September 11th… 8 Years Later…
Here we are… The 8th Anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks against the United States of America, and the only thing that I’ve read today is some lame article on CNN about some U.S. Coast Guard exercise in the Potomac that scared the Secret Service, and in turn the United States, that Obama was under attack.
We’re that scared of the sound of gunfire that we don’t even know when it’s real.
I really do hope that people are not forgetting the sadness of this day and just how horrific the attacks were.
As I said in my post last year on this topic… I’m not sure that we shall ever see the media blitz that covered the airwaves on 09/11/01 and in 02, 03, and I think even in 04 while the media was still interested. ‘05 showed a sharp decline in coverage, ‘06 less, don’t even remember ‘07, and here we are. Today. 09/11/08. Where’s the coverage? Where’s the interest? Where’s America?
In the months after the attacks on that dreadful day people all over the United States Americans stuck flags on their car antennas, bumper stickers, shirts, houses, jackets, everything. You could not look anywhere and NOT see an American flag. Notice I didn’t say “Americans stuck flags…” I’d be insulting all those illegal aliens I witnessed in my old neighborhood of East Elmhurst putting out flags and wearing “our Colors” even while the Country may not have wanted them around – immigration and what not. People all over the United States cried for weeks and swore never to forget, blah blah blah.
Well. Here we are 8 years later. 09/11. Forgotten.
Every year on this day I share MY STORY about what happened on that day, and I ask everyone to remember what happened, where they were, what they saw, who they were next to, at the moments when the airplanes ripped through the World Trade Center towers and in the minutes after each tower collapsed. I was running for my life. I was scared.
This year I’d like you to take your family out to Dinner today, tomorrow, sometime this weekend, or a nice lunch (or Brunch for those of you socialites) and just be together. After you are done go out and walk around your neighborhood for 9 minutes using your usual paths when you walk around the neighborhood. Then stop, and turn around, and find a new way to get around and walk for 11 minutes.
Think of everything you see and wonder to yourself what’d be like for your family to walk these streets without you. That’s what most of the victims of 09/11, the one’s that are still alive and lost someone that day, feel every day.
I hope, as I usually say, that I don’t offend anyone that will read my story, but it is what it is, and it’s what I wrote.
09/11 – We Will Never Forget…
Please read… September 11th – My Story…
Sphere: Related Content
Pandemic… Here We Go Again…
I guess we’ll start putting more bricks between the United States and Canada in the coming weeks, since we now have a new reason to prevent the illegal migration of Mexicans into the United States! Swine Flu!!!
You know I’m right, and that someone somewhere in our great vast government is thinking of how to leverage this new fear among people all over the world – we can cut Mexico off NOW. I can see the look on their face right now, with that sinister look of fear itself, and the sudden laughter in the background like Dr. Evil or something.
I sure do hope that that isn’t the focus that is placed on Swine Flu coming out of Mexico, but rather that the US and many other nations around the world spend more resources trying to figure out how to turn this into a nuisance rather than allowing it to become a true pandemic.
Let’s just hope.
Sphere: Related ContentIt’s All About Them…
This morning I woke up with a renewed sense of purpose recalling that President-Elect Barack Obama was somewhere thinking through the next steps in this Brave New World, though it would be quite unfair to draw comparisons to Huxley’s great work. This morning I felt like I’d spent an entire night taking in some Soma and bashing it up with a group of Betas, that’s how euphoric I felt this morning.
I got out of bed, went through the usual routines, and excitingly told my wife and kids the great news – they could not hang with this old man through CNN coverage which for me ended at 2am. My second oldest son was excited because of my own excitement, and cheered Obama. My wife was still muddling through sleep and gave off a quaint sigh of excitement – she enjoys politics vicariously through me. My youngest, well, that’s where it hit me – he’s too young.
After I tried explaining to my youngest son that Barack Obama was the first African American to be elected President of the United States he gave me this quizzical, “Whatever,” look, but don’t get me wrong it wasn’t an I don’t care kind of attitude so much as it was a genuine misunderstanding of just exactly WHY I was telling him this. The innocence hit me where it always hurts most and I thought to myself, “This right here is what it’s all about – the children; the innocence; the struggle; and the triumphs.” My youngest Son could not comprehend what I was talking about because he’s only six years old and gets along with ALL of his friends at school – black, white, brown, boy, or girl (well, not all that with girls, he’s’ at the, “Girls… ewe…” stage, but he’ll get past it someday – we all did. My youngest gave me the quizzical look and then ran off to get my wife to drop the pea sized ball of toothpaste he needed on his toothbrush. When I mentioned it to him some minutes later he gave me the same look and then asked when was the next time we were going to the Beach.
