Bloodthirsty Liberal

It’s an opportunity.

I guess Zsa-Zsa, or whatever his name is, did more than just lie to the FBI:

An Afghan immigrant plotted for more than a year to detonate homemade bombs in the United States, had recently bought bomb-making supplies from beauty supply stores and was looking for “urgent” help in the past two weeks to make explosives, an indictment charged Thursday.

Najibullah Zazi — a 24-year-old airport shuttle driver who authorities said received explosives and weapons training from al-Qaida during a trip to Pakistan last year — was charged in New York with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

…

Counterterrorism agents have said they feared Zazi and others might have been planning to detonate homemade bombs on New York City commuter trains.

…

The document says that on Sept. 6 and 7, Zazi tried to communicate with another individual “seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives.”

“Each communication,” the papers say, was “more urgent than the last.”

On those days, Zazi rented a suite at a hotel in his hometown of Aurora, Colo., authorities charge. The room had a kitchen, and subsequent FBI testing for explosives and residue in the suite found the presence of residue in the vent above the stove.

In July and August, Zazi bought unusually large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and acetone — a solvent commonly found in nail polish remover — from beauty supply stores in the Denver metropolitan area, the document says. He searched the Internet for home improvement stores in Queens before driving a rental car for a two-day trip to the city, the document says.

I bet the wholesale suppliers of the beauty products tipped off the Feds. A bearded Afghani might look a little suspicious purchasing that much hair dye and nail polish.

Steve Emerson picks up the narrative:

Arrest documents reveal that around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Zazi drove from Denver to New York City in a rental car and spent the night in Flushing, Queens. A search of the rental car turned up a laptop containing a photographic image of handwritten notes on bomb making. According to court documents, Zazi falsely asserted that he had not written the notes and may have unintentionally downloaded the document as part of some religious materials he had downloaded earlier. Agents also found batteries and other items that could be used to make explosives with Zazi’s fingerprints in raids on apartments he visited in New York. Backpacks and cell phones were other items that were seized. According to news reports a New York area U-Haul store turned away a group of Afghan men who tried to rent a 26-foot truck there.

Law enforcement officials suspect that Zazi and others may have been plotting to detonate backpack bombs via cell phones on New York City trains in attacks reminiscent of the London subway bombings in 2005 and the Madrid rail attacks in 2004. Immigration records indicate that Zazi visited Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) in August 2008, where Al Qaeda operates training camps.

Man, this was a very close shave (pardon the pun).

Emerson also notes that the FBI thought they had an informant in the imam who actually tipped off Zazi instead—forcing the FBI to rush the arrest before they had completed their investigation.

I’d like President Obama to talk about these kind of Muslims next Ramadan.

You’d hardly recognize him if you listened only to NPR:

The president’s green jobs czar, Van Jones, quit his post in the face of criticism from conservatives about statements he made before his appointment. Jones resigned, saying the controversy following him was distracting people from the real issues. Host Jeff Young asks Joe Romm, a political analyst at the Center for American Progress what his departure means.

Statements. Words, just words. And words that only a conservative would find objectionable. Let’s learn more about the martyr Van Jones, on the fast track toward beatification in the Church of the Perpetually Soft-Headed.

Not long after President Barack Obama took office he excited environmental activists by making Van Jones a White House special advisor on green jobs. An African American trained as a lawyer at Yale, Mr. Jones built an agency in the Oakland, California area that took off with a campaign for green jobs.

CURWOOD: He’s a best selling author and, as Living on Earth listeners heard last year, an electrifying speaker.

JONES: The people who said we could have a financial strategy based on borrow and spend and bubble and bailout, they’ve had their turn. They’ve been totally discredited. It’s our turn now. Green jobs now! Green jobs now!

Electrifying. Ha, I get it. But if chanting a lame slogan makes one electrifying, watch me unleash my inner Consolidated Edison: Commies out of government! Commies out of government!

What, you didn’t know? You listen to NPR and you didn’t know he was an avowed communist?

