What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday was Sept. 11, 2001, eleven years later, and although US peoples mourned a horrible tragedy, the real shit-kicker is what’s happened since — the US and the world is at a nasty crossroads and with all the remembrances history has become a lie.

The problem is we Americans think our shit don’t stink: The assumption of exceptionalism relieves our governing class from having to learn the lessons of history. Every episode of our country’s expansion — from the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans to the invasion of Iraq — has been accompanied by the confidence that success was certain because of our moral virtue.
Talk about some crock.

(Illustration found here).

This country is currently way-overwhelmed by delusional assholes.
In the instance of Scott Van Duzer, the pizza-shop owner who gave President Obama a lifting bear hug this past weekend and the travails he’s encountered because of it.
Via the most-wonderous Wonkette:

“People are saying a lot of bad things and boycotting my restaurant…There’s no middle line anymore, and that’s exactly what’s wrong with our country right now.”

And the Wonkette continues:

The possible boycott of a guy who hugged a filthy leftist follows in the wake of momentary business surges for a cupcake-selling guy who refused a campaign visit from Joe Biden and an asshole baker lady who proudly told the Poors that their filthy food stamps are not good enough to purchase her fancy cakes.
Oh, and there was something about the deep-seated desire of wingnuts to show support for homophobic deep-fried chicken sandwiches, too.

Wonkette has become a beloved site here lately — if I lived on the East Coast I’d sure attend one of their Drinky Thing(s).

Anyway, Obama yesterday continued to contradict reality during an observance of the World Trade Center attack:

“Instead we recommit ourselves to the values that we believe in,” Obama said, adding that because of the sacrifice on September 11, 2001, Americans had come together and “dealt a crippling blow to the organisation that brought evil to our shores.”
…
“That’s why, when the history books are written, the true legacy of 9/11 will not be one of fear or hate or division.
It will be a safer world, a stronger nation, and a people more united than ever before.”

See pizza guy above.

James Howard Kunstler explains Obama’s bullshit:

In office, then, Mr. Obama quickly proved to be a different breed of porpoise than the voters bargained for.
He let the Wall Street privateers run amuck another four years, aided with colossal infusions of conjured-out-of-nothing “money” from the Federal Reserve.
He let loose the demons of a high-tech totalitarian “security” state with every sort of electronic surveillance, citizen data-mining, and drone spying that innovation allowed.
He stood silent like a Banana Republic store mannequin after the supreme court decided that corporations could buy elections (he could have pushed loudly for legislation or even a constitutional amendment to redefine corporate “personhood”).
And of course, he continued to prosecute the absurd war in Afghanistan where, after nine years, US forces are unable to accomplish the only aims of being there: to control the terrain and to moderate the behavior of the people who live there.

And Obama is just another George Jr. when it comes to spying.
This week, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which authorizes broad, warrantless surveillance of just about everything and everybody, comes up for renewal in the US Congress.
Via antiwar.com:

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 placed some measured controls on the Bush administration’s sprawling surveillance program.
But even the amended program is overly secret and lacks sufficient checks, and the Obama administration refuses to disclose how many US citizens get caught up in the program.
“The only thing the public really knows about it so far,” writes Julian Sanchez, a policy scholar at the Cato Institute, “is that it was almost immediately misused, resulting in ‘significant and systemic’ overcollection of Americans’ purely domestic communications.
Subsequent reporting revealed that the improperly ‘overcollected’ communications could number in the millions, and included former president Clinton’s private e-mails.
So naturally, the Senate is charging ahead toward the renewal of these sweeping powers without hearings or debate.”

One can never forget something he can’t remember.