Living on our feet

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I woke up at almost four am with horrors. In this case it was an infinite sense of grief and loss, like I’d just seen a loved one die before my eyes. And it wouldn’t dissipate. It just wouldn’t.

Eventually I picked up the computer and started poking around. Anything not to be alone, with that sense of dread. Which considering how tired I am… (And yes, I have thought it is a mercy of the Lord that I’m in this endless project right now, kind of like being laid down with a fever when you’d otherwise go berserk. Though the fact Dan is moving tomorrow and we will follow when this is done (there are reasons) doesn’t help. This is no time to have the family separated.)

I think — hope, rather — it was just the date. That’s bad enough.

But the events since January have left us open to a lot of other attacks that are similar or worse. I won’t list them. You’re political junkies. You know.

Though the sheep on the street might not get it, our government is acting in a way that will bring attacks on us in a thousand ways in the next ten years. Children playing today will die because of this idiocy which they won’t even be aware of.

Even the first nine eleven shouldn’t have happened save for institutions that consider Americans the real enemy.

For me? I can’t believe it’s been twenty years, or the friends — entire circles of them who went insane in this time.

They went crazy. I reported (in the sense of reporting for duty.)

Even if my stand didn’t make them froth at the mouth, our views of the world would be too different.

There is a world in which 9/11 never happened, and I’m writing my stories, and no one has any clue what my politics are. It’s not the world I have to live in.

Perhaps better, perhaps not. To quote the song linked above “I wouldn’t know; I’m just holding the fort. Since that day they wounded New York.”

But where we are twenty years in, it’s time to remember we’re Americans. Sure, our government is worse than poisoned wet kleenex when it comes to protecting us, and we might have to protect ourselves from it.

But we’re Americans. Land of the Brave, home of the Free. Not because our government and laws make it so, but because we are.

Remember that.

Remember we have heroes in whose footsteps we can follow, too.

To the Eternal Glory of the US of A, shines the name, shines the name of Colonel Cyril Richard “Rick” Rescorla!

As he performed his duty, 20 years ago, in the face of death he sang two songs. Let his memory guide us with them today.

Remember you’re Americans. Americans aren’t afraid. Oh, some of us at times, but not Americans as a whole. we’re the ones who bite and kick and fight back. We’re not tame.

And we will not be tamed or cowed. Come what may, even if that sense of grief in the night was a premonition be right. Come what may.

394 thoughts on “Living on our feet”

      2. Is Italy still Italy?
        Why, yes, it is.
        And it *burned* through ‘governments’ so fast it was a joke for YEARS.
        The USA will *still* be the USA when the Bidenriech is over — UNLESS there is a foolish surrender to the Collectivist Assholes.

        Hold the line.

    3. Amen.

      Funny thing…. Toby is– or at least was, when I was in the Navy and thus paying closer attention– I’m 90% sure a left-winger.

      But he’s an American. When he visited our guys, he took the Bob Hope and associated folks’ route, doing flat out dangerous stuff to make sure that the guys got something that would MEAN something to them.

      And that song is high grade American, the cross-a-frozen-winter-at-midnight-on-Christmas grade.

      1. Ex-Democrat. Now calls himself an independent.

        https://rarecountry.com/news/toby-keith-unleashes-his-true-political-views-in-new-interview/

        But yeah, whatever his affiliation on paper, anyone who could write and perform that song, and who stands up with the troops like that, bleeds star-spangled red white and blue.

        From Wiki:

        ===
        On March 24, 2001, Keith’s father, Hubert Keith (H.K.) Covel, was killed in a car accident. That event and the September 11, 2001 attacks prompted Keith to write the song “Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)”, a song about his father’s patriotism and faith in the USA. It took him 20 minutes to write the song. Keith noted that the song was written with reference to the war in Afghanistan, claiming to be indifferent on other conflicts, “but you don’t have to listen but once to the words to understand that the song was strictly for Afghanistan”. “I have no stance on the Iraq war,” he continues, “but the second [that I say], Ι have no stance there, I’m not smart enough to tell whether we should be in there or not”. At first, Keith refused to record the song and only sang it live at his concerts for military personnel.

        The reaction was so strong that the Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones told Keith it was his duty as an American citizen to record the song. “It’s your job as an entertainer to lift the morale of the troops,” Jones said to Keith. “If you want to serve, that is what you can do.”[1] As the lead single from the album Unleashed (2002), “Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue” peaked at number 1 on the country charts over the weekend of July 4.

        In a November 2003 interview with CBS, Keith gave his take on the song: “It wasn’t written for everybody. And when you write something from your heart – I had a dad that was a veteran, taught me how precious our freedom is – I was so angry when we were attacked here on American soil that it leaked out of me. You know, some people wept when they heard it. Some people got goose bumps. Some people were emotionally moved. Some cheered, turned their fists in the air.”[2]

        The song was the last song aired by the Armed Forces Radio Network in Baghdad prior to ceasing operations in Baghdad during the drawdown from Iraq.
        ===

        And that was definitely THE song for today, thanks for reminding us.

  4. Today, I choose to believe this: A giant red wave sweeps out communist teachers, school boards, and small government offices like mayors and state offices.

    The Deep State then tries the “Mu” variant to shut down the country before the election, but this time they fail. In every swing State, when the vote counters claim that they are ceasing counting until the morning, observers refuse to leave. They stand guard, in shifts, over the tables until the vote count resumes in the morning.

    Communists are turned out of the Congress and the Senate en masse across the country in 2022. And the senile puppet and his handlers grow more strident, and more impotent, until our new President steps into the Oval office in 2024 and starts dismantling the totally exposed Deep State. The attempted communist takeover fails.

    Let freedom ring.

    1. I like this. This is what I’ve been thinking over the last couple of days. The stories of parents punching back against school boards is what gives me hope. The slow, but continuing, awakening of some people to the train-wreck of a FICUS that they voted for and supported is also hopeful.

      Don’t make us mad. You won’t like it when we’re mad and act on that anger.

      1. The kids that pushed past the administrator to get into school. The parents who are forming micro-schools and co-ops and the demanding charter schools like the Hillsdale offshoot . . . The churches and synagogues who are saying “We answer to a higher power.” The workers and contractors saying, “You know what? You try to enforce the vaccine command, and we will down tools and depart in peace.”

        The People Who Want to be Left Alone are starting to move.

        2. I could gripe that they are pushing to get into the the indoctrination center…….. but they are learning lessons there which most people don’t get to learn.

          And learning the lessons will kill the programming.

      2. to the train-wreck of a FICUS

        Way back around 2001, the proggies were also Google-bombing search engines with the phrase “stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure”. I think we should resurrect that phrase, which applies far, far more accurately to the current Occupant than it ever did to W.

    3. If Churchill were with us today, he might be saying this …

      We shall fight them in the schools …
      We shall fight them on the playing fields …
      We shall fight them in our offices, and in our factories …
      We shall fight them on the highways, and on their receiving docks …
      We shall fight them in our city halls, and state capitals …

      … WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!

  5. Here’s a quote of a post by a commentator on Larry Correia’s blog:

    “The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone’.

    “They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love.

    “They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it.

    “They know, that the moment they fight back, the lives as they have lived them, are over.

    “The moment the ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone’ are forced to fight back, it is a small form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. . . .

    “Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these ¡Men who wanted to be left Alone¡, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at the Left’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy . . . . but it will fall upon deaf ears.”

    1. Partly this blog had that same effect on me. My life will never be the same, and the life I wanted is forever out of reach.
      Sorry, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.
      But it needed to be done.

      1. At least you’ve given a lot of people hope, and the faith we’re not alone staring into the oncoming darkness. That means a lot.

        My life wrecked hard as well, still putting it back together. Today I grieve. Tomorrow – I pick up my rough draft and start edits. Because it’s a small thing, but maybe a tiny romance will be just what the next person needs to hang on one day more.

          3. *Hugs* I’ve been carving out writing time because if I don’t, I’ll go from mildly frustrated to Morrigan (complete with ravens hanging around.)

          4. I would help you paint if I were a bit closer. I think I’m almost 2,000 miles away.
            Try to thrive from some energy of people pulling for you from such distances!

        2. There’s no easy way to recover from that for sure… It just hit me recently that 26 of my 38 years have been some form of suckage and the crap coming down now really isn’t making it easy to climb out of this going on 3-4 week mental slump. Good luck with the recovery on your end.

            1. Story of my life, too. If family problems don’t undercut me, government stupidity (especially from people turning to them in a bad situation like the 2008 financial crisis and Covidiocy) does. I’m just wondering what’s going to come next if I ever settle on a place to get out of this state…

                1. I’m in NW GA and not fond of the heat, humidity, or Southern culture in general. Or hurricanes either for that matter. I haven’t ruled FL out completely, though, and same for TX since I know the cultures in both states are pretty diverse and pretty good as long as you stay away from the blue cities. Just still not sure about a lot of my options, as well as expecting something to blow up either on a small level or a big one, and if it’s the big one, well, nice knowing all of you.

                    1. I definitely plan on staying away from there, no worries. It’s sounding like the Space Coast may be best, though I might check out the NW like crossover suggested. Who knows how it’s going to go, though.

                    2. I fled Massachusetts fifteen years ago, and live between Tampa and Orlando now. When I was deciding where to settle, I just took two weeks off and drove around the state, just taking in the feel of an area and also seeing where I could find work.

            1. If it’s any consolation, I was 35 before things started coming together for me at all economically, and another seven years before I had stable well-paid employment.

                1. I was in my late 40s before financial sanity. $FUTURE_SPOUSE helped a lot, and I finally got rid of the spend-it-all mindset. At 50, the jobs for my specialty in Silicon Valley went overseas, so retirement to Flyover County in Oregon was the best option.

                  A year later, we sold the SV house for “enough” at age 51, and between house proceeds and savings (pretty much all from $SPOUSE’s stash) let us get by until retirement money was accessible. The fact that we could do much of our own work helped a lot. Of the elements added here, the garage and RV shelter (think carport on steroids) were contracted, while outbuildings, wall & window treatments and a boatload of other things were on us. Sheds get affordable(ish) if it’s just materials. Judicious use of subcontractors has been a feature with more money available and increased age (and disabilities. Sigh). Still, we can do a lot ourselves.

                  Ain’t wealthy, but as comfortable as a Deplorable can be with a communist and her band of flying monkeys running the state.

