Combs Spouts Off

"It's my opinion and it's very true."

  • Calendar

    March 2024
    S M T W T F S
     12
    3456789
    10111213141516
    17181920212223
    24252627282930
    31  
  • Recent Posts

  • Tag Cloud

  • Archives

Posts Tagged ‘new york’

Naming the enemy

Posted by Richard on May 5, 2010

David Harsanyi noticed that lots of people on the left were ready and willing to point a finger at “right-wingers” when the identity of the Times Square bomber was unknown. But now that the real perpetrator has been caught, they’re remarkably reluctant to talk about the global army to which he belongs (emphasis added):

Even as investigators were hunting for the perpetrator of the botched “man-caused disaster” in Times Square, our cool Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was reassuring a frazzled nation that the failed bombing appeared to be an isolated incident — a “one-off” — and avoided the notion of (much less the word) “terrorism.”

“If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that,” explained Mayor Michael Bloomberg — who has plenty of quarters to spare — during the investigation’s early stages. “Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

It could be anything, said the mayor of New York City. A mentally deranged person, perhaps? Maybe some crazy from the fundamentalist faction of around 56 percent of us who opposed health-care reform. After all, in the deep recesses of some imaginations, conservatives are not above murdering hundreds of tourists to make a point about Obamacare.

Of course, it turned out to be a Pakistani-American who’d moved his family to that country, returned there 13 times, and recently came back to the US after several months in an Islamic jihadist terrorist training camp learning how to make bombs. But the left (including the current administration) refuses to use words like “Islamist,” “jihadist,” or even “terrorist.”

In fact, upon learning that the bomber wasn’t a Tea Party member, Mayor Bloomberg’s first concern was that Pakistanis and Muslims not be treated unfairly because one of them was the perpetrator. The good mayor has certainly never expressed such concern regarding Tea Party members or opponents of government-controlled health care.

Here’s the nasty truth: the far left — including the current administration, most of the leadership of the Socialist Democrat Party, and the majority of the mainstream media — considers conservatives and libertarians to be the real, dangerous enemy. They view Islamofascism either as nothing but a minor nuisance or as an understandable effort to diminish America’s illegitimate power in the world.

In the last two major terrorist attacks — Times Square and the Christmas airline bombing attempt — we were incredibly lucky. Regarding the Shazad attempt, the Homeland Security folks are all congratulating each other, but they have no reason whatsoever to do so. If Shazad had remembered his lessons better, there would have been carnage in Times Square. If just a few more minutes had passed, he’d have gotten clean away. They got lucky on all counts.

Their luck is going to run out.

The Socialist Democrats and their shills in the media are more concerned about those who oppose their domestic political agenda than they are about the global movement they refuse to even name — an Islamist movement that has declared war on this country and is committed to its destruction. This is insane. And in the case of those who took an oath of office, it’s a serious dereliction of duty.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

It’s not too late to build Twin Towers II

Posted by Richard on April 28, 2010

On this day in 2006, they broke ground for the "Freedom Tower" that's supposed to be built on the World Trade Center site, replacing the Twin Towers. Four years later, nothing has arisen from the hole in the ground. It's not too late to discard that unfortunate plan and do what the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans everywhere want: rebuild new and better Twin Towers. The design exists. The money already allocated for the current going-nowhere project is sufficient to pay for it. As the Twin Towers Alliance noted, much of the work already done had to be done anyway and wouldn't be wasted.

Check out the 67-page booklet It's Not Too Late (PDF) for detailed information about the current plan, its inferiority to Twin Towers II, and the political mess that led to the current state of affairs.

Compare the current LMDC plan to the Twin Towers II plan. If, like most people, you strongly prefer updated, even grander twin towers and free, meaningful, above-ground memorials to Liebeskind's uninspiring obelisk and absurdly expensive (the price of one tower), mediocre underground memorials, please join me in supporting the continuing efforts of the Twin Towers Alliance.

It's not too late to do the right thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Scozzafava surrenders

Posted by Richard on November 1, 2009

Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate in the NY-23 special Congressional election, has suspended her campaign and freed those who endorsed and supported her "to transfer their support as they see fit to do so." This is tremendous news. It clears the way for Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate and a free-market conservative supported by the Club for Growth, to potentially hand the statists of both major parties a stunning defeat. Hoffman has led in most recent polls, and is neck and neck with Democrat Bill Owens (and "surging") in the latest Daily Kos poll.

