hurricane ever did to our nation: Katrina. Just that name alone will summon dread to anyone who lived through those weeks. This article on the ten-year anniversary in 2015 from Letitia Stein for Reuters:

...But recovery has been uneven in the city, which took the brunt of the 2005 storm that killed more than 1,800 people and was the costliest in U.S. history.

Many properties still bear physical scars from the hurricane, particularly in poorer African-American neighborhoods. Social, demographic and political changes still ripple through the city.

In the mostly black Lower Ninth Ward, devastated by the flooding, Charles Brown is still attending services in his pastor’s nearly empty living room, waiting for the day when Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church is rebuilt.

The black population of the city, long a hub of African-American culture, has plummeted since Aug. 29, 2005, the day Katrina swept in from the Gulf of Mexico and overwhelmed the levees meant to prevent flooding in the low-lying city.

Income gaps between blacks and whites have widened. Many African-American neighborhoods and the businesses supporting them have not fully recovered...

Brown, an emergency responder, stayed behind to search for the missing.

“We should have made so much more progress,” said the 55-year-old Brown in an interview before a series of events the city is planning this month to mark the storm’s 10th anniversary. “I don’t see anything to celebrate...”

I remember visiting New Orleans in 2006 the year after for a library conference, and then taking a cable car ride up into the Ninth Ward area where the post-storm flooding was at its worst. Entire neighborhoods empty. Debris piled up that were never getting picked up for the trash heaps. Houses still showing the watermarks for how high the flooding got. I get the sense from the 2015 article that a lot of the cleanup still hadn't happened, and that not a lot of people came back to rebuild.

And now here comes Ida, possibly as strong as if not stronger than Katrina. Those levees that broke in 2005, were they ever truly repaired or upgraded? 

They're about to find out.

The hard way, in the Big Easy.

God help them.

Quick News Tonight II: The Tragedy of Kabul, The Importance of Evacuating Refugees

Earlier this week, an IS suicide bomber attacked an evacuation point for the ongoing refugee rescue efforts, killing many Afghan civilians and at least 16 US Marines trying to help. Referring to Adam L. Silverman's evaluation of the situation via Balloon Juice:

The window of opportunity for today’s attack has two roots. The first is that large numbers of Afghans are constantly approaching Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul attempting to get into the airport in order that the US can get them out. The second is that Islamic State Khorasan’s leadership, like that of Islamic State proper, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and all of our non-state and state adversaries actually watch our broadcast and cable news and read our newspapers... (The) attack was directly intended to take advantage of both of these realities. The physical one – all the Afghans attempting to get to the airport in Kabul – and the informational/psychological ones resulting from the execrable and irresponsible news media reporting and the politicization of the withdrawal by both Republican officials and an entire ecosystem of people who have gained fame and fortune solely by commenting about the war.

IS-K is violently opposed to the Taliban. The reason for this is that the extreme, politicized version of Islam that the Taliban follow is rooted in Deobandi Islam with a much later added overlay of Saudi tawheed as a result of contact with the Saudi mujahideen who flocked to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets... For all that we see the Taliban as being extreme and unyielding, the Islamic State perceives them as not being pure enough in their understanding and application of tawheed...

Just need to say this: How fucked up do you have to be to make the TALIBAN look sane by comparison? That said, the Taliban aren't saints in all this, but again the entire Middle East region is a minefield of divergent political and religious forces at odds with each other in a pileup that would make it impossible to figure out who the good guys are: All we can ever tell is who the victims always are.

The good news is that the United States under President Biden is committed to getting our people and our allied Afghanis out of there as effectively as possible, in spite of the dangers of the extremist terrorists looking for easy targets to upset the already fragile armistice between the U.S. and the Taliban.

Quick News Tonight Part I: Masking Florida

On Friday, the Leon County Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of the families suing DeSantis over his anti-mask mandates (via Jeffrey S. Solochek and Ana Ceballos at the Tampa Bay Times (paywall):

A judge in Leon County ruled Friday that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration acted “without legal authority” when barring universal mask mandates in schools, delivering a blow to the Republican leader as a growing number of school districts defied his order.

