Clear skies this morning on California’s northern coast, and might turn out to be another better-than-average day, with a bit of warmth added to the weather mix.
We’re experiencing some delightful Indian Summer time up here with some of our best days recently — wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the planet.

And today, of course, is the 11th anniversary of most-likely the most-conspicuous and pivotal/mind-blowing event in US history — eclipsing Pearl Harbor by nearly half a decade — the al-Qaeda attacks in New York, Washington, DC, and the skies above Pennsylvania.
The late Osama bin Laden stuck a pitchfork into Western Civilization, scaring the perpetual shit out of everybody: “…perhaps never in the history of human conflict have so few people with so few actual means and capabilities frightened so many.”
Indeed.
(Illustration found here).

And the whole shebang is way-creepy, like some weird, obsessed son, but on a much-bigger scale and scary for a nation of supposedly intelligent peoples — the National September 11 Memorial Museum has finally put its funding dispute behind it and now can become another shell-shocked exhibit to lunacy:

It will house a vast array of 9/11 artifacts, including “photographs, videotapes, voice messages, recovered property, clothing and other personal effects, workplace memorabilia, (and) incident-specific documents,” among other items, according to the site.

Instead of fright, the memorial should be to the horror that came after — a schedule right out of George Orwell, starting with the culprit in the matter, George Jr.
Now, bin Laden was a crazed, smut-loving asshole who killed 3,000 innocent Americans 11 years ago and rightly the shithead is way-dead, but despite all the political bullshit to the contrary, al-Qaeda attacked due to US/and the West involvement in the Middle East — blowback it’s called.
And George Jr. just jumped on the war bandwagon — don’t worry he told Americans just after Sept. 11, 2001, just keep shopping.
Andrew J. Bacevich explains in an October 2008 Washington Post commentary:

To understand this link between today’s financial crisis and Bush’s wider national security decisions, we need to go back to 9/11 itself.
From the very outset, the president described the “war on terror” as a vast undertaking of paramount importance.
But he simultaneously urged Americans to carry on as if there were no war.
“Get down to Disney World in Florida,” he urged just over two weeks after 9/11.
“Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”
Bush certainly wanted citizens to support his war — he just wasn’t going to require them actually to do anything
The support he sought was not active but passive.
It entailed not popular engagement but popular deference.
Bush simply wanted citizens (and Congress) to go along without asking too many questions.
…
From September 2001 until September 2008, this approach allowed Bush to enjoy nearly unfettered freedom of action.
To fund the war on terror, Congress gave the administration all the money it wanted.
Huge bipartisan majorities appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars, producing massive federal deficits and pushing the national debt from roughly $6 trillion in 2001 to just shy of $10 trillion today.
Even many liberal Democrats who decried the war routinely voted to approve this spending, as did conservative Republicans who still trumpeted their principled commitment to fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets.

And here we are, still climbing out of a shithole George Jr. and his cohorts created from a tragedy.

And yesterday, the New York Times added this to the mix with some background on the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, memo ““Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” the CIA gave to George Jr — remember, this is the one where the boy told the CIA guy, it’s okay,‘You’ve Covered Your Ass, Now.’
If that wasn’t bad enough, the intelligence briefings prior that last one are awful:

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release.
While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.
In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.
…
In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.
“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name.
Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.
And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed.
Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties.
On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.”
Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.
Yet, the White House failed to take significant action.
Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic.
On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews.
The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

What a f*cking mess.
And George Jr., The Dick, Don Rumsfeld, etc, all still walking around free as a bird without a care in the terrified, monetary-depleted world they left after September 2001.
That’s the bottom line of any 9/11 commemoration, and we’re living those “dramatic consequences” — and will be forever.