                  1. At 44 I was out of work for 11 months. We maxed out our credit cards and threw ourselves on the mercy of the banks. The next year my wife wrote her novel, and a few months later, she nearly bled to death, leading to emergency surgery followed by another emergency cancer surgery. I spent 6 months arguing with our HMO that the surgery should be covered as an emergency as the doctor said she had 2 weeks to get the second operation, and the HMO wouldn’t give us a referral that fast. The HMO was going bankrupt and they were supposed to challenge all claims, but I annoyed them enough that they paid the hospital, so I’d stop calling them every day.

                    It was several years before I started making enough money for us to be somewhat comfortable. Now I make really good money and am a few months away from being debt-free, but, as I noted, I may have to resign and burn my bridges. Not that it will in any way match the sacrifice of someone like Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller.

                    I had 41 years with the best woman who ever lived, a writer of genius, a teacher that changed the lives of hundreds of her students, a saint who graced everyone she ever met. Whatever happens to me now, I have nothing to complain about. The excerpt of a poem of hers that I put on her tombstone:
                    Not wholeness without wounding
                    nor joy without despair
                    not life without the dying
                    nor fire without the tears

                    As the song says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTQJy-scAU8

                    1. Don’t resign! Don’t make it easy for them. Make them fire you. Then file a complaint with the EEOC to cause both them and the government even more trouble. Make them waste time, and money. Reduce the resources they can commit to harassing other people.

                      Be as big a pain in the ass as you can manage. One grain of sand in the gears won’t do much, but if enough people pitch in, the system will grind to a halt.
                      ———————————
                      Pacifism will, at best, get you a nice peaceful trip to the slave pens. At worst — tell me, have you ever heard of the Aztecs?

                    4. put in a complaint for violation of religious freedom ALL of the vaccines were tested/grown on the cell lines of aborted babies. Fox can give you the links. It’s one of the reasons I won’t have them. And please, I’m not going to argue it. to me, it would make me complicit in infanticide. I have to live with me.
                      I see myself in the mirror every day.
                      So, cite objections of conscience, and make them fire you.

                    5. The best resource I know of, because they’re OBCESSIVE about updating; frequently this is where I find out things have changed, such as that the ethical vaccines that were expected to come out about…now, actually… were canceled.

                      https://cogforlife.org/guidance/
                      Are any COVID-19 vaccines available that are not tested or produced using a cell line derived from an aborted child?
                      No, for now, all vaccines for the COVID-19 virus being distributed are produced and/or tested with cell lines that originated from an aborted child. Each person/family must make a prudential decision with an informed conscience and do what is best for you, your family, and your community.

                    7. Since I know a lot of people had no idea about vaccines being grown and developed with the bodies of deliberately killed humans–
                      you have a major advantage, handed to you because of the FLAT OUT LIES so many of the pro-death fanatics have pushed; they’ve been debunking claims that were not made for years, so it is not just possible but LIKELY that many people who would object to cabalistic extremes were misled into thinking they were getting ethical vaccines, when the “debunking” was about if fetal tissue was in the vaccine dose when administered into the individual.

                      There is a wide range of views on use of fetal cell lines, usually looking at finding some silver lining vs encouraging future losses, although the latest one being a girl from China made many people sit up and pay attention to their use in ongoing production.

                      Unsurprisingly, Orthodox Jews tend to be strongly opposed to the idea of non-person humans as a medical resource; also predictably, many philosophical agnostics are also strongly opposed to such carve-outs in humanity. If you look hard, you can find arguments from most faith and philosophical traditions.

                    8. I know a lot of people had no idea about vaccines being grown and developed with the bodies of deliberately killed humans

                      –
                      +1, raises hand. Had no idea the vaccine was developed using aborted fetuses, no matter how long ago. I do now. Whether the vaccine is actually made from fetal tissues does not matter. It is already tainted. Yes. It is too late. I’ve had the vaccine. (Not because of Biden & Company. Because of *Trump & Company.) But will not be getting the booster. It either worked or it didn’t.

                      Also am against animal testing, for the sake of testing already proven vaccines. Not against animal testing itself. Example: Thyroid treatments. When our cat had thyroid cancer, same type as Betty Ford, of coarse the same treatment worked. Treatment was used on cats before it was used on humans. Continual use of the tested therapy on animals for treatment, fine. Continual use of tested treatment on animals for the sake of testing? Hard no.

                      * I believe Trump and Melania have gotten the vaccine. Whether their children, including their young son, and grandchildren have, wags hands. I’d understand if latter have not. Besides the fact none are in the CCPFlu at risk population some are in the high percentage where the cure is worse risk than the illness.

                    9. I’ve always been opposed to infanticide. Also raised Roman Catholic, currently nominally Episcopalian. (They’re a little soft on abortion, but recognize that life begins at conception.) Still, it almost seems like a copout, because I also deeply oppose a vax mandate because of its totalitarianism.

                    10. I know the feeling– but Himself isn’t opposed to doing things for more than one reason, and strengthening the public support/knowledge of ethical issues like this is a very good side-effect.

                    11. I know. Unfortunately I’m complicit just by living and paying taxes in CA. They pulled out the big lie (“for the children”) years ago and got a huge bond issue to use on fetal stem cell research. I hate living in the land of Moloch, and may any Bishop who allows a priest to give Joe Biden Communion be tortured by the cries of 60 million babies every night in his sleep.

                    12. File it anyway. Make them waste their time and resources, so they have less to go after everybody else.

                      Just like the FICUS is doing at the border. The Border Patrol is so busy dealing with ‘unaccompanied minors’ they don’t have the time or bodies to go after drug smugglers, sex traffickers and terrorists.
                      ———————————
                      But the end result, the true genius of the plan, was the fear. Fear became the ultimate tool of this government, and through it our politician was appointed to the newly created office of High Chancellor.

                    13. BTW, the link to the Joe Diffie song brings up an Obama ad for Gov. Nuisance, at least here in CA it does. The amazing thing is that the ad focuses on Gov. Nuisance “keeping us safe with sensible” COVID restrictions and shows, among other things, a bunch of pre-schoolers wearing masks. He ends with the “ominous” note that Larry Elder wants to do away with these restrictions! OMG Elder doesn’t even have to pay for his own campaign ads now. This kind of cluelessness gives me hope, however faint.

                    14. Alao, be aware some orgs are not actually firing people. They’re just locking their accounts and reporting that they resigned “voluntarily”. Make sure you are prepped for that eventuality as well.

                    15. Addendum to my other post; just found out that the OSHA rule that the terminations will be based on has not yet been published.

                      That explains why they are trying to push people out without formally firing them; you cannot fire someone for a regulation that does not yet exist.

              2. It is, I’m always happy to hear about people getting their lives together; it reminds me keep hoping.

            1. Love Stan Rogers. Have all his stuff on continuous play on Pandora. The Idiot is one of my favorites.

              I can relate as a maritime family now landlocked for the first time in my life. (TN)

              Mary Ellen Carter speaks in a way to all of us who have loyalties to ideas and ideals. Never, never, never, never, never give in.

          1. I giggled when I wrote that, looking furtively over my shoulder and wondering if my OCD matters if no one is here to see it?

            1. Did he write this before or after the Quantum Leap project?

              What do you mean that is the wrong Sam Beckett?

              1. ‘Before’ and ‘after’ get a little tricky when you’re talking about Quantum Leap. 😛

          2. Yes, there is nothing wrong with being a little touched. Having a mental outlook that is not average or standard can be an advantage in seeing through multiple layers of deceit such as we face now.

            But hugs for everyone. This is a difficult day we will move through and upward.

          3. “All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.”
            — Robert Owen (1818 or 1828, depending on your calendar)

    2. My gentle and peaceful sister, who teaches little children how to sing, told me the other day that she was ready to go Red Wedding on the whole lot of them. And she meant it. The “Men who wanted to be left alone” are married to women who will give no quarter when the time comes. I do so hope that it never comes.

    3. …and when they cry, “But this isn’t what we wanted!” the only answer will be, “Then you shouldn’t have made all the choices that brought it about.”

      2. Pretty sure my response will/would be a horrible off-key rendition of the refrain of “You can’t always get what you want/you get what you need” shortly before delivering the coup-de-grace.

            1. Ring their bells with swords and spells, don’t let em get away!
              We’ll cast and chop and stab and bop
              And haul that loot awaaaaay!!!!

      3. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, for others that never asked for them, and for benefits to the ones doing the paving. But how many dead lie buried beneath the paving?

        1. A freeway in Chicago had an estimated one corpse per mile under the pavement as it was being built. Just sayin’.

          1. That is very bad construction practice. Corpses rot and leave voids under the pavement, creating weak spots that eventually break down.

            1. What? You expect them to build it without a need for maintenance? Pray tell, do you expect them to do other work?

          2. En, it was Chicago. Redoing expressways a couple years after construction just meant more money for graft. Besides, who’s gonna tell the mob they can’t do such a thing? (Wonders where Jimmy Hoffa ended up and how many trucks drove over his body each day…)

            On a different freeway, they completely rebuilt it a dozen years after initial construction. Two years later they put down a fresh coat of asphalt over the concrete. Between lousy weather and, er, creative bidding for jobs, it made for interesting roadways. (Occasionally scary as hell, but that was more due to brain-dead designs.)

            And no, I have no idea what they do with old dug up bones…

              1. Much of that is East Slope freeze/thaw cycles that chew the living shit out of roadways. If you get chinooks, your roads will grow potholes.

                10th Ave. South (the main drag and E-W truck route) through Great Falls MT has the worst potholes you’ll ever see, despite cracksealing, resurfacing, and sometimes entirely rebuilding it every summer. It’s so bad by spring that it looks like terminal neglect, but it’s really not. It’s the effect of traffic and snowplows on top of multiple cycles of freeze/thaw fracturing and frost heave, plus several months where you can’t do anything to fix it (other than pack some road mix into the worst holes so small cars don’t fall in and disappear) because asphalt doesn’t stick to wet cold base.

                Here in Billings we’re far enough from the East Slope that we don’t get chinooks and those midwinter thaws, so our roads are much easier to maintain, and never grow potholes big enough to lose a VW, like Great Falls routinely gets.

    6. The Left (and I daresay not a few on The Right) think that when “Civil War 2.0” goes hot, it will just be a modern rehash of v1.0: Ranks of Blues and Ranks of Greys lining up across from each other and alternating volleys until one side’s had enough and retreats. Relatively neat and orderly, and very far away from their quiet abodes.

      What it *will* look like will resemble the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, but turned up to a scale that I suspect would make Milošević, Mladić, and Krstić squeamish.

