9/11

[Aaron Carrara]

Today we remember and honor those that lost their lives on 9/11 as well as the brave first responders involved.

That was a day that bent the United States but didn't break it.

#NEVERFORGET

 

[Juan]

— Twitter API (@twitterapi) November 7, 2011

 

[UTK66]

If you have a twitter account, a great follow today is Ari Fleischer, who was Bush's Press Secretary. Every year he live tweets the events that day with the President. Extremely interesting follow:

Ari FleischerVerified accounthttps://twitter.com/help/verified @AriFleischer

 

[Juan]

Better times ....

 

[Duke C #11]

Maybe one of the best newspaper columns ever written.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article1928716.html

 

[Randolph Duke]

None of these are photoshopped. These are employees of Cantor Fitzgerald from the north tower who decided to jump as opposed to be consumed by the smoke and flames. When it got to this point, the telecom lines were still functioning. The squawk box from the Trade Center office was still broadcasting live into the various offices around the country and in London when the employees started jumping to their deaths.

When your best option is to kill yourself by jumping out a window 1,000 feet up, its a shitty way to die.

One of my good friends was 35, 4 kids, happily married. He went to work that Tuesday to resign from Cantor Fitzgerald. They identified him when they found his pants with his wallet in the back pocket. His legs had been sheared off at the waist and were still in his pants, still wearing his shoes and socks. They never found his torso, arms or skull.

 

[doc longhorn]

None of these are photoshopped. These are employees of Cantor Fitzgerald from the north tower who decided to jump as opposed to be consumed by the smoke and flames. When it got to this point, the telecom lines were still functioning. The squawk box from the Trade Center office was still broadcasting live into the various offices around the country and in London when the employees started jumping to their deaths.

When your best option is to kill yourself by jumping out a window 1,000 feet up, its a shitty way to die.

One of my good friends was 35, 4 kids, happily married. He went to work that Tuesday to resign from Cantor Fitzgerald. They identified him when they found his pants with his wallet in the back pocket. His legs had been sheared off at the waist and were still in his pants, still wearing his shoes and socks. They never found his torso, arms or skull.

These photos are and were horrifying.  These people were someones father, mother and/or child.  It makes one want to weep.

And not to make this tragedy political - but consider this upcoming presidential election and the possible candidates.  Who among them would you say would be the leader we would need in this kind of crisis?  ;Who would have the resolve and the LEADERSHIP to unite this country afterwards?

Who could you trust not to make knee jerk decisions or not to go into committee and wimp out?  Who is more likely to blame the US or take the PC route?

This might make you reconsider your favorites - or not.

 

[Randolph Duke]

The group within Cantor I worked for lost 60 out of 72 employees when the Trade Center went down. The employees in Houston were pleading with their colleagues in NYC not to jump and then having to watch it live on television.

During the rebuild, there were the ones who lived through it and those who were clueless to what really happened because they were hired well after 9/11 as replacements for those who were lost. It was an experience trying to deal with the morale of the employees who had to show back up to work when the company had no address, no phone number, no pencils, no desks. The company also had no culture, no knowledge of who to go to for what. The key people who survived were mostly so emotionally damaged and so burnt out from all the effort to just get through the first few months. Heavy drinking and busted marriages were common.

Things would seem to get back to normal wnen one of the new hires would be bitching on the trading floor out of frustration over the "worthless bitch in HR who never returned any emails and was too lazy to do her job." We hadn't had time to scrub all th einternal documents off the intranet for all the names of the dead employees and every now and then a document would direct an employee tocontact a person who had died and the new hires were clueless to that fact. The employees who had gone through it would be dragged back down into their depression, remembering their dead colleagues and the insensitivity of those who they felt they had little in common with but worked with every weekday.

I didn't look at the list of names of who all died until a year after, on the first anniversary. I knew far too many who died and wanted to convince myself the people I hadn't talked to were simply caught up in life and the reason I hadn't heard anything from them for months was that they were busy, not dead. Thankfully, that was the truth for many, but sadly not for all. About four years after I left Cantor I was interviewing for a jon and the head of HR was interviewing me. One of her first questions was "Have you ever been in a difficult situation at work and, if so, how did you handle it?" I got up and walked out. There was no way I wanted to work with people who were that clueless.

Then I think of people like Dennis, whose passing was not as sudden, but just as frustrating.

Those who were just kids when 9/11 happened are now mostly adults. A number of them want to know what their dad was like.

9/11 brings back a lot of memories, not all of them bad. One of the few positives is that it is a day where people who knew a lot of the people who died and who had to deal with the human elements of the aftermath check in with each other to just say hi. There really isn't much else to talk about. It's mostly text messages and facebook messages saying "hi." The 9/11 experience put an interesting perspective on friendships.

 

[Sirhornsalot]

We do not act like a country that was attacked 14 years ago by Islamic extremists.

 

[J.B. TexasEx]

We do not act like a country that was attacked 14 years ago by Islamic extremists.

Amen

 

[Sirhornsalot]

Today, we have the Muslim Brotherhood inside the highest points of our federal government. We have longstanding officers in our military who are being forced to resign/retire and replaced with muslim officers as part of Obama's "purge." We have Islamic extremists coming across an unprotected border. We not only refuse to protect it under Obama, but we've moved our checkpoints 30-90 miles inland from the border. We now classify a deportation as someone we simply turned back at the river, as part of the deception upon the American people.

We import muslims from Syria because they can't live next to ISIS, which we swore to destroy but have instead facilitated their growth. They are now five times the size and strength they were when Obama swore to destroy them. We advertise and market to people in Central America to come here illegally and then we ship them around the country in secret.

I could go on and on and probably get banned. But America is asleep and we're convinced there's nothing to see here. It's a fatally incorrect position.

 

[JimR]

These photos are and were horrifying.  These people were someones father, mother and/or child.  It makes one want to weep.

And not to make this tragedy political - but consider this upcoming presidential election and the possible candidates.  Who among them would you say would be the leader we would need in this kind of crisis?  ;Who would have the resolve and the LEADERSHIP to unite this country afterwards?

Who could you trust not to make knee jerk decisions or not to go into committee and wimp out?  Who is more likely to blame the US or take the PC route?

This might make you reconsider your favorites - or not.

glad you did not decide to make it political. totally inappropriate today. shame on you.

 

[Juan]

US flag on Mars

The aluminum for this part of the rover was recycled from metals found at the WTC/Ground Zero.

Wut u gonna do about that, jihadis?

http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/newsroom/pressreleases/20110908a.html

 

[Duke C #11]

Politics and religion ruin more message boards than anything else I can think of. Those who died 14 years ago are dishonored.

 

[joeywa]

Politics and religion ruin more message boards than anything else I can think of. Those who died 14 years ago are dishonored.

Agreed.  Today should be a day to honor the fallen.  Another day, another thread for discussions of what is or isn't going on politically/religiously.  There is plenty of time to talk about that.  I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the posts referenced here, I just think we should put them in a different place than a memorial thread for 9/11 victims and heroes. 

 

[Sirhornsalot]

Agreed.  Today should be a day to honor the fallen.  Another day, another thread for discussions of what is or isn't going on politically/religiously.  There is plenty of time to talk about that.  I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the posts referenced here, I just think we should put them in a different place than a memorial thread for 9/11 victims and heroes. 

While I technically agree, what I've pointed out and the reality of the situation is that we've forgotten these people, not remembered them. And we need to refocus ourselves and remember them, remember what took them out, and remember how badly that hurt us all.

If I had the power to do so, I'd change our direction right now. 9-11 should never happen again.