The Brave Jumpers of Sept. 11

 

I feel the need to write something about those persons who leapt from the WTC towers during the attack of 9/11/01.

To me, and I guess to pretty much everybody, these were the most frightening and horrific deaths of all the deaths that occurred that day.

When I think about 9/11 it is this that disturbs me, and it has been ungentle on my mind as this anniversary has approached.

There is a lot of talk about how these images have been “censored”, and maybe that is so.  One thing about images, they stay with you.  That is why one picture is, truly, worth a thousand words.  Anyone who has seen any one of the photos of any of the tragic people falling to their death will NEVER forget it. I don’t think this aspect of the attacks will really go down the “memory hole”, but it will be minimized, because truly it is almost too much to bear.

Nothing I have read really explicates why these images are are so frightening, how they touch on the universal fear of death.

The universal conceit as someone once said is: all shall die, but I shall live.  And, admit it, we all do share this conceit, even though we know it is  erroneous.

There is also the concept of “when your number’s up, your number’s up”.  And that is also true.  And this is where it all breaks down and makes the reality of the WTC jumper so disturbing.

The jumpers had to choose.  They had to choose to die, they had to throw themselves headlong into death, because they had no choice.  They had to choose because all their choices were taken away.  They had been thrown into a situation where “logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead” and they had NO CHOICE but to follow in kind.

No wonder this is so frightening.

It forces one to contemplate: what if I had to jump from the WTC?  From the 90th floor?  The 100th floor?

If you read this article, which is very, extremely, good (I may have to re-think my whole view of Esquire) you will see that there is a great aversion to thinking that it is your family member leaping.

We cannot think of these people as committing suicide.  They were doomed, truly doomed to death and they knew it.  For all we throw these phrases around, I’m doomed, doomed to death, there’s no way out, no one here gets out alive…..well for them all those metaphorical expressions became unutterably true, in the space of a very short time, on one of the the most beautiful mornings any of them had ever seen.

I think those who leapt from the WTC were very brave, incomprehensibly brave.  I doubt I would have been so brave.  I only hope I never need to find out.

RIP Falling Men and Falling Women  I know the Angels caught your Souls.

American Attacked – Original 9/11 Memorial Video by Steve Anonymous

America Attacked 9 1 1.

This link leads to the original, insofar as I know, post 9/11 memorial video.  The only creator’s credit I can find is steve@powforum.org, which appears to be defunct.

This video was EVERYWHERE after 9/11, for some time now I have only been able to find it on one particular website, they are truly great archivists for preserving it, and I thank them very much.

It appeared within a very short time after 9/11, maybe a week later.  This man was the first to use the great Enya tune.  If you check out youtube (as I did looking for this) you’ll see that, as happens to all great artists, everybody stole from Steve.

This video will bring back the emotions of that time as it was filled up with those emotions at the very moments they were being experienced by millions of people.

I very much wanted to post this video, truly it says everything there is to say about that horrible day whose 10th anniversary we mark tomorrow.

May all who were killed rest in eternal peace and may God Bless America.

Happy Labor Day All You Commies

LOL, that was just a little joke.

As a proud German-American (in part) nobody loves labor more than me.  Let me quote some English mystery novel (the title and other details of which I have unfortunately forgotten): It is from the Germans that the Americans have gotten their disgusting habit of getting up in the morning and going to work.  It’s a paraphrase, but accurate.  It is indisputable how much American culture is German in origin and our work ethic is certainly part of that.

In celebration of this holdiday, let us have a couple of vids.

First, my favorite song about work, direct and to the point.

And now here is another good one, for office workers, like myself.

 

 

Why We are Loving Rick Perry

Yesterday’s PPP poll has been confirmed, in spades, by the ever respectable Gallup Organization.  We Republicans are loving Rick Perry right now.

And there are a goodly number of folks who have got their knickers in a twist over this.

