[guest post by Dana]

Tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of 9/11. And what better way to commemorate one of the most horrific moments in America’s history than with a “twin tower” mattress sale:

Mike Bonanno, owner of Miracle Mattress in Houston, has since apologized for the tasteless ad, stating that it was produced by employees without his knowledge.

“We will be silent through the 9/11 Anniversary to avoid any further distractions from a day of recognition and remembrance for the victims and their families,” Bonanno said in a news release. “We take full responsibility for our actions and sincerely regret the hurt and pain caused by this disrespectful advertising campaign.”

“There is very little we can do to take away the hurt we have caused, but we can begin with silence through the Anniversary and then do our best to follow up with actions that reflect the seriousness of our mistake,” he said in the statement.

While most of us certainly agree that the commercial was not in good taste, it’s nowhere in the same leagues as the college professor who willfully tore down students’ “Never Forget” 9/11 remembrance posters. According to Professor Margot Lovett, members of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) student group failed to obtain the necessary “permission from student government” to hang the posters. Therefore, she claims she had to tear them down. And just so you know, Professor Lovett also believes that U.S. imperialism was to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Note that as Lovett confronts YAF students who are documenting her actions, she doesn’t simply remove the posters and hand them back to YAF members to use later, instead she crumples them up:

In spite of Lovett’s rationale for tearing down the posters, Kyle Chiu, the Vice-Chair of Saddleback College YAF, claims the group has been hamstrung by school officials:

[C]ampus leaders refused to grant their club active status because officials want to change some parts of the group’s bylaws. With that, he said, a previously approved 9/11 memorial slated for Sept. 8 was canceled.

“The funny thing is that these are the exact same documents we submitted last year with no problem at all,” Chiu said. “This technically keeps us from active status, thus giving the Student Development Office what they feel is justification for canceling our event. An event the same office approved a couple weeks before.”

“Due to the cancellation of the 9/11 Never Forget Project, all of the reservations for equipment, space on campus, as well as official notifications to campus groups were forfeited,” he added.

YAF released a statement announcing that they would proceed with their 9/11 Never Forget Activism Project on Monday, in spite of it having been cancelled by school officials. Let’s hear it for pushing back against the man!

Let’s face it, we all know that the day Professor Lovett goes out of her way and marches across campus tearing down Hillary Clinton posters, or any other pet cause of the Social Justice Warriors, will be the day that her purple hair turns white.

–Dana

Via reader Jim D. comes this video of a cyclist, on a road I travel on all the time, being passed by a motorist and then taking offense:

from Robert Efthimos on Vimeo.

As I say: I drive that road often. My daughter is driving on it this morning as she goes to take the ACT. On Saturday mornings P.V. Drive East is flooded with cyclists, and she will no doubt have to contend with quite a few on her way. Notice that 1) the motorist was going 40 mph per the statement of the cyclist; 2) 40 mph is the posted speed limit; and 3) the motorist blew past the cyclist, who was driving almost in the middle of the road far below the speed limit but made no effort whatsoever to get out of the motorist’s way. This happens to me all the time as a motorist, and it drives me crazy.

The motorist was not one foot away. It’s difficult to tell for sure, but after watching it four times, I think he was three feet away, which is what the law requires. And he had to cross the double yellow line to do so. Meanwhile, the cyclist had 2-3 feet to his right that he easily could have used to move over further.

The cyclist’s position appears to be that he has no obligation to move over, and that the car had to go completely into the opposite lane to give him more room. This appears to be the attitude of many cyclists: I will go way, way below the posted speed limit, yet I will position my bike near the center of the lane and do nothing to allow you to pass. This means sometimes on curvy portions of the road, where I can’t easily pass in the opposing lane of traffic, I get stuck going 20-25 mph for a quarter of a mile or more, on a 40 mph road. I shouldn’t have to do that.

If cyclists are going nowhere near the posted speed limit, they should not act like they’re just another vehicle that owns the road. They are, in essence, an obstruction that has to be navigated around. And motorists need to make sure not to come too close to them, because a mistake could be catastrophic. This motorist might have been strictly outside the recently passed three-foot buffer zone, but that’s cutting it a little close when the cyclist has no container of steel encircling him, as the motorist has. I give cyclists more than three feet, and if I can’t, I just stay behind them. (And get irritated.)

As with many things in life, a little courtesy on both sides goes a long way.

A curious phenomenon I have noticed this campaign season is that when Hillary Clinton knocks Donald Trump, I can’t stand to listen to her. Even when she saying something true, it sounds like a fake lie coming out of her mouth.

Turns out it’s even worse when she is knocking Trump supporters — especially when she is not telling the truth. For example:

Clinton ripped 50% of Trump supporters during a LGBT fundraiser in lower Manhattan Friday evening, grouping them into a “basket of deplorables.”

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” Clinton said to laughter from the “LGBT for Hillary” crowd. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”

The other half, Clinton said, are disillusioned Americans who feel the “government has let them down.”

Half?

HALF?!

There most certainly is a very vocal minority of Trumpers who are fully on board the Trump Train. They subscribe to the “alt-right” group that promotes communitarian groupthink on behalf of white people. They put pictures of heavy-lidded green cartoon frogs on their Twitter accounts. They post pictures of Trump in a Nazi uniform pushing a red button labeled “Zyklon B” while people they don’t like are depicted in the background in a gas chamber. They share menacing and totally false statistics about blacks and crime. And so on.

This is not half of Trump supporters. By a long shot.

If I had to guess, I’d say a majority of people who read this site plan to vote for Donald Trump. Very few of them are actually excited about the prospect. A very small handful do deserve to be characterized as deplorable.

Not half.

The overwhelming majority of the people reading this site, and the overwhelming majority of the people who plan to vote for Trump in this country, simply can’t stand Hillary Clinton. Many of those people supported other candidates in the primary. They have simply decided that what they’re left with is better than Hillary Clinton.

Let me be clear: I respect that point of view. I have never, ever, ever said otherwise.

SIDE NOTE:

I personally despise and distrust Donald Trump to the point where I believe it makes no difference whether he or Hillary is elected — or, to be more accurate, I know it will make a difference of some kind, but I don’t know which will be worse in the long run. I also happen to think that, in an election season, demonization of the opposing candidate goes into overdrive. This happens every election season. It gets to the point where, offered a chance to vote for Hillary Clinton, or for someone responsible for the deaths of 45 million people — arguably the biggest monster in all human history — a majority (!) of respondents choose the monster over the opposing candidate.

Yes, it’s a silly poll, which garnered only a fraction of the votes that online polls on this site usually receive, in large part because it is silly. Yes, the votes for Mao can’t necessarily be taken seriously. I understand all that. But all that being said, many people treat their actual votes about as seriously as they treat casting a ballot in an online poll — and I think the poll does illustrate the effect of demonization of the opposing candidate. That’s a post for another day.

/END SIDE NOTE

While I do despise Donald Trump, I also despise Hillary Clinton. I am not going to harangue people who have made a personal decision that they want to keep Hillary Clinton as far away from the White House as possible. I have never assailed people who take that position. I never will. It’s a respectable position. It’s held by a lot of my friends on this site.

And that’s a hell of a lot more than half of Trump’s supporters, Hillary Clinton.

And to accuse half of his supporters as racists, xenphobes, Islamophobes, and so forth?

That’s just . . . deplorable.