Historic

Episode 412 – We Shall Never Forget

I found out the the Towers were hit while I was on my way to work at 6:30 AM. My wife called me. While on the phone, she watched in horror as the second plane hit. Twenty minutes later, or it seemed so, the Towers were gone.

I said this story before, but today I am going to go over the entire timeline from that day. I’m doing this because so much happened and way too many people are forgetting.

This timeline is from the 9/11 Memorial. The site has so much I encourage you to visit the site and donate.

 

The Timeline – September 11, 2001

5:45 AM

  • Hijackers Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari pass through security at Portland International Jetport in Maine at 5:45 a.m.
  • Atta and al-Omari board a commuter flight to Boston Logan International Airport, where they connect to American Airlines Flight 11. Three other hijackers will join Atta and al-Omari aboard Flight 11.
  • Less than two hours later, the five terrorists who will hijack American Airlines Flight 77 are videotaped as they pass through Washington Dulles International Airport’s west checkpoint.
  • Three of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed set off metal detectors, but no weapons are found. They proceed to the gate. The hijackers are carrying concealed knives on their persons or in their carry-on luggage.
  • Before 9/11, airports were not required to videotape security checkpoints. At that time, knives were allowed on planes if the blade was less than four inches in length.

6:00 AM

  • September 11, 2001, is a primary election day in New York City. Primary elections are being held for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, and other city offices.

7:59 AM

  • American Airlines Flight 11 takes off from Boston. Eleven crew members, 76 passengers, and five hijackers are on board. The aircraft is filled with 76,400 pounds of fuel for its transcontinental run to Los Angeles.
  • Two hijackers in first class, the other three are in business class.

8:15 AM

  • United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston for Los Angeles. Nine crew members, 51 passengers, and five hijackers are on board. The flight is loaded with 76,000 pounds of fuel.
  • Two hijackers were in first class, three were in business class.

8:19 AM

  • Flight attendant Betty Ann Ong alerts American Airlines ground personnel to a hijacking underway on Flight 11, reporting that the cockpit is unreachable. Using an inflight phone, Ong transmits detailed information about the hijacking on the call, which lasts about 25 minutes.
  • At 8:21 a.m., two minutes into Ong’s call, the hijackers turn off the plane’s transponder—a device that allows air traffic control to identify and monitor an airplane’s flight path.
  • Meanwhile, American Airlines authorities relay details from Ong to their operations center in Texas.
  • At 8:32 a.m., flight attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney reports the hijacking of Flight 11 to a friend on the ground, a manager at Boston Logan International Airport. Over the course of approximately 12 minutes, Sweeney provides key information about the hijacking, including a description of the perpetrators.

This is part of the message from Betty Ong:

8:20 AM

  • American Airlines Flight 77, en route to Los Angeles, takes off from Washington Dulles International Airport. Six crew members, 53 passengers, and five hijackers are on board. The flight is loaded with 49,900 pounds of fuel.
  • Three terrorists are in Zone A (first class) and two are in Zone B (coach).

8:24 AM

  • Attempting to communicate with passengers and crew inside Flight 11’s cabin, hijacker Mohamed Atta presses the wrong button, broadcasting instead to air traffic control and unwittingly alerting controllers to the attacks. Minutes later, Atta again makes an unintended transmission to ground control.
  • At least one of Atta’s transmissions is picked up by the pilot of Flight 175, Victor J. Saracini, who will inform the Federal Aviation Administration of what he has heard minutes before his own plane is hijacked.

This is Mohammad Atta’s message that was intercepted by the towers:

 

8:30 AM

  • Morning activities have commenced at the World Trade Center, a commercial building complex in lower Manhattan owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an interstate agency.
  • In addition to the signature Twin Towers (1 and 2 World Trade Center), the complex included a hotel (3 World Trade Center), four office buildings (4, 5, 6, and 7 World Trade Center), a shopping mall, restaurants, a public plaza, and a major transportation hub.
  • Around 8:30 a.m., roughly 80 people have gathered to attend the Risk Waters Group financial technology conference on the 106th floor of the North Tower.
  • Seventy-two restaurant staff have arrived in advance of the morning’s breakfast service and conference preparation.
  • Other special events at the World Trade Center planned for September 11 include the annual National Association for Business Economics (NABE) conference, already underway in the Marriott hotel, an evening dance performance on the World Trade Center’s outdoor plaza, and a Peace Corps information session scheduled for 6:00 p.m. in 6 World Trade Center.

8:37 AM

8:42 AM

  • Scheduled to leave Newark International Airport within minutes of the other hijacked flights, United Airlines Flight 93 takes off after a delay due to routine traffic. Seven crew members, 33 passengers, and four hijackers are on board the San Francisco–bound flight, which is filled with 48,700 pounds of fuel.
  • All four terrorists are in Zone A (first class).

8:46 AM

  • Five hijackers crash American Airlines Flight 11 into floors 93 through 99 of 1 World Trade Center (North Tower). The 76 passengers and 11 crew members on board and hundreds inside the building are killed instantly. The crash severs all three emergency stairwells and traps hundreds of people above the 91st floor.
  • New York City emergency dispatchers send police, paramedics, and firefighters to the North Tower.
  • Immediately after witnessing the crash from 14 blocks north of the World Trade Center, Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer directs New York City Fire Department (FDNY) dispatch to issue a second alarm.
  • En route to the scene, he signals a third alarm, which calls for 23 engine and ladder companies, 12 chiefs, and 10 specialized units to respond to a plane crash at “Box 8087,” the FDNY’s shorthand reference for the World Trade Center.
  • The Port Authority Police Department (PAPD), responsible for the safety and security of the World Trade Center in addition to regional bridges, tunnels, airports, and the Port of New York and New Jersey, mobilizes in response to the attack. Additional PAPD units from other posts dispatch to the World Trade Center to aid in evacuation and rescue.

