The thing I remember about 9/11, after the shock, was the feeling of dread that the crew in the White House was in no way suited to navigate what was about to come without making everything worse.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 11, 2018
That was my feeling, too. As soon as I could be sure my friends who actually worked in the towers were okay — at least physically. At least for the moment…
"9/11 Fuck Yeah!" pic.twitter.com/wOSDynOd7g
— zeddy (@Zeddary) September 11, 2018
Roughly 3,000 people were killed that day. Among them were NYPD and hundreds of fire fighters who went into the burning towers, climbing hundreds of steps to help people. Rescue workers on the Pile at Ground Zero are still dying today from illnesses related to that work. https://t.co/E2wgDlrerD
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 11, 2018
You literally voted against the Zadroga Act and basic health benefits for the “brave first responders”. Serving their memories involves more than wearing a lapel pin. How about saving those who ran into the rubble from dying broke and in silence. https://t.co/0W5oH8N5fy
— Eric Ortner (@eortner) September 11, 2018
Oh come on. pic.twitter.com/m4YW25XsZJ
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 11, 2018
17 years ago, today, Donald Trump bragged about how his building was now the tallest one in downtown Manhattan since the Twin Towers fell. pic.twitter.com/XOQxAVAoL5
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) September 11, 2018
Would be interested in volume of 9/11 remembrance on social media year by year, weighted against size of user base. Feels like there's more this year. People nostalgic for a terrible day because it's one of the last times the country didn't feel hopelessly fractured? pic.twitter.com/0IjuifkXVp
— laura olin (@lauraolin) September 11, 2018
NotMax
Via WaPo.
raven
Our former office manager posted her email string with her brother on 9/11. She was here in Athens and he was in Manhattan but she alerted him to what was happening.
Cheryl Rofer
This is an amazing compilation of first-person experiences from those traveling with President Bush when the towers came down. From 2016.
raven
Good piece in the hated Times
I went to war to avenge my brother’s death. But the only person I truly wanted to kill died 17 years ago.
debbie
Good to see Trump assumed the “I’m driving a big truck!” stance as he arrived at Shanksville. The only good thing that can be said about Trump’s speech today is that his dentures were snuggly in place.
Felanius Kootea
@NotMax: Perhaps he should just follow Vlad back to Russia. I mean if these are the international protests during his presidency, what does he think is going to happen after it ends? Certain governments and the ICC might want to have a word with him when he visits his overseas golf courses.
Major Major Major Major
Blech. Go away, Donald.
germy
Trump tweeted (1:15 today) a photo of he, melanomia, and white house staff assembled for a 9/11 tribute. Hashtag “never forget!”
Omarosa and Hope Hicks and Ty Cobb are in the photo. And the sun is shining.
It was taken a year ago.
debbie
@raven:
I have to say that the Times’ coverage of 9/11 was stellar. The individual obits written and compiled by reporters were as painful as anything could be. So much was lost that day.
debbie
@germy:
Can I declare war on hashtags?
TenguPhule
How the Fuck Condi Rice, Bush Jr and Darth Cheney are not ritually condemned and burned in effigy across the nation for fucking up in office on this day is something I will never understand.
Truly, today was the day the GOP showed they could sell anything to the rubes, even a tragedy caused by their fucking up.
different-church-lady
How the everloving fuck were 62 million people taken in by this assclown?
I swear to god, one of these days it’s going to come out that the vote totals were hacked.
germy
@debbie: As soon as you stomp one out, a million more appear. They’re like college republicans.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer: Mr. My Pet Goat knows what he did.
different-church-lady
@debbie: Now that’s the kind of mission creep I can get behind.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Same way they were taken in by the fuckup Bush Jr.
Luthe
I remember that when they started reporting the hijackers were of Arab origin I thought “well, our Middle East policy has finally pissed them off enough to attack us directly.” For a seventeen year-old with only a moderate grasp of geopolitics, I was pretty on the mark. Not that our policy has improved one bit since then.
My other two big memories are consoling my sobbing best friend whose father was a pilot scheduled to fly that day (he was fine) and how the radio was completely taken over by the Emergency Broadcast System. I still get nervous when there’s more than a second or two of dead air on the radio because it might mean another massive event happened.
