President Barack Obama and Governor Dennis Daugaard told us to fly our flags at half staff yesterday to commemorate the lives lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I'm on record saying our half-staff mania is overdone and misguided. Letting terrorists drive us into perpetual mourning is not as bad as letting them trick us into perpetual war, but it's still a small victory for the bad guys.
Senator Shantel Krebs spent America's official day of forever-mourning sticking her tongue out at retreating Secretary of State Jason Gant. She told David Montgomery that she's always intended to run for Jason Gant's job, that she will formally announce "very soon," but oh, my gracious stars! she would not want to make a political announcement on September 11.
Come on, Senator Krebs. You helped beat some sense into one of your party's biggest liabilities. You can spike the ball; you don't have to dress it up in patrio-piety.
Rep. Kristi Noem had no problem making a political statement on September 11. She twinned her homage to the victims and heroes of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with a blatantly political call for more investigation of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi killings. (See also Juan Williams, who said Sunday to a steaming Karl Rove that the Benghazi obsession Noem so nimbly mouths is "all in your head, baby.")
Krebs and hubby's part-time boss, U.S. Senate candidate Marion Michael Rounds, probably spent September 11 making some political statements to high-rolling donors. An eager reader tells me Rounds is in Washington, D.C., this week. At 5 p.m. yesterday, Bellwether Consulting Group was honoring Rounds with a swanky reception on the rooftop terrace of The Willard Hotel and asking for four-figure checks.
See, Shantel? No need to hold back. September is just another day at the office... and the five-star hotel.
Update 09:49 CDT: P&R Miscellany views September 11's "flowery words" and "sanctimonious tributes to the dead" as "maudlin tripe, this psycho-babble bull***t that festoons our televisions and public places as if this is an occasion for a gigantic national pity-party."
If former state legislators, that no one knew or remembers, continue to die at the rate they do, the flag will be flying at half staff pretty much the year around.
It seems to me that the way to honor the victims of 9/11 would be to fly the flag high and mightily in defiance of America's enemies.
Totally with you, Roger. When those firemen raised the flag at ground zero the day of the attacks, they didn't fly it at half-staff.
I for one don't think that the Governors should have ever been given the authority to call for half mast flags. It seems the flag flies more at half mast than it does at full these days. We are getting used to it and it weakens the meaning of the half mast flag. I agree with all above, seems like we should commemorate a day known as Patriots Day by flying the flag high.