      3. Milosevic, Mladic and Krstic were foreigners, and as such, were almost certainly oriented to thinking on a smaller scale.

        Kirk is making an interesting argument over on MHN about factors involved with the break up of Yugoslavia.

        Things I was planning to research some things for my novel, which was basically similar to this, except safely distant in 2024 Japan. One was the Italian Years of Lead, another was late apartheid South Africa.

        Anyway, I’m somewhat confident of happier paths then those.

          1. So is Europe. no one tells you this.
            I wonder about Portugal. I don’t think so because the population trends geriatric, but the way mom keeps insisting I’m an insurgent for refusing to buy the covidiocy makes me wonder.

            1. St. Michael the Archangel,
              defend us in battle.
              Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
              May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
              and do thou,
              O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
              by the power of God,
              thrust into hell Satan,
              and all the evil spirits,
              who prowl about the world
              seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. .

              O glorious prince St. Michael,
              chief and commander of the heavenly hosts,
              guardian of souls, vanquisher of rebel spirits,
              servant in the house of the Divine King
              and our admirable conductor,
              you who shine with excellence
              and superhuman virtue deliver us from all evil,
              who turn to you with confidence
              and enable us by your gracious protection
              to serve God more and more faithfully every day.

              1. With Michael before us, Gabriel behind us, Raphael on our right hand, and Uriel on our left hand, let us be about the Lord’s work, secure that if we must fall, we will nevertheless be lifted up.

          3. I know, but that wasn’t something I knew much about when planning the novel, and there was a lot of wild stuff in apartheid that was more relevant to my plotting.

            Current SA riots have some aspects less useful for describing chaos in a modern Japan, and some aspects that are food for thought.

        2. I read a bunch of his comments, and what struck me most was his account of the sudden flareup of ethnic tensions in the US among formerly amicable neighbors.

          All I could think of is that, if you are from overseas, and you want to live in America, or be American, there are certain things that you must leave behind in the Old Country:

          1) your grudges
          2) your feuds
          3) your contempt for those who are not of your people
          4) your culture and (possibly) religion, insofar as either one encourages and reinforces the first three items

          And if you can’t – or worse, won’t – leave those things at the border, then you are not American, will never be American, and need to go home the first chance you get.

          We’d have had a lot less American funding of overseas terrorism – ‘scuse me, freedom fighters – if that principle had been impressed into the skulls of everyone who came here.

          You can bring your food and your clothing and your Christian faith. Those are always welcome.
          Other inoffensive religions (or the inoffensive lack thereof) can be tolerated.

          There’s plenty of opportunity to start new feuds and grudges here, over new slights and insults.
          There’s no need at all to bring the old ones with you.

      5. Think of the Hatfields vs the McCoy’s, only it’s in your neighborhood, and with your neighbors. Or in our case, the Thin Blue Line Supporters, and the BLM crowd, with the cops caught in the middle being directed by the Feds and Blue State govs to support the communists against their own communities.
        Messy, Messy, Messy.

        1. I agree. Activity levels in any civil conflict depend on more variables than one’s “peacetime” politics. Who you’re married to, work for, financial situation, one’s own psychological ability for violence and risk acceptance, etc. There were plenty of armchair Communists, too, Lenin hated them with a cold loathing. I’m thinking France 1941-45, except the only “D Day” we could get is from the PRC.

          1. HOWEVER two things to remember: Americans hate war. So they tend to make it brief.
            There will be lots of revenge taking, but it will mostly be ethnic. (WHY I need to bugger off and be somewhere people know I’m American.)
            I realized yesterday that’s why my feeling is against all our experience of civil wars in the world.
            This one will burn like white phosphorous, but be brief. Because we’re Americans.
            It will be brief for the same reason we’re lousy imperialists: ALL WE WANT TO DO IS GO HOME.
            And G-d help those who stand betwene us and our home.

        2. Or as Tom Kratman put it: Think Beirut in the 1980s on a continent-wide scale and with a large number of people who actually know what they are doing.

      6. Some folks seem to think (with great contmpt) that “those stupid rednecks with their stupid AR-15s are gonna run out and start shooting and then we’ll get them with our tanks and F-15s!”
        The same people say, “AR-15s are weapons of war and no civilian needs to own a weapon of war.”

        *Sigh.*

        1. This. With the possible addition of, “And fantasy, and maybe a hint of private detecting….”

          (Hey, writing cozy mysteries means you have perfectly legit reasons to be scouting possible… secondary crime scenes.)

        2. “I just wanted to be able to mind /my own/ business; That was not good enough, it was deemed vitally important that I pay attention to a bunch of whining by people who would inflict problems upon themselves if they had no problems caused by others.

          Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, and if I do not clap hard enough for Joe Stalin, I am a Jew stabbing the Fatherland in the back, preventing the glories of the Thousand Year Reich.

          You’ve made it your business to make yourself the business that I must deal with before I can attend to my own business.”

    10. All this. The premonitions, night sweats, trying to hold my anger is check as it slowly becomes an inferno.

      This reminds me of my favorite definition of a Gentleman. Basically knowledge of his power and skill coupled with willful restraint of its awesome and fearsome power. I confess to not feeling much like restraining any longer.

    11. Twenty years ago, on an airliner over Pennsylvania, sat such men and women.

      They were forced to take up violence, and they did so with a vengeance that thwarted what was being perpetrated by those who chose not to leave us alone.

      No police or government officials there to protect them. No armor upon them. Not even a single purpose-built weapon among them. Just hot water, tableware, bare hands – and the resolve to stop what was being done to them.

      Not to sacrifice themselves for the White House or Capitol … or the people within who have squandered the example they have set, and instead demand we passively submit to their “protection”, be it waiting for a police officer during a break-in unarmed … or taking a less-than-proven medication “for the good of your neighbors” while still wearing a face covering as though that medication can’t be counted upon to actually work … or actively undermining the effort to interdict the fanatics who sent the perpetrators into that plane, then finally running away in a panic and leaving others in harm’s way.

      They fought for themselves, and their fellow passengers, in the grand tradition of our soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines who fought for the buddy next to them … with the hope of survival for themselves, or at least their fellow passengers.

      They showed us that there are times that the only protection we can count upon, is ourselves and our neighbors.

  6. Remember you’re Americans. Americans aren’t afraid. Oh, some of us at times, but not Americans as a whole. we’re the ones who bite and kick and fight back. We’re not tame.

    And we will not be tamed or cowed. Come what may, even if that sense of grief in the night was a premonition be right. Come what may.

    Raise the Flag up to the sky, how many of them can we make die?

    “Let’s Roll” — an American

      1. The fear reaction of “find a big stick and hit the scary thing until it stops moving”

  7. Never forget, never forgive. Capt Larry Getzfred, Capt Jack Punches (ret), AW1 Joe Pycior. Navy Watch Center Pentagon 9/11/01.

  8. So on 9-11 I was getting ready to go to work at our local elementary school as a teacher’s aid. I never turn on the tv before work but that day I did. The first plane had just hit. I watched in horror as the second plane crashed.

    I left for work then and the school office ladies had the news on the radio but they hadn’t heard about the second plane yet. All day long while students were at recess or whatever the teachers would check for news trying to do it out of earshot of the kids who, nevertheless knew the adults were freaking out about something.

    The next Tuesday, one week from the attack, our principal decided that every single Tuesday morning from then on students would file into the gym at first bell and we would have a pep rally with inspirational messages and the singing of the national anthem and other patriotic songs.

    That continues to this very day. And the sound of a gym full of elementary kids singing God Bless the USA at the top of their lungs is very inspiring, let me tell you.

    So, flyover country has NOT forgotten. And my money is on them NEVER forgetting. What will happen when the current pests in office get them riled up is anyone’s guess.

    1. I was at work and just happened to stop by the conference room and watch the TV. After watching the second plane hit, I just turned away muttering, “Tom Clancy was right.”

    2. I was at work, at New Orleans International, fueling Southwest Airlines, dealing with weather related delays (fog or something in Dallas or Houston, weather was nice in NOLA)
      First one had just happened when I ran into Ops to turn in one ticket and get another, talk was “Something flew into the WTC” and they were belittling some moron in customer service who claimed it was a SWA flight. After two rushed flights, I was back in Ops and everyone was in the break room watching the tv, They had just seen the second hit, and back out for another rush flight . . .during which everyone disappeared working the flight, and the plane stopped moving (no passengers getting on) . . . so everything got shut down, and planes started showing up I had never seen before (the “Land at THE NEAREST airport, NOW” order went out) then, sitting outside with a friend, a panicking ramp Supe ran by and said they were attacking the Pentagon. Then we got lucky when SWA said to get the fuel trucks as far from the terminal as possible, so we parked them back by our old FOB location, and our managers let us go home . . . 5 minutes before they locked down the airport and stuffed everyone in the Hilton across the street. A lady I was pursuing at the time got tied up in that and did not leave until 11pm, after starting at 5 am, and my Supe was there till then too, but he started at 7am. Missed that by minutes, and saw the reactions,stupidity, TSA, etc from the ramp side of things.

    3. I had been laid off from my Silicon Valley job and was trying to find another position. The morning routine at that time was to turn on the computer and hit the web comic pages on my list. (I still read Sluggy Freelance; Pete Abrams is now writing about scenes foreshadowed on 1999.) As I hit User Friendly, Illiad had a banner talking about the WTC attack. We turned on the TV to see the second plane hitting (not sure if it was live or delayed) and the rest of the awful news coming out.

      My folks were visiting Stepdad’s daughters near DC and got caught up in the grounding. I think they ended up renting a car and driving home. The immediate consequence for me was that the fairly cold job market for my stuff froze solid. I got a consulting gig that December that entailed three round trips to Bavaria between 12/01 and 6/02, and you could see Security Theater as it evolved. The French agent searching the old white lady while letting the Middle-Eastern people through was the culmination of that round of PC self-sabotage.

      Curiously, the security people in the Munich airport were actually reasonable. I don’t know if it lasted, but they were the last island of sanity at the airports back then. I never intend to fly again, but back then, Lufthansa made flying transatlantic sort of tolerable.

      1. They were lucky they could rent.

        My father left Colorado on Friday and didn’t even try the airports since they had just reopened and he already rented a car.

        I have heard of two men who escaped NYC and put their heads together and rented a U-Haul to haul themselves.

