Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week.

Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers.

Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

"I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?" said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. "We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down."

-- N.R. KLEINFELD

And there it is, sir. We’ve caught you.

Your goal is not to bring some troops home — maybe — if we let you have your way now;

Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal;

You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

-- KEITH OLBERMANN

Like American children, Congress is returning to a familiar place this week with the challenge of a new curriculum.

The subjects will be the same but on an advanced level, and many of the familiar Washington faces are gone or on the way out the door.

Even the dynamic of Topic A, the war, has changed. Senior Republicans are ripe for change, and the President, under cover of optimistic rhetoric in Anbar yesterday, opened the door slightly to a drawndown of American forces.

How to adapt and create a new climate will be Job One for the Democratic leadership. They can keep railing against Bush’s failed policies at home and abroad or, confident they will take back the White House and extend their control of Congress next year, start to give the American people samples of how they intend to govern in 2009 and beyond.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, it occurred to me that there was something about the whole show we've been watching that reminded me of George Burns standing in front of his television screen explaining to the audience what was really going on, knowing that Gracie and their friends are not watching. Rove (usually in his guise of an unnamed White House aide) perpetually tells the press, and the audience, that they are spewing propaganda, and Kristol even tells us what the plan is, and plenty of bloggers are documenting it along with some of the better elements of the press, so we know - but behind us, on the little black and white screen, Congress carries on getting more and more twisted up in its complete misapprehension of the situation. Why aren't they watching? How embarrassing; Congress is Gracie Allen. Only it isn't funny.

-- AVEDON CAROL

According to Jeffrey Toobin’s new book on the Supreme Court, Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the wake of Bush v. Gore, so distraught was he over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed George W. Bush as president.

In "The Nine," which goes on sale Sept. 18, Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, “David Souter alone was shattered,” at times weeping when he thought of the case. "For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice," Toobin continues. "That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same."

-- JEFF DUFOR and PATRICK GAVIN

Google quietly has taken a major step to further marginalize banner advertising, the molting golden goose that generates a hefty portion of online revenues for mainstream media companies.

In a blog item posted on the eve of the Labor Day weekend, the Silicon Valley behemoth announced that it effectively will start diverting traffic away from the sites of the publishers and broadcasters whose businesses depend, to a consequential degree, on selling ads on the pages viewed by the visitors vectored to them by Google News.

This will happen because Google News henceforth will link directly to the sites of the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press, thus bypassing the sites of the publications and broadcast outlets that publish stories from the four major news services.

-- ALAN D. MUTTER

As far as I can tell, the only qualification for becoming a dad is a pulse, as ably proven by Glenn Close in "The World According to Garp" when she mounted a comatose man in a hospital to impregnate herself.

Go to any shopping mall and it's hard to believe that the mutant Tourette's sufferers pushing two-litre bottles of coke into their children's paws are capable of looking after a bowl of sea monkeys, let alone another little person (or eight).

At the other end of the scale are those micro-managing, obsessive parents who send their children off to infant art classes, hyperventilate if their kid licks something non-organic and play them Mandarin tapes while they're still poopin' green in their crib.

Why? Simply because they want to give their offspring the best chance at becoming superior people, to succeed and thrive in the rorting and snorting of the modern world.

But is it all just cultural static? Does it really matter?

-- SAM de BRITO

Wired reports that AT&T Wireless will allow parents to control what kids can and can't do with their cell phones – for a small fee. Responsible parents will be able to set "limits on when a wireless phone can make and receive calls and to whom, restrictions on text messages and talk time, and set allowances for ring tones and other downloads . . . "

This may sound like nothing more than a financial issue. After all, what parent wouldn't love to prevent unpleasant surprises in the cell phone bill? However, I see here something more than that. This feature allows parents to prevent contact with drug dealers and abusive peers. It allows parents to prevent kids from staying on the phone all night, or using it while at school.

Kudos to AT&T for attempting to give parents a way to encourage responsible cell phone use and protect their kids from unwanted contact. Shame on them for charging $4.99 a month for the feature.

-- BRIDGET MAGNUS

Why don't they just start every child on psychiatric drugs as soon as the pop out of the womb? According to recent studies, children with ADHD and bipolar disorder are under diagnosed and under treated. Why is everyone so determined to classify childhood behaviors as a mental illness? They get no exercise, no fresh air, their food is high in sugar and salt, obesity is rampant, while television and video games have been their baby sitters for years. No wonder they have issues. Is childhood mental illness increasing in other countries? Do China, Norway or Japan have these problems? How about the kids in Iraq, Afghanistan and the West Bank? What is being done to address their more than likely post traumatic stress disorder? Oh wait, they don't have money and they can't afford the medications, therefore they don't have any problems.

-- DEB