And that is the first reason we are loving Rick Perry, because we know, we just know, that he is loving that he’s twisted their knickers.

And not just the libs, many of whom seem convinced that we are always just one election away from some kind of Christian jihad that will have…..oh I don’t know what they think is going to happen, just that it is going to be really, really bad.  I don’t think Rick Perry is worrying too much about what these people are thinking. Of course this is the second reason we are loving Rick Perry.

But also queasy are the Establishment Republicans.  These are the people who live in fear of the New York Times and the rest of the MSM.  I also think some of them might be afraid of that Christian jihad, but only insofar as the jihadis might require them to handle snakes and speak in tongues.  Rick Perry is not intimidated by the Establishment Rs, and of course we love him for that.

Rick Perry grew up poor, became an Eagle Scout and served in the Air Force.  He doesn’t seem like there is too much in the world that fazes him.  The state he governs is doing very well, in sharp contrast to most of the rest of the country.  Of course he gets credit for this, fairly or unfairly, that is how the “chief executive” post works in American politics.  These traits and circumstances convey an ability at Leadership.  To be frank, President Obama has not helped himself with the whole “leading from behind” strategy, which is more than a bogus meme.  It was certainly the approach he took on the Stimulus Package and Obamacare and even the recent Debt Ceiling negotiations.  I wonder why the ghost of Harry Truman hasn’t snuck up on him and hit him upside the head with his old “buck stops here” sign, but alas for Barack, evidently he has not.  And indisputably the fine people of the great state of Texas have seen fit to return Governor Perry again and again to office.  We are getting pretty stressed out here in American and we are looking for someone to lead the way.  Perry seemingly has spent his life as a leader and appears to be an enthusiastic candidate for office.  We’ve been spared both the Hamlet routine and the reluctant saviour schtick and for that we are loving Rick Perry.

Rick Perry looks like a president.  Let’s face it, he looks like a president out of a 1970s TV Movie. He married his childhood sweetheart which is also very 70s TV movie.  Right now we are feeling like we are living through a re-run of the 1970s, so he fits right in to the zeitgeist.  And we are loving that in our universal subconscious hearts.

I, myself, am having a bit of a crush on Rick Perry (you couldn’t tell, right?)  I was very dashed at Tim Pawlenty’s implosion.  When I wrote this post I was going to start it by saying “he may have spoiled his chances” but I didn’t want to think it was true.  But it was.  No need to re-state the reasons, just follow the link and count the ways.  I thought Pawlenty was the prefect candidate,  but his diffidence damned him.  The Republican nominee is going to be facing a man who has said “they bring a knife, you bring a gun”.  Now this may only prove that men watch too many gangster movies and memorize too many lines from them, but I bet that even if Rick Perry doesn’t know any gangster lines, he’s memorized a few from Westerns.  The Republican nominee is going to be called everything bad the Left, the Dems and the MSM can think of, including but not limited to: a nazi, a religious maniac, a moron, an evil genius, a moron again, evil genius again, a racist, a hater of the old, the sick, the poor, and children (except unborn children, for those he or she will be said to have an unnatural affection) and, if the nominee turns out to be Rick Perry or Sarah Palin, a MURDERER of animals.  I can hear Tim Pawlenty running screaming into 10 o’clock in the morning even from here.  I can’t see any of this bothering Rick Perry at all.  I truly think he’s got these people’s numbers and for that I love Rick Perry.

Rick Perry made the much-anticipated announcement of his candidacy at the Red State Gathering.  I wrote a little post about it here because I was surprised at how little mention was made of that.  I’m sure a great deal of thought goes into where one makes one’s announcement of such an important undertaking.  Sometimes the reasoning eludes the audience, as did Jon Huntsman announcing in Liberty State Park, but nevertheless, I’m sure it was a long considered decision.  Even failed short-lived candidacies are monumental undertakings and no one who intends to be a serious candidate is going to say “I’m running for President” on the fly.