Circuit Court Judge John Cooper did not contend the governor violated the state Constitution when it came to providing safe schools or recognizing the local authority of school boards. Rather, he said DeSantis and his administration tried to unlawfully block mask mandates by improperly invoking and selectively enforcing Florida’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights” law.

“Seeking to enforce a policy through executive order, and through actions that violate the provisions of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, is by definition, arbitrary and capricious,” said Cooper, who spoke for 2½ hours to outline his findings.

DeSantis responded by saying the court ruling was “not based on science and facts” and made with “incoherent justifications.” The Florida Department of Education, which was enforcing the mask mandate ban, said Cooper’s decision “discards the rule of law” and vowed to keep fighting in court...

This means that while DeSantis got punched, he's not down for the count and he's not going to budge on his "pandering to the ignorant trumpsters" agenda.

In the meantime, the COVID infection rates for Florida keep going up and nobody is slapping DeSantis in the face for every single number he's generating through his inaction.

Fighting DeSantis Over Masking This Week

Let's cut to the chase, there's a courtroom decision set to come down this Friday between DeSantis' mad efforts to spread COVID throughout our K-12 schools versus a ton of families and county school boards trying to, you know, KEEP OUR KIDS HEALTHY (via Jeffrey Solochek and Ana Ceballos at Tampa Bay Times (paywalled)):

The third day of Florida’s heated court battle over school mask mandates ended Wednesday with no ruling, leaving observers across the state waiting to see how to proceed next.

Leon County Judge John C. Cooper said he would take closing arguments Thursday morning and rule Friday morning on the case brought by parents from Hillsborough, Pinellas, Palm Beach and Alachua counties.

“I need some time. I need what I call alone time, with my door closed and no interruptions to go through this,” Cooper said.

The mask mandate debate has sparked debate statewide and even grabbed the attention of the White House. The judge’s decision could change the way schools work to fend off the coronavirus moving forward and affect the relationship between the state and local school boards...

Meanwhile, how is DeSantis' combatting the state of Florida's ongoing spike of COVID infectees and ICUs getting filled up? While cities like Orlando and Tampa cut back on liquid oxygen for their water treatments because that oxygen is needed for the overwhelmed hospitals?

He's accusing Biden of not doing enough to end COVID.

Bitch, Biden is out there every day asking people to get vaccinated and masking in public to reduce the spread of the pandemic. Biden's plans to get everyone vaccinated by July could have worked if only the goddamned wingnuts and anti-vaxxers getting misinformed by Fox Not-News and Far Right Facebook pages accepted the vaccines as legit and reduced the virus' chances to spread and mutate.

Instead, it was stupid idjits like you Ron who went out there and mocked the vaccines and refused to wear the masks. You campaigned against Fauci to mock his insistence that the pandemic wasn't over yet, while letting thousands of Floridians get sick and spread the COVID into our schools and workplaces well into August.

Thanks to your partisan bullshit, Governor DeSantis, Florida is one of the biggest hot zones on the planet this 2021. And you think this is going to win you votes in 2022, let alone 2024? You think at this rate ANY OF US WILL BE ALIVE TO VOTE BY 2024?!

Goddamn you, DeathSantis.

Starting a Podcast: Got a Name, Now I Need 99 More Things Done

Well, okay, I'm kind of indulging here but:

If I'm going to start a podcast, what would be a good name for it?

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) August 20, 2021

I'm actually working on a library project, the city Parks and Recreation department was keen on starting up recording studios at some of the Rec centers to get the kids interested in music/podcast recordings. As the library is now partnered with them through Leisure Services, we were tasked with getting some of the resources pulled together and some training done so we could help when called upon. 

While the pandemic kind of stalled that idea, it's still one I'm expecting we'll follow through if/when the pandemic clears up.