CURWOOD: But as soon as Van Jones was on the job he was under attack from conservative commentators like Fox News host Glen Beck.

BECK: Van Jones, Van Jones, he’s our green jobs czar. What does that tell you? It says that the president has an agenda that is radical, revolutionary and in some cases Marxist.

YOUNG: The pundits dug into his past and found Jones once used rude anatomical slang to describe some Republicans.

Right. You have to watch Fox and listen to Rush (among many others) to learn anything—anything—of value. NPR presented the accusation, but left it hanging to twist slowly in the wind. Van Jones is not shy about his Marxist background, and is articulate and passionate about why he felt, or feels, that way. Why should NPR be?

And while the “a-hole” comment was obnoxious, nobody demanded he resign for it. (Note to NPR: the comment was hardly in his “past”. He said it in February, one month before being appointed.)

It was those other comments that troubled people and got his ass canned faster than you can say “Let’s roll.”

More damaging, he long ago signed a petition involving the families of victims of 9/11. Among other things it claimed the Bush White House had some prior knowledge of the attacks. Van Jones says he never saw that petition’s full text and not does agree with it.

Oh, come, NPR. You can do better than that.

Van Jones did:

“The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City,” said Van Jones, director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, who also warned against forthcoming violence by the Bush Administration. “The US cannot bomb its way out of this one. Safety at home requires justice abroad.”

…

“Everyone should be as wise as these inner-city youth here today,” Van Jones concluded. “We all have more in common with the working people of the earth than we do with George Bush or Colin Powell.”

Almost everyone who died on 9/11 was working at the time. Yet this was how Jones saw fit to honor them barely one day after they died in the worst terrorist attack in US history.

That’s why he was fired, NPR. Not because he called Republicans “rude anatomical slang”, not because he signed a petition he claimed never to have read (though we’re getting closer to the truth), but because he held views that were offensive to the memories of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day. He’s welcome to his opinion—this is America, after all—he’s just not welcome to represent the American people in government—snuck in via the czar route without any vetting—when he holds them in such contempt. That is the “truth” of 9/11.

Oh, and what day did NPR choose to share this story with us?

Air Date: September 11, 2009

These remembrances were prompted by blogger Dale Roe, to pay tribute to the nearly 3,000 innocent people who were murdered by terrorists eight years ago today. I volunteered to write one, then saw that many more needed to be covered, and asked for seven more, for a total of eight—one for each year.

It wasn’t easy. These people weren’t special—or, rather, they all were. The eight, my eight, deserved their posthumous fifteen minutes of fame, and I had to see they got them.

I called these portraits “remembrances” earlier, but truthfully there’s nothing for me to remember: I didn’t know them; some I could barely relate to. But I feel came to know all of them. Through small details in their life stories, through remembrances of loved ones, through the depth and breadth of the influence they had on people they barely knew (or, like me, didn’t know at all). It would be unseemly to declare a favorite, but I can’t help smiling warmly at the thought of my first portrait, Curt (the flirt) Noel: wassup, yo!

Dale assigned a cross section of the extraordinary population of 9/11: WTC, Pentagon, UA, AA, black, white, male, female, straight, gay, old, young. They were Americans all.

I present them in the order I wrote them. I have no expectations for how these will be received, except for one. I hope the love with which these people were held by those who knew them comes through. That’s all I want, and I want it for them. It’s all any of us could really want.

Curtis Terrence Noel didn’t get up for work on the morning of September 11, 2001 thinking he wouldn’t live to see the morning coffee break.

None of the victims in the World Trade Center (or the Pentagon, or the UA and AA flights did).

He just went to work.

Curtis was a switch operations technician for General Telecom, on the 83rd floor of the North Tower (the first to be hit, at 8:46 am). Through a cruel twist of fate, his office, though ten floors below the impact, was sealed off from any means of escape. All 13 employees of the company died in the collapse of the tower (they used a pager to communicate with the outside world until the end). Curtis’ body was never recovered.