Major Major Major Major
This whole thread is brilliant.
TenguPhule
Republicans long for the day when they could manipulate the public to support the very people who fucked up and silence the opposition.
Mike in NC
Surprised that Fat Bastard hasn’t bragged today about how he’d have totaly prevented 9/11 from happening.
Mary G
I do think there’s been more attention paid this year as opposed to last year. Last year it was Trump! WTF! OMG! and this year it’s I am sick of Trump, what else can we talk about?
I’m still getting the DNS error every time on the PC and occasionally on the tablet. Is it only me?
Everyone in the path of Florence, stay safe and GTFO, including pets, if your in its path.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: That black comedy hits a little too close to home.
Southend
@different-church-lady: Preach it. I’ve been saying that since the reporting that various States’ voting systems had been hacked. Why hack then not bother to go all in?
germy
germy
@Mary G:
I can’t access this site with Safari, only Chrome. And even then it sometimes freezes my computer while waiting for some ad or another, and I’m compelled to “force quit”
Brachiator
Even though I hung out in New York, years and years ago, I decided to do a “tourist” tour of the city. I went to the World Trade Center, and to a restaurant on the top floor. I remember getting a little anxious during the elevator ride, because I had an “internal clock” idea of how long it should take to get to the top, but it was taking a damn long time, and I was getting nervous. But finally I got out and had a great time looking over the city on a clear day.
I simply could not believe what I saw when the towers fell.
I remember buying the New York Times because it ran a regular feature on the lives of all the souls lost during the attacks.
germy
@Southend: Didn’t John Kerry recently say he suspected some funny business with the vote totals in 2004? I don’t know why he waited all these years to speak up.
raven
@Brachiator: I have a friend who had dinner up there on 9/10 and the waiter liked him so he gave him a plate.
Roger Moore
@Felanius Kootea:
If the Democrats win big in the elections, maybe he will.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
They weren’t taken in. They voted for war on Those People, and they’re getting just what they asked for.
maeve
I was working in New Jersey then – teaching at a college. Had an exam that day, sent it through the intranet to be printed – walked over to the student union building where the printing was located – walking back with my copies of exams in hand – noticed everyone was gathered around the TVs that were there – couldn’t comprehend – first thought a small plan had accidentally flown into the tower – then saw it collapse.
Still gave my exam that day – you can’t figure out what to do when it is incomprehisible – but later excused anyone who didn’t want that exam to count and gave a makeup. Since I’m not from the east coast I didn’t have a personal connection to New York but a lot of my students did.
Flew a flag on my house for a couple of weeks after – not sure what it meant but it seemed the thing to do – mostly in terms of collective group mourning.
JPL
@Mike in NC: He did help afterwards though
https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/722224694078779392
debbie
@JPL:
The comments in that thread reminded me of his stellar behavior: Bragging that his building was now the tallest and applying for recovery funds. Bastard.
Major Major Major Major
In lighter news, it’s the one year anniversary of Ted Cruz’s twitter account liking that porn video.
Aleta
NOAA has updated their predictions: The bullseye is now predicted for southern North Carolina. The prediction is that the storm surge will go over the barrier islands. 15-20″ of rain extending into the sw part of Va.
realbtl
I was about 70 miles inside British Columbia on a Fall convertible trip. Hauled ass for the border the second I heard and made it by about 2 hours before everything came to a grinding halt.
Gelfling 545
@germy: I can’t access it with wifi but can with cellular data.
smintheus
My feeling as I watched the Tower collapse was that Bush was almost certainly going to do everything possible to distract public attention from a screw up of colossal proportions, including starting at least one war, scare-mongering on a gruesome scale and making wild accusations against critics at home, and civil rights abuses galore. In other words, he’d go the super-duper-patriot route of Woodrow Wilson 1917-1918 (as Wilson realized that drafting people to send overseas for an unpopular and unnecessary war was likely to hurt him politically). It felt sickeningly inevitable on 9/11 that Bush would take a f^cked up situation and make it infinitely worse. So I went out for a long walk in the mountains that afternoon, figuring it was going to be a long ugly fight against encroaching tyranny.
