What can be said about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 that hasn’t already been said? I, like most Americans, saw it play out on TV that morning, felt the confusion that faded to disbelief then slowly turned to anger. I can’t say I was sad that day. That came later as what happened really sank in. I felt anger. I still feel the anger.
I was in Baltimore that day at a random hotel for a conference. I had no business attending, but when you’re working your first entry-level job out of college, a day out of the office is a day out of the office. I lived in Baltimore and worked in DC, so a day off from that train commute was like vacation. I leapt at the chance to not make it. (It was an eBooks conference and I had nothing to do with them, but my boss had just taken pity on me and let me go with two co-worker friends who did).
I first saw the burning towers on a 27-inch TV in the lobby just after 9:20 when the conference took a break upon the news rumbling through the room. Hearing planes had hit the buildings was such a bizarre concept that I couldn’t picture it. After the break, attendees started to filter back into the conference room to continue whatever it was they were talking about. I couldn’t go back. I told my co-workers I was leaving, I had to find out what was going on. I had to watch.
I got home and didn’t blink for the next hour. Didn’t breathe either. There were unconfirmed reports of everything – rumors of bombs at the State Department and the Washington Monument, then confirmation the Pentagon had been hit. I had been there the week before delivering books. I felt an uncontrollable urge to do something. What, I had no idea.
I wanted to get to D.C., but that wasn’t possible. Trains weren’t running. I didn’t own a car. And everyone was leaving the city. I had no idea what I would’ve done had I gotten there, but I needed to be there. I was stuck.
News coverage became heroin to me, I couldn’t get enough. I couldn’t stop watching. If I slept the next two days, I did it with my eyes open in front of the television. I don’t remember eating.
I was numb with anger.
Ten years later the anger is still there. Our lives, our nation have gone on, but the anger is always there, lurking in the background. Just as it should be. We shouldn’t “get over it” and move on.
Most of those who planned and perpetrated that act of war are either dead or in custody, but they’ve been replaced. The war will never end. We will never win because it can’t be won. You can’t defeat an ideology unless and until that ideology changes. And it shows no sign of changing. That may not be a comforting thought. Reality often isn’t. But dislike of reality doesn’t make it any less so. All we can do is not lose. And thanks to our military and our American Spirit, we will not lose.
There’s comfort and justice in that, at least for me.
Remember...
And now, on with the show.
Look, Up In The Sky! It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s...Another Empty Speech!
I’ve been asked about my take on Obama’s “big” jobs speech, but instead of reliving that wasted 35 minutes I thought it would just be easier to post my tweets from when it was happening. Like I said before, I live on Twitter.
Here they are, in the order they sprang from my fingertips:
Barack Obama is a joke. An unfunny joke that has been played on all of us, but a joke nonetheless.
It's pretty sickening that our tax dollars are being used to pay for this garbage.
BREAKING: Boners in the newsroom! MT @politico President Barack Obama has entered the chamber for his #jobsspeech to Congress.
I prefer my tax dollars celibate on political matters RT @batgirrll @derekahunter our f*@king tax dollars are paying for far worse than this.
I'd love it if @johnboehner lit up a smoke and started watching a movie on his iPad.
Hey, everybody with a job who pays taxes, get ready to hear from the president just how horrible you are.
Obama wants Congress to pass "The American Jobs Act." For the record, bill names are generally ironic.
At least three times he's said "Pass it right away." His sense of urgency would lead you to believe he didn't spend last month vacationing.
I've heard one specific from Obama so far...the bill's name.
Hey Mr. President, nice buildings don't make bad teachers good.
If this bill is the cure for everything, @BarackObama, why did you wait three years to introduce it?
Obama's speech sounds like the kid who is BSing his way through a book report for a book he didn't read, just saw the movie.
Why is Obama talking about rising health care costs? Is he not aware that Obamacare is now law? That was going to stop that.
Obama - We have to decide what our priorities are. Mr. President, my priority is to make sure you are a one-term president.
After nearly three years in office, and it being his No. 1 priority, Obama is hoping to create jobs "right away." Welcome to the party, pal.
Shorter Obama - Screw you, suckers who bought a house you could afford and actually paid your mortgages.
Maybe Obama should ask his speech guest Jeff Immelt to teach small businesses how to make billions & avoid paying any taxes.
Hey @BarackObama, everywhere people have the freedom to NOT join a union, they don't. #RightToWork
Obama asks: What would this country be without Social Security & Medicare? Not broke, for one.
Will Obama close honestly by saying, "So do something. Anything. Now is not the time to rest. Now I'm going golfing"?
You want an idea that works, @BarackObama? How about free-market capitalism. That works every time it's tried.
That was the most pathetic speech from any President I've ever hear or read.
Now I know what "shovel-ready" means. Obama was just spewing enough BS to keep a million people with shovels busy for a year.
Bipartisanship: Obama-style - Give me what I want, NOW! He's the Veruca Salt of Presidents, he's wants Golden Goose and he wants it NOW!
If so many of Obama's "jobs" ideas are Republican ideas, that means Democrats are responsible for unemployment cuz they blocked them.
Valerie Jarrett on @Maddow "Congress should pass this bill right now." A minute later "We're writing the bill & will submit it next week."
BREAKING: Leftists on @MSNBC think Obama hit a home run tonight! JUST AS SHOCKING: Sun to rise in east tomorrow!
It really is amazing how a man can vocalize so much without actually saying anything. But saying anything, doing anything wasn’t the point of the speech. Neither was “jobs.” It’s the campaign. And in that regard, it could be very effective.
What the President will do next is simple - submit a bill, once it’s written, that costs too much and does too little but will be billed as the cure for our economic cancer. It won’t go anywhere in Congress, as it shouldn’t, and the economy will continue to flounder under the weight of Obama’s previous actions. And the President will blame it all on Republicans’ failure to pass his latest boondoggle. It’s a brilliant plan, if your goal is to get re-elected. It’s his only hope, really.
It’s just a horrible plan if your goal is to spur job creation and grow the economy.
One must have priorities... Ban First, Ask Questions Later
To hear progressives tell it, science is sacred to them. Their strict adherence to whatever science tells them is right is the driving force in their lives. They follow it with a devotion not seen since Marshall Applewhite convinced his followers it was time for them to meet the spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Their devotion is so strong they’ve moved beyond what science says and have started to demand the world follow what they think science will say or what they want it to say.
Nothing exemplifies the progressives’ obsession with pre-proof science than the green movement. Science used to require proof. Now that it’s pre-proof science, it only requires consensus. Listen to Al Gore, or any progressive for that matter, talk about global warming. Inevitably, they will say something along the lines of “there is a consensus among scientists” or “the majority of scientists agree” global warming is real and man-made. I’m not sure when science dropped the “proof” threshold and accepted “majority vote” as the end-all, be-all, but greens adopted it with vigor.
No matter what you call it, without proof, it’s not actually science. The fervor with which its adherents truly believe it is irrelevant. In the absence of proof, it’s agenda.
While pre-proof science started in the climate arena, it since has spread to wherever progressives and general big-government greenie types need justification for their desired actions. Facts be damned, full embargo ahead!
Bisphenol A (BPA), a common chemical used in the making of plastic, has been on the greenie hit list for a while now. States and cities have banned it because of perceived harm to humans. Studies that show it is harmless were routinely attacked by believers and their allies in the media. Bans moved forward.
When the Environmental Protection Agency released the largest study to date on BPA, finding it was harmless to humans, greenies and the media simply ignored it. Bans moved forward.
Triclosan is an anti-bacterial agent used in soap. It’s harmless and actually helps limit the spread of disease by killing harmful bacteria with simple hand-washing. Seems like an easy win for people, right? Not so much.
As I wrote back in January, “The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is suing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in an attempt to get the FDA to move against Triclosan, even though the FDA’s own testing has shown the antimicrobial agent does not harm humans.” Bans move forward.
What is the Natural Resources Defense Council? It’s exactly what it sounds like – an extreme green group more interested in an agenda than facts or helping people.
The NRDC is headed by Frances Beinecke, who blogs at the Huffington Post. Her column titles read like a wish list of government action - ban this, stop that, save the other. To devotees of pre-science, jobs don’t matter. The economy doesn’t matter, Hell, people don’t matter - it’s the agenda over everything.
All is not lost, freedom isn’t dead...yet. BPA and anti-bacterial soap are still legal. But the devotees to pre-science are relentless. Remember when smoking was legal on private property? Thanks to agenda-driven activist groups, aided by bogus pre-science, smoking is now banned in private businesses across the country. But people are fighting back.
In Michigan, more than 500 bar and restaurant owners who have been suffering since the state’s smoking ban, have decided that since lawmakers have stuck their noses into their business and banned a legal product from their private property, they would exercise their private property rights and ban lawmakers. It’s a small step, but it’s a step. People finally have had enough of the nanny state’s “ban first/ask questions later” activism so prevalent today.
So as pre-science devotee groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council push to ban pipelines and hand soaps, people people are starting to say enough! The more freedom-loving people stand up to these micro-tyrannies dependent on pre-science, the better the chance liberty survives. Who knows? Maybe someday we can get back our old functioning toilets, our non-toxic lightbulbs or our dishwashing detergent. If not, at least will be able to safely wash our hands after.
The ACLU Sucks. Nothing controversial about that “bold” statement, so to speak. The ACLU is challenging a new law in Florida that would require new applicants for welfare to pay for a drug test to receive benefits. If they pass, they get reimbursed for the cost of the test. If they fail, they immediately become campaign manager for Alan Grayson. Not really. Plausible, though. Actually, if they fail, they are denied benefits but can re-apply after a year. The ACLU says that’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So the ACLU has no problem with taxpayers footing the bill for junkies, druggies and potheads to maintain their lifestyles because it thinks it’s unconstitutional. I’ve read the Constitution, several times, and I’ve yet to see the part that OKs forcibly taking the result of one person’s labor under threat of prison and giving it to someone else. Maybe I’ve missed it. My mind was probably distracted by work...or the contact buzz from the welfare recipient next to me.
How Do You Say Poetic Justice In Dog? Poetic justice is rarely so cruelly, nor aptly, illustrated by a simple story. A man in Indonesia went on vacation for two weeks and didn’t leave any food or water for his nine dogs. OK, I call him a “man” because I’m not allowed to string together the paragraph of obscenities that would accurately describe this sleazebag. Needless to say, the dogs were starving. Police say they ate two of their own out of desperation. Then, after 14 days, Andre Lumboga, the owner, returned home...and was attacked and eaten by the remaining seven dogs. It’s a horrible way to go, but a more fitting end for this creature could not be scripted. And, if you will forgive the pun, it gives new meaning to the phrase “Karma is a ‘bitch.’”
And In The End...
Have you ever heard of Martin Noakes? No? Don’t feel bad, you’re not alone. And after this paragraph, I hope you never hear of him again. But this was so stupid, so bad and so devoid of talent, I wanted to bring it to your attention just in case you ever have the misfortune to come across him. Martin is a “musician” and a truther. Being a truther is bad enough, but he’s a horrible musician on top of it. Combining the two is like stupid squared. Making a music video for your truther song is stupid cubed. If you want to see what a complete lack of sense would look like from a kid with a complete lack of talent, click here. I would say if you ever had the misfortune of coming across Martin on the street, consider kicking him in the testicles. But his voice and this video make me suspect you’d be like Charlie Brown kicking at Lucy’s football...
That is all.
Go about your week.