The day will come for all of us.

Every morning I lift myself out of bed, grumbling as I fill my travel mug with coffee and swing into my truck, the thoughts of the day to come and the challenges that will make it feel longer than it ought to filling my head. As I drive through the neighborhood I see the same play being rehearsed as cars pull from houses still asleep and children still lost in dreams. But the world won’t wait for me to kiss my little ones one more time. For all the time I spent chasing the woman I love, we never expected that life would pass so fast we couldn’t catch up.

That’s why the irony of hurrying out the door to sit motionless on the freeway grates on me now. All of my life I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and no matter who I am, or how much I mean to those around me, today might be the day I wished I had stayed home to spend just one more minute with eyes that know me, or the little hands that hold me. Every one of us know stories of those taken before their time. Of lives let behind in shock. But those stories fade in our memories as the price of life forces our attention to those things in the here and now.

That was until September 11, 2001. I remember that morning like it was yesterday. A friend called me as I dressed for work. “Turn on the news.” was all he said. The building stood stoic even as acrid smoke billowed out. ‘All those people’ I thought to myself. When the second plane made its slow turn toward the second tower and slammed into the side of it, I jumped from my chair in outrage - it all came to me then, and it mattered little why, because who was the more important question - “who could slaughter innocents like this?” Days later I would hear the government tell me they were terrorists bent on revenge for American influence in the Middle East. Days after that, with the building still smoldering, came the lectures from professors and callous opportunists blaming America for the evil deeds of others - that because of our arrogance and our capitalism, we have brought death upon us. What to do? Apologize. Withdraw from the world, accept that America is a country birthed in exploitation and now bleeding as it should for all of the darkness it has spread in freedom’s name. With the wounds still deep from the elections only months before, political unity was short lived, and almost a year later we stormed into Iraq after pleading with the UN to stand tough against those that traded in terrorism. Before 9/11 we were willing to give countries the benefit of the doubt. No longer, we said, but still so many that cried with us on that fateful day now turned and walked away when we asked for support.

What did that day in September teach me? It taught me that the world is far smaller than I thought. That oceans and air craft carriers and the world’s greatest technology cannot protect us. It taught me that our government is largely incompetent and willfully ignorant when it comes to protecting our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. It taught me that our FBI and our CIA worry more about turf battles than battling those who declared war on America decades earlier. It taught me that our State Department sees strength in capitulation and weakness in standing up for the ideals that made this country thrive. Most importantly, from that day to this, I’ve watched many Americans who cried with me that day forget the pain and death inflicted on us by men insane with a religious lust that paid them with black eyed whores for the lives they took. The enemy today, for too many Americans, is George Bush. It’s Dick Cheney. It’s Donald Rumsfield. It’s the battle joined even though the enemy has declared war on us countless times. It’s Israel, a thin slice of land bordered by countries that raise children eager to murder. It’s our soldiers, slandered as beasts who murder in cold blood, terrorizing women and children, like Nazis. It’s General Patraeus, a man who has dedicated his life to his country only to be dismissed as a traitor. For all the flags that flew in the months that followed that atrocity in New York, so few fly now. Why? Are we afraid of being called patriotic? Jingoistic? Warmongers?

The nearly three thousand who died on September 11, 2001 would all rather be called those names that what they are called today instead - victims of terrorism. No one got up that morning, raced to their cars and onto airplanes knowing that their day had come. If they any inkling, maybe they might have held that little hand one more time, or kissed the ones they loved for a moment longer. But they are gone now, and we are here, remembering them and for a moment longer, treasuring the time we have left in this world.

That is the way to honor those who died that day - not a moment of silence, but a moment of gratitude for those around us that make our lives lovable.

Political Vindication!

Brother Meringoff has some heartfelt advice for Rudy Giuliani:

[T]here are several problems with constantly bragging in the first person about his tenure as mayor.

First, when a candidate keeps hitting the same note over and over, people quicky tire of hearing it. Moreover, it makes the candidate an easy target for ridicule.

Second, by talking so much about New York, Rudy is playing into the stereotype of New Yorkers as people who think that the rest of the country is basically a suburb of that city. That’s not a stereotype that’s likely to enhance Giuliani’s popularity in places like New Hampshire, where voters like to hear about themselves and their state. Nor is it likely to play well generally. Giuliani needs to talk more about his solutions for national problems and less about past successes dealing with New York’s.

Third, voters don’t like non-stop bragging. And Giuliani’s constant use of the first person singular is not only grating, it overstates his case. The crime reduction in New York city wasn’t all down to Rudy. The city was the beneficiary of positive demographic and other trends and, in any event, surely its citizens deserve some of the credit. It would be better if Rudy would say, for example, that under his leadership “we reduced shootings by 75%.

This, I think, basically boils down to, “Hey, Rudy, stop sounding like a New Yorker!”  That’s counsel that he’d do well to consider.

Besides, it’s not as though he’d ever carry New York in any case.