Elizabelle
9/11 is such a fraught occasion for me. You want to remember those who died, and I do, but the whole tragedy was co-opted to start a neocon war of choice, and we live with the aftereffects daily.
9/11 was a tragedy, and what followed was even worse. What a black period in American history.
Elizabelle
I also feel that the national news media glommed on to the tragedy, and broadcast until they’d desensitized us. It was good for business. But they did not seem to be up to picking apart Bush and Cheney’s lies.
A lot of the rot that is killing us now stems from the runup and aftermath to 9/11.
Doug R
Sick of the sackcloth and ashes.
Double tap to the head, Bin Laden’s dead.
smintheus
@Elizabelle: They kept showing the video of the attacks and collapse of the towers. It was outlandishly stupid to deliberately traumatize Americans; I walked away from the TVs because I wouldn’t let them mess with my mind.
B.B.A.
Barbara Lee was right.
Elizabelle
@smintheus: I remember they finally stopped when some child psychologists clued them in that young children thought it was happening, again and again, in real time. Only thing that made them stop.
My small nephews drew all kinds of pictures of planes hitting buildings. I wonder if my sister kept them.
Jay
@Doug R:
And the War that was started to “kill him” grinds on,
And all the other Wars of Convenience started in the shadows of that day.
Elizabelle
OT: WaPost reports Cardinal Donald Wuerl is heading to Rome to discuss his possible resignation with Pope Francis.
I just hope this awful scandal does not take down Francis, too. It’s the goddamned (may they be, literally) conservatives in the Church who were in power when the bulk of it happened. Francis is one of the Catholic Church’s few bright lights.
s
@maeve:
I was doing a gig for the Dept of the Navy. I was at the airport on my way to Pax River NAS. Mrs texted me that somebody flew a plane into the WTC. I wondered how drunk a Beechcraft Twin pilot would have to be at that hour of the morning. This was before there was no place to hide from TVs at airports but I had a membership to a club room. When I got in I noticed everyone crowed around the TV. I got a text from Mrs saying “CALL ME NOW!” the second plane had hit.
I knew there would be hell to pay for the attack but at that moment I hoped we could act responsibly. I can never forgive Boy Blunder for his maladministrations behaviour.
Gelfling 545
I wish they would just stop with this. We heard as we were going into church for my mother’s funeral. It felt like we were not able to memorialize her properly because suddenly everything was about this enormous horror and the whole thing became surreal. On the second anniversary of the day my sister had to call her daughter’s teacher ( she was in 7th grade) and tell her in no uncertain terms that my niece would not then and probably not ever write another essay on her feelings about 9/11 after finding her crying hysterically and saying “I can’t, Mom. I just can’t “. (What the hell kind of feelings is ANY 12 rear old supposed to have about it?) We have many great tragedies in the country and in the world but this one seems to be the only one that gets a level of attention that amounts to obsession. I think they use it to keep people from objecting to the war. Anyway, I think I’d hate the perpetual remember, remember droning even if it didn’t carry personal pain for me and mine and I think there are those who lost people that day who’d just like to let them rest in peace.
Sorry. It gets to me.
Gin & Tonic
We celebrated my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary at Windows on the World. Before their 42nd my father was dead.
It was a very nice place.
Jager
I was getting my car serviced when the first plane hit, all conversation in the waiting room stopped, one of the service guys turned up the TV sound. There were about 20 of us waiting for our cars, in minutes the entire service department was staring at the TV in disbelief. I called a retired airline pilot neighbor and asked him how much fuel was aboard the plane, he said, “more than enough to take the building down” What a terrible day. The problem is what followed was worse than any of us could have imagined at the time.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
I’m not Catholic, but I’ll dance for joy when they excommunicate Vigano.
MTmofo
Glad to see the site is back up. Checked a few hours ago and still no joy.
Thanks to Alain and whomever else for the fix.
hitchhiker
Almost exactly 6 months before 9/11 was the medical catastrophe that very nearly swallowed my family. It was abrupt, out of nowhere, and devastating on every level: emotionally, financially, physically, psychologically. Just a complete and utter flattening of our lives.