So I've done some of the things to get a podcast going - microphone, free app Audacity software to record, stuff like that - and now it's a question of writing up a script, getting it recorded, figuring out the editing, and posting it online with a podcast provider - Apple apparently is huge, Spotify might be another - in time to see if I've got it right and can teach a class on it.

So, it seems Book With the Blue Cover is the winner of the poll (I'm a bit disappointed the more poetic Always Sober Never Sane didn't win over the votes), now it's a question of making sure it wasn't trademarked yet. With a title like that, I may be forced to stick to library-related topics although the urge to rant about politics will overtake me. We'll see...

I'll update as needed. I'm busy until then.

Florida's Schools Under Threat of DeSantis' Power Plays (w/ Update)

(Update: Many thanks as always to Batocchio for adding this blog to Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks&Liars! I have a more recent article regarding the parents' lawsuit against DeSantis' anti-masking policy that we all need to keep track of - the ruling should be this Friday - and as always keep pushing back against the anti-vaxxers who are making us sicker)

As more Florida school districts - Sarasota County just voted last night - pass their own masking mandates in opposition to Ron DeSantis' anti-mask orders, the governor and his officials are pushing back (via AP News linking to NPR):

Florida officials are threatening to withhold funds equal to the salaries of school board members if school districts in two counties don't immediately do away with strict mask mandates as the state continues to battle through high hospitalization rates.

School boards in Broward and Alachua counties received a warning Friday from the State Board of Education giving them 48 hours to walk back their decisions to require masks for all students, only exempting those with a doctor's note. Broward County has the second-largest school district in the state.

"We cannot have government officials pick and choose what laws they want to follow," said Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran in an emailed statement. "These are the initial consequences to their intentional refusal to follow state law and state rule to purposefully and willingly violate the rights of parents..."

Yet which rights are Corcoran and DeSantis are desperate to uphold: The rights of certain parents to be secure with the hope that their masked kids are going to stay healthy while at high-risk schools, or the rights of other parents who don't give a rat's ass about the COVID pandemic and are willing for everyone to get sick and risk dying all because they bought into the Far Right misinformation telling them it's all a hoax/conspiracy?

DeSantis maintains masks can be detrimental for children's development and that younger children simply don't wear masks properly. But board members in the counties of Broward, home to Fort Lauderdale, and Alachua, home to Gainesville, decided not to allow parents to easily opt out of the mandate as surging cases fueled by the Delta variant began straining hospitals.

Florida on Friday surpassed 3 million total COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a weekly report from the state's health department. It also reported 1,486 new deaths in a week, significantly raising the seven-day average of reported deaths per day from 153 to 212 over the past week.

The state continued to have the highest hospitalization rates in the country, with 16,849 patients with COVID-19 — 3,500 of them in intensive care, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...

These aren't fake numbers, or works of fiction: Florida is currently one of the biggest COVID hot zones in the United States, and you'd think a sane response to a contagious virus would be to listen to the medical experts and go back to the steps we took in 2020 to reduce the risks of the pandemic. Instead, DeSantis is turning this into a pissing contest between himself and the various county school boards who are on the ground living the nightmare in-person as COVID races through their classrooms infecting children and teachers alike.

At some point, the needs of many - the ones who are vaccinating and masking and doing their part to bring this year-long-and-counting pandemic to an end - are going to have to take priority over the needs of the few who want to be assholes to the rest of us. Like Rude Pundit notes:

...And that's because something else is true: the people at these (school board) meetings don't represent how actually reasonable most people are. Polls show that over two-thirds of the public support mask mandates in schools. But you know who don't go to meetings where they know that a bunch of screaming fucknuts aren't going to be wearing masks? The people who support mask mandates...

I have long, long ago given up having any sympathy for the belligerently unmasked and/or unvaccinated. I have given up feeling bad when someone who said COVID is a hoax or vaccines are mind control ends up dying from the virus. As I've said, I want them to be vaccinated. I want them to save their own lives. But, you know, you fucked around and you found out. Just stop taking up ICU beds from people who gave a shit or the kids you gave COVID to...

