Tag Archives: 9/11

local news

Thank you, firefighters; you are our heroes

I suppose one could trace Americans’ love affair with emergency responders back to around the 9/11 attacks.

You remember the horror, the heartache — and the heroism!

I damn sure remember all of it.

The heroes were the firefighters and police officers who ran into burning skyscrapers in New York City, or into the Pentagon to rescue individuals who had been trapped by fire and smoke or perhaps paralyzed by the terror that been thrust upon them.

In that spirit I want to offer a word of gratitude and utmost respect and admiration to some emergency responders who at this very moment are fighting fires all along our sprawling landscape on the High Plains of Texas.

The wind is howling and is fanning flames across many acres of grassland. The firefighters are answering the call to battle the flames — and the relentless wind.

What’s more, many of those brave men and women are volunteers. They have day jobs. They do other things for pay, but they volunteer their time as firefighters because of their desire to serve the public.

Sure, we say it on occasion. We express our thanks and our appreciation to our friends and tell them how we stand in awe of those who risk their lives to protect us from nature’s wrath.

Do we tell the men and women directly how much we admire them for the work they do? No. Of course we don’t. I don’t.

I’m doing so here in this blog. I hope the word gets out. These individuals are heroes in every sense of an often-overused and misused word.

I also plan to tell the next firefighter I see at the grocery store stocking up on grub for his or her colleagues at the fire station that very thing.

national news

Proof, Donald, we need proof … yet again!

It’s helpful to keep everything that flies out of Donald J. Trump’s mouth — or shows up on his Twitter feed — in their proper perspective.

It is that the president of the United States is likely to say or tweet whatever the hell pops into his noggin at any time of the day or night.

He now accuses President Obama of wiretapping his Trump Tower offices, allegedly to determine if he had held unauthorized talks with Russian officials before he became president.

Proof? Pffft! Who needs it? Trump seems to ask.

Let us review for a moment a couple of other specious claims that Trump has made.

* He said “thousands and thousands of Muslims cheered” the collapse of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

* The president said that “millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton” in the 2016 presidential election, giving her the comfortable popular vote margin she scored over Trump while losing the Electoral College. He has yet to prove that, either.

Now this.

Obama had his staff wiretap his office, according to Trump.

No proof has come forward.

How on God’s Earth can we believe anything that this clown keeps saying?

I cannot.

International news, legal news

9/11 mastermind tells the Mother of all Lies

Khalid Sheik Mohammed blames the United States of America for the terrorist attacks that killed roughly 3,000 innocent victims on Sept. 11, 2001.

Imagine that.

The 9/11 mastermind says it’s our fault.

We are to blame because 19 madmen boarded jetliners and flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon — and struggled with passengers before crashing a third plane into a Pennsylvania field.

Mohammed wrote this fantasy in a length letter to President Barack Obama.

According to the Miami Herald: “‘I will be happy to be alone in my cell to worship Allah the rest of my life and repent to Him all my sins and misdeeds,’ he says in the letter that he wrote at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“‘And if your court sentences me to death, I will be even happier to meet Allah and the prophets and see my best friends whom you killed unjustly all around the world and to see sheik Osama bin Laden.'”

They’ll both rot in hell.

He said in his letter that U.S. “tyrants” have brought death to the Middle East. The letter had been hidden from the public until just this week.

In truth, Mohammed’s case is another one of those that tests my opposition to capital punishment.

This guy isn’t a U.S. citizen. He’ll go on trial — eventually! — for the plot he concocted and the terrible act of war he committed against this country.

I’d be willing to bet my last dollar that he’ll get a one-way ticket to the death chamber whenever a jury gets around to convicting him.

Yes, I still oppose capital punishment — even for monsters such as this one. When Mohammed checks out of this world, though, I won’t shed a tear.

If only our nation’s judicial system would get busy and dispose of this heinous killer.

International news, military news

ISIS or ISIL … pick which one you want to hate

Defense Secretary Ash Carter invoked a term that I find puzzling.

It’s not in a negative way, just a puzzling way.

Appearing this morning on “Meet the Press,” Carter was responding to a question from moderator Chuck Todd, who used the term “ISIS.” Carter answered him using the term “ISIL.”

ISIS, ISIL. Tomato, tom-ah-to.

President Obama for some time has been calling the terrorist monsters ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The more, um, colloquial term has been ISIS, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The Levant describes a geographical region that covers roughly the nations bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. They comprise the site of the ongoing struggle against Islamic terrorists.

I suppose that, given the reach of the Islamic State, that “ISIL” seems a bit more appropriate, as it has done its murderous deeds throughout the eastern Med — and beyond.

Secretary of State John Kerry has been using the term “Daesh” when discussing ISIS/ISIL. Daesh is seen in the Islamic world as an epithet, a slur against the terrorists who comprise this monstrous group.

We all know, of course, how the Islamic State has elevated its profile from something President Obama once called the “JV team” of international terrorists. They’re the first-stringers these days, the varsity, Public Enemy No. 1 worldwide.

