Joe Moorman

[A Gene Robinson @AlGeneRobi96834]

She was 27 years old.

Twenty-seven.

An age when you are supposed to be planning what comes next, not making peace with the end.

Her name was Honor Elizabeth Wainio.

Everyone called her Lizz.

And on September 11, 2001, in the final minutes of her life, Lizz did something almost incomprehensible.

She tried to comfort everyone else.

Just two days earlier, she had been in Paris.

She had walked the Champs-Élysées. She had attended a friend’s wedding in Florence. She had stepped inside a church and lit a candle for her grandmother.

She once told her mother that if she ever got to see Paris, she could die happy.

She had no idea how haunting those words would become.

On September 11, Lizz boarded United Airlines Flight 93 in Newark, headed for San Francisco.

She had a career. People who loved her. Plans waiting for her on the other side of that flight.

Then, at 9:28 that morning, everything changed.

The cockpit was overtaken. The aircraft plunged. Passengers were forced toward the rear.

Then the people aboard Flight 93 began making phone calls.

And they learned the truth.

Other aircraft had struck the World Trade Center. Another had struck the Pentagon.

Suddenly these ordinary Americans understood something terrifying.

Nobody was coming to negotiate their way out of this.

Their airplane itself was the weapon.

Someone handed Lizz a phone and told her:

“Call someone you love.”

Think about that sentence.

Not call the police.

Not call your employer.

Not call somebody who can fix this.

Call someone you love.

Because time was disappearing.

Lizz called her stepmother, Esther.

And somehow, with everything happening around her, this 27-year-old woman turned her attention away from herself.

She said:

“This is going to be so much harder for you than it is for me.”

That sentence wrecks me.

Because imagine the love required to stare directly into your own final moments and think first about the people who will have to wake up tomorrow without you.

Lizz wasn’t asking to be comforted.

She was comforting them.

She told Esther:

“I’m gonna be with Grandma.”

The same grandmother for whom she had lit a candle in Europe only days earlier.

There is something almost numinous about that.

Then, aboard Flight 93, ordinary people began doing something extraordinary.

They understood what was happening.

They understood what the hijackers intended.

And they made a decision.

If they could not save themselves, they might still save people they would never meet.

Parents.

Children.

Secretaries.

Police officers.

Tourists.

People walking through Washington who would never know the names of the strangers fighting for them thousands of feet above Pennsylvania.

Flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw told her husband she was preparing boiling water.

Todd Beamer prayed the Lord’s Prayer.

Then came the words America would remember:

“Let’s roll.”

These were not soldiers boarding that airplane that morning.

They were ordinary Americans.

They had luggage.

Appointments.

Families.

Wedding memories.

Vacations.

Coffee cups.

Plans for Wednesday.

And suddenly history placed an impossible burden upon them.

They carried it anyway.

Lizz returned to the phone one final time.

“They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to go. I love you. Good-bye.”

Read those words slowly.

“I have to go.”

She knew where she was going.

She knew what those passengers were preparing to do.

And still:

“I love you.”

At 10:03 a.m., Flight 93 came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

It never reached Washington.

Forty passengers and crew did not come home.

But countless other Americans did.

That distinction matters.

Today, at the Flight 93 National Memorial, the Tower of Voices contains 40 wind chimes.

Forty individual voices.

Forty human beings.

Not statistics.

Not merely names carved into stone.

Sons.

Daughters.

Mothers.

Fathers.

Husbands.

Wives.

Friends.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

A Hero That Trusted His Intuition.

The problem wasn’t that Morgan Stanley didn’t believe him.

Rick Rescorla had already been right once. After the 1993 basement bombing of the World Trade Center, the firm’s security chief walked the towers, studied the site, and reached a conclusion most people preferred not to hear: the World Trade Center was still a target. Next time, he said, it would not be a truck. It would be an airplane.

An airplane. In a 1993 report.

Executives listened. Then they looked at the lease.

Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the complex—twenty-two floors of the South Tower, thousands of brokers, and a trading infrastructure that could not be packed into boxes and wheeled across the Hudson.

They literally made it a trading center.

The contract with the Port Authority ran until 2006. Walking away from premium Manhattan space of that scale would have meant penalties measured in the hundreds of millions, plus the operational chaos of relocating an entire downtown machine. So the company stayed.

Rescorla adjusted. If they could not leave the building, they would learn to escape it.

He built a protocol and treated it like doctrine. Unannounced drills. No exemptions. Brokers who billed by the minute were pulled off their desks and sent into the stairwells two by two, starting from the top floors, leaving a lane for firefighters coming the other way.

People complained. He did not care. Practice, he believed, was the only thing that would beat panic.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. From the 44th floor of the South Tower, Rescorla could see the fire. Then the Port Authority came over the speakers: the South Tower was secure. Stay at your desks.