Scozzafava, who's been in third place for a while now, is so liberal the liberal Owens has attacked her for her tax hiking record. There was no primary for this vacancy election, and Scozzafava (great name, BTW; even fun to type) was selected by three local Republican leaders, reportedly at the behest of the RNCC and its beltway-mentality party hacks. My guess is they saw "NY" and assumed the GOP needed a liberal candidate to be "in tune" with the electorate (wrong; the district is upstate and moderately conservative).

If Hoffman pulls off a win, this will be a tremendous boost for the grass-roots pro-freedom tea party movement, which has been instrumental in the Hoffman campaign. And it's a wake-up call to people like Newt Gingrich (who should know better) and the GOP's unprincipled, visionless, corrupted-with-power Washington elite who think the "little people" in the party should just shut up and do what their leaders tell them.

UPDATE (11/2/09): Surprise, surprise, surprise! The liberal pseudo-Republican Scozzafava has endorsed the liberal Democrat Owens. Speaking of wake-up calls for the party's inept leadership. Investor's Business Daily :

… Republican success has always had to do with ideas and principles, not "pragmatism."

That's why the Gerald Fords and the Bob Doles were losers, while the Ronald Reagans and the George W. Bushes were winners. It's why backslapping old Bob Michel was a permanent House Minority Leader who could never become speaker of the House, while firebrand Newt Gingrich was propelled to third in line to the presidency by nationalizing the 1994 congressional elections.

Unfortunately, one of the people forgetting that lesson is Gingrich himself. First, the former speaker endorsed Scozzafava. When she withdrew late last week, Gingrich endorsed Hoffman but in a back-handed sort of way, warning that local party hacks should be allowed to nominate liberal Democratic clones.

But the reason Hoffman was able to end Scozzafava's candidacy is that the people in NY-23 preferred a Reaganite citizen politician to a party machinist doing an impersonation of liberal Sen. Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican.

Now that Scozzafava has, in an act of incalculable pettiness, endorsed the Democrat in the race, Bill Owens, Gingrich looks like a professor at the Mister Magoo school of political science.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Hoffman, because if he wins, it may mark the beginning of something important. Maybe this time, we don't need a Gingrich to lead the way. Maybe this time, change will come from the bottom up instead of the top down. And thus be more lasting.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Never forget

Posted by Richard on September 11, 2009

Never forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.

Eight years ago today, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this: 

Lady Liberty watching over the twin towers before 9/11

to this:

1st tower falls

Fleeing as the tower falls

Fleeing through the choking dust

Falling to his death

 

Some people have forgotten now
It was many years ago
And peaceful here at home since then
So just let the memory go
But I close my eyes and see it still
Like it was yesterday — Oh no!
People jumping from a hundred-story building!
I can still see those Americans
Jumping from a hundred-story building …

© 2009 Richard G. Combs. All rights reserved.


 

As I have on previous September 11ths, I offer you passage from Gerard Van der Leun's Of a Fire in a Field — a passage that moves me beyond words every time I read it — in which he recalled 9/11 and its aftermath, when he lived in New York:

Inside the wire under the hole in the sky was, in time, a growing hole in the ground as the rubble was cleared away and, after many months, the last fire was put out. Often at first, but with slowly diminishing frequency, all the work to clear out the rubble and the wreckage would come to a halt.

The machinery would be shut down and it would become quiet. Across the site, tools would be laid down and the workers would straighten up and stand still. Then, from somewhere in the pile or the pit, a group of men would emerge carrying a stretcher covered with an American flag and holding, if they were fortunate, a body. If they were not so fortunate the flag covering over the stretcher would be lumpy, holding only portions of a body from which, across the river on the Jersey shore, a forensic lab would try to make an identification and then pass on to the victim's survivors something that they could bury.

I'm not sure anymore about the final count, but I am pretty sure that most families, in the end, got nothing. Their loved ones had all gone into the smoke and the dust that covered the end of the island and blew, mostly, across the river into Brooklyn where I lived. What happened to most of the three thousand killed by the animals on that day? It is simple and ghastly. We breathed them until the rains came and washed clean what would never be clean again.

. . .

Read the whole thing — and think about the question he asks you at the end. 

And never forget.

Flag still stands

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Fly the flag September 11

Posted by Richard on September 11, 2009

September 11 is the eighth anniversary of the worst attack ever on U.S. soil, when many of us finally realized that a dangerous and implacable enemy had declared war on us years earlier and wasn't kidding.

September 11 is the eighth anniversary of the day that we watched in horror as people fell a hundred stories to the pavement and the skyline of Manhattan changed in a matter of hours.

