While all eyes point to NYC, DC, and PA for Sunday’s 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, overlooked in all of the media frenzy was the fact that Friday the 9th was the anniversary of another inferno.  One year ago on Friday, a neighborhood in San Bruno, California went up in flames due to the incompetence and negligence of the local utility, Pacific Gas & Electric.  If only the incompetence had been as benevolent as that seen in Stinque World Domination Headquarters last night.

To recap what is going on today, 8 people are still dead, multiple survivors are dealing with debilitating burns and other physical and emotional injuries, and half of the homes destroyed have owners who are still haggling with insurance companies over getting any money to rebuild.

Oh, and PG&E? What’s going on with them?

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Rudolf Brazda, the last known living “pink triangle” survivor of Nazi concentration camps, died on August 3 at the age of 98. He spent three years in Buchenwald.  He once commented that his oppressors “were never able to destroy me. I am not ashamed.”

Born in Germany to Czech parents, after liberation from the camp, he lived in the Alsace region of France, including 52 years with his partner, who passed away in 2002.

The photo of Mr. Brazda on this post was taken in 2008 at the dedication of a Berlin memorial to the gay (and presumed/perceived gay) victims and survivors of the Third Reich. In April of this year, he was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur for promoting awareness of the deportation of homosexuals during WWII.

Meanwhile, a few days after Brazda’s death, GOP Presidential candidate Guv. Good Hair prayed at an event sponsored by a hate group that says gays were responsible for the Holocaust.

[LAT & SF Sentinel]

Un-fucking-believable.

The latest from Tripoli about Iman Al-Obeidi:

The Libyan woman who burst into a Tripoli hotel to tell western reporters she had been raped by Muammar Gaddafi’s militiamen is now facing criminal charges herself, a government spokesman said. Mussa Ibrahim said charges had been brought against her by some of the militiamen she had accused. “It’s a legal case,” Ibrahim told reporters. “The boys she accused of rape are making a case against her because it’s a grave offence to accuse someone of a sexual crime.”

(H/T: Mellbell)

[The Guardian]

Maybe now is a good time to take a step back and see this whole Wisconsin thing for what it is.  On this evidence, what happened tonight might just be the final blow for one of the two dominant political parties.

No.  Not the Democrats.  The Republicans.

Seriously.

Full explanation, post-jump.

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I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for three years.  I went to the U.W. Law School, and participated in my share of standard-issue Madison protests.  The anti-war protests were large, and loud.  There was a walkout just before spring break in 2003 that underwhelmed, but the crowds got big, in a hurry, on the day the bombs started dropping.

As I got some distance from Madison, I looked at the protests cynically.  I came to view them as exercises in toothless, mindless, directionless idealism that sounded cool, but would change absolutely nothing.  (To boot: some of the leaders of the rallies were absolutely batty.)  And that’s because that was, and is, the truth of it.

But what’s happening in Madison now just feels different, somehow.  Yes — it will change nothing.  After November, Republicans have a hammerlock on both chambers.  And Scott Walker is completely deaf to the protests that, if thousands of people were rising up against Obamacare or socialism, would become magically unplugged.  The removal of collective bargaining rights for state employees is a done deal (apart from the inevitable lawsuits).  The math tells me so.  No amount of pickets or sickouts, or even a general strike (which I don’t think Wisconsin labor leaders have the stones to do), will change it.

And yet, for tonight at least, my whole heart is behind these guys.  They can change the world.  The bill will be passed — that ship has sailed.  But they can still change the world, maybe.

Our dear FlyingChainSaw tipped me off to this story a day or so ago, but it’s taken me a while to post something on it because every time I think about it I start wanting to smash objects and curse like Chainsaw.

Tonight’s outrage involves Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mom of two kids in Akron, Ohio. Kelley, like most parents, wanted her kids to go to the best possible school and do well and succeed in the 21st Century world where the buzzwords involve competing with the Chinese kiddos and information and knowledge.

Kelley lives in a housing project in Akron, which feeds into a shitty school. Her father lives in a nearby school district, where he pays taxes. Kelley, like many other parents who live in shitty school districts (believe me, I know enough teachers in the Bay Area to know this happens like crazy), registered her kids in her dad’s school district, stating that the kids lived with their grandfather.

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OK, Stinquers — a quick contest for big money AND fabulous prizes:

Tomorrow, as Nancy Pelosi hands off the gavel to John Boehner, Agent Orange will give a speech outlining what he intends to do with the next two years.  We all know what he’s going to say, sort of.  But the big question is…

AT WHAT POINT WILL HE LOSE CONTROL OF HIMSELF AND START WEEPING?

Rules are simple.  When the handoff happens, invariably there will be a standing ovation.  As soon as that standing-o stops and he starts flapping his gums, the clock starts.  “Weeping” defined as (a) actual tears or (b) unplanned stoppage in speech for more than two seconds as he tries to collect himself COMBINED WITH acts incidental to weeping (deep breath, sniffling, etc.).

Put your predictions — quoted in minutes and seconds — in the comments.  The Price Is Right scoring rules are in effect: closest to the actual weeping time, without going over, will win.  (Addendum: taking a competitor’s time and adding one second would be frowned upon, yet be totes hilarious at the same time.)  Example:

A — 4:30 // B — 5:30 // C — 5:31

Actual weeping time 5:15 — A wins… and gets to play PLINKO!

(No actual prizes, of course.  So there.)

As I will be judging, I will throw out an obviously wrong answer and declare that he gets through the speech without shedding a single tear.  Not even so much as a manly sniffle.  The rest of you: put some real responses in there.  Bonne chance!