Rescorla grabbed a bullhorn and ignored them.

He started the drill his people already knew by heart. Floor by floor, two by two, down the stairs. He sang as he moved—Cornish songs from childhood, then “God Bless America”—keeping the line moving, refusing to let the stairwell become a stampede. Seventeen minutes later, the second plane struck the South Tower.

By then, most of Morgan Stanley was already on the way out.

Of the 2,687 employees in the building that morning, all but 13 survived.

It was stunning.

Rescorla could have been outside with them. He went back up instead. Colleagues told him to leave. He said he would, as soon as he was sure no one was left behind.

He was last seen around the 10th floor, heading higher.

The South Tower fell at 9:59 a.m. They never found him.

He was one of the 13.

He was a hero in every sense of the word.

Remember Rick Rescorla, he remembered for us.

[Wisconsin Football @BadgerFootball]

“I don’t think anyone outside our locker room thought we were going to win this game.”

We did.

Remembering 10 years ago today at Lambeau Field 👐

[MAGA Deb 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @DebRN1953]

He called his wife four times from a hijacked airplane.
He never got to say goodbye to his daughters.
But he made sure his wife knew he loved her.
His name was Tom Burnett.
He was 38 years old.
A husband.
A father of three young daughters.
And the chief operating officer of a medical device company in California.
He wasn't even supposed to be on Flight 93 that morning.
He had changed his travel plans because he wanted to get home one night earlier.
That small decision put him on an airplane that would become part of one of the most extraordinary acts of courage in American history.
At about 9:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001, somewhere over Ohio, Tom called his wife, Deena.
His voice was calm.
He told her the plane had been hijacked.
The hijackers claimed they had a bomb.
A passenger had already been stabbed.
Then Deena told him something that changed everything.
Two airplanes had already crashed into the World Trade Center.
Tom went quiet.
The hijacking suddenly made sense.
This wasn't about taking passengers hostage.
It was something much worse.
The plane could be a weapon.
Tom called again.
And again.
Four calls in total.
Each time, he asked Deena what she knew.
What was happening on the ground?
What was the news reporting?
Where had the other planes gone?
He gathered information.
Then he shared it with the passengers around him.
Slowly, the people aboard Flight 93 began reaching the same terrifying conclusion.
They weren't going to survive by cooperating.
They had only two choices.
Wait.
Or fight.
During one of his calls, Tom told Deena:
"A group of us are going to do something."
She knew what that meant.
She didn't tell him not to.
She understood that her husband had reached a decision.
His final call came shortly before 10:00 a.m.
There was no dramatic speech.
No long goodbye.
Just a few words.
"We're going to do something."
Then:
"I've got to go."
The phone went dead.
Tom and the other passengers moved toward the cockpit.
They had no firearms.
No tactical equipment.
No guarantee that they would succeed.
They were ordinary people confronting armed hijackers at 30,000 feet.
But they had one advantage.
They knew what was waiting for them if they did nothing.

They fought.
The cockpit voice recorder captured the struggle.
The hijackers fought back.
The airplane pitched violently.
Passengers tried to breach the cockpit.
The fight continued until the very end.
At 10:03 a.m., Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Everyone aboard died.
But the airplane never reached its intended target.
The passengers had stopped it.
Years later, Deena and other Flight 93 family members listened to the cockpit recording.
For Deena, it was one of the hardest moments imaginable.
She heard the chaos.
The shouting.
The struggle.
The sound of the meal cart being driven repeatedly into the cockpit door.
And somewhere inside those final minutes, she heard her husband's voice.
She already knew what he had chosen.

He wasn't coming home.
Tom Burnett was not a soldier.
He wasn't a police officer.
He wasn't a firefighter.
He was a husband who had kissed his wife goodbye.
A father who had three little girls waiting for him.
A businessman who had simply wanted to get home one night earlier.
That morning, he made four phone calls to the woman he loved.
He asked her for information.
He listened.
He told her what was happening.
And when the moment came, he made the decision to act.
He knew there was a chance he would never see Deena again.
He knew he might never hold his daughters again.
And he went anyway.
There are moments in history that become larger than the people inside them.
Flight 93 is one of them.
But behind the history was a husband.
Behind the heroism was a father.

Behind the final charge was a man who had spent the last half hour trying to understand what was happening—and then decided that waiting was no longer a choice. Now we are electing those responsible to office 💔

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

Madeline Amy Sweeney knew the plane had been hijacked. Instead of panicking, she started gathering information.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the 35-year-old American Airlines flight attendant was working aboard Flight 11, a Boeing 767 traveling from Boston to Los Angeles.

Not long after takeoff, something was terribly wrong.

The cockpit stopped responding.

Passengers were being attacked.

Crew members were injured.

The aircraft was no longer under the control of its pilots.