Only 22, he left his mark on the world. Kisha remembered:

I miss you Curtis and they way you always made me smile. I will never ever forget you!

And again:

Curtis always made me laugh with his sparkling personality and his sense of humor. I find myself thinking of him quite often, driving his car down Croes Avenue in the Bronx with the tinted windows cracked enough so all you could see was his big eyes. My cousin Lisa and I would laugh as he pulled over to talk to us with his famous “Wassup Yo!”

I will always love and remember you Curt Flirt!

“Kizzy” recalled:

Curt was a comedian, always cracking jokes and smiling. He loved his family, his friends and i’ll always remember him pulling up in his Money Green Acura. Keep the angels laughing in Heaven, I guess god needed to smile more, so he called Curt home.

He was Curt to his friends, not Curtis Terrence. Only mass murderers and their victims are referred to by their full names. Let’s not do that to him.

And what a friend he was:

Mr. Noel, 22, could never bulk up. He would go to the gym, or eat a lot, but he was always skinny. So he would tell his husky friend Garvin Richardson, “You’re my bodyguard.” He had got Mr. Richardson a job at another office of General Telecom, but they rode most of the way from the Bronx to work together.

The last time he told Mr. Richardson about bodyguard duty was the morning of Sept. 11, when they arranged to go to the bank at lunchtime. They shook hands when Mr. Richardson got off at the Brooklyn Bridge stop on the No. 4 train.

Mr. Noel and his girlfriend, Aisha Harris, were thinking of getting married. She worked at General Telecom, and she died that day, too.

As painful and invasive as it may feel (at least to me), the last word should go to his mom:

Theresa Noel shows a photograph of her 22-year-old son, Curtis Noel, who was killed in Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The memory of losing her youngest son in the Sept. 11 terror attacks are still too fresh for Theresa Noel.

“I’ve never been to the World Trade Center site,” Noel, 55, of Bronx River, said Tuesday. “I can’t face that hole.”

…

For Noel, who always attends the Bronx memorial services, it’s an attempt to make sense of her loss of her 22-year-old son, whose body was never found.

“I have no closure yet,” she said. “If they build a memorial at the site, like a fountain or something, then maybe I can go. Until then, I can’t face it.”

Curt the Flirt Noel should have been 30 this year. Not would have, should have. He should have married Alisha, should have had kids.

Thousands of stories should have come out differently. We need to remember that as surely as we need to remember how they did come out.

“People looked at us and it was always Kenny and Patty. I hope my children will have that, and I hope whoever didn’t have that will have it in the future, because life is empty without it.”

So remembers the wife of a New York City firefighter, one of 346 who died in service to their city, their country, their neighbors.

He left behind four children—Kimberly, Erin, Danny and Kenny—who are left with the memories of their selfless and heroic father. Memories which their community will never let them forget:

September 09, 2009

To Danny and family,

We’re sorry we never had the privilege to meet such a courageous man as your father. We’re blessed to know that a man like your father walked among us in this world. We’re so proud of the strength that you continue to have each day. We just want to let you know that we recognize that your father is a true hero and even though we never met him personally we admire his bravery and selflessness. We’re always going to be here for you and we’ll keep your father in our hearts.

Winnie & Vanie
Queens, New York

September 07, 2009

I wish I could have met you but you raised a wonderful family and they miss you very much. Watch over them and tell my grandfather i said hi. I will meet you one day!

connie lafauce
maspeth, New York

They will remember:

MY DAD
Erin Phelan, age 14 (in 2002), Freshman, St. Francis Prep

I like the sky.
It is blue.
It reminds me of my father
who is way up high in the sky.
So high he is above the other souls
because he is such a great man
too great for Heaven.

He played soccer? He put his life on the line in the Persian Gulf and on the USS George Washington and he played soccer? Wow, I guess anyone can be a hero.

Bill Donovan certainly was a hero: to the country he served; to his family; and, judging by the number of tributes in his on-line guestbook, to friends, to acquaintances—even total strangers.