And yet, for all the majority of Americans and all the majority of Floridians, these assholes aren't listening. DeSantis and his ilk aren't listening because they don't care to listen. 

One of the problems in Florida is how decades of gerrymandering and voter suppression allowed the Republicans to maintain an outsized and unbalanced control of the state legislature and governorship. As a result, the Republican leadership only cares to stay in power by pandering to the minority voting base they control. Because of that, DeSantis and the other state/federal officials would rather double-down on their base's ignorance and fear - and push for an anti-mask anti-vax position that's genuinely harmful - than do the right things that the real majority of residents want them do to.

The local boards at the county and city level can't afford to play those partisan games. Granted, many of them can be partisan themselves, but the school boards and county commissioners and city halls have to deal with the daily workings of schools and public services and whatnot. The local governments have to deal with the hospitals overflowing, and the school children getting sicker, while the governor can go dance in front of the Fox News cameras posing for 2024. It's been left to the school boards and city halls to find ways to keep people alive.

And so you have this fight now, between an out-of-touch state leader in DeSantis against the overwhelmed county-level school districts. DeSantis doesn't want to concede or compromise on COVID responses because that will ruin his Narrative that he's already beaten the pandemic. It would ruin his image as the Male Alpha Dominus able to replace donald trump on the national ticket. 

Ron DeSantis is turning a crisis response to the COVID pandemic into a power play against the lower-rung county offices actually trying to survive COVID.

This is why DeSantis' nickname on Twitter is #DeathSantis 

Goddamn him and his Republican buddies for putting partisanship ahead of public safety.

I keep saying this: This is not going to end well. And I keep saying that because these asshole Republicans never admit what they're doing wrong and change their efforts towards what does work, and they keep proving me right.

See you next week when I'll likely rant about DeSantis' partisan bullshit agenda even more.

What To Say About Afghanistan In the Aftermath

Me, I'm just a lowly blogger with no direct military, national intelligence, or foreign policy creds.

But I read a number of people on the Intertubes who ARE well-credentialed, and sometimes it's best to just link straight to them to get an idea of 1) what might have happened that led to Afghanistan's government swift fall to the Taliban, and 2) who's accountable for what happened in Afghanistan.

I've quote Adam L. Silverman here before, with his intel analysis and experience that he posts at Balloon Juice, and here he is going into detail about what led up to this past weekend's collapse:

...The agreement negotiated by Ambassador Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghan Reconstruction working under the direction of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the direct orders of then President Trump makes the Treaty of Versailles look like strategic genius.

The abject surrender is in part one and sections 2 and 3 of part 3. Part 2, which is the Taliban’s responsibilities as a result of the agreement, are not enforceable by the US once the US and its Coalition allies complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan and because of what the US agreed to in part 1: to never again threaten to use force, use force, or interfere in any way in Afghanistan.

What did the US agree to:

1. Release of Taliban prisoners,

2. Lifting of all sanctions,

3. Complete withdrawal from Afghanistan,

4. To never again threaten to use force, use force, or interfere in any way in Afghanistan

5. To seek positive relations with the Taliban

6. To establish economic reconciliation with the new post occupation Islamic government of Afghanistan...

Essentially, the great deal-maker donald trump traded away an entire pro football roster for the sake of getting a Third Round draft pick to snag the best-available college punter. 

Back to Silverman, who noted that the Afghan President Ghani issued a stand-down order that basically made the nation's military surrender, and also noted strong evidence that the manpower of the Afghan military and police were overstated with no-shows and payroll grifts:

We have four documentable, verifiable reasons for why the Taliban were able to so quickly and easily retake Afghanistan and not a single one of them was the result of something the Biden administration did...