        1. OK, “You”haul. 🙂

          As memory serves (not going to ask Mom; she’s not in great shape), they had a rental to begin with, since one daughter was in Maryland and the other in Virginia. So, it was a matter of convincing the car rental company to take the car back in a different (huge) metro market.

          Rough guess was the agent was already overwhelmed and felt “Whatever. This makes for one fewer problem for me.”

  9. I’m afraid I feel very maudlin today. It’s a perfect weather day. It often is this time of year here and it was a perfect day 20 years ago. I wasn’t there on the day, which is a good thing since my office was right across the street from WTC and I would have been right there when the first plane hit. We were living in the UK and I was actually in Hong Kong airport when it all happened.

    t just came back from a funeral on Staten Island. Mother of a friend of ours, she was 87. He’s FDNY EMS and was at WTC on 9/11. Most of the firemen who were there on that day will have retired by now, once around is 20 years, and there were stacks of them at the wake last night down to the pipers paying Amazing Grace for the mother of one of their own. That’s how it goes. My Father-in-law was working at FDNY emergency command, one BIL was the first NYPD captain on the scene after the collapse, another BIL spent most of the next months down in the hole. Fr. Micael Judge, who was the FDNY Chaplain killed when a jumpers body fell on him was a friend of ours.

    Back to the funeral. This was just an ordinary parish, there are a large number in NYC. Fr. Vincent Capodano, who one the Medal of Honor posthumous had been an altar boy there. Out front was a memorial to the seven firemen, one cop, and three others from the parish killed on the day. Again just an ordinary working class parish surrounded by ordinary working class houses filled with ordinary working class people. American flags all over, almost no masks. It came to me. This is ours, it’s not theirs. Why was Biden not invited to the memorial? It was because these were the people being memorialized and they despise him.

    So on this day, I ask that you keep in mind the names of those who died and remember this is ours and this we shall hold.

    1. A good friend is former FDNY volunteer–which is as good as full time fire in that city.
      Both sons chose firefighting. One son lost his life, and most all of his ladder on 9/11/2001.
      We lived in Key West and my friend drove nonstop KW to NYC.

      He will never be the same. None of us will be the same.

      I think today we remember who we are, and through the grief we find strength to destroy the enemy and restore that which we love.

  10. Cross posted from MeWe:
    So, with the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, lots of reminiscing going on. And a lot of somber music and reflective thinking and everyone talking about their sadness and shock over this “tragedy”…

    Sorry, but screw that noise.

    This was not a “tragedy”. It was an atrocity and a war crime.

    I still remember seeing that second aircraft hit the WTC live on CNN in the company break room, and saying (out loud without realizing it) “we are at war”.

    I was not in shock, I had no problem believing this was happening given recent history, I was PISSED! And frustrated.

    If not for the post Cold War RIF, I would have been 11 months from retirement from the USAF. As a targeting officer with a background in cruise missiles, smart munitions and joint staff experience, I would probably have been right in the thick of setting up the payback for those bastards.

    Instead I was working at a print center figuring out how to get payroll checks to factories around the country because FEDEX and everyone else was grounded. That did not help my mood any.

    It didn’t get better the next few days, especially as all of the local radios stations, including the rock stations, were playing somber, dirge like music and crap like Candle in the Wind (which I disliked even before it got associated with that artisto-twit after she and her boy-toy got themselves whacked).

    I had not heard of March of Cambreadth at that time, but I cranked my MP3s at my desk computer with Bodies by Drowning Pool, Hell’s Bells by AC/DC, I Won’t back Down by Tom Petty, In America by Charlie Daniels, VOA by Sammy Hagar, Balls to the Wall by Accept, Don’t Tread on Me by Metallica…

    (I’ve added to this list over time with March of Cambreadth, Do You Remember?, Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue and others calling it my WWIV list. (With WWIII having been the Cold War IMHO)

    But the one song that summed up my feelings that day, that I cranked repeatedly in my car and at my desk when on one else was around to complain was this song: Pat Invincible

    I will be cranking this and the rest of the WWIV playlist today and probably the next few days. I’m still pissed (although the renewed anger is aimed at our so-called leadership these days).

    1. There is nowhere else left in the world for conservatives to go. It’s either communist, marxist, or socialist; or some form of totalitarian dictatorship.

      3. Meanwhile, between Canada and North Korea there is a country that matches the political ideal for every Democrat. I don’t have any personal animosity towards any of them, I’d be perfectly happy to let them go to their political paradise. I’ll even help pack. What pisses me off is when they try to destroy the only country I can live in. I’d rather kill them then let them succeed.

    2. This is the song that immediately came to mind that afternoon (I was deployed to Bosnia as a mobilized Guardsman at the time):

      And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
      That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
      A home and a country should leave us no more!
      Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
      No refuge could save the hireling and slave
      From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
      And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
      O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

      1. Isaac Asimov used to sing the entire Star Spangled Banner, all verses. The Left love to complain about it being racist and promoting of slavery for the 3rd stanza; but that’s because they deliberately misinterpret it. The British did have a policy of freeing any slaves who came over to their side in exchange for military service. They very pointedly did NOT encourage a slave rebellion because they still had slavery in their other American holdings. Key probably included that in his verse to discourage slaves from taking that route. I seem to recall about 5000 slaves did escape and join the Brits.

        1. Thanks, but please don’t: you have enough on your plate, and I already have a “Freedom Radio” playlist of my own. Just wanted to see if I was missing anything on it.

          [whistles merrily as he begins slogging through the Book of Feces…]

  12. Say their names. Patrick Murphy, Martin Egan, Neil Leavy, Ned Thompson, Christopher Sedenburg, Brian Cannizzaro, Jeffery Stark, Michael Clark, Christopher Mozillo, Keith Roma.

    They will not grow old as we will,grow,old.

  13. So, twenty years. Time goes by, eh?

    Twenty years of gas-lighting and lies. Nobody in a position to do something about it gave a single sh1t about 9/11 at the time, and they never have for a moment since.

    Today, on the anniversary, all anybody in power is talking about is the vaccine mandate and tax increases. This is true in Canada and the USA as well. Terrorism? Not on the agenda. “Shut up!” they explained.

    I can see you lying, boys. All of us, friend and foe alike, can see it.

    1. Your forgot abortion. The Democrats of Death are screaming about Texas making it a bit harder for women to just flush and forget. Funny how Blacks don’t give a damn about life before birth.

      1. Yes, very amusing this last couple of weeks to watch the Left losing their sh1t because somebody finally took a swing at them.

        First of many? We’ll see. Every time they try to take an inch, you beat them back a mile. That’s what we’ve learned.

        1. More accurately, they’re freaking out because instead of issuing a knee-jerk injunction, the USSC said, paraphrasing, “Because this is a civil law and not a criminal law, you need to bring us someone who claims to have had their constitutional rights impinged on as a result of this law. Until then, we can’t rule on it.”

          1. Which is . . . exactly the same thing the SCotUS says for almost every case like this. “Show us the person who suffered the harm, then we will consider the case.”

          1. I put that in a story:

            “The basis of law enforcement is force. That is the final argument, the last unwritten clause in every law: ‘Obey this, or the government will kill you’.”

  14. I just don’t even know what else to say. My heart’s so full it’s pushing tears.
    I love my country so much, and it’s being destroyed, and I just won’t take it anymore.

    1. We have a unique country. Whilethe territory is important. Our country is not defined by those borders or a line of kings. It is a country, foundationally, of ideals. And that makes it much harder to kill completely. Just conquest won’t work. And Ideas are hard to kill.

  16. Carol F. just shared this song in a comment, thought it might work well for this audience:

    Like I told her, the lyrics are a wonderful kick in the TEETH to these cowardly maggots, points out that they’re not brave fighters– they hide behind women and children, with less bravery than a feral dog.

    1. They are supposed to be in concert tonight in FL. I wonder if they will do “Winged Hussars,” and how loudly the crowd will sing along?

      1. I find this version of the video a great deal more …uplifting.

        Not to mention the top several comments.

      2. I’d like to avoid dying a martyr, too, even if that’s one of the happier forms of red martyrdom; the succeeded, even if they died.

        That said, I’ve had most of that CD on my repeat list for about a year, now. Sabaton is do not give up.

    1. I remember that one. It was moving. Not as good as the Puppies and Clydesdales commercials but still a darn good plucker of heartstrings.

              1. The Clydesdales came here, to the neighborhood, for the first Made in America concert in 2012. It was very cool. Concert sucked, and still does. But that first year with the Clydesdales was fun.

  20. Again, nothing to really add here… My own “Where were you” moment was walking out a UGA dorm, finding class was cancelled, and being glued to the computer lab screens. It was haunting and sickening to see that it had happened. I suppose it says…something that not two days later I was wondering how long it would take for the left/Dems to make the inevitable response to the attacks all about Bush and begin denigrating America. About 2-3 weeks if my memory isn’t failing me. *Sigh* As always, I hope you’re right about people reaching their limit with this foolishness. Maybe I do need to pick up the pace on getting out of here… All I see is resignation to both masking and the state going completely blue next year around town.

    1. “Where were you” moment … Um, like St Helen blowing up, I was in bed asleep. 7 AM PST before I turned on the TV, for breakfast, to the replays of the planes hitting the towers, and the towers coming down. My second response, after “OMG, OMG” a few times, was “We are at War.”

      I know I’m preaching to the choir but despite the coward in charge, we are still at war. It takes both sides to stop a war. The Caliphate has always been at war with us, those they would enslave. Just the coward has brought it home. I’ll be very surprised if nothing happens today. After all they’ve had months to smuggle in people and supplies over our unprotected wide open southern border, with a few sacrificial lambs so that HLS/FBI/CIA/etc. can pat themselves on the back and say “Look how diligent we are!”

  21. You should have called me, or I called you. I was also up at 3AM this morning, though it was because of pain.

    As for this administration that FICUS is the face of, I’m not sure what our enemies could do to us that’s much worse than what it’s doing now. Save for an actual terrorist or military attack, they’ve done more damage to this country in less than a year than I could have ever imagined. They’ve manufactured crisis after crisis, and then bungled it so badly in front of the world that I can no longer consider them merely incompetent. These continuous disasters are deliberate. The chances are just too low to have this many misfortunes all in a row in such a short time for it to be anything other than deliberate.

    1. My theory is that they intend to repeat the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the USA. Before 2024. And that not only Covid but also Critical Race (and Gender) Theory, the BLM/Antifa terrorist attacks, and the stolen election were all funded or inflicted by China with that end in mind.