This is Tom Kaminski from WCBS News Radio:

 

8:50 AM

8:55 AM

  • The South Tower (Tower #2) is declared safe by the Port Authority.
  • “Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen. Building Two is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building Two. If you are in the midst of evacuation, you may use the reentry doors and the elevators to return to your office. Repeat, Building Two is secure.”

8:59 AM

  • Port Authority police Sergeant Al DeVona orders both towers to be evacuated.
  • One minute later, Port Authority Captain Whitaker expands the evacuation to the entire World Trade Center complex.
  • The NYFD are beginning to clime the tower by the stairs. There are 120 floors in the building and each floor take 6 minutes to climb since the fire fighters are are carrying 60 pounds of equipment.
  • At this time, people began to jump from the building.
  • Between 100-200 people jumped from the tower.

Here is Constance Labetti being interviewed about running down the stairs and seeing the fire fighters running up:

Here is Florence Jones who was wondering if she was going to have to jump from the 77th floor of the South Tower:

9:00 AM

  • Earlier, at 8:52 a.m., a flight attendant, likely Robert John Fangman, had reached a United Airlines operator in San Francisco, California, and reported a hijacking underway. By 9:00 a.m., passengers Garnet Ace Bailey, Peter Burton Hanson, and Brian David Sweeney have called family members.

One of the harder things to here, one of the messages sent from Brian David Sweeny to his wife while being trapped on Flight 175.

 

9:02 AM

An evacuation order is issued for the South Tower.

9:03 AM

  • Five hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 77 through 85 of 2 World Trade Center (South Tower), killing the 51 passengers and nine crew members onboard the aircraft and an unknown number of people inside the building.
  • The impact renders two of the three emergency stairwells impassable and severs a majority of the elevator cables in this area, trapping many above the impact zone and inside elevator cars.
  • The plane flew into the building at 590 miles per hour.
  • The impact was so hard, one of the plane’s engines was found, in tact, six blocks away.
  • In addition to requesting the shutdown of airspace over New York City, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) calls for a second Level 4 mobilization, bringing its total deployment to nearly 2,000 officers.
  • The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) issues a fifth alarm for the South Tower, deploying several hundred additional firefighters to the disaster. Additional companies and off-duty personnel from across the metropolitan area travel to the scene.

Here is Pat Kelly from WCBS Newsradio 880:

 

9:05 AM

9:05 AM

Rudi Giuliani arrives at the NYPD command post.

9:12 AM

9:30 AM

9:36 AM

  • U.S. Secret Service agents evacuate Vice President Dick Cheney to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House.

9:37 AM

  • American Flight 77 flies into the Pentagon.

This is John Yates speaking to his wife immediately before the attack:

 

9:42

  • The FAA orders all planes to land.
  • That’s an entire other story all to itself.
  • The FAA also prohibited any other planes from taking off.

9:45 AM

  • White House and Capitol building are evacuated.
  • All government building, bridges and other public offices are closed.

9:58 AM

  • Thirty-seven telephone calls are known to have been made from hijacked Flight 93, most placed from the rear of the plane. One of the last calls is made by passenger Edward P. Felt, who uses his cell phone to dial 9-1-1 after closing himself in a restroom to avoid detection. By 9:58 a.m., Flight 93 is flying so low that he succeeds in reaching an emergency operator in nearby Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

This is Alice Hoagland telling her son, Mark Bingham who is on Flight 93, to do something because she knew the terrorists were going to crash the plane:

9:59 AM

 

This is Independent Photo Journalist, Catherine Leuthold:

10:03 AM

  • Four hijackers crash Flight 93 in a field near the town of Shanksville in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew storm the cockpit. The 33 passengers and seven crew members on board perish. The crash site is approximately 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C.

10:15 AM

  • The E-ring of the Pentagon collapses.

10:28 AM

This is the spectators reaction to the tower collapsing:

 

11:02 AM

  • Near the World Trade Center when the South Tower collapses, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and senior members of his administration find temporary shelter inside an office building close by.
  • As the dust begins to settle, they walk north, intent on establishing a new base of operations for city government.
  • Reporters catch up with the mayor, who urges the public at 11:02 a.m. to evacuate lower Manhattan. He will continue to address the public in briefings at temporary headquarters at the New York City Police Academy throughout the day.

12:16 PM

  • The last flight still in the air above the continental United States lands. In two and a half hours, U.S. airspace has been cleared of an estimated 4,500 commercial and general aviation planes.
  • Plane passengers become stranded as flights are canceled. Others attempting to travel nationally by train, bus, or rental car find most options canceled or sold out within hours of the attacks.
  • Air Force One, carrying U.S. President George W. Bush and members of his staff, travels throughout the day in search of secure locations, landing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana around 11:45 a.m. and later landing at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska at 2:50 p.m. President Bush will return to the Washington, D.C., area that evening, landing at Andrews Air Force Base and taking a helicopter to the White House.

12:30 PM

  • A lower section of the North Tower’s stairwell B survives the building’s collapse, protecting a group of 13 first responders and one civilian who had been attempting to evacuate down the stairs. Within hours of the tower’s collapse, the first responders emerge from the debris and direct rescuers to the civilian.

Early Afternoon

  • Within hours of the attacks, some rescue workers and journalists begin referring to the scene of mass destruction at the World Trade Center site as Ground Zero, a term typically used to describe devastation caused by an atomic bomb.

  • First responders, search and rescue teams, and volunteers continue to converge on Ground Zero throughout the day.
  • Rescuers use special tools to peer into voids and search for remnants of stairwells and elevators that might shelter survivors. The last successful rescue will occur midday on September 12.

3:00 PM

  • Rescuers free Port Authority employee Pasquale Buzzelli from the rubble of the North Tower. Buzzelli had been in the process of evacuating the North Tower when the building began to collapse from above. Situated somewhere between the 22nd and 13th floors, Buzzelli crouches into a fetal position and, hours later, wakes up on a slab in the building debris, 15 feet above the ground.

5:20 PM

8:30 PM

George W. Bush addresses the nation.

10:30 PM

  • Around this time, rescuers locate PAPD Officer William Jimeno and PAPD Sergeant John McLoughlin, injured but alive in the debris of the World Trade Center. They free Officer Jimeno after three hours of dangerous tunneling work. Sergeant McLoughlin’s rescue will take another eight hours.
  • Workers will extricate the 18th survivor, Genelle Guzman, on the afternoon of September 12. She will be the last person rescued.

https://timeline.911memorial.org/#Timeline/2

https://www.wsj.com/story/911-timeline-how-the-day-unfolded-acbc78e3?adobe_mc=TS%3D1631209817%7CMCMID%3D57984580952917091038866124422853428462%7CMCORGID%3DCB68E4BA55144CAA0A4C98A5%40AdobeOrg&ns=prod%2Faccounts-wsj&wsj_native_webview=androidtablet

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Episode 288 – The 1619 Project

One thing I hate about our society, specifically on the Left, is how we are changing everything.

We have changed language. We have normalized in correct language like using “at” at the end of the sentence. We have changed definitions like how we did with the term “gender.” We have even changed the way we use pronouns referring to an individual as “they.”

We are trying to change science because of political correctness. A man wanting to be a woman means that he is a woman, no matter what his DNA says. Gender dysphoria is no longer a mental disorder. We are assigned gender, not born with it. And the world is going to end in 10 years because of weather.

But the worse thing we are doing is changing the history of the United States without adding context to the history of the world. The revision of our history is enunciating our dark moments without acknowledging our successes. The goal of this is to emphasize the failure of the United States and all its systems.

Enter the 1619 Project.

 

What is the 1619 Project?

There is a huge push to revise history within the United States. This revisionist push is not something that just happened in the last ten years. It has been around for almost a century. People like Howard Zinn have written histories that make the United States look like an imperialistic tyranny instead of a country that celebrates freedoms that have been given to us by God, not government.

In Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, a book that was touted by Matt Damon who played a genius in Good Will Hunting, blamed all evils in history on the United States. Slavery, the Native American crisis, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, the wars in the Middle East, even terrorism was all because of the imperialism of the United States. Many of Zinn’s findings were actually debunked by real historians. In fact, there is an entire book written that destroys all of Zinn’s arguments. But this doesn’t matter to the Leftists. The book is being touted as a legitimate history of the United States and has found its way into out high schools and colleges as mandatory reading.

In 2019, another document that tries to revise American history was released: The 1619 Project. According to Wikipedia.com:

The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the United States‘ national narrative”.[1] The project was first published in August 2019 for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony.[2] The project later included a broadsheet article, live events, and a podcast.

 

It is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unanimously celebrated every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619? Though the exact date has been lost to history (it has come to be observed on Aug. 20), that was when a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s very origin.

Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.

The goal of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times that this issue of the magazine inaugurates, is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year.  Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country. Perhaps you need some persuading. The issue contains essays on different aspects of contemporary American life, from mass incarceration to rush-hour traffic, that have their roots in slavery and its aftermath.

Each essay takes up a modern phenomenon, familiar to all, and reveals its history. The first, by the staff writer Nikole Hannah- Jones (from whose mind this project sprang), provides the intellectual framework for the project and can be read as an introduction. Alongside the essays, you will find 17 literary works that bring to life key moments in African-American history. These works are all original compositions by contemporary black writers who were asked to choose events on a timeline of the past 400 years. The poetry and fiction they created is arranged chronologically throughout the issue, and each work is introduced by the history to which the author is responding. A word of warning: There is gruesome material in these pages, material that readers will find disturbing. That is, unfortunately, as it must be. American history cannot be told truthfully without a clear vision of how inhuman and immoral the treatment of black Americans has been. By acknowledging this shameful history, by trying hard to understand its powerful influence on the present, perhaps we can prepare ourselves for a more just future. That is the hope of this project.

The Goals of the Project

 

This is a complete rewrite of American history. Its goal is to:

************

  • Become the new education tool of American history.
  • Change the way our children think about America. They will be our leaders one day. The goal is to change the culture so the future generations will change it politically. Politics is always down stream of culture.
  • Blame America for slavery. Slavery has been around forever and still exists.
  • Make it only that blacks made America what it is today and ignore what we did as a nation.
  • America is evil and must be changed. That includes eliminating our philosophy, accomplishments and successes.
  • Ignore our real history and the struggles we went through to become the successful country we are.
  • Makes racism systemic. It’s not.
  • It ignores the struggles this country went through, black and white, to get where we are today.
  • It ignores how far we’ve come.
  • Demonize an entire race; the white race. This is a document on black supremacy. This is dangerous. When you demonize a skin color, you end up with slavery, gulags and holocausts. Isn’t this what they are fighting against?
  • Ignore that whites are diverse. We are English, Irish, Scottish, Italian, Russian, German and many others.
  • Ignore the sins of other civilizations including African and Muslim civilizations.

 

This is some really dangerous stuff. This is changing U.S. history in order to demonize a country, its citizens and the system:

  • Justifies cancel culture. This will kill the economy, kill innovation and kill national pride.
  • Promotes a complete change to the system of the most successful country in world history.
  • Justifies the persecution of those who don’t agree.
  • Creates race superiority.
  • Justifies policies that will hurt the economy of this country, further pushing the need for socialism. Socialism leads to tyranny.

 

Oops! It Ain’t that Accurate

 

******

According to the Wall Street Journal article by Elliot Kaufman:

‘So wrong in so many ways” is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party.

A September essay for the World Socialist Web Site called the project a “racialist falsification” of history. That didn’t get much attention, but in November the interviews with the historians went viral. “I wish my books would have this kind of reaction,” Mr. Wood says in an email. “It still strikes me as amazing why the NY Times would put its authority behind a project that has such weak scholarly support.” He adds that fellow historians have privately expressed their agreement. Mr. McPherson coolly describes the project’s “implicit position that there have never been any good white people, thereby ignoring white radicals and even liberals who have supported racial equality.”

The project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is proud that it “decenters whiteness” and disdains its critics as “old, white male historians.” She tweeted of Mr. McPherson: “Who considers him preeminent? I don’t.” Her own qualifications are an undergraduate degree in history and African-American studies and a master’s in journalism. She says the project goes beyond Mr. McPherson’s expertise, the Civil War. “For the most part,” she writes in its lead essay, “black Americans fought back alone” against racism. No wonder she’d rather not talk about the Civil War.

When called out by the socialist organization, Nicole Hannah-Jones doubled-down using race as her justification:

To the Trotskyists, Ms. Hannah-Jones writes: “You all have truly revealed yourselves for the anti-black folks you really are.” She calls them “white men claiming to be socialists.” Perhaps they’re guilty of being white men, but they’re definitely socialists. Their faction, called the Workers League until 1995, was “one of the most strident and rigid Marxist groups in America” during the Cold War, says Harvey Klehr, a leading historian of American communism.

“Ours is not a patriotic, flag-waving kind of perspective,” says Thomas Mackaman, the World Socialist Web Site’s interviewer and a history professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He simply recognizes that the arrival of 20 slaves in 1619 wasn’t a “world-altering event.” Slavery had existed across the world for millennia, and there were already slaves elsewhere in what would become the U.S. before 1619.

But “even if you want to make slavery the central story of American history,” he says, the Times gets it backward. The American Revolution didn’t found a “slavocracy,” as Ms. Hannah-Jones puts it. Instead, in Mr. Mackaman’s telling, it “brought slavery in for questioning in a way that had never been done before” by “raising universal human equality as a fundamental principle.” Nor was protecting slavery “one of the primary reasons” the colonists declared independence, as Ms. Hannah-Jones claims. It’s no coincidence the abolitionists rapidly won votes to end slavery in five of the original 13 states, along with Vermont and the new states of the Midwest.

Ms. Hannah-Jones insists “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” Mr. Mackaman calls that claim “anti-historical.” Proving it requires her to belittle the most progressive declaration of modern history: “that all men are created equal.” Ms. Hannah-Jones calls this a “lie” and claims its drafters didn’t even believe it. The abolitionists disagreed. So did Martin Luther King Jr: He saw it as a “promissory note.”

Other things that the 1619 Project gets wrong:

  • Sociologist Matthew Desmond marshals substantially discredited research to tar the whole of American capitalism as a legacy of slavery.
  • Legal activist Bryan Stevenson presents the war on drugs and broken-windows policing as successors to lynching, the Black Codes and other white “strategies of racial control.”
  • Joseph Kishore, the Socialist Equality Party’s national secretary, says the “1619 Project” is aimed at legitimizing the politics of the Democratic Party and at “dividing workers” by race.

 

Other issues about the 1619 Project come from The Atlantic, far from a right-wing publication. They did try to ease the conflict but pointed out that the conflict was started by real historians who had issue with the layman’s history created by the doocument:

Several weeks ago, the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, who had criticized the 1619 Project’s “cynicism”in a lecture in November, began quietly circulating a letter objecting to the project, and some of Hannah-Jones’s work in particular. The letter acquired four signatories—James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes, all leading scholars in their field. They sent their letter to three top Times editors and the publisher, A. G. Sulzberger, on December 4. A version of that letter was published on Friday, along with a detailed rebuttal from Jake Silverstein, the editor of the Times Magazine.

  • The letter sent to the Timessays, “We applaud all efforts to address the foundational centrality of slavery and racism to our history,” but then veers into harsh criticism of the 1619 Project. The letter refers to “matters of verifiable fact” that “cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing’” and says the project reflected “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” Wilentz and his fellow signatories didn’t just dispute the Times Magazine’s interpretation of past events, but demanded corrections.

The letter is rooted in a vision of American history as a slow, uncertain march toward a more perfect union. The 1619 Project, and Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay in particular, offer a darker vision of the nation, in which Americans have made less progress than they think, and in which black people continue to struggle indefinitely for rights they may never fully realize. Inherent in that vision is a kind of pessimism, not about black struggle but about the sincerity and viability of white anti-racism. It is a harsh verdict, and one of the reasons the 1619 Project has provoked pointed criticism alongside praise.

Americans need to believe that, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of history bends toward justice. And they are rarely kind to those who question whether it does.

 

What Does This Document Ignore?

This document ignores a lot of things.

  • From a history standpoint, the Africans brought over in 1619 weren’t slaves, they were indentured servants. That sucked too. But, after a time, they were freed and given land. Some of those same blacks brought over in 1619, owned land as freeman and owned slaves. Chattel slavery did not really start until later in the century.
  • It ignores that the English Puritans and Spanish colonists did not support any type of slavery. Christopher Columbus got into trouble with Queen Isabella for sending 500 Haitian slaves back to Spain. He was arrested and the slaves were immediately freed and sent home.
  • The Founding Fathers did debate ending slavery with the new Constitution. George Washington actually freed his slaves. Slavery is mentioned in the Federalist Papers. But, because the south depended on slavery and the Union needed to remain unified, the Founding Fathers decided to deal with slavery later.
  • The abolition movement in the United States started right after the Revolutionary War and picked up steam in the early 1800s, well before the Civil War.
  • It ignores the individual and puts individuals into groups based on race. This is evil. This racist. This was done during slavery and Jim Crow. It was also done in Nazi Germany, done in Cuba by the Leftist-revered Che Guevara and is currently being done in China with the Uyghers.
  • Likewise, it groups whites as a single race and all with the same privilege. This is racist. It doesn’t acknowledge that whites also were in their own little castes within the United States. Germans, Irish and Italians are all white ethnicities but were seen as lower class compared to the northern European races. They were treated pretty badly. Jews, also white, were treated with disdain. But none of that matters, they’re all white.
  • It ignores individual’s capacity. If a black man can only get a job as a ditch digger, it is because of racial inequity. If a white man is a ditch digger, it is ignored. There is never an acknowledgement that each have their own abilities.
  • If there is systemic racism in the United States, where is it? What evidence is there? We were systemically racist before the Civil Rights Act but where is it now?
  • It ignores that times have changed and that history is flat within the United States. According to the 1619 Project, blacks have it just as bad today than they did during slavery and Jim Crow which is just ridiculous.
  • It states that all technology and feats achieved by the United States have been abled by slavery, giving blacks credit in areas that just are not true. The light bulb, electricity, space flight, the Internet, computing, cars, television, astrophysics, the plane and jets and other forms of technology are all because of slavery. None of this stuff has anything to do with slavery.
  • The document has no problem stating what America has done wrong but ignores what America has done right throughout history to fix their sins. The Civil War, Women’s Suffrage, reparations for the Japanese interned during World War II and the Civil Rights Act. These never happened and, if acknowledged as significant times in American history, would make America a country that acknowledges its sins.
  • It also brings up the rich black culture and how it affected American culture. Now this is true. Blacks have a great culture that I embrace including dance, blues and jazz music and literature. But American culture seems to be forgotten. Whites had some culture also. Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, John Wayne and Elvis might have a say about that.
  • It ignores the success that blacks have had in this country. Ophra Winfrey is worth billions of dollars. Would she have done that in another country? LeBron James, who is no genius and continually bitches about equity, is worth a billion dollars. Everyone who added to the 1619 Project has a degree is black and from Harvard or Princeton. Does it sound like these people are being oppressed? Stop it.
  • Didn’t mankind have slavery throughout its history? Weren’t the pyramids of Egypt built from slave labor? Weren’t the pyramids of Mexico and South America built on slave labor? Doesn’t China still have slave labor? Not sure? Where the hell do you think your f-ing iPhone came from?
  • Finally, why is there an equity problem in the black community? Why are blacks not earning as much as whites (or Asians)? Why are blacks jailed in disproportionate numbers than any other races including Hispanics? Because of systemic white racism? Then why aren’t there more Asians and Hispanics in jails? Why are white men still the majority in jails and prisons? And what are the examples of unjust imprisonment? None of this is answered. It’s just stated and that’s it.

 

What is the Goal of this Document?

Not sure who said it but some said, outside of 2+2=4, that math can be manipulated to show whatever you want to show. Physics, with the math in the right places, can prove that an elephant can hang off a cliff with its tail tied around a daisy. Well, so it is with history.

This is pure revisionist history. The document admits it. It is revising history to teach the truth. Problem with revisionist history is it adds what “historians” want you to know and leaves out what they want you to forget. The problems with the 1619 Project: It adds stuff that, flat out, isn’t true and leaves out most of true American history. I think it is a good idea to go through all of the history of the New World and the United States. I think U.S. history starts well before the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.

This document is to change our culture. It is to teach our children the fallacy that the United States is evil, always has been and always will be. The United States is systemically racist. The Left wants that philosophy bled into the institutions: the news media, entertainment and, especially, the education system. Once in the culture, it is a short trip to politics.

Once in politics the system can be changed.

 

What Do We Do?

The Left wants to “counter” systemic racism by, you got it, implementing systemic racism. But the racism will go in a different direction. Let’s listen to Joe Biden, who, in this statement, is promoting systemic racism:

That is promoting systemic racism. Help everyone except white people. Maybe the government will help white women.

When the government will benefit one race over another, that is systemic racism.

When the government supports the change of history to demonize a race, that is systemic racism.

When the government condemns and prosecutes white rioters at the capital building but ignores the $3 billion in damage by BLM and Antifa because of “racial justice,” that is systemic racism.

So what do we do who are concerned with this very disturbing turn of events:

  • Read the Bible and go to church. Many of our philosophies are based on the Judeo-Christian philosophy. Our rights came from God, not government. You might as well know what God said. Include your children. They will need a moral base because they are not going to get it from public school.
  • Read the Declaration of Independence. This document defines who we are as a nation. It is never changing. We are to be in 2021 that we were defined to be in 1776. Make sure your children know about it. Teach them. They won’t get it in public school.
  • Read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and all the Amendments. This document is the law of the land and gives us the exact process to lead us to be what is defined in the Declaration of Independence. Know that was not defined in the Constitution is a state’s right. Abortion: Not a Constitutional right. Make sure your children know about it. Teach them. They won’t get it in public school.
  • Devour history books. Read history from all sides. I have read Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States. It was crappy and filled with lies, but that’s what your children are learning in school. I like Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen’s A Patriot’s History of the United States because it is a far more detailed history of America, both positive and negative, and will counter the Leftist narrative on history. Talk to your children about American history. Learn what they are learning and teach them how to be critical of what they learn. They won’t get any counter arguments in public school.
  • Home schooling is not a thing for everyone. It’s just not possible. But talk to your children. Teach them. Teach them morality, religion, history, math and English. They ain’t learning it is public school. Make them read Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and JD Salinger. Their books are banned in public school.

We need to take over the culture. The only way we do it is teach our children.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1619-project-gets-schooled-11576540494
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project

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I Know I Will Never Forget

It is the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Every year I blog about this and I am going to do it again. Let’s talk about what I was doing that day. Let’s talk about other major events I had the honor and horror to experience in my lifetime and the disturbing trends I see with our kids today. And finally, as 9/11 becomes a historical event for our youth is it possible we could actually forget?

Where Was I?

It is six in the morning west coast time. I am a computer networking instructor that starts his class at 8 AM. I like to get to my classroom 30 to 45 minutes early just to check on things before the class starts.  It only takes me twenty minutes to get ready and be on the road. I lived in Thousand Oaks, California at the time with my ex-wife and three children and I worked in Oxnard, which was about thirty minutes away.

During the drive, there is a very steep grade that can be a tad dangerous. It is very easy to go from 55 Miles an hour to 90 without even touching the accelerator. So you can imagine I really paid attention to my driving. It was at the bottom of that hill that I received a call from my ex-wife.

“A plane flew into the World Trade Center!” she said breathlessly.

“What?”

“The building is on fire!”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t even formulate a question. How could a plane run into a building? It didn’t make sense.

“Oh my God!” my ex-wife screamed. “Another plane just crashed into the other building!”

“What? When?”

“Now! Just now!”

“Both buildings are on fire?”

“Yes…”

I don’t know what she said then. I had goose bumps and really could not understand what was happening at the time. The United States had not really gone through a serious terror attack so that was the furthest from my mind at the moment. In fact, I’m not really sure when I did realize this was an attack.

Timeline for me gets really fuzzy. I got to work and was sitting in front of my computer, reading through the story on CNN.com. Now, mind you, the Internet then was not the Internet today. There was no YouTube and streaming video was very difficult. All I could do was refresh the web page and see if there was any more news.

That’s when the phone rang again.

“They’re gone. They fell,” my ex-wife says without so much as a greeting.

“What do you mean?” I ask her, not understanding.

“The buildings fell. They’re gone.”

I had a training in Philadelphia a few years before. When we completed, our training, my partner and I had a full day before our light. We decided to drive to New York because we’ve never been there before. We stopped off in Atlantic City and played a couple of games in Trump’s hotel. Weird how things change. We got to New York and parked on the edge of Manhattan. Parking and traffic were horrid. We took the subway to the edge of Manhattan. We were greeted by the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (I didn’t know, at the time, that there was more to the Center than those two buildings.

They were huge. One building must have taken up ten square blocks. I practically put a crick in my neck looking at how tall they were. They were amazing. I could not conceive of what my ex-wife was telling me. They were way too big.

“How much of them fell?”

Looking back at the destruction, I must have sounded like an idiot.

“They are gone. Completely gone.”

I hung up. He words were confirmed when I refreshed the CNN page and a picture on the home page showed that iconic image of the rickety skeleton of what was left of the World Trade Center.

 

It Was Just One

The September 11th attack was a turning point in life. It was a realization that life as we know it had changed. After the terrorist attack, I knew we were in a world of terrorism and were going to be in a war that would probably last my entire lifetime, whether we had boots on the ground in a foreign country or just needing to protect our borders. But this wasn’t the only epic event through my life that made me. I wasn’t sentient during the moon landing or the Watergate scandal. But there were some heavy things that changed the direction of my life. Let’s talk about that.

The release of Star Wars. I know it sounds kind of dumb but Star Wars made me understand the core meaning of life: good vs. evil. Things are that simple. One can either be on the good side or bad side of life. I learned that controlling fear and anger are very important and I have been fighting that till this day.

The United States hockey team winning the 1980 Olympics and the election of Ronald Reagan. Those are the moments I became a patriot. I remember the U.S. beating the heavily favored Soviets and I could not keep my feet on the ground. And it wasn’t just me. Funny: I saw the game on a ten inch, black and white television in the kitchen of our house. I don’t even know who they beat to actually win the gold (the Soviet game was the semi-final) but I do remember the countdown. I’m getting chills just thinking about it.

Ronald Reagan was such a powerful figure. All he talked about was how great our country is. He did something no one did much at the time. When he won, I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt pride about being an American.

Ronald Reagan getting shot. I was at school when we heard the Reagan was shot and it was on video. This was when I learned that our President was no more than a human being. I also learned how people can be so hateful of others simply because of their politics. See, Donald Trump wasn’t the first who was hated by democrats and the media. They hated Reagan too. A lot of people don’t realize that the same things they say about Trump, they said about Reagan.

The breakup of the Challenger Space Shuttle. To that point, the space shuttle program was just going. It wasn’t even something exciting anymore. The shuttle launched, flew around the earth a few hundred times and landed. In short, no one cared. When that ship blew up, I realized how dangerous space travel is. I also realized why we stopped going to the moon. It is way too expensive and way too dangerous. I’ve come to realize that danger comes with the territory and there are always heroes. We should honor their bravery and continue moving forward. I prayed our space program would continue and advance. It did and is.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. For me, this is sad. People today don’t realize what we went through during the Cold War. There was always the threat of nuclear war. I even had to have a debate as to why the United States should continue its nuclear build up during the Cold War. What did I learn? The power of capitalism, the vulnerabilities of socialism and communism and what “mutual assured destruction” is.

The Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles. This was my first real view of racism. At the time I didn’t know what happened. But I did learn. And I was concerned and angry because things didn’t seem to be covered correctly by the media.

The Northridge Earthquake. I had been through several earthquakes in the past. None ever scared me like that one. Heck, I was 200 miles away when it hit. But it changed my view on survival. No matter how much fun I make of my friend from Tennessee, whose scared of earthquakes, he’s right. I have ten gallons of water, dry goods, guns, a medical kit and a survival kit. The next big one is coming.

The OJ Simpson Trial. It became very clear to me that race was more important than a horrific crime. Even when reason and evidence left no doubt. I heard the verdict at Cal State Northridge while in class. The reaction was disgusting. All the black student yelled in joy and everyone else just looked in shock. We thought (and I talked with people about it) being black was more important than justice. Forget that his wife was white. Forget the huge amount of evidence. Racism is back.

The election of Barack Obama. I didn’t want him to win. But he did. He was my President and I supported him. He, needless to say, disappointed me. I knew, with him being elected twice, racism was a talking point. There was no “systemic racism,” I started thinking for myself.

Last, but not least: the Iran-Contra Scandal and The Monica Lewinsky Scandal. I simply learned that our politicians are corrupt. I trust non of them now.

There’s been a lot of stuff that’s happened during my life that made me what I am today. The September 11th attacks were huge but it was only a drop in the bucket.

I do want to point one thing out. The U.S. hockey team winning the gold medal in the Olympics and the election of Ronald Reagan really shifted me to be a patriot. Ask yourself something: What have the millennial and Gen-Z had that shifted their beliefs to being patriotic? I had some great things. Things I didn’t even mention here. That included the first launch of the space shuttle Columbia (forgot about that one).

But that topic is for another podcast.

 

Are We Forgetting?

I will never forget. Probably anyone my age or older won’t forget either.

I’m not going to harsh your mellow here but for millennial and Gen-Z folk, this is history. They only know of 9/11 based off the teachings in school (and we know how the education system works). I have tons of sound clips that came out today to prove this event was not that important. I won’t play them because I want to keep this positive.

What’s important is that we teach it. Everything about the terrorist attacks even if that means  contradicting the twenty-something teachers that are educating out kids.

Do not forget and make it your responsibility that your kids don’t forget.

 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/51650/shapiro-did-we-learn-lesson-911-ben-shapiro

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“Tear Down That Wall”

The un-American American women’s soccer team played this week and were an embarrassment. Rep. Ben Crenshaw has to prove he is a patriot and he does so in an unusual way. Sarah Sanders, my favorite press secretary of all time, resigns. And it was the anniversary of one of the greatest speeches in American history.

It’s been an awesome news  weeks.

 

I Hope They Lose

I love soccer. I played for 18 years. So, when the FIFA World Cup comes around, I am transfixed for a month. Even if it’s the women that are playing. I love women’s soccer. It’s not as fast but it’s just as exciting.

The last men’s World Cup sucked because the U.S. team did not make it. That was disappointing but I watched anyway. Now the women are playing. U.S. Women’s soccer is far more successful. They have won the World Cup four times and are the defending champions. Contrary to what one might think, I am a little wary of rooting for them. And, after the first game against Thailand, I almost hope they lose. Though not to France. I hate France.

But I digress. You be asking why I’m not cheering for the U.S. women’s team? Well, there are three reasons.

The first is this team decided to file a lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation. Their complaint says that the team is suffering from gender discrimination because they do not get paid as much as the men’s team does. This is a stupid lawsuit based on “woke” principles. And woke principles are twisted anyway.

There is a reason women’s sports, all of them, are payed less than the men’s sports. Men’s sports make more money. The men’s World Cup last year made $4 billion while the women’s World Cup made only $75 million. The women’s World Cup team, though the best in the women’s international competitions, could never compete against the men’s international team. Heck, they lost against a U15 team from Texas by the score of 5-2. There’s a reason there are no major professional sports leagues for women. They all fail because no one watches them. Yes, there is the WNBA, but that is being financed by the NBA and has been in the red since it started.

Men’s sports are just more exciting to watch. Men are stronger, faster and more aggressive. Women’s sports, not so much.

The second reason is because of woke-scold Megan Rapinoe. Apparently she hates Donald Trump so much she refused to stand for the National Anthem. Her coach told her, before the World Cup, that she needed to stand. So she made it clear that she would stand but she refused to put her hand on her chest and refused to sing the National Anthem. She was inspired by that other idiot, and now irrelevant, Colin Kaepernick. What’s really embarrassing is watching all the other countries, especially the crap-hole countries, all showing their countries respect and the players representing the best country in the world basically spit at it.

It’s disgusting. This is a woman who has played soccer her entire life and has the privilege to represent our country. She never needed a real job. Just play soccer, get paid and shut up.

I am disgusted that these young people think that one man represents a country. Donald Trump is not the United States. His presidency will be a blink of the eye in the history of the United States. When I hear the National Anthem, I think of the soldiers out there protecting us, I think of all the good we have done, I think of all the mistakes and injustices we have corrected. I think of the most powerful civilization and community that cares for those that aren’t part of our community. When a tidal waves hits Indonesia, who donated billions of dollars? When Mexico City has a huge earthquake that kills thousands, who donates billions of dollars. And I mean donates. People actually pulled money out of their wallets and give it. I’m not just talking about the government giving money. No other country does this.

This gal disgusts me. She should move to a country that she thinks is awesome and see how awesome other places really are. She definitely shouldn’t be representing the United States.

Finally, what the United States team did to Thailand on Tuesday was just tacky. I understand that goal differential is a thing, but 13 goals? Really? They needed to thoroughly embarrass a country that way? The Thai players were crying on the field. You think maybe the goal differential thing might have become a moot point after 9 goals? This is soccer, not basketball.

I’m disgusted with this team. I hope they lose. But they probably won’t.

 

A Metaphor

I love Twitter. There are always weird little wars between people. In this case, it is between a New York Times writer and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R.-Texas).

Apparently, Wajahat Ali, an opinion writer for the New York Times posted this Tweet:

Well, there’s just a small problem with this Tweet: Rep. Crenshaw is the co-sponsor for the for the bill. And, as far as being less patriotic than Ilhan Omar… well, you see what he Tweeted back at the New York Times journalist:

That’s right! He posted his response correcting the false claim and sent Ali a picture of his skull proving that he is missing his eye. Crenshaw lost his eye in Afghanistan  when an improvised explosive device went off. He was a Navy SEAL and retired as a Lieutenant Commander. Ali deleted the Tweet when he was corrected. I bet he will never doubt the  patriotism of Dan Crenshaw again.

But this story is a little more than just a humorous anecdote. It is a metaphor for how the left and right debate. The left will make things up and try to convince the world that their lies are true. But the right has truth on its side. So we can’t lose. In the old days, the right would just go along with the crap and simply deny the story. Now, the right is beginning to attack. That’s why Trump is so popular. People call him a traitor, racist, sexist, bigot, misogynist, criminal and business failure. And he has no fear blasting his critics.

We should learn from this. We should stand our ground when it comes to standing for our beliefs. Someone sits there and tells me I have no right to be against abortion, I slam them with facts and the truth. When they start getting personal like this idiot from the New York Times, I know I’ve won and I will just dismiss him like the maggot he is.

 

My Favorite Press Secretary Resigns

Sarah Sanders is leaving a Press Secretary for the President. This makes me sad. She was an awesome Press Secretary. In fact, she was my all-time favorite. She had the most difficult job in the world. Dealing with an insanely aggressive and vicious press defending her unstable boss who says and Tweets the dumbest things on a daily basis.

I loved watching her speak. She’s a mixture of grace, intelligence and viciousness. All needed to be a great Press Secretary. Here are some of her best moments from the Daily Caller:

Gonna miss you Sarah!

 

Inspiring

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan made one of the most powerful and emotional speeches in the history of the United States. It was in West Berlin in West Germany. Many of my younger listeners may not be aware that the Soviet Union (known as Russia today) occupied half of Germany. Separating the two countries was a huge wall. Anyone who tried to get over that wall and into West Germany was shot without warning. This was part of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The United States, booming economically, continued to build up our defense. We built up our nuclear arsenal, our air force and were even looking into arming ourselves in space (the plan was known as Star Wars). The Soviet Union, which was not economically stable, tried to keep.

They couldn’t. Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party was in trouble. And he knew it. Reagan decided it was time to put the nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union, and he did with this speech:

It was only a short time after this speech that the Soviet Union collapsed. The German, on both sides of the wall, grabbed hammers and started chipping away at the wall. It was truly the greatest speech of the 20th century and one of the greatest in the history of the United States. Those were really some good times. By the way, this is really one of the best reasons to go to the Reagan Library. There, by Ronald Reagan’s grave, is a huge chunk of that wall. It’s quite amazing.

 

Follow me on Twitter @RunninFewl

Listen to my podcast on iTunes, Podbean, YouTube and Podcast Addict

 

Resources:

https://nypost.com/2019/05/14/megan-rapinoe-my-national-anthem-protests-are-an-f-you-to-trump-administration/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-women-s-soccer-team-files-gender-discrimination-suit-n980981

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/rep-crenshaw-sends-x-ray-of-missing-eye-to-journalist-who-questioned-his-patriotism

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/sarah-sanders-to-resign-at-end-of-june/

https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/12/reagan-tear-down-this-wall-anniversary/

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