We’re in Seattle. I used to keep a radio in the bathroom and listen to NPR during my shower, which is why I was washing my hair when I heard Scott Simon say that the towers were gone and a plane had flown into the Pentagon. We’re under a terrorist attack.
For the next few months I kept hearing people around me talking about how nothing would ever be the same … but as far as I could see, they were all carrying on exactly as they had before. Under the circumstances, it felt as though a lot of people were eager to claim this nightmare as their personal tragedy, experienced through the endless television and print media coverage. The four of us, meantime, were still hard in the grip of a very personal tragedy that I’d have given just about anything to be free of, so my memory of this event always comes with narrowed eyes and certain skepticism, at least for people who weren’t in NYC or DC, and who had no real connection to anyone who was.
As the months passed and it became obvious that the Republicans were going to milk this for every last vote while botching the wars they were determined to start, my contempt for them all overwhelmed just about every other feeling I had.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
The only way to save the Church is to destroy it, root and branch.
It is built on too many violated dead bodies and looted lands.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
One of Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s few sins is that they did not force Bush and Cheney to submit to questioning under oath in public hearings when they had the chance.
Quinerly
@Elizabelle: My dad at age 79 had had a traumatic brain injury from a fall from a friend’s roof (yes, I know…) 10 days prior. He was in rehab on 9/11. The tvs were on in the rehab facility. He thought buildings everywhere were being attacked repeatedly. I realized what was happening with him a couple days after, pitched a fit with the facility, and got them to turn off the tvs.
Mandalay
@B.B.A.:
She certainly was. The really scary thing (even now) is that she was about the only person in Washington DC who was right.
Bill Arnold
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m shallow and laughed a lot.
When do we get comment edit back?
—
Have to say I’m unreasonably irritated at DJ Trumps hurricane focus (he can’t even do hurricane focus well, but it’s at least an effort) as a hurricane bares down on a Deep Red State. (or a Reddish-Purple State.) Seriously hope damage including to lives is limited, though.
So I’m hoping this from The Onion will be a rare misfire:
FEMA Frantically Prepares Apology For Screwing Up Hurricane Florence Response
Roger Moore
@smintheus:
I felt exactly the same way. The media wasn’t just reporting the news; they were trying to get viewers to wallow in the tragedy. I deliberately avoided watching the TV news around then because I didn’t want to see the same thing rebroadcast endlessly. I guess it stuck, because I have stayed away from TV news ever since.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
Jennifer at 3weirdsisters had the best take on 9/11 for its tenth year anniversary:
“If you want to see what this country really is, look there [Katrina]. In the absence of some foreign other to blame, we lost no time in turning victims into villains. That’s who we really are. And that’s nothing to celebrate.”
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
when do we get comment edit back? :-)
TenguPhule
@Bill Arnold:
After nested comments but before John Cole moves the willow tree.
randy khan
@Brachiator:
I went to Windows on the World a few times when I lived in New York and later when my girlfriend (now wife) lived there. It was an amazing view, and you could get out cheap(ish!) if you just had a drink and appetizers. One of the weirdest things for me about 9/11 was the idea that it was gone.
Ladyraxterinok
@Elizabelle: William Lindsey at his blog bilgrimage.blogspot.com has many posts about how the ultra conservatives in the hierarchy with the aid of RW lay people are in an all out war to take down Francis because of his stances on capital punishment, poverty, small opening to LGBT people and divorced people. They are claining Francis supported MacCarrick (sp?) who has been revealed to have molested boys and seminarians. In 1 of his posts Lindsey does the timeline–MacC was supported and promoted by the 2 previous (and adamently anti Vatican II) popes; he actually retired before Francis was chosen pope.
In one of his posts Lindsey links to a v recent Commonweal article whose authors discuss how prominent RW leaders in US have become Catholic–not for theological reasons but because they see the church as a way to implement their radical conservative goals for the US.
The blog posts and the Commonweal article provide the context for the fight in the RCC. The Commonweal article speaks of a possible schism in the church.
CliosFanBoy
@debbie: and he LIED about it being the biggest! It was, at most, the 3d biggest.
Bill Arnold
@TenguPhule:
Those days are mostly gone, though, after 3+ years of remedial training in how to recognize obvious manipulation.