~  ~  ~

You can’t, though, knock Rudy for not being up-front and forthright, even if some of his pre-emptive boasting is considerably less than credible.  Pity the same thing cannot be said of Mitt Romney, both in the questionable shenanigans of his “independent” supporters and his irresolute hedging on the war.  Heck, I still can’t fathom how Ron Paul keeps getting into these so-called debates, but there’s no question about his ankle-grabbing war stance.  With Mitt, to quote Zell Miller from three years ago about another prominent Bay State pol, “you get a ‘yes….no….maybe’ bowl o’ mush, that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.”

I see a moment in the next primary “debate” in which Fred Thompson absolutely pantses Romney on this issue, and even more devastatingly than John McCain did the last time.  I don’t know that Mitt’s leads in Iowa and New Hampshire are robust enough to take many more self-inflicted gut shots, especially now that “the wild card” has taken the plunge.

UPDATE: Uh, this isn’t quite what I was envisioning….

Tonight Frank and Shane present a special round table edition of

Political Vindication Radio; “Remembering 9/11.”

Joining us live will be Rachel Alexander of Intellectual Conservative and Michael Linn Jones of the Michael Linn Jones blog. We’ll talk about the attack on September 11, 2001 and honor those that lost their lives that day, and also discuss how terrorism has changed America.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about that day.
Call Political Vindication Radio at
(646) 652-4598

Wall-to-wall commentary on the nutter meltdown over General Petraeus’ congressional “Surge” testimony: moveon.org, Joe Biden, and the dyspeptic duo of Bob Wexler and Loretta Sanchez.

Oh, and why the President should veto the Donk Entrenchment Act of 2007.

Joseph Angelini Jr., age 38 of Lindenhurst, NY, died heroically on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center terrorist attack. He was a New York firefighter with Ladder Co. 4

Joseph Angelini Jr.
A Firefighter Passionate About Family, Gardening

October 22, 2001Joseph Angelini Jr. may have lived for the New York City Fire Department, but he didn’t hang around when his tour ended.

“Gotta get home to the kids,” he’d tell the guys in Manhattan’s Ladder Co. 4 before heading to the 6:33 p.m. train to Lindenhurst.

Angelini’s wife, Donna, has scheduled a memorial service for today to help 7-year-old Jennifer, 5-year-old Jacqueline and 3-year-old Joseph Angelini III to finally understand that he won’t be coming home anymore.

“My son asks everyone he sees in uniform, ‘Did you find my daddy, did you find my daddy?’” Donna Angelini said Friday.

The seven-year department veteran followed in the footsteps of his father, Joseph Angelini Sr., 63, who was the senior member of Brooklyn’s Rescue Co. 1 and also perished in the World Trade Center attacks.

The younger Angelini, 38, was assigned to a house that protects New York’s theater district. Its motto: “Never miss a performance.”

But at home, he was a cook, craftsman and avid gardener who grew pumpkins, zucchini, eggplants and hot peppers and filled the house with the smells of pizza and focaccia.

“He was the air in my lungs, and now that air is taken away from me,” Donna Angelini said. “I keep waiting for him to come off a 24 [hour shift] and come through the door and say, ‘You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today.’”

Angelini also is survived by his mother, Anne, a grandmother, Mary, sister Annmarie Bianco and brother, Michael, all of Lindenhurst; sister Mary Angelini of Washington D.C.; and by seven nieces and nephews.

A memorial service will be held today at 11 a.m. at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Lindenhurst.
– Elizabeth Moore (Newsday)

CNN.com profile of Joe Jr.

Living Tribute to Joseph Angelini, Jr.

Joe’s father, Joe Sr. also died that day:
The Veteran and His Son

Joseph J. Angelini Sr. and his son, Joseph Jr., were firefighters, and neither survived the twin towers’ collapse. “If he had lived and his son had died, I don’t think he would have survived,” said Alfred Benjamin, a firefighter at Rescue Company 1 in Manhattan who was partnered with Mr. Angelini for the last six months.The elder Mr. Angelini, 63, was the most veteran firefighter in the city, with 40 years on the job. He was tough and “rode the back step” like everyone else. His 38-year-old son, who worked on Ladder Company 4 on 48th Street, was on the job for seven years.

“If you mentioned retirement to Joey, it was like punching him,” Mr. Benjamin said. Joseph Jr. was proud of his father’s reputation and tried to copy him any way he could, said Joseph Jr.’s wife, Donna.

And they never gave up their tools. “Think about climbing 20 stories with bunker gear, ropes, hooks, halogens and other different types of tools and somebody wants to borrow a tool — no way,” Mr. Benjamin said. “You ask them what they need done and you do it for them. You carried that tool all the way up there, so you’re going to use it. If they thought they were going to need a tool, they should have carried it up. Joey Sr. always said carry your own weight. He always carried his.”

Joseph Jr. applied to the department 11 years ago. He got called seven years ago. “It was the proudest day for my father-in-law. It was a great opportunity,” said Donna Angelini. “His father was a firefighter and he wanted to be one, too.”

Mr. Angelini, who had four children, taught Joseph Jr. carpentry. Often they worked on projects together, including a rocking horse. Joseph Jr., who had three children, had started building a dollhouse for one of his daughters. Unfinished, it is sitting on his workbench.