      And if I’m right, we are going to have to organize defenses on the state or maybe county level, because the Biden administration and family are on Beijing’s payroll.

      1. There is a reason that for years I have been referring to what has been going on as Mao’s Cultural Revolution Redux.

      2. I remember the first day I heard a deluded young person use the phrase “politically correct” as if it meant “to be polite.” “Who taught this young lady Communism, and why didn’t the rest of the room leap out of their chairs at an American using that phrase?” is what I thought. They have no clue.

        1. I was in college when the first threats to use PC language or else were in effect. They openly admitted at the time that they were trying to keep us from thinking wrongthink.

      3. The early stages of a “cultural revolution” are already going on. The Chinese Cultural Revolution wasn’t just students in the Red Guard running around beating people. It was figuring out who was an “enemy”, announcing that the enemy in question had a flaw – real or imagined – and then blowing up that flaw out of all proportion The enemy was subsequently denounced for that flaw, and then pushed to denounce him or herself. If self denunciation didn’t occur, you got beaten and publicly humiliated. If self denunciation did occur, you were still publicly humiliated, and likely beaten as well, but you might not be beaten as much.

        Antifa, BLM, 1619 Project, CRT, these are all things that are designed with the purpose of pushing enemies of the left to self-denunciate.

        So as I said, a cultural revolution is already here.

        2. They’re desperately unhappy. And they want everyone to suffer as they do. They don’t realize what is making them unhappy is their own envy and malice. They assume everyone has that.

          1. Which is why I suspect that the inner circle are knowing children of perdition. They act too aptly for what CS Lewis had Screwtape call ‘the miserific vision’ to be ignorant of what they serve. Plus everything they do as initiation.

            The closest they get to anything ‘happy’ is gloating in front of the ‘have nots’. Like Pelosi with 20k in chocolate ice cream.

            -Albert

          2. Wanting everyone to be miserable because you are miserable is satanic. And knowingly or unknowingly that’s who they are serving at this point.

            1. Marxists are satanic and have always been so. Marxists think that for someone to be better off a different person must be made worse. So they feel either that they have been exploited and so have the right to take from others or they feel they are the elite directing construction of a socialist paradise and have the right to take from others. They envy what others have achieved and seek to demonize achievement. They are greedy for what others have. They are slothful in feeling others owe them money which they have not worked to earn.
              They lust after power over others. Their lives are inherently sinful. This is why Marxist are atheists.
              Marxists do not care to see that in capitalism investment and work make everyone better off. People buy what they want and are free to take any job. Capitalist economies are the only ones to raise up the poor consistently. People that have worked to be better off are happier.

              Under Marxism only the elite ( nomenklatura ) are better off. Under capitalism everyone is better off.

              1. Not all Marxists are Atheists. A LOT of them think they’re Christian. (Looks at mainline churches, including vast swathes of her own.) Remember Marxism is a Christian heresy.

                1. Absolutely.

                  Many main line churches have gone with the “liberation theology“ of poor versus rich. This theology is a Marxist trap as it advocates an explicitly socialist solution to the worlds problems. It is Marxism wearing the skin suit of the church.

                  Back in college in the 1970s I completed majors in economics and political science (spit) with a minor in Land Tenure, which was a cooperative program of the Agriculture, Political Science and Economics schools. The LT program studied in detail how people worked to become better off in underdeveloped countries, which leads generally to a belief in individual initiative and free-markets. Even Marxists participating in the land in LT program indicated they were becoming more free market influenced. Discussions in the LT program did not degenerate into Marxist diatribes and analysis and discussion made Marxism look like a poor substitute for personal initiative and free markets.

                  Marxism really is a religion, and that is why there is no such thing as Marxist Christianity. Marxist Christianity is simply Marxism. And Marxism must be taken on faith because it has never delivered the paradise promised in any application of it’s system in the real world.

                2. Yep, I’ve met a notable number of them myself. They think anything done through capitalism is hopelessly tainted by greed and only the government or some other kind of nonprofit can act with pure motives. I’ve also heard the whole redistribution is compassion angle from them and they also trend towards the Woke narrative, too. What’s funny in a “You’ve got to be kidding me” sort of way for me personally is that a number of those that I’ve run across seem to think I’m their “fellow child of the King,” especially during my last masochistic run on a dating site (and they were definitely Church Karen types who were…unimpressive inside and out, shall we say). Just WTF kind of signal am I giving off here…?

                  1. I don’t think it’s your signal. Many younger people nowadays seem to lack enough knowledge of history, economics and civics to evaluate capitalism or Marxism. They have been indoctrinated to assume generally socialistic viewpoints, including in their faith. They just assume everyone has the same “enlightened” viewpoint.

                    Oh, as to what is “younger”, I am 68. Younger is a big territory.

                    1. I’ve said before that many “craftsy,” sorts tend to be very “progressive,” and assume if you share an interest in their craft you’re also very progressive. It can get awkward when they find you aren’t.

                      A friend of ours and his wife are members of a very socially conscious mainline denomination and he announced in a group chat they was working to be considered an “ally,” of BLM. It was painful.

                    2. I don’t know, people constantly taking a religious angle with me and saying I need to be with a good churchgoing woman when I’m borderline agnostic (and should probably stop calling myself Christian as a result) and rarely talk religion has been a constant in my life so there’s something definitely weird going on here. Yeah, you’ve got me beat my a good several years but I’m borderline, if not full-on, middle aged now and people who should have learned better about these things haven’t. *Sigh* I really do need out of here… Maybe then I can get my brain out of survive crap circumstances mode.

                    3. If you’re getting karens plus the “good, churchgoing” BS– hm, seem to remember you mentioned before that you’re soft-spoken.

                      My dad’s soft spoken, too, there have been a LOT of folks who made the mistake of thinking he was a dishrag because of it. And karens of all sorts really, really want a guy with the spine of a dish-rag, because then he will serve her Vision. (No, it doesn’t get anybody happy, especially since guys who really do the dishrag thing tend to do passive resistance, too– they fight like NASTY girls, it’s not good for them, either, and they usually get betrayed by their user.)

                    4. A fair bit to cover… Church Karens specifically in that area of my life. I don’t know about soft-spoken, though I suppose so since I have to speak up a lot (even without masks, which makes that part of the theater even more frustrating). They’re not entirely wrong about me being a dishrag, though, and it’s not even really “craftsy” types who assume these things either. Sounds right on the red states vs blue and being in a state that just turned blue is another major headache.

                    5. Remember that your entire body, and particularly your skull, is a speaker system.

                      You don’t really have to speak more loudly; you just have to activate your natural resonance powers. Like babies, who can easily be heard in a large space.

                      Your speaker system is taller and broader than a baby, and masks are nothing.

                    6. Lord, yes, Dorothy. I love beadwork and have met !!One!! conservative beader other than myself. Ever.

                    7. In person, or period?

                      I’d classify Crossover as conservative, although mostly via being fact-based, tolerant of being around folks like us, and otherwise basically quiet politically, and she beads. I just got some earrings for my daughters’ Christmas from her online store.

            2. Yeah, they think that everybody thinks about things the same way they do. Thus, everybody else must be miserable. And if you are not demonstrably miserable, there must be something wrong with you. At the same time, they’ll tell you that they are happy in life. Uh-huh. Sure. And, like Dorothy mentioned, if you share interests or hobbies, it is assumed that you share political views. Which is another sign of a very closed off world. I mean, really, how can a racist, white supremacist, evil Christian like quilting too? Unpossible!

          3. I’m seeing more comments that note people in red states are,,on the whole, living normal lives and reasonably happy, prosperous and content. It’s the people in overregulated blue areas that are actively seeking scapegoats, unhappy and poorer.

      1. If Dragon is giving you trouble, I am a tolerable transcriptionist and would be willing to give dictation a try. Offer is open if you think it’d be helpful.

              2. I grew up in an enclave of Portuguese immigrants. Ex-wife all four grandparents were from the Azores. Sounds like home.

                1. You realize to me the Azorean accent is completely different, right?
                  What you just said is kind of like telling someone from FL “I grew up with immigrants from NYC. Sounds like home.”
                  I KNOW what you mean, because across national accents regional accents aren’t heard, but it’s still hilarious.

                  2. Depending on where you are in Florida, a New York accent might be prevalent! 🙂 I never actually met any of the grandparents, but was just using them as an example. I never checked on what was the greater population between islanders or people from Portugal itself, just know there were a shedload of “Falamos Portugues” signs everywhere.

                    5. Publix (large grocery chain in Southeastern U.S. does stock linguica and chourico, I do get some occasionally to throw on the grill but don’t do a turkey for myself. Might just have to make a load of dressing alone 🙂

          2. No issues either way. If it’ll help you write, I’ll help you get it down. If it doesn’t, no hard feelings. 🙂

  22. What neither the Jihadis nor the Progressive establishment seem to understand is that, eventually, the American people with Have Had Enough. When that happens, hell is going to go for a walk with the sleeves rolled up. I’m not sure it will happen at home, although I’m less sure of that than I used to be, but the Middle East? Toast. Large patches of slightly radioactive glass.

  23. Just remember, when they start coming for us, (if they have someone think about it ahead of time) they’ll try to cancel all communications from inside the area of operations, and only allow the MSM to broadcast their tailored lies. You’ll need to get the word out asap. A canned e-mail or text to as many allies as you can briefly describing the situation. e.g. “3 police cars and 5 black SUV just blocked the entrance to the circle and armed guys are coming toward the house.” If electronic communications are blocked, then you know for sure. Probably best to have 3 extremely loud explosive devices (something considerably louder than regular fireworks) and set them off once every 3 seconds to alert your allies in hearing range.

      1. Maybe. There’s a considerable amount of target shooting by residents on our road so it would have to be odd hours to raise an eye brow. That’s why you need a distinct recognizable signal. Ordinary bonfires wouldn’t have carried the message that Minas Tirith was in need of military aid.

        1. I got to see the lighting of the bonfires in the Alps on Midsummer. It is . . . hair raising, in the sense that something very old and very important is happening, even if you don’t know entirely what (I did). When that scene came on screen in the film, I got the same goosebumps.

          2. All night from tower to tower they sprang; they sprang from hill to hill:
            Till the proud Peak unfurled the flag o’er Darwin’s rocky dales
            Till like volcanoes flared to heaven the stormy hills of Wales,
            Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern’s lonely height,
            Till streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin’s crest of light,
            Till broad and fierce the star came forth on Ely’s stately fane,
            And tower and hamlet rose in arms o’er all the boundless plain;
            Till Belvoir’s lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent,
            And Lincoln sped the message on o’er the wide vale of Trent;
            Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt’s embattled pile,
            And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle.