Donovan left behind a wife and three children. The on-line notes from his daughter Kelsey are too personal, too painful to be included here (even if they are discoverable on line), but one from Kelsey’s best friend (one step removed from the pain) will give you an idea of what kind of husband and father he was:

Hi, I have never met you, but im your daughter, Kelsey Donovan’s best friend! My name is lauren! I would have LOVED to meet you because KELSEY TALKS ABOUT YOU SO MUCH!! I just want to cry sometimes when she tells me.. I wish you were here because i no KELSEY would ove that! Oh my gosh your family is putting on this icredible addition!! IT IS AMAZING!! You would be proud of your wife and three children!! Well i hope you get this message!! I bet you were an amazing father!! Because i no that KLESEY said that to me one time!! Kelsey if you ever read this.. Just no that im hear for you and that i love you soo much!! I will never forget about you Mr. Donovan.. You will always be in my prayers!!

Kelsey is her father’s daughter:

One blistering hot day last summer, Kelsey Donovan, a rising sixth-grader at Waynewood Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., set out for the Mount Vernon Trail bike path equipped with some Gatorade and a good cause. Her goal was to raise money for the Pentagon Memorial for the victims of Sept. 11, one of whom was her father, Navy Cmdr. Bill Donovan. Kelsey had a big day — she took in about $450 from Gatorade sales. And at Christmas she collected $1,000 from a bake sale she organized at school. Cmdr. Donovan would be very proud.

But back to soccer. Donovan’s Pentagon colleague Colonel Greg Smith noted on this date three years ago:

Commander Donovan and I played recreational lunch-time soccer at the Pentagon. I retired a few years back from the Army. The Pentagon Soccer Club named its Cup in your honor… The Donovan Cup. The Club was on on the soccer field in Arlington today and honored your memory with a moment and the display of a large US flag and then played its normal lunchtime game. Fitting.

Fitting indeed. The world has revolved almost 3,000 times since the morning of 9/11/01—almost one day for every victim—but the memory of Commander William Howard Donovan Jr.—Bill, Dad—has only brightened.

I REMEMBER TAMARA AS A SWEET LITTLE GIRL FULL OF LIFE AND SPIRIT, SHE WAS IN MY DAUGHTER JAMIES’ CLASS FROM THE 1ST GRADE THROUGH THE 7TH, UNTIL WE MOVED. IT SADDENS ME SO TO KNOW THAT SUCH A LOVELY CHILD WAS TAKEN SO SUDDENLY. THE WORLD BECAME A LITTLE DIMMER WITHOUT HER GLOWING SMILE.

Sgt. Tamara Thurman she worked as an assistant in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel at the Pentagon. After she enlisted out of high school, Tamara served in Bosnia, Korea, and Germany, earning several medals and commendations along the way.

She was 25 when she died. Too young. Too young to have done what she intended to do with her life. Too young to have made the mark she was intended to make.

But she made her mark anyway:

My sister, my friend. I miss you so much. Our sister bond was like no other. Not a day goes by that I dont think about you. I sit and think about when we were little kids and how I always managed to get us in trouble, but you would always take the wrap for it. I know now why.. You were my angel here on earth, now you are my angel in Heaven. Tami you were my best friend, no one can ever take your place. I will keep your memory alive through me always…Love your sis, Bea

You were thought of today as you always are…..In my own little way this is like talking to you (smile). I miss you…….Time has gone by but the memories still remain. An old friend reminded me of our MANY laughters……It made me smile….Just wanted you to know that even til this day, you will ALWAYS be my sister, my friend, my babies God mother, and my strength. I asked God to kiss you for me…..I love you!! Stacey

Sept 11,2008 i made the journey to the Pentagon Memorial Service as I have done faithfully every year since that day..This year I visited your memorial bench in the park that has opened.. It was breathtaking and beautiful..I took pictures and also talked to a co-worker of yours. She told me that she would never forget you..your smile..humble..and how sweet you were..People you came in contact with will always remember you..Our brother has joined the Army in your footsteps…My sister, my friend…No one will ever know the bond that we shared…not only as a sister, but as my best friend..that day i lost someone who could never be replaced…But I feel you and I know your by my side… always..I love you

Your Sister, Bea

Memories are persistent things. The memory of Tamara Thurman is testament to the line from the Beatles’ song:

“And, in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.”

