Tag: 9-11

Every decent man

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Just in time for H. L. Mencken’s birthday.

Mark Steyn, perhaps Mencken’s closest modern counterpart, brings us these notes:
Bush Re-Enters the Room
The Years We Wasted

As Mencken wrote:

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
————

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
————

“It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume…that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.”

Or punishing him for the quest:

[E]ven former Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who has been consistently pro-vaccine and very friendly to the virus policies of Anthony Fauci and Biden, observed that the president’s mandate speech was “delivered to leave you feeling angry if vaccinated, and ashamed if unvaccinated. It was a war speech, but the enemy wasn’t the virus — it was your neighbor.”

And this just in from ragnardaneskjold – in response to my comment that, “Dubya’s 9/11 speech was just family Trump hatred“:

When petty animus meets modern virtue signaling amid apparent ignorance of the chasm between a few broken windows and premeditated mass murder.

To which we should add arson, including of Federal buildings, and mass looting.

On Jan. 6 there was no arson, the looting was minor… the few objects looted already the people’s property. If you’re pissed about the lectern, just remember it wasn’t Nancy Pelosi’s: It was yours.

Those who think it was Pelosi’s probably agree with Dubya.

Finally, let’s stipulate that while Trump also more than satisfies Mencken’s disdain for windbag authoritarian assholes, his stewardship never approached Biden’s blatant scupidity (my stupidity/cupidity portmanteau). Trump, at the very least, has a respect for the United States of America that Biden can’t even imagine. And Trump has a will of his own.

The yawning gap between the lesser of the Trump/Biden evils is being made terrifyingly apparent every time the animatronic placeholder occupying the assisted living facility now operating at 1600 Pennsylvania opens his mouth, or has a decision made for him about which sycophantic reporter’s softball question he is allowed to answer.

And he’s doing his best to increase to cost of ammo.

“Some airplanes did something”

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You can see one of them here, about to do something:a86a1-911121dc-wtc91139026-911_liberty

I remember this day quite distinctly, but some do not.

Ilhan Omar, for example, is unable to recall the religion, ethnicity or culture of the 9-11 murderers. She described them as “Some people,” who “did something.” Murdering 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage is something, all right. But, we’re not to be reminded of that in a speech to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

At least her remarks she didn’t go so far as to completely eliminate human agency. For that, you need a New York Times copy editor: NYT Updates Story Blaming Airplanes For Taking Down WTC

Omar and the Times weasel their way around the fact that Islamist fanatics murdered 3,000 people. They are working to erase the memory of it.

They share the idea that the United States is ultimately responsible for it.

Social Security is a compulsory Ponzi scheme

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Apropos of his fear of calling a spade a spade (see also Obamneycare) Mitt Romney took Rick Perry to task last night because Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. James Taranto mounts a defense of sorts:

Perry was not claiming that Social Security is literally a criminal enterprise but asserting that there are similarities between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme.

It is probably true that Perry did not literally mean Social Security is a criminal enterprise. It should be noted, however, that Social Security is not a criminal enterprise only by definition. The people who define what constitutes a criminal enterprise say so.

Imagine Social Security as an investment fund offered by a private company. The Social Security “prospectus” makes guarantees it manifestly cannot fulfill, and the executives in charge largely continue to lie about that. Its accounting practices are much worse than those of Enron. Payments are funded in a way which put Bernie Madoff in jail. The major difference between Madoff and the United States government is that Madoff could not legally exact “investments” with the threat of violence.

If Madoff could legally have paid US dollar investments back in Zimbabwean dollars, he’d be a free man. In contrast, those ultimately in charge of Social Security deliberately and continuously debase SS payments to their own advantage. Unaccountably, they are free men.

Social Security would be a better system if it were a criminal enterprise.

Copyright 2005-2019

Always remember

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Today is a day to honor the people who died on 9-11-2001. This video will help.

Today is a day to remember what you were doing when the planes hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. And how you felt on 9-12.

The President wants you to think of today as a “day of service.” Perform some service if you want to, but it isn’t about helping your government or your fellows. Remember that.

Update & bumped 7:34PM:

Here’s an example of the first bit of the slippery slope the President’s National Day of Service has set us on.

NEW YORK – Americans planned beach cleanups, packages for soldiers and save-the-tree fundraisers along with familiar remembrances in three cities to mark eight years since the attacks of Sept. 11, the first time the anniversary was named a national day of service.

“Instead of us simply remembering the horrible events and more importantly the heroes who lost their lives on 9/11, we are all going to turn into local heroes,” said Ted Tenenbaum, a Los Angeles repair shop owner who offered free handyman services Thursday and planned to do so again Friday.

Now, I don’t quite know if it would have been better or worse if Mr. Tenenbaum had not used the word “simply.” Maybe he just meant to say we are honoring the dead and their loved ones by these good acts. Maybe. On the face of it, of course, it would seem worse if he hadn’t said “simply.” Except that the meaning of the day is so very simple. President Bush described it well on November 10, 2001.

“…Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.

“And the people of my country will remember those who have plotted against us. We are learning their names. We are coming to know their faces. There is no corner of the earth distant or dark enough to protect them. However long it takes, their hour of justice will come.

It is so very, very simple that Mr. Tenenbaum’s words made me sad. Remembering the heroes and victims of 911 is so completely simple that it need not, should not, involve a national commitment to heroic handyman services, much less celebration with save-the-tree fundraisers, or a beach cleanup.

Maybe next year they’ll clean up the beach near the Arizona.

Copyright 2005-2019