September 11 is the eighth anniversary of the day that 2,996 innocent people were murdered by a small band of fanatical Islamofascists, and the world changed forever.

Remember September 11. Fly the flag.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Big Brother is being ripped off

Posted by Richard on July 29, 2009

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the country's most strident opponents of citizens' self-defense rights, a man who firmly believes we should forgo armed self-defense in favor of dialing 911 and/or counting on the government to always be watching out for our safety, has for some time been pushing for more and more surveillance cameras in the city.

They'd better add cameras fast, because the thieves are stealing them pretty fast:

New York, NY – Two oddballs have been busted for swiping nearly 20 percent of the city’s red-light cameras right under Big Brother’s nose.

They allegedly drove around town in a pickup truck with a cherry-picker to dismantle 22 of the high-end Nikons from their street poles.

The devices are used to identify red-light-running drivers, who then are issued tickets by mail.

The suspects peddled an estimated $88,000 worth of goods to a camera resale shop for $300 each to feed their heroin habits.

Having gobs of cameras covering public places everywhere is not really a Constitutional problem. But in spite of what TV cop shows lead you to believe, it's apparently not very helpful either. That's what the evidence from Britain, the most surveilled society on Earth, suggests, according to Ross Clark, author of The Road to Big Brother: One Man's Struggle Against the Surveillance State. Reason's Jacob Sullum noted this in his review of the book:

Take all those cameras. So far in the United States, they have been limited mainly to detecting traffic violations, generating heated debate about whether they reduce or increase accidents and whether municipalities are sacrificing public safety for the sake of revenue (by reducing the duration of yellow lights, for example). But provided they focus only on public areas, there is no constitutional barrier to erecting surveillance cameras throughout the United States, until our country is as thick with them as the U.K. …

Yet there is something to be said, fiscal concerns aside, for not having a cop on every corner. The sense of being constantly watched tends to put a damper on things

By Clark’s account, this cost is not worth paying. He says the evidence that the government’s surveillance cameras are effective at either deterring or detecting crime is thin. Facial recognition software aimed at catching known suspects has been a bust, easily foiled by poor lighting, hats, sunglasses, even a few months of aging. Clark argues that Britain’s cameras, which he describes as frequently unmonitored or out of order, are appealing as a relatively cheap way of seeming to do something about crime. He finds that “electronic surveillance is not always augmenting traditional policing; it is more often than not replacing it, with poor results.” Likewise, he says, huge collections of information gleaned from private sources such as phone companies, banks, and credit bureaus (along the lines of America’s renamed but not abandoned Total Information Awareness program) are unmanageable and rife with errors. Clark notes that “there is a fundamental rule about databases: the bigger they are, the more useless they become.” 

There's no indication in Sullum's review that camera theft is a problem in Britain. Maybe the bad guys are just more entrepreneurial in New York than in London. 

In any case, the idea that we can abandon all responsibility for our own safety and entrust it to the ever-watchful and ready-to-respond-instantaneously "authorities" is, always has been, and always will be nonsense.

 And likewise, the fears of libertarians (and civil libertarians) that Big Brother is always watching seem overblown (even if Big Brother's camera hasn't been stolen).

Governments seem to be no more competent in their efforts to institute Big Brother than they are in anything else.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

40,000 Atlases

Posted by Richard on February 20, 2009

In 2003, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismissed concerns that the city's taxes were too high, blithely declaring that New York was a "luxury product" that people gladly paid more for. But now the liberal mayor is singing a different tune. The combined state and local income tax rate already goes over 10%, well above surrounding states. Lawmakers in both Albany and NYC are talking about further increases.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg is now sounding like their editorial page regarding tax rates and incentives:

But late last week Mayor Bloomberg was channelling these columns when he said that raising taxes on high earners could drive them from the city. "One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50% of the taxes," explained the Mayor. "In the city, that's something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral. The question is what's fair. If 1% are paying 50% of the taxes, you want to make it even more?"

I found Bloomberg's numbers rather stunning. They aren't that far above the national level — the top 1% pay 40% of federal personal income taxes — but the enormity of it seems more concrete and real when you bring the scale down to just New York City, and suddenly "the rich" who bear the burden goes from a nebulous abstraction to just 40,000 people.

It's hard to leave the country to escape an unfair tax burden (they still come after you unless you renounce your citizenship, and they confiscate part of your wealth if you do that). But it's pretty easy to move out of New York. Connecticut isn't far. I can understand why even the very liberal Bloomberg is opposed to more tax increases.