As I sat there thinking of what I just explained to him I realized that my second oldest Son had a similar reaction, though he showed genuine interest, he’s still too worried about the simpler things in life like school, girls (he’s way past that other stage), and what he’s going to draw next, or build with his hands – he loves to take things apart and put them back together… Reminds me of, well, me.
All of this made me realize that they are both so innocent, and so very much protected from what I’ve lived through, what we’ve been through, and what our Parents and their Parents went through. Our kids have not lived through the nuances of the last century, along with carefree 70’s, the money laundering 80’s, the no direction 90’s and the void of the last 8 years.
Our kids have not seen the struggle face to face and we protect them from it every day as we flip channels on them and though they watch too much television there’s not much negativity they can learn from Dora or High School Musical. We identify negativity on the street and in stores all over the United States and we block their view of things we otherwise don’t need them to see. Most of us teach our children to be righteous, and teach them tolerance, and make them understand that hate is a bad thing and more so when it is directed at race.
Our kids only see images of the struggles we’ve endured on the Internet when asked to write a report about racial issues in the 50’s and 60’s and when asked to speak about who Martin Luther King, Jr., was. Thankfully because of him and others our kids will never have to walk through picket lines or be escorted by Military Police to get to a classroom. Our kids understand race in ways that they’ve been taught – some learn from the mistakes they hear about in school, and a few stray off and become wannabe Nazi’s joining factions that are both ignorant of progress the world over but even more ignorant of basic human decency.
Our kids don’t know the hate that some men can manifest, though many of them did live through September 11th – and many of those that saw the event or understood the breadth of the destruction still today only identify with the persona of Osama Bin Laden as the most evil man on Earth, but they don’t understand the entire realm of just what his hate is all about and where it comes from or why. Oh, they know of Hitler and others, but to most of them those stories are in history books – and most of them don’t really care about those figures in history, though they certainly learn from them and we hope for the better.
Our kids are what we get up for every day and work so hard at protecting that it’s a wonder to me sometimes that we can’t do more for them.
Well.
That changes today, because if all the talk of the past two years is true and Barack Obama is going to bring Change to America then life is about to do a complete 180 in the United States and people are going to begin to feel less responsible for the things that are truly out of their control and much more responsible for the things in their field of influence and best of all our families will become the most important things in our lives – again. Now, I’m not saying that family has lost its importance, but honestly, with all that’s going on around the world we’ve lost sight of just what family means – though we support each other through things it’s simply not the same if you’re hugging your wife one minute and wondering just where Bush is going to drop the bomb next, and if by his actions your wife will be there tomorrow, or worse… If your kids will be.
All of it changes today and in the next 120 days or so we will know if this is going to be a good boat to be on, or if it will end up like The Poseidon. Let’s hope for the best and embrace change as it happens, and let’s not be the one that looks the other way now.
Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States of America. Make us proud and God Speed to you Sir.
Sphere: Related ContentThank You John McCain…
I was beside myself when Barack Obama was declared the next President of the United States.
I am beside again watching John McCain giving his concession speech, and I simply wanted to say thank you John McCain for being eloquent and for being just. You stepped up and fought a strong race, and you didn’t win, but that didn’t reflect as some would have expected it to reflect. You kept your inner maverick in check and your poignant speech asking Americans to embrace Barack was a great exit.
Thank you John McCain and God Bless You.
Sphere: Related ContentWE DID IT!!!
Barack Obama has just been named the 44th President of the United States!!! He will be inaugurated on the 100th Anniversary of the NAACP!!! And he beat McCain by a LANDSLIDE!!!
Congratulations Barack!!! Now… MAKE US PROUD!!!
Mr. Speaker!!! The President of the United States!!!
I am so proud of my Country right now, I am in tears in my living room watching CNN and thinking… YES WE CAN!!! YES WE CAN!!! And all the kids of the world can now really believe that it is possible…
Can you say it with me??? Free at LAST!!! Free at LAST!!! Thank God Almighty!!! We ARE FREE AT LAST!!!
Sphere: Related ContentIt Began Last Night…
21 people in a Northeaster New Hampshire town that boasts a population of 75 stayed up late to cast the first official votes of today, and this morning CNN’s reporting that Obama won that town by a landslide – 15 votes for him, while McCain only picked up 6.
What’s the big deal you ask? Well, consider that the town’s last Democrat lean was back in 1968. A sure sign of what’s to come today, and definite sign that Americans (even the suburban middle class) are simply tired of Bush and are making it clear that 4 more years simply will not happen.
Sphere: Related ContentToo Little? Too Late?
Conspiracy Theorists Unite!