Bea Woolen of Atlanta, Georgia, called the memorial, “beautiful and breathtaking.” “I hope everyone else will think it’s beautiful too,” she said. Woolen’s sister, Sgt. Tamara Thurman, U.S. Army, worked at the Pentagon.

So many people mentioned Tamara’s smile. Not hard to understand why.

Mourners outside the First Congregational Church in Georgetown, Mass. at a memorial service for Carol Flyzik, who died Sept. 11.

Carol Flyzik touched many lives, but perhaps none as much as that of her step-daughter, Nancy Walsh:

Ms. Walsh’s mother, Nancy, brought Carol Flyzik home 13 years ago and introduced her as her girlfriend to Kristin and her two brothers.

…

”It’s hard when your parents bring a new person home,” Ms. Walsh said. ”The fact that she was a woman made it a little harder, but I guess I felt the same way when my dad married another woman.”

The family of five lived in Plaistow, N.H., and Ms. Flyzik proved to be a patient woman. She listened to the children. She made the holidays warmer. Through the years their relationship changed from ”Stay out of my life” to ”I love you.”

Last year was the first time that Ms. Walsh bought Ms. Flyzik a Christmas present of her own: two tickets to a Celtics game. ”We had so much fun,” she recalled. ”It was quality time that we never had together before.”

She considered the empty chair, where her stepmom used to sit and watch television. ”I guess you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

Nancy Walsh lived not only the nightmare of losing her partner, but of being denied the recognition due the next of kin:

[E]ven though Nancy and Carol had been together for 12 years, the airline wouldn’t talk to Nancy. They would only give information to family members, they said, and since she and Carol weren’t married, Nancy wasn’t family.

At 6 o’clock that night, more than nine hours after Nancy first flipped on the television, Carol’s sister called the airline and confirmed that Carol was on Flight 11.

Nancy and Carol, who were raising their three children in the small New Hampshire town of Plainstow, had designated each other as domestic partners at their jobs and named each other as beneficiaries on insurance policies and retirement accounts. But Carol hadn’t left a will. As far as New Hampshire was concerned, Nancy and Carol were legal strangers.

GLAD applied for and won for Nancy compensation from the federal September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, and also helped Nancy as she sought Carol’s death certificate, and dealt with probate issues. By helping her stand up for her rights and her relationship with Carol, GLAD helped Nancy reaffirm the life they shared together.

Nancy Walsh received an American flag and an urn of ashes from ground zero from American Red Cross representatives.

But it is her life that will be remembered by those who knew her. So many people mentioned her sympathy and affection for children.

Let us borrow one remembrance:

Where do you begin. Is it the time, as a child, she took me to the drive-in in the convertable, and I got to sit on the top of the seat over looking the windshield. Is it the sleepovers, trips to the beach, going with her when she was running aherns, or stopping by a friends house. Just to name a few. She was a very big part of my childhood. Knowing how speical she was to me as a child, I know my two boys would have loved her just as I did growing up. It would have been funny to see what their knick names would have been. As for me its was Booger. As I have become older I realize just how special Carol is and how much I will miss her. As I wrote this, my emotions ran wild, and I found it very difficult to bring myself to this point. Again a perfect example as to how much Carol has touched my life. Rest asure you will be in my heart and thoughts forever.

As a teacher, Hilda E. Taylor shaped many lives:

Hilda E. Taylor, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, was a veteran teacher at Leckie Elementary School in Southwest Washington. She taught sixth grade and was on her way to California on a National Geographic field trip when the plane slammed into the Pentagon.

Taylor, who was born in Sierra Leone, lived with a grandson and two adult sons.