A city of 8 million is being carried on the shoulders of 40,000 Atlases. If even a few thousand of them shrug …

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Never forget

Posted by Richard on September 11, 2008

Seven years ago today, barbarians with box cutters — primitive savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people in pursuit of their war against Western Civilization.

Never forget that on September 10, 2001, Manhattan looked like this.

Lady Liberty watching over the twin towers before 9/11

Never forget that on September 11, 2001, Manhattan looked like this.

1st tower falls

Fleeing as the tower falls

Fleeing through the choking dust

Never forget that we watched people jump from hundred-story buildings to avoid an even worse fate.

Falling to his death

Never forget that we were wounded, but our spirit wasn’t broken. We’ve fought back. And we will win.

Raising the flag at Ground Zero

As I have each of the last two September 11ths, I offer you passage from Gerard Van der Leun’s Of a Fire in a Field — a passage that moves me beyond words every time I read it — in which he recalled 9/11 and its aftermath, when he lived in New York:

Inside the wire under the hole in the sky was, in time, a growing hole in the ground as the rubble was cleared away and, after many months, the last fire was put out. Often at first, but with slowly diminishing frequency, all the work to clear out the rubble and the wreckage would come to a halt.

The machinery would be shut down and it would become quiet. Across the site, tools would be laid down and the workers would straighten up and stand still. Then, from somewhere in the pile or the pit, a group of men would emerge carrying a stretcher covered with an American flag and holding, if they were fortunate, a body. If they were not so fortunate the flag covering over the stretcher would be lumpy, holding only portions of a body from which, across the river on the Jersey shore, a forensic lab would try to make an identification and then pass on to the victim’s survivors something that they could bury.

I’m not sure anymore about the final count, but I am pretty sure that most families, in the end, got nothing. Their loved ones had all gone into the smoke and the dust that covered the end of the island and blew, mostly, across the river into Brooklyn where I lived. What happened to most of the three thousand killed by the animals on that day? It is simple and ghastly. We breathed them until the rains came and washed clean what would never be clean again.

. . .

Read the whole thing — and think about the question he asks you at the end.

And never forget.

The flag still stands

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Fly the flag September 11

Posted by Richard on September 11, 2008

September 11 is the seventh anniversary of the worst attack ever on U.S. soil, when many of us finally realized that a dangerous and implacable enemy had declared war on us years earlier and wasn’t kidding.

September 11 is the seventh anniversary of the day that we watched in horror as people fell a hundred stories to the pavement and the skyline of Manhattan changed in a matter of hours.

September 11 is the seventh anniversary of the day that 2,996 innocent people were murdered by a small band of fanatical Islamofascists, and the world changed forever.

Remember September 11. Fly the flag.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Energy industry claims more victims

Posted by Richard on August 18, 2008

By now it's a familiar story: Another rural community torn apart by conflicts over energy development. Father pitted against son, brother against brother, and neighbor against neighbor, as some celebrate the influx of money and jobs, while others rail against the destruction of their peaceful way of life, the noise and pollution, and the damage to their pristine surroundings.

But the story of the Tug Hill plateau near the village of Lowville in upstate New York is a bit different:

"Is it worth destroying families, pitting neighbor against neighbor, father against son?" asks John Yancey, whose family have farmed Tug Hill for generations. "Is it worth destroying a whole way of life?"

Similar questions are being asked across the state and the country as more and more small towns grapple with big money and big wind.

Yep, she said "big wind."

Shouldn't that be capitalized? Big Wind. Like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco. 

I guess wind power was all green and cool when only a few aging hippies and their starry-eyed, Gaia-worshipping offspring were involved. But now it's becoming a big industry. So the usual suspects are beginning to express doubts, view with alarm, and wring their hands with worry and concern. 

I guess some people won't be happy until there is no energy industry at all. No industry of any kind, for that matter. I guess they want us all to live in primitive huts, subsistence farm, and huddle around dung fires.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Rebuild the Twin Towers!

Posted by Richard on June 23, 2008

Via email from the Twin Towers Alliance:

Finally, there is an opportunity to change direction at Ground Zero. On May 25, 2008  the editor of the New York Post wrote: “No one seriously believes that the current schedule of construction deadlines is remotely achievable, and things are only getting worse.”  And just last Thursday, New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo wrote: that “lots of what's going on is what real-estate developers derisively call ‘moving dirt around.’ The likelihood it will result in even a single component of the new WTC being finished on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, just over three years from now, is nil.”