So Perry’s choice of venue served two purposes – it was a poke in the eye of the MSM, since they were forced to give publicity to a right-wing  blog site (they did strenuously avoid this part) and it cemented his attachment to the Tea Party movement.  And that brings me to what I think is the biggest reason we love Rick Perry, he respects us.

The Tea Party movement is the truest grassroots movement since the Feminist wave of the 1970s.  It was set off by a random rant by CNBC newscaster Rick Santelli and took off like wildfire across the United States.  It began as a protest movement by people who don’t go to protests, or at least they hadn’t gone to any since the 1970s or earlier.  It was motivated by the fear that Barack Obama was going to make good on at least one campaign promise, the promise to “fundamentally transform” America and that with solid, filibuster-proof majorities in both houses of congress he would succeed in that quest.  I don’t want to delve into a lot a detail here, but let me just say there was a big “hey, wait just one lousy minute” moment amoung the middle class who, generally, don’t want their entire societies fundamentally transformed. (Provided of course they are essentially free societies, in totalitarian lands the shoe is on the other foot. Yes, China, I’m talking about you.)  This is, of course, why the Left fundamentally, historically, always and forever, hates the bourgeoisie.

Well, the Tea Party movement organized Tax Day Rallies, marched on Washington (twice if you count the Glenn Beck event and I’d say it should be counted), contributed mightily to the election of Republican Scott Brown to the erstwhile “Kennedy” senate seat in Massachusetts and ultimately engineered the biggest gain of house seats in decades, taking the national purse out of the hands of the Democratic party, much to the consternation of the bien pensant.

There was an awful lot of effort involved in all this.  It was done amoung friends and strangers who became new friends.  There was, as election day got closer, some funding from groups like Americans for Prosperity and others, but there were no secret sacks of money. (Or if there were I didn’t get any – story of my life!)

And what did we get for our efforts at peaceful protest and the exercise of our constitutionally guaranteed right to petition our Government?  What did we get for our civic participation? What did we get from the people who just two years prior,  for the last 6 years of George W. Bush’s presidency, had cheered on International ANSWER (those people are pure Communist and do not ever believe otherwise), Code Pink and the pathetic Cindy Sheehan; from the people like Hillary Clinton who told us “Dissent is the highest form of Patriotism”; from the people, like Barack Obama and the editorial staff of the New York Times who somewhere along the way found an indulgent and affectionate respect for many of those, like Bill Ayers, who had once sought to overthrow the US Government by violent means; what did we get from those people?

We got slandered as violent racists, derided as dupes, laughed at as bumblers and clowns.

Now, of course there are already “Tea Party” candidates running (Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Caine) or still considered possible candidates (Sarah Palin) but all of them have serious draw backs.  Bachmann and Paul share a problem, they are house members, while Caine has never held office, and he seems clueless on foreign policy.  Palin first has to overcome the problem of not actually being a candidate.  These are all good people and every one of them would be a vast improvement over Barack Obama, as would non-tea party candidates Rick Santorum and the unjustly ignored Gary Johnson and even former front-runner Mitt Romney.

But, let’s face it, Rick Perry is a BIG dog.  He is the current governor of the second largest state, a state whose economy is booming, he is an incredibly successful politician (as both a Democrat and a Republican), if you measure that by getting elected. And this is a campaign, we’re not writing a history book here.  He knows how to get massive publicity and how to wow a crowd.   Perry could have gone anywhere, spoken to any group but he came to us, out of Respect, as they say in the gangster movies. And so far, he hasn’t asked for a thing beyond a fair hearing. And that is probably the single most important reason why we are loving Rick Perry right now.

Sigh. I hope we don’t all hate him in 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years because then I’ll have to do a long “why we hate Rick Perry” post and this one took hours.

And if I never have to do that, how much will I love Rick Perry then!