            Thomas Babington McCauley – a poem about defeating the Spanish Armada.

            1. Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
              Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
              Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
              a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
              Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

    2. If you’ve got baddies incoming you probably have more important things to do than keep setting off explosives every few seconds.

      A better idea might be a battery-powered siren. They just can’t cut that off from the outside and once you’ve pushed the button you can move on to other things.

      1. Also, the sound of explosives might set the baddies off and cause them to open fire on your house immediately. A siren seems less likely to have that effect. If their plan is to take you alive then not giving them an excuse to start shooting gives more time for help to arrive and save you.

  24. My 9/11 story was me getting ready for work, and hearing on the TV that a plane had crashed into the WTC. My historian brain went “oh, f(YAY!)k, we had an idiot flying into the WTC because they got lost or something, like the B-17 bombers that got lost in the fog and hit the Empire State Building.”

    Then, the second plane hit. And, I knew it was no accident.

    I went to work…and they closed the office an hour after I got there. I walked around a San Francisco that was deserted. This was long before the homeless and chemical set had taken over downtown SF, and I remember the bookstore that was on Market St (which had a huge magazine and section on architecture and law) and went there for a little while, before I just had to go home.

    I remember that I did drive up to see my parents. Dad had gotten called in because while all State of California offices were closed, armed security had to be provided.

    I baked cookies. I baked a lot of cookies.

    I didn’t know if I had to go back to work tomorrow (I did), so I went home that night…and, it was a different world.

    It was a world that far too many people either went mad…or let their madness out. I can remember as late as ’06-’07 that I was hearing from nominal liberals that they were glad that Bush won. Because they knew that Gore or Kerry would have been a disaster. But, underneath, they were going insane. That the Obamamessiah was coming to save us all. That it was our fault it happened and we needed to engage in soft power and listen to the UN and the EU. And how anybody that doesn’t live in the cities is a racist, bigoted, homophobe that is probably raping their first cousin while dragging gays behind their coal-burner trucks…

    (And, yes, I did hear that. Without irony.)

    Everything that I liked around here…went away, one way or another. People left, or went mad and I could feel the purity spiral increasing. The things that I wanted to enjoy were wrongthink.

    The feeling, increasingly so, that I was the only human in a world of vampires.

    …and, maybe, just maybe, what’s happening now is the high water mark. The moment before the fever breaks and something that looks like sanity hits. However painful it might be.

    I don’t want to consider the alternatives.

    1. …and, maybe, just maybe, what’s happening now is the high water mark. The moment before the fever breaks and something that looks like sanity hits. However painful it might be.

      I have that feeling too, but I expect the Balrog to lash out even as it falls into the chasm, to do as much damage as possible before its total destruction.

      The generational theory that gives us the Fourth Turning says that the High following a Crisis is characterized by cultural conformity, strengthened gender roles, and looser child rearing. I could use 15 or 20 years of that ANY TIME NOW. (As long as it’s not Wokeness that we all have to conform to.)

      1. Yea, I would rather we chopped the Balorg’s head off and fire a lot of bullets into the corpse to make sure it doesn’t come back and doesn’t lash out any time soon.

        It’s not going to be a good time for a while. So, just keeping calm and buggering on, I think.

      2. What would the Woke version of strengthened gender roles and looser child rearing even look like?

        1. The great danger and instability of the previous era is over, and children don’t have to be watched like hawks anymore. Cf the “keep your kids close” child-rearing the Silents experienced with the “let them watch tv” child-rearing of the Boomers. For child-rearing, it’s a transition to the loosest version during the following Awakening, see the latchkey and largely ignored experience of GenX. Apparently this tracks well with the previous cycle; Strauss & Howe muster a lot of excerpts from newspapers and literature of the time to support it.

          Wouldn’t it be nice to escape the excesses of helicopter parenting? It seems like so much work for the parents and so stultifying for the kids.

            1. Yeah, it’s a fabulous theory for predicting the past, and there are certainly lots of critiques of it.

              We were also in uncharted waters during the Civil War, and that’s the one break in Strauss & Howe’s perfect cycle. They argue that it was SO traumatic that we skipped an era or combined the third and fourth turnings into one.

              One might also say that the colonists of 1770 would have said we were in uncharted waters. Englishmens’ rights trampled? Soldiers in private homes? Massacres in Boston? But wait, revolt against the King? Unthinkable! And yet, here we are.

          3. I am classified as a Boomer. By 2nd Grade I could ride my bike to grammar school if I wanted (I was on the bus route so it was optional). This was ~ 1 mile along a relatively busy stretch of road (US Route 1). By 3rd grade I’d go to my buddies house (and he to mine) a distance of perhaps 3.5 miles mostly along Rt 1. In 4th grade I got a paper route and in summers several of my friends would help me. On collection day we’d hit the local gas station for a Nehi Grape or a Coke in the traditional glass bottle (on me largess from my funds). If it wasn’t collection day we’d drop stuff at the paper box and head over to Hammonasset State beach and swim and play pick up baseball with the campers there. I spent lots of time wandering the field across the street from my house, over 60 acres of land that had been stripped of it’s topsoil in many places. We gave my daughters as much freedom as they wanted, but there wasn’t the huge neighboorhood of kids, our children were at the younger side of things. If we had given them the freedom I had (or my wife who had similar stories) we’d have been likely fighting with the Mass Department of Children and Families. For their generation (late Millenials) they had immense freedom compared to their compatriots. Looking at the messes that are many of their compatriots lives the tight constraints were NOT healthy. Without the chance to experience freedom in the small having to cope with it in the large when you finish whatever it is you trained/studied for is daunting.

            1. Yes. Hubby (San Diego) and I (Eugene), both outskirts of our various cities, didn’t have acres to roam, nor highways to navigate, but the rule was “get out of the house, be home by dinner”, all summer. Each of us had neighborhood of kids to roam with. Either an older sibling (in hubby’s case 3, older siblings) or a parent (mom) at home for fail safe.

              Our child didn’t have the same freedom. Didn’t have the kids in the neighborhood, for all that we are almost across the grade school. Even today with a lot more kids in the neighborhood, school had kids at school during non-school hours because of sports team practices or other youth formal activities, not kids just meeting up to play. Locally, now, any child at home alone, age 12 or younger, is likely to have the family reported to TPTB. Any free ranging child that looks young, is likely to have someone trigger a call to TPTB. Our neighborhood is very not dangerous. Heck, even with all the homeless (in other areas) our city isn’t considered “dangerous”.

              1. Not sure Route 1 classifies as a Highway other than in name in the town where I grew up on the Connecticut shoreline. Two lanes 40-25 mph speed limit. it is LITERALLY main street divided into East Main street and West Main street at the US Post Office and the Town bank. Very busy in the summer as the population swelled from 3500 to over 10K with the beach houses and summer tourism. Not much space at the side of the road and only maybe a mile or so near the center had side walks. But I was not unusual, Grammar (K-4) school had large (100+ ) bike racks often full on a nice fall or Spring day. Many schoolmates lived close enough to the grammar school to go home for lunch. And yes my Dad was home during the day though sleeping (he worked 3rd shift). Mom was home until 3rd grade or so when she went back to work (bookeeper).

                1. Hard to tell. Highway 126 is main street in Springfield, Oregon. One of the most dangerous areas to try and cross the street, sidewalk and protected crossings included. Technically 25 to 35 through town.

                  1. Route 1 was more dangerous outside of tourist season. That was because in tourist season it was so full of traffic it topped out between 10 and 15 MPH. I would pass cars on my 5 speed Schwinn Lemon Crate 🙂 .

                2. We took the city bus or walked. HS I took the subway.

                  We definitely had more freedom, and had to learn the constraints to that freedom since missing (e.g.,) the last subway might mean sleeping on the platform bench and having your head handed to you when you got home. Not really recommended.

                  We used to keep a dime in our penny loafers, — sorry — or tucked up somewhere to make the call if necessary.

    2. Increasingly I get the feeling that if we can hold out long enough, the Ficus Cabal is likely to implode under its own power. Especially since they’ve just kicked themselves in the head.

        1. Yeah they are kind of like people who cut themselves, Don’t make me cut myself!!! They desperately want attention and the mainstream of middle America, looks on and says “You poor stupid fools, stop hurting yourself”. Hell every last Democrat president before the FICUS had daddy issues ranging from moderate(Carter) to severe (Obumbles and Clinton). It feels like it is a commonality among the Democrat elite.

          1. …

            You guys didn’t figure out why Biden is so desperate to shut it down?

            It’s National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children.
            https://nationaldayofremembrance.org/

            Same way the “security concerns” meant that they shut down the 2021 march. (Went virtual.)

            And the harassment of the Covington Kids in 2019 was supposed to silence them before THAT, with the doubling down on harassment for 2020.

  25. On 9/11 I was working and didn’t know about the towers until I got home about 8:00 that evening. I had stopped listening to the radio on the commute home so I found out by seeing images of people falling on the TV my wife was watching. Once I realized what had happened, my first thought was, “Well it finally happened.”

    1. when I was sitting with a friend at the airport during the Pentagon hit, he asked me why I didn’t seem fazed at all by the events. “Sorry, just not at all surprised this happened, just sorta surprised it took so long.”

  27. Put this up on my FB home page this morning, figured it worth sharing here as well.
    In answer to the linked song’s title question, it would seem many of have. Afgan war is over for some values of “over.” Bin Laden’s dead. And the powers that be really want us to just move on to things important to their agenda and narrative.
    But some of us still remember.

  28. I was driving to work in DC when the first plane hit. We were evacuated a few hours later, and I drove home under a pall of smoke from the Pentagon. My boss called that night and said the office would be open but anyone who didn’t feel like coming in could have the day off. I asked my (ex-tanker) husband if it was safe to go back into DC. He said, “Of course you’re going back, you have a job to do. You will not act like a goddam civilian!” That’s been my watchword for the last 20 years. We still have a job to do, and we will not act like goddam civilians.

  30. O/T. I see Xiden just exempted Congress from the vaccine mandate….Just in case anyone thought it was a legit health measure….

    1. I haven’t thought anything they were doing was a legit health measure since people tried to bring up “if you got over Covid, why get a vaccine?” and the CDC/Fauci went “La la la, we can’t HEAR you….”