The stage is set. We have a bright and independent new Governor of New York who wants to win election on his own in 2010 and a Governor in New Jersey who would love to distinguish himself. And they have the absolute power to do whatever they decide is best for the WTC. Governor Patterson recently appointed a new executive director at the Port Authority, a man who was on record from the start as not favoring the depressing “Reflecting Absence” memorial. And he has directed him to audit the entire site and report back by June 30th. Even the New York Times is noting that a fundamental correction is due. And we have been in touch with a number of key individuals behind the scenes who are on board and ready to speak out when the time comes.

But none of that would matter if it weren’t for the fact that the Twin Towers II plan is fully developed and ready to swap for the current boondoggle. The politicians could never abandon one plan without having another plan ready to go. The fact that there is a plan to restore our butchered skyline by 2011 is what makes this all possible.  When officials finally recognize that there is a way out of the mess they have made, they would have to be demented to pass on it. 

The Twin Towers II plan is ready to take all the time and energy that has gone into Ground Zero and convert it into soaring Twin Towers that WOULD be ready for the 10th anniversary. It includes a memorial, which has the support of many 9/11 families and that is a quantum leap in quality over the current design. And Ken Gardner even has a plan to recycle the materials that have been procured for the funereal “Freedom Tower” into the Deutsche Bank replacement – so waste will not become an issue.

The way the political landscape has changed over the past six months is truly miraculous. Rebuilding the Twin Towers is now less radical than continuing on the current course. There is no way to justify or redeem the current mess. So there really has never been such an opportune moment as is now upon us and The Twin Towers Alliance has prepared an extraordinary booklet that is going to leverage all the promising developments.  We will go to print this week and get it to the desks of well over 100 prominent individuals around the country. We fully expect it to be the catalyst for new Twin Towers.  When people see how far superior the Twin Tower II plan is to the current development, and they see the mailing list of names that will be attached, there will be no responsible way to ignore it.

There is NO doubt that this is going to open the eyes of a lot of these people and get them thinking and turning to their rolodexes. The very high quality presentation will cost around $25.00 apiece to print and mail, but there is no other way to do it right.  Once the mailing has gone out we will post a Flash copy of the booklet on the site as the pinnacle of all we have been striving to achieve. We know that no one will be disappointed.

This is by far the most important broadcast The Twin Towers Alliance has ever sent out. We have sent out very few fundraising emails in the past so we think our credibility should be pretty high. There is a real opportunity for each of you to rebuild the Towers by clicking here or on the banner below to donate. This is the culmination of all our efforts, so please think carefully about how much you can afford to help – especially if you have never contributed in the past.  The Twin Towers II plan is 115 stories high and for a donation of $115 we will send the donor a booklet, which we expect will become a collector’s item. Rebuilding the Twin Towers is just as momentous for every one of you as it is for us.  

Finally, we want to acknowledge all the inspirational email messages that are sent in and to say that we only wish we could answer them all. But we are sincerely grateful for the moral support and read every one.

There is something magical about the possibilities before us. Please help us make the most of them. We vow, pledge, promise, and swear to do everything humanly possible to channel your support into a World Trade Center worthy of the name.

Thank you and best wishes,

Margaret Donovan and Richard Hughes

for The Twin Towers Alliance

THE WORLD IS WATCHING

Contribute to Twin Towers Alliance

 

Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center: "World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center… is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace… a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness." Please join me in supporting this effort to restore that symbol.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Good riddance to Spitzer

Posted by Richard on March 12, 2008

Ann Coulter's rabid social conservatism is far from my cup of tea, but I do admire her gift for language and ability to turn a phrase. As a fan of puns, I think "Whoreable Behavior" (title of her latest column) is by far the best Eliot Spitzer quip I've heard. And then there's this zinger: "Hillary Clinton couldn't feel worse about the Spitzer case if she were an actual New Yorker." <rimshot />

If you want to know why some of us are pleased to see Spitzer run out of office (and hopefully have his presidential ambitions dashed), read Roger Donway's 2005 article (when Spitzer was running for Governor), "Eliot Spitzer: Ayatollah General," from The New Individualist.

I'm delighted by the downfall of this arrogant, sanctimonious SOB, who never met a capitalist he didn't want to destroy and never had any scruples about how he went about it.

I initially felt sympathy for Spitzer's entire family, but then I saw a report that his wife had urged him to stick it out and not resign. So I'll save my sympathy for his poor daughters. Every day at school must be torture for them.