The Abortion of the Wanted Child

Everyone is discussing this piece, by Ruth Padawer, that ran in the New York Times, and, since it is infuriating, I figured I would too.  Ms. Padawer has written a hard-hitting piece.  I think it presents all views as fairly as can be expected and it does not mince words.  Full disclosure, it took me three attempts to read it through.  I then sent a very annoyed letter to the author because I felt she was justifying something that is wrong.  While I still feel that this is an attempt at justification, perhaps I did not give the writer enough credit for revealing what has been, and continues to be, a somewhat hidden aspect of both abortion practice and artificial fertility treatments.  Please, if this topic is of interest to you, read it all.

The article discusses women who have had fertility treatment(s) and who found themselves carrying twins (in one case triplets) as a result and who chose to “reduce their pregnancies” to only one fetus.

This is sufficiently taboo that all but one of the interviewees requested anonymity (and hey, I’m jocon307, so I’ve got nothing against anonymity); one woman didn’t even want her initial used.  That verges on the paranoid, but again, I can relate.

Why this subject is so charged is due to the fact that in vitro fertilization treatments (IVF) often involve the implantation of multiple fertilized eggs, in the hopes that at least one will implant in the uterus and grow to full term.

One of the side effects of this approach has been undesired multiple implantations.  I remember reading a short story years ago, I can only remember the final line: My God, I’m having a litter.  I’m not sure if the woman in the story had even had fertility treatments, but unless one is demented like the so-called Octomom, no one craves having a “litter” of children.

And there’s the rub.  Twins has never been considered a litter.  Twins are uncommon, certainly, but they are often naturally occurring both in the fraternal and identical versions.

One woman is even quoted in the story as saying that had she conceived her twins “naturally” she would not have aborted one of them.

This article reveals that abortion has truly become an “on demand” procedure to be used as part of a range of on demand reproductive services.  It is clear that to these folks it is no longer about “the children” it is about fulfilling their own, highly particularized needs.

To a large extent abortion was always about “Choice”, arguments about “wanted” children not withstanding.  But this is not what one was told the expensive, invasive and ethically complex process of IVF was supposed to be about. That was supposed to be about bringing the miracle of children to infertile couples who could not, or did not wish to, adopt children.  But, maybe that never really was the intent.  Maybe, like abortion and no-fault divorce and so many other things in the modern world, it was always about “self actualization”.

There are several women in this story who already have one or several children and that is part of why they don’t want the burden of caring for twins.

There is a lesbian couple who decided to both undergo fertility treatments at the same time.   Why they thought THAT was a good idea, I can’t imagine.  After many attempts one of the woman gave birth to a son, after another round one remains pregnant with the remaining twin from a “reduced” pregnancy.  In addition to these children there were miscarriages of three others along the way, including another set of IVF conceived twins.

So it becomes rather tangled.

These women are going to great lengths to conceive children, and then find themselves in a “I want to have my cake and not eat it too” situation.

And I think this is where people start to tell themselves lies, and as we all know, nobody can lie to a person as well as herself.

One of the most sensitive decisions is which fetus to abort.  Generally the doctor makes this choice based on strictly utilitarian reasons, such as location in the uterus.  However, if the twins are different sexes some doctors will ask which sex the parents prefer.  The article goes on to say “Until the last decade, most doctors refused even to broach that question, but that ethical demarcation has eroded, as ever more patients lobby for that option and doctors discover that plenty opt for girls.”

Now, this is a good example of the self-comforting hokum that advocates of radical reproductive choices tell themselves. Sure, plenty of people “opt for girls”, but I doubt anyone is keeping any stats on this.  The article does not discuss the problems of increasingly uneven birthrates between boys and girls that is already happening in China and India. (That’s not intended as a criticism, that’s a  really long story for another day.)  My guess would be that in the U.S., as the number of patients receiving fertility treatments comes to include an increasing number of women from certain ethnic backgrounds, they will continue their cultural preference for boys.

