Remembering 9/11
The Debra Burlingame, sister of the Capt. Charles F. (Chic) Burlingame 3rd, the pilot of the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11 seven years ago warns against misremembering that tragic day:
There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts that result in loss of life, with “body count” being the primary factor that keeps it in the top spot of “worst in the nation’s history.”
Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup.
The attacks were not a random actof violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act ofwar committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society. Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done.
Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but “9/11″ is with us every day. The body count keeps rising – Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman.
We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that “only six lives were lost,” we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. While the comparison to other “tragedies” may help us cope with what has befallen us, we must resist being glib and intellectually careless.
Our fellow human beings were not “lost” in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts.
We must refuse to be fooled by their propaganda, which is meant to appeal to our own moral vanity – the belief that we can appease them by responding to their outrageous demands for accommodation, their open threats and their hateful rhetoric with even more forbearance.
Read the whole thing here.
Never Forget
Never surrender.
Obama can’t even come up with his own words for a smear.
His comments before the nefarious “lipstick on a pig” remark appear to be a complete ripoff of a political cartoon.
Check out Newsbusters:
The folks at FreeRepublic have found an interesting… uh, shall we say coincidence… concerning Barack Obama’s widely panned September 9 comments made at a rally in Virginia where he seemed to be saying that Governor Palin was a “pig” by referencing the “lipstick” quote from her acceptance speech at the GOP convention. It is looking like Obama’s comments were not off the cuff, but scripted. And, not only were they scripted, but they were stolen without attribution from a Washington Post political cartoon by Tom Toles from September 5. Will the media notice?
Probably not.
Lipstick and Politicians
I don’t think Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig, when he said, ”you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
He was just using an old expression to say that McCain’s proposals were pretty much the same old same old. So I don’t get it why Republicans and media types have to make such a big deal about the remarks. There are so many other things to go after Obama on.
The guys over at Power Line blog think Obama’s unfortunate remark is a sign that the wheels are coming off his campaign wagon:
The more interesting question is whether Obama is starting to come apart at the seams. As his party’s Presidential nominee, he should be doing battle with John McCain, not Sarah Palin. But he seemingly can’t help himself. Over the last couple of days, several generally apolitical people have told me that they think Obama has been melting down ever since Palin’s nomination was announced. Hysteria does appear to be sweeping the Obama camp, with over the top attacks on both Palin and McCain. One wonders whether their internal polling numbers are really, really bad.
From the McCain side of the debate, I’m finding Palin to be a bit more of a distraction than necessary. But perhaps focusing on Palin is giving McCain a boost he wouldn’t otherwise have.
Overall, I’m just tired of this whole election cycle. Hurry November.
My Belly Hurts
Sharp, stabbing pain in my side awakened me this morning at about 4:55 a.m. I’ve been having pretty strong belly cramps, but so far haven’t been able to go to the bathroom. The pain this morning I think was due to the pain medicine running out. I was sleeping pretty solidly when a couple sharp jabs just about took my breath away, waking me in the process.
It took a little while for the nurse to arrive and give me another dose, and of course it takes about 10 to 15 minutes for the stuff to make its way down the IV line and into my body.
I’m feeling better now. Still have a great deal of bloating in my abdomen. My belly is a bit distended and very tender. I keep having cramps like I want to go to the bathroom, but so far nothing. SIGH.
Star Trek, the original, is on TV right now. I flip between it and Fox & Friends. I watched X Files between to 2 and 3 a.m. Mostly though I just sleep.
Leave it to the Brits…
To come up with an even handed assessment of John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin.
I saw a clip of this article from the U.K.Telegraph on the Ace of Spades blog.
Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.
The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska’s energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes – the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having “no international experience” particularly absurd.
In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.
Getting elected while hitched to what until now has been a rather moribund McCain campaign may prove to be her biggest challenge yet.
2nd Tuesday in November
John McCain finally did something to convince me to give him my vote for president in November: he chose Sarah Palin to be his VP.
Until just two weeks ago, I had resolutely decided not to vote at all in the presidential election this time around. While I can’t in good conscience vote for an empty shirt like Barack Obama, McCain was not much of a choice either. The Arizona senator has come down on the wrong side of so many issues over the years, to say nothing of his open delight in dissing conservatives, that there was no way I could vote for him.
I’ve long since abandoned the typical conservative position of holding my nose to vote come November, figuring that any Republican, even a liberal one, is better than any Democrat. Unfortunately liberal Republicans count on that kind of reaction from disaffected conservatives.
Not me anymore. I won’t vote for a liberal/moderate, or whatever you want to call it Republican or Democrat.
Unless…
He does what McCain did, which is choose a strong conservative as his running mate. Now granted the vice president doesn’t do a whole lot in any adminstration. (Al Gore’s invention of the Internet aside. Come to think of it, he performed that bit of magic while still in Congress, if memory serves.)
But I like what I saw and heard from Palin over the past couple weeks, and I think that she may well have a very postive impact on the conservative movement in the long run. I say conservative, rather than Republican, because I have little doubt that the country club republicans are ready and willing to stab her in the back like they have nearly every other strong conservative to come along.
So it’s with the hope that she survives this election cycle, a likely disappointing McCain adminstration and goes on to have a long and successful career and that her coattails will be long, bringing in many more young and aggressive conservatives into public service.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Been a long time since I’ve posted anything here.
Initially I was pretty fired up about this blog, posting every day, sometimes several times a day. But back in April I lost my job and with it my enthusiasm for writing.
Then, in May our household was caught up in Daughter Number Two’s wedding at the end of the month. We spent two weeks in the Outer Banks of North Carolina where daughter and terrific son-in-law were hitched on the beach in Duck.
After we got back from the beach, I was busy trying to earn some dough to keep the mortgage company and other creditors at bay. Some time in the middle of June I decided to take advantage of the six month health insurance severance from the last job to get a minor but annoying medical problem taken care of.
While recoverying from that, which should have been a small matter, I developed a perforated colon, spent 20 days in the hospital and ended up with an ileostomy, which is the same as a colostomy, except instead of your colon being brought out to the side of your abdomen, your small intestine is.
So that was mid July, and for the past two months I’ve been recuperating from that surgery. I’m writing this now from the hospital where I’ve just had surgery to reverse the eliostomy. I’m pretty sore from the operation, but the pain meds keep things under control.
This morning I had a yummy liquid breakfast of orange Jello, cream of wheat, milk and chicken broth. Now I’m sitting here waiting for my colon to reawaken and start moving all of the above along. I’m crampy (on top of the surgery pain) and feeling somewhat bloated. This will eventually pass when everything else begins to pass through my digestive system.
So that’s how I spent my summer vacation.
Coming Back Soon
Been busy, but I’ll be back to blogging soon.