…

Taylor came to the United States many years ago in search of a better life for herself and her children.

Taylor’s sons said their mother, a seasoned traveler and an accomplished cook, savored life. She received a master’s degree from the University of the District of Columbia. She loved the classroom, her students and the thought that she was helping to develop young minds.

Sounds like she did:

TO THOSE WHO DID NOT KNOW MS.HILDA TAYLOR U MISSED OUT ON AN ANGEL.I ATTENDED LECKIE FOR 7 YEARS(79-86) K-6 MS.TAYLOR WAS MY SIXTH GRADE TEACHER AND SHE BELIEVED IN ME WHEN I DIDNT BELIEVE IN MYSELF.I NEVER FORGOT THAT AND EVERYTIME I WD FLY HOME TO D.C I MADE IT MY BUSINESS TO ALWAYS GO TO THE SCHOOL TO VISIT HER.IT STILLS BREAKS MY HEART TO THIS DAY AND I PRAY FOR HER FAMILY.SHE WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN!

Ms. Taylor’s influence persisted, even after she passed:

Late teacher Hilda E. Taylor’s students gather after dinner for a moonlight hike through the forests of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

They were afraid to drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, but the vertigo and the panoramic view were what their teacher wanted them to experience.

They were afraid of the woods after dark, but their teacher wanted them to know what it was like to hike, without streetlights, without flashlights, using only their night vision and hearing.

They were afraid of baby striped bass, and traps for hairy crabs near the pier, and the weird, symphonic sound of crickets, but all of that — the new, the strange and the different — was exactly what Hilda E. Taylor wanted them to confront.

But Taylor, 62, was not there to reassure them. She and one of her sixth-graders, Bernard Brown, were heading to California on Sept. 11 to hike and kayak and study oceanic life when their hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon. Taylor, of Forestville, was doing for 11-year-old Bernard what she tried to do for all of her students: give them the world.

So at 11:15 a.m. Monday, in a grove of naked trees, next to a goat named Doby and a black sheep named Wilbur, 39 sixth-grade students from M.V. Leckie Elementary School in Southwest Washington tumbled off two chartered buses and into the woods of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. They had their doubts about three days of nature.

“It smells like cow manure and looks like ‘Blair Witch 2,’ ” pronounced Kaleema Wages.

That’s the nature of the world, isn’t it? Ms. Taylor was very wise.

She touched colleagues as well:

I was blessed to work with you on several occasions through our shared interests in education and geography. I will always remember your sense of humor often directed at me. Save a hula dance for me.

What better way to remember her than hula dancing to the great beyond?

Aloha oe, Hilda.

Mark Bavis was a local hockey legend.

Oh, I’m sorry, you’re not from Boston, are you? Let me translate: that’s like saying he was a high school football star in Texas, or a basketball phenom in Indiana.

That’s who Mark Bavis was around here.

By the time he joined his high school hockey team at Catholic Memorial, it was obvious to many that he was destined for a bright hockey career. His twin brother, Mike, also prospered at Catholic Memorial and together they helped CM win three state championships in the late 1980s. During his senior year, Mark was named a Boston Globe and Boston Herald All-Sholastic. It was the crowning achievement for a school boy hockey star.

In his four seasons with the Boston University hockey team, Mark led the Terriers to the NCAA Tournament every year, reaching the title game in 1991.

He followed his college hockey career with stints playing minor league hockey, coaching, and scouting. It was as a scout for the Los Angeles Kings that he boarded UA Flight 175 on the morning of September 11, 2001, along with Garnet “Ace” Bailey, head scout for the Kings and former great for the Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers.

What’s the greatest tribute we can pay to our lost hockey heroes?

He is the reason I am where I am today. … I wanted to take this time to let you know how he touched my life. I will never forget the eighth of September 2001. That was the day Mark found me at the rink to talk. It meant a lot to me that he went out of his way to do that. Mark was a real man and he will be forever missed.

What’s the second-greatest tribute we pay to our lost hockey heroes?