I highly doubt this would ever increase to a point where it would distort the balance of the U.S. population, but it can hardly be counted as a victory for Feminism.

As we go further into the ethical wild west it is impossible to know what repercussions lie ahead of us.  As the article says “Even if parents work hard to conceal it, the child may discover the full story of his or her origins, and we don’t know what feelings of guilt or vulnerability or loss this discovery might summon.”  One woman is quoted as saying she intends to tell her child the story in the future.  I won’t give any unsolicited advice, but her child is a girl, I had one of those and I was one of those and all I can say is that’s going to be some conversation.

Several years ago there was an article, which I think also ran in the Times, where the author discussed her own decision to reduce her pregnancy (I forget from how many to how many children).  The quote scandaleux from that piece was she didn’t want to have so many children because it would turn her into the kind of person who bought giant jars of mayonnaise at Costco.  Well, as my mother used to always say: if that’s the worst thing that ever happens to you….  The author published the piece under her own name, so I suppose her child(ren) will read all about it some day.  I’m sure they will feel sad.  I certainly hope they will still honor their mother.  I’m not sure how they are going to feel about the mayo.

One reads more and more articles about children who are the offspring of women who chose not to have a father in the child’s life, regardless of the method of conception.  Many of these children long for their fathers, and really who can blame them?

Children are people, they are not dolls or pets.  They are well aware of their God-given rights, whether they can articulate this at various ages or even agree with it sociopolitically.  I can’t imagine how someone would react to finding out his or her parent chose death for their twin.

Hey, kids are a lot of work.  I only had one, so maybe I’m not one to talk.  But these are intelligent women we are talking about.  And I wonder if they are not kidding themselves.  Ms. Padawer discussed her own experience with twins, saying “There’s no doubt that life with twins and a third child so close in age has often felt all-consuming and out of control. And yet the thought of not having any one of them is unbearable now, because they are no longer shadowy fetuses but full-fledged human beings whom I love in a huge and aching way. ”

I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I don’t think she loves her children in a “huge and aching way” because they are full-fledged human beings, but because they are her children.

Down through the ages parents have sacrificed for their children.  In recent decades the concept of sacrificing so one’s child could have a better life than his or her parents has come to be considered a  part of the “American Dream”.  In myth and history there are many instances where children have been required to sacrifice for their parents, sometimes with their lives.  It is disturbing to see this ethos returning and really, for so little.  There are not kingdoms at stake here, certainly no gods to appease.

The women in this article may feel, may actually be, overwhelmed.  But they are absolutely not the poor, alone, desperate “in trouble” women for whose needs we have always been told abortion must be kept safe and legal and (we hope) rare, to borrow President Clinton’s oft quoted phrase.

These are all abortions of wanted children and it is extremely disturbing.

 

Our President Loves Ice Cream

I can’t remember any President who seemed so fond of a food as President Obama is of ice cream.

Our President is concerned about the rights of ice cream eaters everywhere.  In discussing the Arizona anti-illegal immigration bill he worried that  “…if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you can be harassed, that’s something that could potentially happen.”

And he seems to be that irritating type of skinny person who can probably eat all the ice cream he wants and never get fat.  (I bet he drives Michelle nuts!)

While searching around for the details of this post I saw that one of the Brit papers reported President Obama had worked in a Baskin & Robbins ice cream store when he was a teenager, so did I!  Common ground, there’s always a little bit of it somewhere.

However, they also said he doesn’t like ice cream anymore, so don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

Rick Perry and Red State

I’m writing about this because for all the hoopla about Perry’s announcement, there is a major aspect of it that I think is being overlooked.

Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, announced his much anticipated bid for President of the United States at the Red State Gathering.

What is the Red State Gathering? It’s a shingdig for a blog.  A BLOG!

A VRWC blog, and not being a blog historian I don’t know if it’s the grandaddy of them all, if it’s the most visited, the most influential, I don’t really know.