Joseph Angelini, Sr.
The quilt

A brother, Firefighter Michael Angelini, was there as well, but, in a move that probably saved his life, left when asked to help carry out the body of the Rev. Mychal Judge, the fire department’s chaplain.

From Newsday:

Between Funeral and ‘Pile’September 21, 2001

Michael’s choice: remain with his mother, Anne, in Lindenhurst and support his family during the wake, today, and the funeral, tomorrow, for his father, New York firefighter Joey Angelini, 63; or, return to The Pile to continue searching for his missing brother, New York firefighter Joey Angelini Jr., 38.

Michael, 33, knew yesterday that his mother and Joey Jr.’s wife, Donna, his two sisters and his nieces and nephews needed him, needed a strong, grown, male Angelini nearby, perhaps as much or more than he needed to be nearer his brother. “It’s hard to figure out what’s the right place to be in,” he said, already having decided to stay with the family. “I want so much to go back there.”

Michael works for the Fire Patrol of New York, which operates under the New York Board of Underwriters, protecting the interests of insurers during and in the aftermath of commercial property fires. Wearing the same firefighting gear, except for the distinctive red helmet that denotes Fire Patrol, he responded to the World Trade Center disaster last Tuesday morning, as did his father, a 40-year FDNY veteran assigned to Rescue 1, and his brother, of Ladder Co. 4 in the Theater District. “We were all in the same area, and none of us knew it,” he said.

In the lobby of one of the stricken towers, a fire supervisor suddenly ordered him out of the building. They passed firefighters who had just encountered the body of department chaplain Father Mychal Judge. Michael helped carry Judge away. “… but then my officer grabbed me and said, ‘Let’s go!’” he said. “We ended up a block or two north on West Murray Street.”

Michael entertained a slender hope that his brother might have finished his tour early and gone home. He suspected otherwise, and he learned later that afternoon that Joey had done what his father would have done and what so many other firefighters did who were supposed to be ending their tours at 9 a.m. They went to work.

Once a jokester and a partygoer, Joey Jr. had undergone personality changes increasingly noticeable to Michael during the past seven years, since he had joined the department and Donna gave birth to the first of their three children, Jennifer. He had worked previously as an electrician with the Transit Authority. “I didn’t want him to leave Transit,” said his mother, “because they were about to make him a foreman. But, for some reason, he switched over to the fire department.”

“Since then,” Michael said, “I saw him taking on more and more of my father’s traits. Before, we used to go out a lot, he and I. He was silly, funny. Now, getting him to go out was like pulling teeth. I tell old stories to guys he worked with, and they’ll look at me like I’m talking about somebody they don’t know. He had become so, like, straight. He just wanted to be with his family. He was showing more and more of that integrity, that seriousness, like my father.

“Three things were important to my father: his family, the church and the department, and I’m not sure in what order. My father was honest to a fault, religious. I remember walking back from the store with him. I was only little. He realized that the counter girl had given him 30 cents too much in change, and we had to walk all the way back. I mean, it was almost ridiculous. Joey was becoming more like that. It was good to watch, but it’s hard to live up to.”

The elder Angelini was in special operations that morning, and Michael hoped he too might have been sent elsewhere, but he really knew better. His father was legendary in the department for loving the work, for loving “to get dirty,” for loving “making a grab [rescuing somebody],” for routinely walking out of a mostly extinguished inferno and lighting a cigarette while younger firefighters lay sprawled around him, exhausted.

Earlier this year, at a Holy Name Society communion breakfast tribute for his 40th anniversary as a firefighter, the short, wiry, gray-haired Angelini resisted efforts by his fellow firefighters to get him to wear more of his medals. “They convinced him to put on maybe a third of them,” Michael said. “Then he said, ‘Stop. I’m tired of pinning these on.’

“He kept them in the back of a drawer, in a box,” Michael said. “He didn’t tell us about half of them. He didn’t talk about what he did. You would be eating dinner across from him and notice that he looked dif- ferent, like, strange, and then you would realize that his face was all red, and his eyebrows were completely gone, and his hairline had receded. He was burned. You would say, ‘What happened to you?’ And he would say, ‘Aw, something flashed over me.’

“At the site, all week, guys were joking about him finding a pocket and eventually walking out. They said to me, ‘He was probably buried in a void, and as soon as he runs out of cigarettes he’s gonna come walking out.’”

Rescue workers found the body of Joey Angelini on Monday. He had been listed as missing since the day after the attack. Joey Jr. still is missing. After tomorrow’s funeral Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Lindenhurst, Michael probably will return to the site.
–Ed Lowe (Newsday Columnist)

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I Remember
Joseph Angelini, age 38
Lindenhurst, N.Y

Looking Back in Anger

Others remembering
Carl remembers Touri Hamzavi Bolourchi
Greta remembers Debra Lynn Gibbon
West Coast Chaos remembers Louis Calvin Williams III
Raven remembers Kevin Wayne Yokum
Zionist Weather Machine remembers Lt. Michael Scott Lamana

Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog.