George W's 9/11 Interview

Disclaimer: One minute I'm blogging about Mary Kay sales, the next minute I am blogging about George W. Bush and 9/11. Welcome to my blog! :) I obviously blog about whatever the heck I wanna blog about. :) 

This morning, I'm at home watching the George W. Bush 9/11 interview on National Geographic (which apparently I will be watching a lot more of now, particularly because of my new-found fascination with the Amish population).

So, about this 9/11 interview...

Think what you want about our past President or judge his actions made during that time, if you want, and if you feel like you're in a position to judge anyone. But remember this: he is just a man, just one person, in the same state of shock, and terror, and more overwhelmed than any of us thought we were, and had some super major decisions to make. I don't think any of us would be prepared for a situation like that. And I'm glad I wasn't the one that had to deal with all that stress, fear, and turmoil.

Here's some great George W. Bush quotes from this interview that I felt led to share :::

"My first reaction was, "Whodahell would do that to "Amurica""?"

Now, this isn't as serious as the following quotes, but I thought this was appropriate. This just shows that he is human. He is man. And he is Texan. I love George Bush's accent, and it's only appropriate that SNL makes fun of it, because I mean dang, it's country as heck! Okay... back to some seriousness...

In regards to him being informed of the terrorist attacks while he was in front of a small group of elementary-school children:
I think it's so judgmental for people to comment on his reactions in the classroom [in front of the CHILDREN] after he heard the news. I'm glad he specified why he did what he did though [for those of who like to judge]. He said he knew a lot of people were going to be watching his reactions to these crises. He said he made the decision not to jump up immediately because did not want to rattle the kids. He said he had a moment of clarity in the classroom with those children, that his job was to protect. And I guess in that moment, he thought [and I think a lot of us agree] that it was in those children's best interests for him to keep his cool. Y'all know he wanted to get up, start screaming, panic, and cuss up a storm. And we're going to judge him for sitting there for a few more moments in an attempt to not freak a bunch of elementary school-aged children out???

I didn't know that the first time he addressed the country, it was in the room full of children, parents, and teachers. They thought he was going to compliment them on their school's reading program, but instead were informed that the country had been attacked. What an experience! How shocking! It makes me want to Google that video & see the reactions from those behind him. That blows my mind. Can you imagine?

"The most powerless I felt was when I watched people jumping to their death on TV

and there was nothing I could do about it.

I said, "Let's go to Washington." I wanted to be in Washington DC as the Commander in Chief at a time of war. And I needed to be in the Capitol making the decisions necessary to protect the home land and to recover from the initial attacks. .... And [the head of the Secret Service] said, "You're not going back to Washington." I said, "What dahell you talkin' bout, man? I'm the President of the United States. We're going back. I need to be there."

"We didn't know if there had been any other commercial airlines that had been hijacked. So the first decision I made, on Air Force One, was to give our Air Force orders to shoot down any commercial aircraft that did not respond to our orders to land. It would have been awfully difficult for an Air Force pilot to shoot down a commercial airliner full of our citizens, and yet, that was a decision I made because I thought it was the best way to protect our country at that point in time." 

I feel like I'm semi-educated on the events of 9/11 and I did not know that. What a decision to make! And he commented on the guilt he felt when he learned that Flight 93 had crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania, thinking that it was due to those orders he had made until he learned that it was also a terrorist attack. Seriously, this man had so much to deal with this day. He was in charge of our country and it was under attack! Can you imagine the pressure?? The feelings of responsibility?? I can't.

"This is what war looks like in the 21st century."

"You never know what it's like to be a war-time President until the moment occurs. I never campaigned on 'Please elect me, I'll be the kind of war-time chief you'll be proud of. The war came upon us unexpectantly. And at that point in time you just deal with the issues. And there's certain gravity, of course, that comes when you start making decisions that involve life. It wasn't one of these moments when you can weigh the consequences or think about the politics. You decide. And I made the decisions as best I could in the fog of war. But i was determined, determined to protect the country, and determined to find out who did it and go get 'em." 

I'm also glad he said that. I never realized until he said that that no, presidential candidates don't focus on their crisis intervention plans, or their history of emergency-handling when campaigning to be President. They focus on money, and their stance on abortion, and what they want to do with welfare, and unemployment. They're all realistic in that sense. I bet none of them know what they'd do when they are put in a position such as this. So they skirt the issue, and hope that if the win, they don't have to find out. And if you are put in a position like this, like George Bush was, then you just do what you've gotta do, and hope it's a good decision.

"One of my concerns, like the concerns of other husbands and/or wives, was, "Was my spouse okay?" Was Laura okay? And my second concern was, "Are our girls okay?" It took a while to find her. She was in a secure location. And it was awesome to hear her comforting voice, and she had talked to the girls, and said they were okay, so, that was a relief for me." 

Aww! This [again] just goes to show you that he's human. He's a husband and a father. He's worried and afraid, and just wants his family to be okay too. The comfort of a spouse really is what we probably all want in a time of crisis. And he's no exception.

"It was in this moment that I made the decision that I'm going back to Washington over the objections of just about everybody else. I'd had it. I said, "I need to get home." A lot had developed, and it was important to wrap the day up with a Presidential speech assuring people that the government was functioning and responding, and that we would take the appropriate actions necessary to protect our country. And I damn sure wasn't gonna give it from a bunker in Nebraska. I wanted to give it from the Oval Office. I didn't want the enemy to have the psychological victory of a President speaking from a bunker in the heartland of our country, and not speaking from the Capitol that had been attacked. So I told the head of the Secret Service, "I'm coming home," and they prepared the flight and off we went. 

"There were firefighters, police men and women, and rescue workers lining the way. I decided I was going to shake every hand."

“Eventually, September 11 will be a day on the calendar; it’ll be like Pearl Harbor Day. For those of us who lived through it, it’ll be a day that we’ll never forget.”

This really was a great interview. It was completely apolitical so no matter what side of the fence you stand on, if you're an American, I'm sure you'll appreciate hearing it.

Did you see it?

What did you think about it? 

Tell me. :) 

Let Us Not Forget September 11th, 2001

Today is September 11th, 2011. I think we all know what happened ten years ago on this day. The sad thing is, is that today's youth might not know exactly what happened ten years ago today. They may hear words and terms such as: September 11th, the war on terror, terrorism, World Trade Centers, Ground Zero, etc. but not really have a clue as to what it all means. I really pray that today's parents and educators take time to stop the busyness, stop the cramming for End of Grade tests, and take the time this event deserves to be respected, remembered, and honored. We need to not forget about the victims that lost their lives that day, the family members and loved ones who lost someone they cared for, the children without parents, the heroes of that day, and the volunteers who have sacrificed their future health to help those in desperate need.

I can tell you exactly what I was doing {sitting in 1st period}, what classroom I was in {9th grade English}, what I was feeling {fear, worry, confusion}, and what I thought {World War III is going to start}. Seriously, that's what I thought. Our teachers and administrators thought it would be best to "help us not panic," or "not cause chaos" or whatever they thought, and turned the TVs off so we couldn't see anymore news. We all saw newscasts of what had just happened, and then had to go to school the remainder of the day not having a clue what in the world the world was coming to! I'm not gonna lie, that was a super scary experience for us adolescents and for the record: I don't think it was the best idea ever. Back then I had nightmares anyways, nightmares about the world ending and things of the sort. WWIII was one of my biggest fears. So, you can imagine my torment throughout the day, as I waited to turn on the TV when I got home to see any updates. Watching bombings on Baghdad and worrying how they would retaliate seriously filled my days. It was horrible.

But not nearly as horrible as the experiences of the actual bystanders, the experiences of the people not being able to get ahold of their loved ones in NYC, or be able to get on a flight back home to their families. I can not even begin to imagine what that felt like. No experience in my life would ever be able to hold a candle to that amount of fear, worry, and torment those victims endured.

Thank you Facebook for now showing me past Facebook statuses "on this day" in the past two years. It reminded me of this fabulous quote/reminder:

"Freedom isn't free. Somebody paid."

Let us not forget! 

Disrespecting September 11th

So, yesterday I did a co-worker a favor & subbed for a school worker. I was basically supposed to monitor this client who is on the autism spectrum and prompt him when he becomes distracted. Well, in his last class of the day, his English teacher wanted to show the class some videos of 9/11 that included visuals, audio recordings, timelines, etc. It was pretty educational to those who cared to listen because these "kids" were 4-6 years old on September 11, 2011.

Now, onto the part that INFURIATED me...

While watching the video(s), there were two class clowns complete A-holes who thought it would be cool or funny or whatever the heck their peanut brains thought to snicker, laugh, and make dumb comments. A conversation between one of them and the teacher went a little something like this:

Idiot Boy: "They should have never got their license."

Teacher: "Who?"

Idiot Boy: "The people driving the planes. They can't drive!"

Teacher: "They FLY the planes, and yes they could fly planes, they had their PILOT'S license."

Idiot Boy: "Well obviously they couldn't fly the planes. They should have never gotten their license. This was all their fault."

You see where I'm going here? COMPLETE idiot. Idiot's not even the word.

So they kept laughing, making fun of the videos, laughing out loud at the audio tapes of victims right before they died on the flights they were on, etc. ...SERIOUSLY.

So, there was a Deaf and Hard of Hearing interpreter in the room. She was obviously getting visibly upset and finally said, "WHY are you laughing? This is nothing to laugh about! I lost my son to a suicide bomber in Afghanistan because of this, and you are laughing!" She then preceded to remove herself from the classroom.

While she was gone, the teacher {who is still not on my favorite persons list} half-serious asked the student(s) why they were laughing and "informed them" that they had hurt her feelings. Uh, duh! The lead idiot then talked about how he shouldn't have to apologize to her, because it wasn't his fault that she was crying and that the videos were obviously humorous and wanted to know why they had to watch them.

I am being serious! This kid was serious!

That's when I politely interjected, saying, "Your teacher is trying to educate you on the events of that day because it's obvious you have no idea what happened."

At this time, I went with my student to this special break students could go on, so I was out of the room for most of the rest of the presentation. When we returned, the two A-holes were sitting in the hallway, together, laughing and cutting up.

"So, I guess you got kicked out of class."
"Yeah, she kicked us out."
"GOOD" was my response.

We caught the last five minutes of the presentation, while we had to keep the door open to "keep an eye on" the two in the hallway, whom we could still hear. Um, I don't know but about being an actual teacher, but I can guarantee you one thing- if those students were in MY classroom they sure would not be rewarded for completely offending everyone in the room.

I will give the teacher a little credit. When the idiots were instructed back into the classroom, she told them that if they said one more thing or laughed one more time that they were going to have to write down the names of every single victim of 9/11. I thought that was a great idea.

Now, I won't get really into the rest of my thoughts on the rest of what happened, but let's just say that this kid is a SUPER Obama fan. He can't tell you that you FLY instead of DRIVE a plane, and believes that 9/11 is at the fault of the pilots who lost their lives,  but he can tell you that Obama is the best President ever.
He can't tell you what Obama believes in, has attempted to do or succeeded in doing during his Presidency, or whether he's a Republican or a Democrat, but he can tell you that he's the best President ever. I'm sure he thought of that idea all on his own too.

Okay, {morals of the story is} parents of this generation:

• First of all, PLEASE for all of our sakes, educate your child on the events of September 11th because we are still witnessing the ramifications of this event. Yes, it happened 10 years ago, but it's still very relevant.
• Next, it would be nice to teach these kids some R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Seriously, this child was obviously not raised to know what the word even means. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not a contributing, upstanding citizen of our society one day. He needed the absolute crap beat out of him.
• If you want to sway your children on who which political member to support, please please please give them at least one political reason to support them and not because of the color of their skin. If you don't, they'll just look like a complete ignorant idiot.

Can you believe I even had to witness this crap?! What a SHAME!

9/11: 102 Minutes That Changed The World

So, today, of course, you've heard about how it's 9/11 and we should "remember." My question is, "How could anyone forget?" Seriously? How would one forget about such a horrific day?

After my company left & I was settling down for the night, I saw that the History Channel was playing an encore of "102 Minutes That Changed The World."  All I did was devote a literal minute to the show and already I was pausing my TiVo, changing into my pajamas, and settling on my couch with a blanket and my dog.

First of all, there are so many thoughts running through my head as I watched this. Literally, for the first half hour my mouth didn't close and my hand was somewhere near my face in shock and awe. I just couldn't believe it. You hear all these stories from that day and you just don't get the idea unless you see it on someone's amateur homevideo camera.

Sidenote: I will say, some of these people videoing are completely idiotic. But, without their thoughtless attempts, we wouldn't have raw video documentation of the horror that was NYC on September 11, 2001. So, thanks guys...

Now, another thought I had when watching this was, I am assuming no one thought that the towers would crumble. It's been a good hour into the attacks and people are still hanging out a couple blocks from the place. I guess I wouldn't have a clue what to do and would be in complete shock, so, I can't really blame them, but, I guess life experience {through hearing these stories and watching these videos} teach me that buildings DO crumble and we should always evacuate! NEVER hang out out of curiosity! And put the video camera DOWN!

I see all these videos of fire fighters and police officers and EMTs and the countless others offering their services. They are at ground zero, voluntarily! Making sure everyone gets out okay, making sure the streets are evacuated. They are going into the buildings!!

That's another thing... you hear people saying things like, "There's no way they can put that fire out." and "There's no way they are going to be able to help those people." And honestly, I agreed with those people. As hopeless as that sounds, realistically, you'd have to take the stairs, up at least 70ish floors, and then IF you see someone to help, you have to help them, and there's tons of people, and you have to get them all back down 70+ flights of stairs and, yeah, I wonder if they even considered the thought the buildings would collapse. Man, what heroism!

I see the desperation in the victims in the buildings, hanging out of windows flying white "flags" or just waving their arms in the attempt that someone will see them wayyyy up there, and actually be able to help! Lord, those people wanted to live!

You also saw those people who committed suicide by jumping out of their windows. They made a choice at that time, believing there was no hope. God bless their souls.

I heard 911 calls of people in the buildings, flames everywhere, smoke surrounding them. Lord, I know those 911 operators had no idea what to do. They did their job- they told people the best advice they could in the situation. Unfortunately, that advice was things such as "stay calm" and "hang tight" and "don't go anywhere" and "sir, I can't tell you what to do, that's your choice" and "if you feel like you should break a window, then that's your choice." MAN! Hang tight?? Stay there?? Stay calm?? Those 911 operators were clueless, reading off a script! What do you say to someone who you believe is in a world of danger, about to die? Do you worry about your job? Do you pray with them? Do you quit answering the phone because you know you can't help anyone personally? I mean really, I don't know what I would have done.

I watch as people realize the  building is about to collapse, or as it is collapsing, and they start to run. My first thought was, "what about everyone who couldn't run?" I mean, the people who did run probably didn't run out of harm's way, but, this is obviously why they attempted to evacuate the parameter beforehand.

Man, this show is tearing my nerves up. {I actually paused it to start blogging, then am blogging while the last hour is playing, just so you aren't confused in my past & present tenses.}

Someone actually said, "yeah, I heard they were doing this {running airplanes into buildings} every half hour" so, that's probably a good reason as to why people thought they need to evacuate their buildings and go outside, where they were even more unsafe. I just keep going back to, "but they had no idea....." I mean really, you don't have drills for things like this. One would never think something of this magnitude would happen. It's just unbelievable.

Everything looks so surreal. It's like at some points in time, it looks like a scene from a movie, like The Book of Eli or something post-apocalyptic. Not a soul is around, except that darn cameraman.

"I think we should go to war, like now," a girl said. Then some guy said, "I think we should just go to all the Arab countries and blow them all up." Man oh man....this is where it all began. More war, more hatred, stereotyping, discrimination, and more importantly, more lives lost.

My next thought is, "What about the pentagon? What about the plane that crashed into the field?" Are they not going to touch on that? Is there no footage from those places?" NYC was such a major centerpoint of the terrorist attacks that day, but it was not the only place innocent victims lost their lives.

Man, watching that really just made me realize how truly blessed I am to be ALIVE and SAFE!

God bless the souls of the lives lost on September 11th, 2001.

I heard the most awesome quote today in remembrance of 9/11:

"Freedom isn't free, somebody paid."