I mean, I read A LOT of Right Wing blogs myself, and I’ve checked out Red State a few times, I just never could get into it.

Myself, I’m a freeper. http://www.freerepublic.com you can go there for some hard core conservatism and the greatest group on the internet, imho.

But, nevertheless, this is some kind of a great, newsworthy, thing, I think.

And, yet nobody seems to be mentioning it.  All we hear is that Perry announced in South Carolina.

I don’t know if this is blog jealousy or what.

Kudos Red State, I think you’ve brought it all to a whole ‘nother level!

Backin’ up

OK, with all the cr*p I just discussed in my last post, it is time to get REAL.

I refer, of course, to the backin’ up lady who is basically me.  Whose daddy was like my own.  And who is an icon for our time.

Without further ado I proudly present an informative witness and a wonderful human being, the backin’ up lady.

 

 

Why on earth did I start this blog now?

Ok, not now, a few months ago.

I didn’t want to start an end of the world blog.

I wanted to start a yeah, so, that’s how I feel blog.

As a true born native New Yorker, an F U blog.

But now….

but now…

We’ve lost our triple A

London’s burning

Race riot (almost) at the Wisconsin State Fair.  Seriously, Wisconsin –  my mom got a Masters Degree at Madison, in freaking Spanish, OK?  Which Fair is so down homey they refer to it as “at State Fair” rather than “at THE State Fair”; which I don’t understand.  Either they’ve got some large area that is always set aside for (the) State Fair or it is just a really big thing for them.  Which, being they are cheese heads, and cheese comes from cows, and cows, etc. are what a state fair is really all about and damn it all, I guess it is really just a big thing for them.

So, a race riot (almost) at the Wisconsin state fair, pretty bad.  Perhaps it is almost as bad as that Republican governance.  Tomorrow will tell the tale on that, eh?

[Check back in six weeks or so for an unrelated update.]

In the middle east (cue music) our erstwhile ally (well, we were erstwhile to him) Mubarak is in a cage, on a gurney (Which sucks more?  Gurney I reckon provided it is not just for show).  We can’t, even with all the help the Euros are willing to provide at the front end, dislodge that weirdo Qadhafi.  And meanwhile….our enemy Assad slaughters his people left and right.

Hubby is talking, seriously, about getting a shot-gun.  He even filled out some form today.

Can a society really collapse?

I was thinking about this today.

I mean, of course they can and have.

But, I can’t think of an instance where it happened outside of war.  Real WAR.  Shooting and killing and territory capturing war.

Aside from some ancient, archaeologically discovered civilizations, where nobody really knows how or why they ended I don’t know of one.

Has this happened, in recorded history?

 

 

 

 

Take the 3 points

I see the House republicans in this analogous position:

They have moved the ball far down the field and are in a position to score.

Some folks want to go for a touch down, but I urge that we kick for the field goal. In attempting for a bigger score, we may lose the ball and give momentum (if not points) to the other side.

My brother and sister tea partiers need to realize this is only half-time.  In fact it is only half-time of the first game of the new season.

Anybody who thought that the so-called Tea Party freshmen were going to change the country in 7 months wasn’t really thinking very realistically.  Even if we had a filibuster-proof Senate Majority (which we manifestly do not have, we don’t even have a plain old majority), I doubt we could really turn the whole nation around in 7 months.

Boehner and Co. have accomplished a lot.  They’ve gotten the issue on the front pages, they’ve turned the narrative our way, they’ve held the line on no more taxes.  President Obama has made himself look like a petulant child, or I should say has revealed himself to be a petulant child.  The Senate Dems have been shown for the craven lot they, in fact, are.

I’m hearing “remember Regan” a lot these days.  Well I would remind everyone to remember Gingrich.

We need to remember that as conservatives (and even just as Republicans) we are always in a two front war against both the Left/Democrats AND the media.