      1. It’s a mechanism to further the purge of all who do not think in lockstep with the radical left. They believe that people who refuse the vaccine are not on board with their attempt to turn the USA Into a Marxist totalitarian state. What better way to push all of those people out of their jobs and society itself by mandating the vaccine and barring those who don’t get it from working or participating in society. It’s not about public health. It is about imposing ideological conformity and absolute obedience to government diktat, and removing those who refuse. It’s a purge.

        1. I’m agreeing more and more with the idea that they’re pushing for something they can overreact against. Creating more and more people who have “nothing left to lose”

          1. I think they think they can win. Importing Aghan insurgents is part of it. “They’re battle hardened.”
            They have no clue of how pissed, how big, how determined this country is.
            They’re going to start the boog, then be shocked. BRIEFLY.

            1. Our hostess said
              Importing Aghan insurgents is part of it. “They’re battle hardened.”
              I presume you mean the SJW/Tranzis THINK they are battle hardened. Mostly what we got is the ones that bear a closer resemblance to Sir Robin, other than the ones who are sleepers… The SJW/Tranzis will not like what they got.

              1. There’s also a massive cultural difference in the targets.

                Americans, by and large, believe we have a right to not be hurt, and to defend ourselves when threatened. There’s been a lot of work put into breaking that– see the sense of entitlement among the families of some urban dwelling criminals when their family member is ventilated after threatening or attempting to commit fatal violence against a target– but the idea that *I* get to defend myself is pretty strong, even for those who say THOSE GUYS shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves.

                1. Yup as I said they’re more Brave Sir Robin than Lancelot. Most of them will just knuckle under to pressure or move away. They’ll make darn poor shock troops other than all the lovely diseases they seem to be bringing (measles, Tuberculosis, Polio). Lovely idea that. Truthfully I think the Tranzi/SJW types see them and let the Noble Savage idea run through their heads, They are fulfilling a white savior fantasy that they can not admit they have. For people with wall paper paste for brain tissue they really can sling the opposing ideas without much effort. A != A is VERY easy for them. Must be the severe detachment from actual physical reality.

                  1. other than all the lovely diseases they seem to be bringing (measles, Tuberculosis, Polio)

                    –
                    Won’t that be a shock to the traditional anti-vaxers. Can’t speak to an overall generalization, but other than parents whose child is too young, or for medical reasons shouldn’t get the long proven childhood vaccines, the people refusing to have their child vaccinated, are snowflakes, of the what is good for thee, isn’t required for me. Still a choice they get to make for their child. But I can hear the screams now when their child gets sick and has consequences from diseases that are rare in the US now.

                1. When Connery says “you benighted muckers,” I heard that last word as something else. Certainly got my attention. 😉

          1. Yeah, this popped up on my random playlist on the way to pick up groceries:

            Reassuringly, note that it’s using ~50 year old stuff….

    3. I thought Pelosi already mandated vaccines for all Congresscritters? Ted Cruz said a while back that everyone there has already had the jab anyway so it was just noise from Her Bitchship.

      1. My understanding is that executive orders never apply to Congress and people who work directly for Congress. Co-equal branches and all that.

        1. No, this was when she was threatening that she’d lock ’em out if they didn’t. Some time ago now. Nothing to do with Ficus orders.

              1. Her half of the legislative branch.

                Schumer likely agreed with it, but is almost certainly jealous enough of his perogatives that he wouldn’t allow her to issue such a proclamation that also covered the Senate.

    4. For better or worse he kinda has to. The executive cannot order a coequal branch to perform actions. It’s the fig leaf for why congressional police are only answerable to the congress, not up thru doj. It’s the same reasoning as to why usps supposedly doesn’t fall under the federal mandate but does under the company with >100.

  31. Biden’s mandate is going to affect me. I’ve put up with the frickin’ masking, but soon I’ll have to retire, or maybe take a leave of absence. I’m 6 months from getting myself all set up for retirement, barring FICUS’ killer inflation (I know), even if I didn’t intend to retire that soon. Worst part is that all my colleagues are going to say, “Why choose to die on that hill?” It’s not like I think the vaccine will hurt me personally. I just don’t think I can bring myself to participate in the “show your papers” regime, not for a lie. This is going to be a “2+2=5” moment for me. I haven’t flown since 2006. Not from fear. Flight 93 put an end to hijacking airplanes. It’s the TSA bullshit that Flight 93 made useless that I refuse to put up with.

    So now I have to put up or shut up. I have little hope that we can reclaim our electoral process, so I have to start writing up my resignation letters. I was looking forward to at least a retirement party after 40 years in the business and 17 with my current firm. I doubt that anyone will want to be seen with me after I get done with my resignation letters.

    May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.

    2. No way I am getting the mRNA vaccines, the J&J is not likely to do harm, but also looks to not do much good. still around 68% effective and while the regular variants only give you a mild illness, if you get the WuFlu D-style you may get slightly sicker than the unvaxxed (betting actual Delta is the sicker ones and those not as sick are the other variants,), but less sick than some of the mRNA vaxxed ( also betting some of the mild cases are NOT CCP Lungrot, but Flu and they are not checking for it. Flu kicks a Positive for Covid, but Covid give a negative on the Flu tests). I was about ready to think about getting the J&J because the Novavax is on a slow roll (again they are pushing out the approval date) but between SloJoe the waste of oxygen and work place stupidity, forget it. I ain’t getting anything right now. Maybe once they get off the pot on Novavax . . . maybe. If it ever gets approved (90% effective including the two latest variants, and 100% assured to prevent severe cases, if all the data is accurate . . . you’d think the Feds would want it out there, huh?)

      1. Remember, the ordinary flu vaccines typically range from 60 to 90% effectiveness; although about 10 years ago they had one that was only about 40% effective since they guessed wrong on which strains were going to be dominant.

        1. seems more often than not they guess wrong and the 60-90 is B.S. but yeah, I recall everyone at the Texas plant getting the shot also got the flu that one year. I missed it that year . . . over the years, I have had flu less than those I know who have gotten the shot every year. Makes me contemplate

            1. Also there’s a wide range of results depending on genetics as well as previous exposure to related Flu types. Flu (and Common cold) are things where what we’ve learned from the COVID vaccines and mRNA may pay off down the road and get us more generic vaccines.

        2. The effectiveness of the flu vaccine has been as low as 15%, admitted by my doctor…I never get it, just take the D3 and zinc, etc, and haven’t had any problems…

          2. all to often they release Flu vaxxs for Strains X,Y,Z, and that year, it is strains V,W,X, or on a good year, W,X,Y, but then many times the prominent strain is W and the “decent” protection from X,Y,Z, is maybe a slight help, but often not doing a damned thing. And then every so often you get 10 or so years ago where the vax did nothing for the strains that went around that year.

  32. I remember the fog of war on that day.

    I remember how the plane crash in a field in Pennsylvania was just one of scores of rumors until Jerry Pournelle posted an email from the father of someone on that flight. (Instantly got asked, a lot, whether he had contacted news agencies.)

      1. I heard it was a crash, so your big advantage was knowing it was not just a rumor.

        Several news stories mentioned that it happened but whether it was connected was not known. For a plane to have suffered a mechanical failure that day would not be the world’s greatest coincidence.

    2. Another thing, we had a thread for people to report that they were all right. People were asking that anyone who might have been anywhere in the Northeast to comment there.

  33. Marxist Totalitarianism is the religion of the left. I think having illegal immigrants exempt from Covid rules ( and all other rules) is deliberate; part of a plan to take over the US.

  34. Sound Transit bus (Puget Sound intercity line) commuting from Tacoma to Redmond so the wife could have the car. Just coming up on downtown Seattle.

    Someone getting news alerts on their flip phone. Or someone with a Walkman + radio. Chatter among the passengers. A plane hit the WTC. I think it was a horrible accident like that B-17 in the ’40s.

    The second plane hits. Gasps and shouts. I think “oh shit, it’s Al Qaeda”. I kept up on the news, I knew about the USS Cole and the ’93 WTC bombing.

    I also knew about the simultaneous hits on the Kenya and Tanzania embassies. I look out the window at the Columbia Tower and wonder if I’ll see a plane dive out of the landing pattern for Sea-Tac and hit it.

    I change buses in north downtown. The leg out to Redmond passes in a haze.

    I get to the office. Memory says I saw the towers collapse, but the timing is off and I must have really seen it in (endless) replay. Nobody gets any work done that day.

    I-5 between Seattle and Tacoma goes right past Sea-Tac Airport. The empty skies for weeks were an eerie reminder every single day.

    A few weeks later as the bombers are hitting Afghanistan, I see young people holding “NO WAR” signs on Capitol Hill. As my lip curls I think that takes some guts to be that out of step, even in Seattle.

    1. Actually, it was a B-25 that hit the Empire State Building on July 28 1945. 14 people died; 11 in the building and 3 on the plane.

  35. “….[F]rom these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

    Of course this is the ending of Lincoln’s little speech at Gettysburg, from back over a century and a half ago; but I slowly realized it’s possibly the best thing we Americans have to a meditation, a daily reading, or even maybe a pledge to take (or re-take) to fit this day, on That Day.

    Obviously this is our first September the 11th — and That Day is the closest I have ever come to having a name for it, in 2001, 2021, or 2277 (story setting) so that’s what I’ll use — under the New Regime, with its ever-more-clear fraud origin story (report in Arizona should be out soon). That makes it different, or at least certain people hope it will; and the recent (well-timed?) collapse, rout, disaster in Afghanistan might tend to make that difference more and worse. (I don’t say “defeat” bacause throwing a fight is not the same as getting beat fair and square. And the DOD / State Dept. Black Sox Team from the New Regime deserve as much ignominy and far more… “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” Oh, wait, it is!)

    That Day was not really an attack on the Bush Administration, the Federal government, or even (just) our military. It was really an attack on America — and so this is our day, not the Regime’s, not Chairman Zhou’s. Ours.

    We paid for it in blood, after all. So we ought to keep it.

    And I have to say that to “highly resolve” one more time in one more way, is and has been something of a comfort to me.

    1. According to my wall calendar it is “Patriot Day”.

      So that’s something for the “things no one ever told us” file.

  36. September 11 2001 — I was on my way to work when I heard something about an attack on the World Trade Center on the radio. Wasn’t really paying attention; I thought they were talking about the 1993 garage bombing for some reason. Didn’t find out what was going on until I got to work.

    We all spent most of the day watching the news as the story came out bit by bit.

  37. 9/11/01 – I was working for a charter airline and about half of our revenue came from flying troops back and forth between various places, especially the ME. We were pretty well plugged in when the SHTF. Our CEO, who was an ex Delta A/L president, called for HQ employees to meet (voluntarily) in a large open room for a prayer and to sing “America The Beautiful”. Because of the nature of our business we had a contingent of city police around our HQ building all that day.

  38. I was at home that day, still recovering from the con crud I’d picked up at Worldcon in Philly. I’d slept in, so I came into everything a little late. When I turned on the Weather Channel before getting on the computer (back in the days of dial-up, when I had to wait for it to connect to my ISP) and heard about a plane hitting the WTC, I also thought of the WWII incident at the Empire State Building. A stupid accident, bad for the people involved, but that it would be cleaned up and repaired.

    Then I got onto newsgroups at SFF.net (a now-closed service for sf fans) and someone said “this is war.” That’s when I changed channels to see what was going on, and got my first view of the Twin Towers with gaping holes in their sides. My first thought was “there’s no way they can repair that, they’ll have to be demolished” — and then they collapsed, one after the other. I don’t know whether I saw the collapses live, or if it was already late enough that it was a replay. But I was absolutely horrified, and uncertain of the future.

    And yes, I had some real concerns that I’d wake up this morning to news of a new terror attack. Or worse, wake up to silence and discover the power was off, everything electronic fried, and only later discover that the US had been the victim of an EMP attack.

    I think being in the midst of preparations for yet another sales event has helped — I spent the whole afternoon at the warehouse, toiling to sort merchandise and get the van loaded so we’re ready to hit the road on Monday. That way I didn’t spend the whole day bouncing from one website to another, seeing who was saying what, wondering whether something nasty would happen, maybe at one of the memorial serv8ces.

  39. Dodgers announcer is calling today “Patriots Day” (dunno who came up with it). Yeah, I’m good with that. Cuz 9/11 made me bristle up for America like little else.

    Angels announcer (yeah I’ve got two games going at once, and no I don’t pay MLB for the privilege) is relating how it was with Bush and the Series first pitch, 20 years ago, and how we should never forget.

    [Some of the corporate side may have gone stupid-woke, but it’s still mostly hands-on-hearts down there in the ballpark.]

  41. I just posted this to FB. Let’s see if anyone drops me, or if I have to drop anyone.

    Twenty years have not erased, have not dulled the shock, the horror, the rage.

    It was fucking miracle that we only lost three thousand dead and not thirty thousand.

    Evil men did this in service to an evil version of their religion. Comrades in their sick ideology have done as close as they could before and many many times since. If only they could have all died screaming and covered in pig shit rather than take one innocent life: American, French, British, Iraqi.

    If you’re going to curl your lip and comment “we brought it on ourselves”, don’t. Fuck you, go to hell. If you’re going to sneer “it was an inside job”, fuck you too.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEogeIIOJzU

      1. No. I didn’t think you were on FB. Friend request sent. Avatar is me wearing a bowtie and a colander on my head (long story).

        2. Herself has multiple presences on FB and a few other places, everything from public and open to you have to know someone to get in. And Sarah’s Diner still lives both on FB and over at Baen’s Bar though very little traffic these days, at least on the Bar.

            1. I recently read a post indicating that Zuckerberg has 1000 employees spread across three continents reading and collating MeWe traffic. Yes, MeWe is supposed to be end to end encrypted, but, hey, it’s Zuck.

              1. It is almost trivially easy to set up a Java, php, or other language script (while recording the generated human readable screens returned back) to log in as a MeWe subscriber and then search for any groups / individuals who have let their pages be public. Once there, you can have one of those 1000 employees answer membership questions while recording the HTML responses so your scripts can do the same in the future.

                Any number of tools, such as Selenium, LoadRunner, SoapUI, et. can do this.

                  1. Exactly. The bottleneck is analysis and interpretation. The business IT world has been drowning in data for a while now; AI is the attempt to deal with the flood.

                    What we’re finding out is that AIs have the same biases and blind spots as their trainers.

                    1. I’d classify that as an ‘interpretation’ flaw, since there’s always a reason for someone to lie– sometimes it’s “amazing” how open they are in abusing it, though.

                      Like the surveys they did in the late 90s where they asked teenagers if they’d ever had sex, assumed the boys were 100% honest and the girls were lying because there wasn’t anything CLOSE to a 1-1 lineup; even the folks who ignored the whole “teen boy admitting he’s a virgin has just volunteered to be mentally and possibly physically abused for the next decade or so” problem, it ignored the idea of under-sampling girls who did sleep with a large number of boys, and the behavior of predatory adults.

                      (I was a teen girl at the time. Admitting I was a virgin, and that I didn’t think that was a bad thing, was bad enough– a guy in the same situation? Dear heavens.)

      2. And a late thanks for accepting my request there. Now you’ve got two sites if you want to take a break checking out the kitties’ adorableness. 🙂 I’m surprised C hasn’t demanded lap time this morning yet on that note…

    3. My one quibble is that there is NO of their religion that is not evil, unless you count people who are not good Muslims. Islam =mandates= deception, hatred, and death to infidels; that’s being pious, and it’s not an optional behavior.

      But don’t take my word for it…

      https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/violence.aspx

      And a few quotes I keep handy, to remind myself:

      “Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Koran 2:191
      “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” Quran 8:12
      “Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.” Koran 9:123
      “When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.” Koran 9:5
      “Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.” Koran 3:85
      “The Jews and the Christians are perverts fight them.” Koran 9:30
      “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam” Koran 5:33
      “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water melt their skin and bellies.” Koran 22:19
      “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” — from the hadith Sahih Muslim, 41:6985
      “The unbelievers are stupid urge the Muslims to fight them.” Koran 8:65
      “Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.” Koran 3:28
      “Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.” Koran 8:12
      “Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.” Koran 8:60
      “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book — until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (Qur’an 9:29)

      [“People of the Book” means other Abrahamic religions. All others who don’t convert are to be killed instead of being given dhimmi status if they pay the jizya (to become second class citizens).]

      There are millions of radical Muslims. The peaceful ones don’t matter, as 9/11 amply demonstrates.

      1. Yes, well, I’ve been studying Islam since 1985 and I’m well aware of all that. For reasons of my own I don’t want to get kicked off Facebook on the grounds of “Islamophobia”, so I added the caveat. And saying they followed an “evil version” does not necessarily imply that there is a non-evil version.

            1. One of the teetering To Be or Partly Read pile… along with Raymond Ibrahim and pretty much all of Robert Spencer except his most recent, and Darío Fernández-Morera (great interview with Gad Saad a few years back). Plus absorbing the Usual Suspects off Youtube (Al Fadi etc.). Tho I usually start beginners with Bill Warner.

  42. Beauty passes, stubborn outlasts them, we are a stubborn and a stiff necked people. God be with us, for then no one can prevail against us.

  43. After my chemo, I’m really cranky enough to relive what some of my ancestors actually did… So I chose disarm my home and to let others fight… I am old, crippled, out of shape, and don’t want to screw up the efforts of the rest of you…

  44. I’ve just realized; what happens when the security services turn their coats again, to our side?

    It seems likely that they will be sending agents provocateur to frame folks that they aren’t currently trying to frame, so may not know to be on watch for that, and we might expect that they will frame some innocents and present them to us.

    1. If the security services turn their coats again, we’ll already be past the point of framings and other skullduggery. We’ll be at the point of “refusing to fire on civilians” instead.

        1. Yeah.

          And, security services turn their coats in the circumstances likely to occur.

          They have a good idea how fragile things really are, they have skills, and if they make themselves useful, they might evade the consequences of more public figures.

          Security service bureaucrats would mostly not have been inside the decision process on this enough to expect the actual results, and the consequences for regime stability. As in, most security service bureaucrats would have had other tasks, and would not have been cleared to know. And, the folks cooking the books on the Afghanistan withdrawal at the analyst level would probably not be people who are tasked with domestic regime stability, nor have a really good understanding of what is going on here.

          I think this surprise is not enough for them to decide to flip, but further surprises of the correct nature could see them flip.

  45. I tuned out completely yesterday– in escape mode. I read most of the day. But I did write a poem right after 9/11. I’ll post it here:

    Thundering at Daybreak

    As cold sweat pours from my body, I wake
    to dark hounds feeling at dark gray hares:
    to sounds of war thundering at daybreak.

    Oh, Holy Fool, quaking for Allah, break
    the fox’s chains, the fox who cowers in lairs;
    as cold sweat pours from my body, I wake

    knowing the hound, the fox, the hares will take
    us from peace of hearth and home, from our cares
    to sounds of war thundering at daybreak.

    Beware of false prophets, who shiver and shake,
    serpents who delight in killing human hares.
    As cold sweat pours from my body, I wake

    to falling towers — a large death. They slake
    their blood thirst with innocent lives. Who dares–
    to sounds of war echoing at daybreak.

    Who dares to strike again? My heart aches.
    Is this the end of choice? Must we forbear?
    As cold sweat pours from my body, I wake
    to sounds of war thundering at daybreak.

    Cyn Bagley (c 2001) Published in Acumen literary journal #42 Jan. 2002

    3. I will let you know what happens when I vote tomorrow. I will have the UNOPENED unconstitutional fraud-by-mail ballot in my hand. The one that was sent out by a DECREE of the very same asshole we’re trying to get rid of.

  49. I suspect many have seen the picture of Biden at the 9/11 memorial. There’s a story told about a gambler who had himself taken under the wing of an old time gambler who told him the essence of gambling is knowing the difference between a player and a mark. To show him the difference he took the young apprentice to a crowded roulette table in a casino which was surrounded by shouting, exciting people. The old gambler had carried in a hidden sawed off shotgun, he worked the action, which gave off an unmistakable sound. Only a few in the crowd looked around to see where the sound had come from. After they left, the old master told apprentice, “the people who heard the action are players, all the rest are marks.”

    Look at the picture. Hillary, Obama, and Jill Biden are not looking at sundown Joe, they’re looking at the camera. Everyone else is a mark.

    1. Yeah, I had been buying the quiet from Hillary as her finally being forced to shelve her ambitions. Then I saw that picture.

      Some one has gotten her to listen to the ‘be patient, and control yourself’ advice.

      This would be a scary realization, except that the baseline for that is already saturated.

  51. lol, I was singin’ something to the (imagined) tune of Rodger Young just the other day !

    and yes, Rick Rescorla, my personal “be this guy” icon.

    all best everything to you & yours in these times !

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