It really matters not one damn bit whether we call them “ISIS, ISIL” or “Daesh.” I’d prefer to call them all “dead.” We have killed many thousands of them since 9/11, but there no doubt remain many more to hunt down and, in the parlance so often used, “remove from the battlefield.”

I continue to have faith we’ll be able to do that — one day. I hope to be alive to welcome that event.

International news

Islamophobe to lead national security team

18-michael-flynn-trump-tower-w710-h473

President Bush declared it in 2001.

President Obama reaffirmed it in 2009.

“We are not at war with Islam,” both men said. The enemy, they asserted, comprises individuals who have “perverted” a great religion for some decidedly unholy causes. They are murderers, terrorists, thugs, goons … you name it.

So, who does the next president select as his national security adviser? A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who calls Islam a “cancer.” Michael Flynn has said repeatedly over the years that the fight, indeed, is against those who adhere to a certain religious faith.

The attack at the Berlin Christmas market allegedly by an Islamic State agent, according to Donald J. Trump, underscores the hatred that Muslims harbor against Christians. Gen. Flynn shares that view and he will have the new president’s ear when the administration takes over on Jan. 20.

This is a dangerous situation that we’re about to enflame with the expected rhetoric that will come from Trump’s national security adviser.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/report-nsc-facing-staff-exodus-over-michael-flynn.html

Now we’re hearing reports of career security analysts leaving the National Security Council rather than serving under Gen. Flynn. There apparently is little contact between the NSC staff and the incoming team. What’s more, there are questions emerging about whether Flynn shared sensitive information with foreign military officers while he was serving in Afghanistan.

I don’t doubt for an instant that Gen. Flynn is a top-flight military tactician. He once ran the Defense Intelligence Agency and apparently did so with great competence. However, I do question his temperament — not to mention the temperament of the man who has selected him to lead the NSC.

Do we really need someone operating at the right hand of the commander in chief who has this nutty view that we’re fighting a war against more than 1 billion Muslims around the world?

We are at war with terrorists who do not represent the overwhelming majority of people who want to live in peace alongside the rest of the world.

The doctrine to which we have adhered since 9/11 has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of terrorists. We’ve eliminated the mastermind behind the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We have blown other terrorist leaders to bits and have decimated the terrorists’ ability to sustain combat on the battlefield.

Have we eliminated the threat? No. The Berlin attack, the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey and the shooting this past week at the Swiss mosque show us that the fight continues.

It’s a fight against terrorists. It’s not a fight against a religion.

military news, national news

They fought for ‘the duration’

origin11

Seventy-five years ago today, Japanese navy pilots swooped in over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and — perhaps without knowing it at the moment — changed the world forever.

That act dragged the United States of America into the greatest global conflict the world has ever witnessed.

The young men who answered the call from that day forward did so under terms that no longer apply in this day.

Many of them volunteered to get into the fight; others of them were drafted by the government. They all took an oath to defend the nation. Then they signed a paper that committed them to fighting for their nation for as long as it took to finish the fight.

They signed up for “the duration” of the conflict. The war would end in August 1945, but no one who signed up for that battle had a clue as to how long it would last.

Think about that for a moment. As the smoke billowed from the wreckage in Hawaii, did anyone know how long this war would last? It could last for a year, two, three. It could go on for decades.

The young Americans who donned their country’s uniform did so without knowing how long they would be ordered to sacrifice.

My father was one of those young men. He was 20 years and seven months old when we entered World War II. He waited just a few weeks before deciding one day to go to the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, Ore., and enlist in the armed services. His first choice was the Marine Corps. The office was closed. He then walked across the hall and enlisted in the Navy.

He didn’t know when he’d be finished. He didn’t know if he’d ever come home. Dad wanted to fight the enemy.

And he did.

We don’t ask such things of our young men and women these days. We send them off to war for a length of time. They serve and return. Of late — since 9/11 to be exact — we’ve been sending them back into harm’s way repeatedly. That, too, is creating tremendous emotional stress on our young warriors and I wouldn’t for a moment wish to be wearing their boots.

Many of us today, though, will recall the sacrifice made by the young Americans who answered their nation’s call to arms against tyranny.

When we do, think of how they might have felt knowing they might be going into a battle with no end.

That’s what I call “sacrifice.”

national news, political news

‘Millions voted illegally’ … seriously?

donald

Donald J. Trump has cemented his title as a provocative prevaricator.

The president-elect has launched a fascinating counterattack against those who want to recount the ballots cast in Wisconsin, and possibly in two other states.

Trump said he won the Electoral College in a landslide and would have won the popular vote as well if you take out the “millions” of votes that were cast “illegally.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-attacks-recount-effort-in-election-where-millions-voted-illegally/ar-AAkPasR?li=BBnb7Kz

Really, Mr. President-elect?

Here is what he wrote in one of his flurry of tweets: “In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Well now. A 306-232 electoral vote victory isn’t really a “landslide,” but I digress.

I guess Trump is presuming that most if not all the “illegal votes” were cast for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He how does he know that? He doesn’t. Trump doesn’t know anything about the electoral process that’s been called into question.