UPDATE (3/13): See also John Fund's column in the 3/12 Wall Street Journal, which makes it clear that Spitzer brought his arrogance, disdain for the rule of law, and unscrupulousness with him to the governor's office.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Never forget

Posted by Richard on September 11, 2006

Lady Liberty watching over the twin towers before 9/11
 

On this anniversary, no words I write could match what Gerard Van der Leun wrote several months ago when United 93 came out. I described it thus:

Nothing else I’ve read comes close to Gerard Van der Leun’s Of a Fire in a Field. I first read it several days ago and was unable to even write about it. I’ve read it several times now, and the impact is still powerful. I don’t recall anything that has ever moved me more.

In the passage that moved me beyond words, and that I quote again today, Van der Leun recalled 9/11 and its aftermath, when he lived in New York:

Inside the wire under the hole in the sky was, in time, a growing hole in the ground as the rubble was cleared away and, after many months, the last fire was put out. Often at first, but with slowly diminishing frequency, all the work to clear out the rubble and the wreckage would come to a halt.

The machinery would be shut down and it would become quiet. Across the site, tools would be laid down and the workers would straighten up and stand still. Then, from somewhere in the pile or the pit, a group of men would emerge carrying a stretcher covered with an American flag and holding, if they were fortunate, a body. If they were not so fortunate the flag covering over the stretcher would be lumpy, holding only portions of a body from which, across the river on the Jersey shore, a forensic lab would try to make an identification and then pass on to the victim’s survivors something that they could bury.

I’m not sure anymore about the final count, but I am pretty sure that most families, in the end, got nothing. Their loved ones had all gone into the smoke and the dust that covered the end of the island and blew, mostly, across the river into Brooklyn where I lived. What happened to most of the three thousand killed by the animals on that day? It is simple and ghastly. We breathed them until the rains came and washed clean what would never be clean again.

. . .

As I did back in May, on this anniversary, I urge you to read the whole thing — and think about the question he asks you at the end.

The final count, apparently, is 2,626 at the WTC and 2,996 total. The latter number is also the name of a website and a fine idea for a tribute:

2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers
will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Each person will pay tribute to a single victim.

We will honor them by remembering their lives,
and not by remembering their murderers.

I really meant to sign up for this effort, but other events made me forget. Not to worry — there was no shortage of volunteers. In fact, the list is oversubscribed (more than 3400 bloggers participating), so some victims have more than one blogger paying tribute.

Here’s the entire list of links to the tributes. Take a few moments today to read just a few, won’t you?

And never forget.

First tower falls
Fleeing through the choking dust

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Standing with Israel — and Bush — in NYC

Posted by Richard on July 17, 2006

I heard Pamela of Atlas Shrugs on Rush a few minutes ago (mid-afternoon; he’s on tape-delay here in Denver). She talked a mile a minute. Rush pleaded with her to slow down several times. Pamela had just come from the Stand with Israel rally in New York, and she was just bubbling over with excitement and enthusiasm. Apparently, tens of thousands attended. She’s got a post up with a zillion pictures and some video clips.

The big news item from the rally, the thing that had Pamela so excited when talking to Rush: Elie Wiesel thanked God for President Bush. People cheered. In New York City. 🙂

UPDATE: Pamela’s post has been updated with, among other things, the news that the transcript of her call is on Rush’s website. Check it out — she was terrific. Also, she has links to some LGF posts dealing with the crap at the DailyKos thread that she told Rush about.

Meanwhile, the AP story of the event mentioned Elie Wiesel, and even had a brief quote, but ignored the pro-Bush remark (what a surprise). The NYTimes version of the event might lead you to believe it was a Hillary Clinton rally. It never mentioned Wiesel.

UPDATE (7/20): You know, it just burns me up that this story has been completely ignored. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who Elie Wiesel is, Google him. On the subject of the Jews, their enemies, and their survival, this man probably has more moral authority than any person alive — and a Nobel Prize to back it up. And yet, a Google News search for "elie wiesel thank god bush" returned four hits — one from the Jerusalem Post, and three reposts of the same New York Post story (Google chooses not to index the New York Post itself as a news source). This is ridiculous and disgusting, and there’s no excuse other than political bias. There should have been headlines, dammit:

Elie Wiesel Thanked God for President Bush!

This man has moral authority, you Bush-hating moonbat asshats, and what he said should give you pause and cause you to rethink your sick, hate-filled worldview.

OK, I feel better now. I’m going to finish my Buffalo Trace and go to bed.
 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »