I assume most of you caught Olbermann's speech

Thanks Gus, I would have missed this since I don't have cable and get around to few blogs.

I thought Ground Zero should have been turned into an affordable housing village for the families of police and fireman, along with a large memorial park to serve as open space. Anyone who has ever lived in Manhattan knows that police and fireman can't afford to live in the actual city, but must scour the burroughs and beyond for an economical place to raise their families. Many live in my area and commute two hours, each way, to get to their jobs and back. What better way to thank these people than to give them a home where they can spend more time with their families. Instead we will build more monuments to money.

At nearly $10 million/month in lease payments, it's unlikely that anything at ground zero will resemble anything "affordable", or be relevent to firefighters or policemen.

You missed her point.

And it was pretty hard to miss.

Joe(then again this (NYC) is the center of something)Nation

We could always just give them the $10million/month.

Sorry, perhaps you missed mine.

$10 million doesn't pay for a day's worth of bullets in Iraq. The American people/The Government should buy the frickin' site and donate it back to the public servants.

That would be a tough point to argue.....

hey gus

After PBS news each night, I switch between Olberman, Stewart/Colbert and O'Reilly. As I mentioned elsewhere, Olberman's ratings continue to rise while O'Reilly's (and fox generally) are losing ground. The boy is getting braver all the time. I like this trend very much indeed.

For those who haven't read it or seen it, the transcript is here.

A few comments:


That's a nice rhetorical touch, but there's no such thing as the "Gettysburg Memorial." Lincoln went to Gettysburg to help dedicate a cemetery for Union war dead. I would suggest that a cemetery is rather easier to plan, develop, and dedicate than the kind of multi-million dollar farrago of grief and vengeance that most politicians and family members have demanded for the WTC site.


I guess this means that Olbermann is laying the entire blame for the failure to erect a 9/11 monument to Bush. First of all, I don't think that's fair, and secondly, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Bush certainly isn't the guy who is calling all of the shots at Ground Zero: there are numerous bureaucratic and governmental layers, as well as a rather vocal public and a stubborn developer to consider. And the inevitable result of any kind of process that takes all of those disparate factors into consideration is usually something quite awful, like the World War II monument in Washington, D.C. Actually, I believe the process would have gone much faster if one person had been in charge, even if that person had been George W. Bush. The result, of course, might have been even worse, but at least it would have been finished by now.

As to his overall message, however, Olbermann is right: Bush has used fear for his own partisan purposes, and has taken cynical advantage of the 9/11 attacks to promote his agenda.

joe

It appears you are arguing that Olberman is unreasonably conflating the 9/11 site and Bush. Still, we know without question that there were ties going back decades. We know that Bush had seen pictures of the towers and had even actually met with people who'd been there. Perhaps Keith presses his case a bit too emotionally, but this is, after all, a new world now and whatever else we are in the midst of, part of that is a conflationary spiral.

Well no, not exactly. What I got from Olbermann's criticisms is that Bush is responsible for the fact that "[f]ive years… later this country's mass grave is still unmarked." The failure to build a monument on that site, however, is a responsibility shared by many, many people. It's unfair to blame Bush alone. Moreover, it may be a good thing that we don't have a monument on that site: imagine what sort of monstrosities various politcians and interest groups would have erected if they had been given the chance. On the other hand, it's true Bush has politicized the site, but then so have many other politicians. That's what politicians do.

joe

Your criticism is entirely valid. My post just wasn't as funny as I'd hoped. But I've steeled myself against that outcome through practice, practice, practice.

Of course, Bushie and his oil cartel caused 9/11. Anyone who does not think so has not studied the profits the oilmen have made since 9/11. They have tons of money and will probably try to control the elections again in November and 2008. They are the true enemies of America.

Care to post your studied profits, and the correlation between 9/11 and said profits, as opposed to simple market forces, supply and demand etc.

I'd be more concerned with the conservative brotherhood's ability to get multi-billion dollar no bid contracts throughout the "rebuilding" of Iraq.

Do you know what you are saying? The Bushies and their family have been in the oil business for generations. Do you really think that they have not and will not profit from the price of oil? Are you naive!