I’ve just sat here and watched some of the Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash on NBC, and just about fell out of my chair with an ad airing tonight where the National Republican Trust PAC is trying to rekindle the connection between Obama and Reverend Wright. The ad shows a profile of Obama on the left while showing snippets of the infamous speech made by the Reverend. Funny. Just absolutely funny that the Republicans (yeah, someone will argue that it was a PAC, but whatever) are trying this last ditch effort to rekindle the “fear” that we’re all trying to get away from.
And the Bush Administration, keeping true to form, CNN’s reporting that a Bin Laden aide was convicted TODAY – of all days, one day BEFORE the PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Why wasn’t this reported on Wednesday? Is it that important for us to have known this as Americans today? Does some obscure Bin Laden aide being convicted today change my life in any way? Well, when you read what the aide is quoted as saying you might consider just WHY this article somehow surfaced today.
“We will fight any government that governs America,” he told the military jurors at his sentencing hearing. “We are the only ones on Earth who stand against you.”
We will fight ANY government that governs America? Jeez, Bush? Could you not have come up with anything closer to what Bin Laden himself said on the eve of your win 4 years ago? I mean we do all remember how the “fear” factor was raised tremendously just before the election 4 years ago, the difference this time is that we’re not as dumb as we were back then.
Last minute hits. Hail marys. Prayers to God. Brujeria (Witchcraft in Spanish), and Voodoo. Whatever it takes? The RNC will do just about anything, and if we allow them to pull the wool over our eyes, then we might as well sit back and relax for the next 4 years if McCain wins.
Sphere: Related ContentLong Lines are the Least of Our Worries…
Millions of Americans across the United States have stood in lines for hours waiting for their opportunity to let their voice be heard this year as one of the hottest Presidential contests in history is about to come to a close. We should be proud of each and everyone of those people and their desire to vote early in as many as, “Thirty-one states,” that, “have allowed voting ahead of Tuesday’s election, either in person or by mail-in ballot.” reports CNN.
CNN continues on to say that, “by Friday, more than 23 million ballots had been collected in 25 of the states.” Which I find completely and utterly astonishing when you consider that these 23 million people represent about 20% of the voter turnout for the 2004 election. Some states are seeing much higher turnout this year than in any year in the past, and state where the political constest if hot turnout is higher and higher as time goes by.
Of course this would not be news without some controversy as some media outlets, CNN included, are running reports that people are frustrated by the long lines and what not. I am only going to say one thing here and I hope it’s clear to everyone reading. Who the HELL cares about long lines? Really? With the stakes so high and the importance of this election being, well, important?
The funny thing about many of the articles I’ve read about long lines and frustration is that in most of them you see Americans doing what Americans are known best for – being resourceful. In one image you see an African American woman sitting on a portable chair, in others you see scores of people reading books while waiting. Now, that’s impressive, and we should be even prouder of those folk.
Those people that feel so frustrated by the long lines have one thing in common with the rest of the folk though – so long as they stay on the line – they also feel that the line is the least of their worries. Like I keep saying the stakes are simply too high and our future as a Nation is on the line, with a President that has the lowest approval rating in the history of anything – and I mean anything. Is there no doubt Bush, Jr., is hiding at a Day Camp right now?
So, for all the brave souls that have stood on line all day waiting to vote.
Thank you!
Sphere: Related ContentAfter 23 Million Votes… Obama is Up…
It’s been quite some time since my last post, and most of you are probably wondering what the heck? so, I’m back, and happy as a kid in a candy store right now at the idea that over 23 million Americans have already cast their vote for this coming Tuesday’s election – including myself.
According to CNN, approximately 57.8% of those who have voted are Democrats! Can you believe it? This early in the process and 23 MILLION people have already made their choice. This is very exciting and I hope that you have made the decision to go out and vote now or early on Tuesday. This is probably going to be the single most important election in the last 50 years, if not ever, and not voting is simply not acceptable.
SO! If you have the right… EXERCISE it, and make your voice heard. Don’t sit at home thinking you won’t make a difference. The stakes are simply to high this time and we can not allow Bush and his cronies to control, I mean destroy, this Country for another 4 years.
Get up and VOTE.
Sphere: Related ContentObama? The Anti-Christ? Truth or Dare…
A good friend of mine, Dave, on his Techie Blog, Beyond the Bits, wrote an article worth reading, though I respectfully disagree with his second to last paragraph. OBama is the answer, and all we have to do as sane folk is stop listening to all the rhetoric and show McCain that we are not as stupid or afraid as he’d want us to be.
I encourage you to read Dave’s post and understand that he’s very right on the power of investigation, and how we as responsible and intelligent adults should know that what we are reading is the truth before allowing to influence our decisions – especially with the idea that this election is by far the most important decision we will all make.
Sphere: Related Content