Which leads to the second part of what we need to discuss, and I'd like to link to Stonekettle - whose bio has him with an extensive military background - at his blog Stonekettle Station to quote a few words from his article "Bitter Pill" (you should follow the link to read the article in full. It is bitter and brutal and honest and factual about all the follies our nation's done from Vietnam to now in the name of war):

The ragged American forces left in-country are in full retreat, falling back and back to the airplanes that will maybe get them out of the carnage. No time to destroy their equipment. No time to destroy classified materials. No time to save our allies. No time left but to run. And it's the fall of Saigon all over again. All it needs is a sad Billy Joel ballad and some helicopters being pushed into the sea on the Six-O-Clock news. If Joel was still writing ballads and we still had such a thing as the evening news anyway. 

And it's all Joe Biden's fault.

Yes it is. 

But that's not surprising, is it?

No, that's not surprising at all. 

Because that was the plan...

It enraged Trump that the military experts and the diplomats wouldn't kiss his ass like the rest of his cabinet. Wouldn't do what he wanted, just get out of Afghanistan, quit the war and bring the troops home. You're so smart, Sir! So handsome and brilliant! 

No, instead the military experts told Trump what would happen if we just pulled out. They told him how it would go, just like it's going right now. He didn't care ...until his handlers, Bannon, Miller, maybe Ivanka, told him how it would look. 

It would be a disaster, it would be Saigon, and it would be all on him.

He couldn't keep his promise. 

Now, all presidents learn this. 

All presidents discover pretty quickly that they aren't going to be able to keep their campaign promises. 

It happened to Obama. He promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He couldn't. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, wouldn't let him. He had to eat it and he did. Obama learned, like the presidents before him, that the political realities of the office are vastly different when you're actually sitting behind the Resolute Desk. 

But not Trump...

But then, Trump lost the election.

Joe Biden won.

Trump lost the White House and Republicans lost the Senate. 

And that's when Donald Trump could finally make good on his promise. 

As soon as it became certain that he would have to leave office, Trump ordered American forces out of Afghanistan. Trump and Pompeo invited the Taliban to Camp David -- not the actual government of Afghanistan and our alleged allies, but the Taliban. And he turned thousands of Taliban prisoners loose, one of which is now the de facto president of Afghanistan...

And now, Joe Biden owns this disaster. 

Because that's how it works. 

I didn't say it was right. I didn't say it was fair, because it most assuredly is not.  I said that's how it is. That's how public perception and politics work. The buck stops at the Resolute Desk and America will remember this as Joe Biden's disaster. 

Trump, with the support of the most radical elements of the Republican party, finally made good on his promise and left Joe Biden holding the bag. 

That was the plan...

If everyone in the mainstream media is mad at Biden (and a lot of them are), that's by their own design. Many pundits do not care for the history or causes of why our foreign invasions/occupations seem to collapse upon themselves, they only care to defend their own world-views ("Here's how I'm right and everyone else is wrong") and place blame on those leaders who fail in their (flawed and partisan) judgment.

If the Republicans are mad at Biden - and that's a fucking given thanks to their decades-long partisan rancor and obstructionism - it's a means to deflect the blame for Afghanistan's failures away from the bastards and warhawks who drove us into that nation in the first place after 9/11: The Republicans don't want the pundits or historians to remember that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld sent in our armed forces without a realistic Exit Strategy; and then fucked up the end game even more by dividing our focus and military strength into a needless occupation of Iraq.

The Republicans are desperate to blame anyone else in order to avoid the blame they truly deserve.

And so here's Joe Biden, who has been tossed this hot potato, this live grenade of an ongoing Afghanistan occupation for the United States closing in on twenty goddamned years, all because NOBODY ELSE sitting in the White House - Bush the Lesser, Obama, trump - wanted to fall on that grenade and end the war, because they all knew it would end like Vietnam with the local bad guys in control and American prestige in tatters (although thanks to that prolonged indecision, our prestige already suffered).

And yet Biden has the courage to fall on that grenade. We ought to recognize that.

In Biden's own words, he did not want to pass this burden onto another generation of men and women in a military already fatigued by decades of fighting. In other moments he's quoted saying "I know my decision will be criticized. But I would rather take that criticism than pass this on to a fifth president," said Biden. “I am the president of the United States, the buck stops with me."

With that, Biden defers to Harry S Truman, a President who made hard choices and stuck by them, even as the public opinion soured and when history proved he made the best possible moves.

These are the things we need to remember when we talk now about Afghanistan.

We also need to act and do what our nation can do to provide sanctuary for the thousands of Afghani civilians and government officials who aided the United States in their desire to rebuild a nation that is no longer safe for them.

The Occupation of Afghanistan is over. The fight to save people is still ongoing.

All It Takes Is One Week To Prove How COVID-19 Hits Us. One Week, And DeSantis Proves Himself a Fool

Before the regular school season started, even I knew it was a huge risk to send our children and our teachers back into classrooms that could turn into COVID super-spreader locations. All it takes is five to fourteen days to see the results. Well, it's five days after school opened across Florida, and look what's happening in my backyard (via WFLA):

The Hillsborough County School Board will hold an Emergency School Board Meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 18, from 1-3:30 p.m. due to rising COVID-19 cases across the county.

As of 7 a.m., Monday, 5,599 students and 316 employees in Hillsborough County Public Schools are in isolation or quarantine. Isolation refers to individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 while quarantine refers to those who have had close contact with a positive case...

Hillsborough County is the seventh-largest student population in the state. Let's check in with some of the others. Here's Jacksonville/Duval County (via News4Jax):

Over the first four days of the 2021-2022 school year in Duval County, the number of positive COVID-19 cases listed on the district’s online tracking dashboard grew at a nearly exponential rate.

After only two cases were listed on Tuesday, one student and one employee, the following days saw six students, 18 students and 41 students added, respectively...

While it hasn’t been used so far this year, the district also plans to use a similar process to decide if and when an outbreak grows to the point that a classroom, a school, or the entire district has to move to virtual learning.

Generally in Duval County, if 20% of a class or school has been exposed, that switch will happen...

If you look at the chart (I can't link it) in that report for Duval County schools, each day saw a huge jump in cases, and that was just in three days. Has it been updated yet for this Monday...?

The Sun-Sentinel paper in South Florida reports (behind paywall) that 1,000 students are quarantined in Palm Beach County by now. That number is only going to go up.

And while it's not school related, Polk County in the middle of the state in a major population hub (the I-4 corridor) is the hottest hotspot in the hottest COVID state (via Sarah Megan-Walsh at the Lakeland Ledger):

In Polk, there were 6,521 new COVID infections reported from Aug. 6 to 12, according to the Florida Department of Health's latest report issued Friday. That's about 700 more than last week's record 5,703 cases. It brings the county's total to 93,349 infected since the pandemic began in March 2020.

The rapid spike in new cases locally appears to be leveling off slightly. Polk's week-over-week increase in cases was up about 14%, where in prior weeks the number of weekly infections nearly doubled in mid-July.

Statewide, Florida reported 151,415 new COVID cases last week — also setting a record, according to the state health department. On Wednesday, the state reported an all-time high of 24,869 people newly infected with the coronavirus in a single day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID Data Tracker...

And in the midst of all this, what is Governor DeSantis doing?

He dare not speak out to encourage masks in public again, he dare not encourage people to get vaccinated when they can, because that would enrage the trumpian GOP base.

No, he's out there promoting an expensive drug Regeneron to help those in the ICU wards recover faster... which isn't a smart alternative to, you know, getting a super-cheap vaccine and avoid getting super-sick in the first place.

This is where we are as the COVID-19 pandemic speeds along: Utterly screwed by our Republican leadership that would rather get us all sick before doing a damn thing to help us.

Woodstock Memories for 2021

Sorry, but with all the bad news right now - the fall of Afghanistan, the tragic earthquake in Haiti that deserves more attention (and find some charities to donate to help out like Hope For Haiti!), the ongoing COVID BS here in the Red States - I'm not in the mood to talk about Woodstock today.