John Revolta
@NotMax: “But Fearless Leader, I wanted to go golfing in Ireland!”
“Nyet. You come see Vlad.”
“Awwww, I never get to do ANYTHING…………..!!!!”
randy khan
Today I’ve been thinking about all the people who stepped in to help that day and in the days afterward. Of course, the police, firefighters and EMS personnel who rushed in – up the stairs at the Trade Center! – to try to save people in the buildings. But also the civilians who helped others get out of the Trade Center, a few of whom didn’t make it themselves (including at least one who went back upstairs to look for more people who needed help). And then, afterwards, the huge outpouring of help and support, from volunteers, both professionals from out of town and others, who worked at the Pit to aid in rescue and recovery (and the last survivor was discovered by one of those volunteers) to the people who helped deal with donations that poured into New York – the Mets not only volunteered Shea Stadium, but most of the people who worked for the team were involved in the effort, including all of the players – and even the many people who stood in line to donate blood, although it turned out not to be needed.
So what I’m remembering today is how, for that brief time, in so many places and so many ways we saw the best of America.
jc
In California on the day of 9/11/01 I said to a co-worker: I have the feeling we’re going to hear the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” every day for the next ten years. Sadly, I think I called it pretty accurately.
TenguPhule
@randy khan: And too many of those good people have died and will die horrible agonizing deaths because Bush Jr. couldn’t spoil his good PR by telling the rescuers that having two skyscrapers collapse and vaporize and whole bunch of nasty shit in the air does horrible things to the bodies of human beings that breathe it in. And the GOP in Congress voted against helping them.
Kay
We had a really good turn out for a Galbraith town hall tonight. US House. This is a 70% Trump county and he won’t win – it’s a safe seat for R’s- but it’s starting to feel …wavy out here :)
Anotherlurker
I was awakened on 9/11/2001 by a phone call from my neighbor, informing me what had happened. Like everyone, I was in shock.
When W gave his Axis of Evil speech and its “us vs. them” theme, I remember thinking the strategy would be, keep the people scared, stupid and angry. I was right. The Hawks played the deaths of thousands for all the jingoistic venom they could extract.
To me, this was the time that the Flag became a patriotic club, used to stifle contrary thought. This first occoured to me, later that fall, while working an NFL game, as a sound tech. There were flags everywhere. The military were being cannonanized, and flag pins were being handed out to everyone. I felt dread. I felt the that there was a mass manipulation of the country that had conquest on their agenda and not justice. Before we did our interview, my reporter handed me a flag pin. I dropped it on the field. I wanted no part of this manipulative charade.
When I expressed this, on a few occasions, I was roundly derided and shouted down . I learned to keep my mouth shut, after that .
JM
I was a civilian USAF employee in Ohio working in HR at MAJCOM level. Everyone was afraid and many were sobbing. We were all told to get away from all windows and stay off the phones. When news of the Pentagon strike circulated my thoughts were on my HR contacts there at USAF. Found rather quickly (maybe some called/emailed/texted others in the office) that they were all safe. But the Pentagon strike did hit US NAVY HR and some there didn’t make it.
I was TDY to DC on the one yr anniversary but not at Pentagon. It was unsettling to me just to be there on that day. In speaking to my Pentagon HR contacts in the yrs following each said on that day all they wanted to do was to “go home”. The few times I was in the Pentagon after 9/11 the security checks to “get in” were not to be fooled with.
TriassicSands
@different-church-lady:
I wish that were the case. It would be comforting in a way, but the sad truth probably is that there really are that many stupid, ignorant, and/or racist American voters.
Q: Is it ever possible to have any event NOT be about Donald Trump?
(Secret Answer: NO!)
Mandalay
@Anotherlurker:
You were certainly in the brave minority, but not alone. From 2007…
Elizabelle
@debbie: I am good with Vigano swinging under a bridge. Terrible man. In hiding, last I heard.
Elizabelle
@debbie: And Ratzinger (aka Benedict) too.
Elizabelle
@Ladyraxterinok: If there is a schism, I am going with the Francis branch. Um, forgetting that I am a lapsed Catholic there.
That Church needs fresh air, as Francis is, and poverty. Enough of the trappings of wealth for bishops, etc.
Elizabelle
@Quinerly: How sad. I hope your dad eventually recovered from the TBI (I know he has since passed). Good point, though, about the elderly being exposed to all that horror too.
I am all for nursing homes that don’t allow Fox News.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Nailed it. The great majority of them are thrilled. Trump has kept the promises they cared about.
@Bill Arnold:
Thank goodness. It was a great relief during the 2016 campaign to watch terrorist events happen, and Trump wouldn’t get a blip out of it. Everyone who would run to hide behind the GOP daddy’s leg already votes Republican. Everyone else has realized Republicans don’t do shit except politicize danger.
Mike G
Rescue workers on the Pile at Ground Zero are still dying today from illnesses related to that work.
Fuck you Christine Todd Whitman, Bush’s coward of an EPA administrator, who said the air was safe at Ground Zero when she knew it wasn’t, because the GOP wanted everyone to get back to work generating profits for their cronies.
TriassicSands
@Roger Moore:
Except for the comedy shows on Fox News, right? A person’s got to laugh. (Or cry.) (Or throw up.) (Or…?)
Personally, I found that the easiest way to stay away from TV news is not to have a TV.* That way, at the most, I see clips only. The Internet has made it possible to be well-informed. I have a friend who is a confirmed Democrat (and hates the GOP), but he gets his news from cable TV and as a result he needs constant prodding to fill in the blanks — of which there are many. Some quite serious. It’s just easier for people to watch the news than it is to read the news. But the results are a problem.
*I suppose it is possible to stream all the TV news — I don’t really know because I’ve never tried, but that requires effort that isn’t necessary with a TV.
stinger
I was driving into work that morning, and couldn’t understand at first why, instead of my usual music-and-weather, I was hearing Peter Jennings on the radio. He was an evening TV anchor.
After I grasped what he was saying, I could hardly drive the car. A close colleague of mine had traveled to Boston for work and was scheduled to fly back from Logan that morning.
When I got into the office and saw her sitting at her desk, I nearly collapsed from relief. She had taken an earlier flight and come home the night before. We all spent the rest of the day wandering in and out of the few rooms in our office building that had television sets.
Jennings, a former smoker, took up the habit again in the stressful days after 9/11. He died a few years later from lung cancer. His intensive, extended travel around the country to report on the aftermath of the attacks motivated him to get American citizenship (I believe he retained his Canadian citizenship).
Uncle Cosmo
@realbtl: In Kaunas, Lithuania on 9/11/01 when the planes struck. Didn’t hear about anything until 3 PM EDT. Two days late getting home fromYerp due to airspace closures. Everyone I spoke to in the following days, in Lithuania, Sweden & Iceland, were with us. Aujourd’hui nous sommes toutes americains – IIRC that was the headline in Le Figaro (Paris) on 9/12. Didn’t take long for Boy Blunder to fuck that up, did it?.
PJ
@TenguPhule: You could say that about any institution more than a few hundred years old.
TenguPhule
@PJ: Yep.
PJ
I had read the manifesto for the Project for the New American Century sometime in the late 90s, or perhaps as late as 2000/1. Those people had been clamoring for war in the Middle East, and now they were working for the Bush Administration, and, with 9/11, it was handed to them on a platter. Everything that followed was not a surprise.
PJ
@PJ: Well, the torture, that was a surprise. That opened my eyes a little about my fellow Americans.
FelonyGovt
I worked in the World Trade Center, on a high floor of the North Tower, in 1976-7. When we took our daughter to New York City for the first time in 2000, we took her to the top of the World Trade Center. So 9/11 for me, out here in California, was quite surreal.
Jeffro
@Chris:
Rick Santorum just did just that on CNN, blaming the “country of Puerto Rico” for its 3,000 deaths. For realz.
I’d like to think that karma will take care of him someday, and soon. But then again, he’s condemned to be Rick. Santorum. for all of the days of his life…
Jeffro
Meanwhile…Marc Thiessen at the Post is actually trying to pretend that Obama “shattered” some sort of norm (a previous president criticizing a sitting one, OMG!) and therefore shut up libs. Hey Marc, here’s a grenade mi amigo, and I’ll give you back the pin in 3, 2, whoops…
Also meanwhile, I think Dana Milbank is loosening up a bit: How Many Benedict Arnolds Can One Administration Hold?