However, he knows that “millions voted illegally.” I believe the president-elect is applying the same base of knowledge he used to declare — falsely — that “thousands of Muslims cheered” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

business news, media news, national news, political news

Right-wrong track polls tell only part of story

thbigcx2wm

One of my social media friends thinks I spend too much time blogging about Donald J. Trump.

I heard him. So I think I’ll shift gears for a moment or two.

Those polls that measure whether Americans think we’re heading on the right or wrong track puzzle me. Take a look at the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls on that subject.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html

What these averages don’t necessarily say up front is whether Americans want the nation’s directly to veer sharply to the right or sharply to the left.

I generally pay little attention to these polls.

The RCP average says there’s a 30-plus percentage variance, meaning that about one-third more Americans think the country is heading on the “wrong track.”

No one has ever polled me on the subject. If one were to ask me, I’d say we’re doing just fine. I heard the U.S. Labor Department jobs report this morning and learned we added 161,000 non-farm jobs in October; the jobless rate declined to 4.9 percent; wages went up.

Is that a wrong track indicator regarding the economy?

I don’t think so.

Foreign policy issues? Well, we haven’t been hit by a major terror attack since 9/11. We keep killing terrorists around the world. Our alliances seem solid.

Federal budget policy? The deficit has been cut by one-third during the past eight years. Is it still too great? Yes. It’s heading in the “right direction.”

I’m digressing.

Right track-wrong track polls tell only part of the story.

national news, political news

Calls for Trump to quit race are mounting, but …

donald

The Deseret News of Salt Lake City has joined a growing chorus around the country in demanding that Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, quit his campaign.

The editorial is attached here:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865664336/In-our-opinion-Donald-Trump-should-resign-his-candidacy.html

He probably won’t quit, although I hate to predict anything at this point of a growing scandal that only promises to get worse.

My own sense is that Trump is thinking about it, considering at some level to call it quits, to hand this presidential nomination over to VP nominee Mike Pence.

He has vowed to go the distance.

Frankly, I want him to stay in the race. It’s not that I want this man to redeem himself. I believe that politically speaking he is beyond redemption.

Republican Party primary voters very well could have known this kind of news would splatter itself all over the campaign. Yet they punched their ticket next to a man who “tells it like it is,” who eschews “political correctness,” who has promised to “build a wall” to keep out the Mexican “rapists, drug dealers and killers” and who has pledged to ban all Muslims from entering the United States of America.

Oh, the personal stuff? The three marriages and his boasts about all his sexual conquests, the language he uses to describe women? Pfftt! Doesn’t matter, man.

Trump “isn’t a politician,” the mantra goes. Well, actually he became a politician the moment he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his campaign for the presidency.

The media are largely complicit, too, in allowing this man to get to this point. They didn’t call him out immediately for the lies he told about seeing “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, or for the phony excuses he gives for refusing to release his income tax returns.

The Deseret News has taken a bold step in calling for Trump to quit the race. I get that it dislikes Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, too, and cannot endorse her candidacy.

There will be more of this kind of demand in the days to come before the election.

Let us not kid ourselves, though. The Republican Party’s primary voters have made their choice. It’s Donald J. Trump. They now must swallow what he fed them on his march to their party’s presidential nomination.

International news, legal news, national news

Go for the override, Congress, of 9/11 lawsuit veto

obama-veto

It’s rare, indeed, these days to see liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans agree on much of anything.

However, we have bipartisan agreement on a veto by President Obama on a bill that would have allowed victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.

The president said “no” to the bill. Congress is vowing to override the veto.

I believe members of Congress are right about this one.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lawmakers-vow-to-override-obamas-veto-of-sept-11-bill/ar-BBwzrJK?li=BBnb7Kz

According to the Associated Press: “This is a disappointing decision that will be swiftly and soundly overturned in Congress,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who sponsored the bill. “If the Saudis did nothing wrong, they should not fear this legislation. If they were culpable in 9/11, they should be held accountable.”

There’s your comment from a liberal Democrat. Then there’s this, from a leading Republican, again from the AP: Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another of the bill’s sponsor, criticized Obama for failing to listen to the families of the victims and said he looked forward to the opportunity for Congress to override the veto.

Proponents of the bill say it is tailored narrowly and that it allows plaintiffs to sue only on matters relating to acts of terror. The president said it might cause other governments to take action against U.S. personnel stationed abroad and warned of consequences if the Saudis are actually sued.

I like Schumer’s rationale for overriding the veto.

The Saudis have said they had nothing to do with the terrorists — many of whom were Saudi citizens — who flew those jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Fine … let them deny it.

As Schumer has said, if they are not complicit, then they shouldn’t worry.

The 9/11 attacks will cause pain and misery for as long as Americans are alive who remember that day. Many thousands of them suffered incalculable loss at the hands of deranged terrorist monsters.

If another government — a supposed ally of the United States — at the very least looked the other way, then it should have to pay for the unspeakable grief it allowed to occur.