It’s projection, Dana, all the way down!
he’s right…the body count could get quite high…and we’re just talking about the Cabinet…
The ending ain’t bad, either…I think he might be channeling some Petri here:
Matt McIrvin
I spent a lot of time commiserating and arguing about it on the Usenet group where I still hung out at the time. One guy there, who was also one of the earliest bloggers, was a super-radical lefty who said he was glad the terrorist attacks happened and he hoped there would be more like them. His theory was old 19th-century Propaganda of the Deed stuff: the tyrannical overreaction of the government would lead to mass popular resentment and, eventually, the Revolution.
Great prognosticating there, dude.
Matt McIrvin
…Though for every one like that guy, there were probably a hundred right-wingers who are relieved that the People finally agreed with them about everything.
burnspbesq
@debbie:
I am. I’ll join you.
Ruckus
@Gelfling 545:
Don’t be sorry.
We were played. Junior wanted his war so he could be reelected and the republicans wanted that as well so they could stay in power, which they stole, and the neocons just wanted somebody else to kill people they didn’t give a shit about so they could feel like he-men.
The whole thing seems surreal and the reactions asinine and yet predictable. I’ve often wondered how much if anything was known by junior’s maladministration, given his “friendship” with the Saudi’s?
Anotherlurker
@Mandalay: Thanks, but I don’t consider myself brave. The entire zeitgeist just felt wrong to me, instinctually.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Some people don’t care who gets hurt or dies, as long as the world ends up the way they think it should. The can be extreme right or left, they really don’t care about a world that isn’t arranged to their delight. They are a danger to the rest of us because they are selfish assholes.
VOR
I was at home with my wife and our younger son, an infant at the time. The older son had just taken the bus to kindergarden. I was getting coffee in the kitchen when my wife called, saying Good Morning America reported that a plane hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was “wow, must be bad weather and some Cessna went way off course”. Turn on the TV where they are playing a replay of the plane hitting the first tower, they just happened to have a camera on it. Clear blue sky, great visibility. I was surprised to see it was a big plane, I guessed a 737. Then we saw the second plane hit the other tower live. I turned to my wife and said “somebody just declared war on us”.
sgrAstar
I found the events of 9-11 so deeply shocking, so terrible…it’s taken years to process what happened. I think a lot of the media coverage was driven by that collective need to process what happened. And the details unfolded like a poisonous flower. Individual acts of heroism. THe phone calls from the trapped. The people in that elevator. The gut wrenching jumping. The firefighters entering the dying buildings. I’m a mountaineer, so I have a tendency to imagine dangerous scenarios and how we could extricate ourselves from them. Basic survival strategy to prepare in detail, in advance. 9-11 fully engaged my imagination and my emotions. It was crushing. I wasn’t imagining how badly Bush and co would respond to this…in fact, I couldn’t. Republicans and their enablers must be consigned to the dustbin of history- the sooner the better.
tiredofsitenotworking
TPM has a story up reminding us that Trump lied about donating to the 911 relief funds PLUS he took $150k from the fund.
Perfect.
TCS
I remember watching the plane bank into the south tower. I remember the rumble as the towers fell. I remember the blackness as the ash cloud enveloped my apartment building. I remember the window blinds and paper files fluttering down on our rooftop. I remember the sound of military aircraft flying overhead but invisible because of the cloud of smoke and ash.I remember calling my wife and kids at work and finding their ways home.I remember the silence, like after a snowfall, as I walked uptown in the evening of 9/11.
I lived in the financial district during and after the attack. I still can envision the parked cars of the victims, left in place for weeks, covered in ash and dust.
Procopius
@germy: I seem to recall a lot of posts about suspicious numbers in Ohio. Not only in 2004. Bear in mind it was the Republicans who drafted the Help America Vote Act of 2002 which requires the states to use electronic voting machines, which are hackable and many of which do not have a paper trail. Paper ballots, marked by hand, counted in public, stored for at least 25 years.