As chaos unfolded around her, Sweeney managed to connect to an American Airlines operations center using an Airfone. On the other end was supervisor Michael Woodward.

What followed would become one of the most important eyewitness accounts from inside a hijacked aircraft.

Sweeney didn't waste precious moments focusing on her own fate.

Instead, she began relaying information.

Carefully.

Clearly.

Methodically.

She described the men who had taken over the plane.

She gave their seat assignments.

She reported injuries among passengers and crew.

She explained that a passenger had been stabbed.

Every detail mattered.

Even as she faced the reality that she might never leave the aircraft alive, she continued feeding information to authorities.

According to later accounts, Woodward was struck by how calm and composed she remained. Her voice was steady. Her descriptions were precise.

Then she provided information that would later prove critical to investigators.

She identified Mohamed Atta as one of the hijackers and supplied details about the others involved.

As Flight 11 headed toward New York City, Sweeney stayed on the line, continuing to report what she could see.

At 8:46 a.m., the plane slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Everyone on board was killed.

Sweeney was just 35 years old.

The information she provided during those final minutes became some of the earliest and most valuable evidence available to investigators trying to understand what had happened.

She couldn't regain control of the aircraft.

She couldn't stop the hijackers.

She couldn't save herself.

But she could help others understand what was unfolding.

And she did.

Until the very end.

Madeline Sweeney left behind her husband and two young children—her son, Jack, who was four, and her daughter, Anna, who was seven.

They never saw her again.

Yet in the face of unimaginable circumstances, she chose to remain focused, courageous, and selfless.

Trapped aboard a hijacked plane with no way out, Madeline Amy Sweeney spent her final moments ensuring that the world would know exactly who had taken control of Flight 11—and what was happening inside it.

[Joe Moorman @JoMoHappening]

@SquawkCNBC please bring back Alex Carp every week!

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.

They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.

Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.

They lost them for two reasons.

The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.

In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.

Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.

That fight dragged on for years.

The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.

Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.

So now it's all gone.

The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.

Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.

Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.

But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.

Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.

And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.

Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.

Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."

There it is. "Billionaire-owned."

That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.

Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.

Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."

When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.

They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.

Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.

But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."

Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.

Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.

Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.

[Jacob Turner @TheJacobTurner]

A PARENT’S JOURNEY THROUGH YOUTH SPORTS:

Age 5: “He’s got a cannon.”
Age 6: “He’s the fastest kid out there. Coach said so.”
Age 7: “Rec ball isn’t challenging him anymore.”
Age 8: “We tried out for select. Obviously made it.”
Age 9: “$2,800 for the season. Plus uniforms. Plus tournaments. Plus hotels.”
Age 10: “Cooperstown is basically a family vacation, right?”
Age 11: “He needs a hitting guy. And a pitching guy. And probably a mental performance coach.”
Age 12: “I’m not a crazy sports parent. The OTHER parents are crazy.”
Age 13: “We changed schools. For academics. (And also baseball.)”
Age 14: “Showcases are a requirement at this age.”
Age 15: “Ya his ranking just ticked up. We’re cooking.”
Age 16: “He just needs to get seen by the right school.”
Age 17: “The D1 schools want him to walk on. He’ll earn a spot by sophomore year.”
Age 18: “Okay, D2 is actually really competitive.”
Age 19: “He’s redshirting. Strategic.”
Age 20: “He’s focusing on school now.”
Age 21: “You know what? He’s so much happier.”

Roughly 7% of high schoolers play in college.

About 1.5% of those get drafted.

Less than half of draftees ever play one day in the big leagues.

The odds of our kids going pro are somewhere between “struck by lightning” and “find a $100 in old shorts.”

I love youth sports (all my kids play a bunch of them) just keep a good perspective my friends. ✌️

[Riley Gaines @Riley_Gaines_]

Maine Sec. of State Shenna Bellows just killed the “Protect Girls Sports” citizen initiative despite initially certifying 71,033 valid signature.

She later invalidated ~12,542 more, leaving it 532 short.

This isn't getting nearly enough attention. So much for democracy...

[Joe Moorman @JoMoHappening]

@JJSebastianelli A mid major finally takes advantage of the system the blue bloods created and NOW they cry foul?! Please!

[Guy Benson @guypbenson]

Finally watched it all. Extraordinary.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

This Islamic radical is working security at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

He threatened to kill Jews last night.

Can we make this go viral to raise awareness so he can be arrested?

[Liza Rosen @LizaRosen0000]

Breaking: Muslim terrorists just stormed a Christian village in Nigeria and unleashed pure demonic savagery on innocent families who couldn’t run fast enough to escape.

They captured pregnant women and hacked their bellies open with machetes — forcing the young women to witness their own unborn babies die right in front of them as they succumbed to fatal stab wounds.

All because they were Christians who refused to convert to Islam.

No one in the international community, UN, EU, ICC, or ICJ seems to care. Not even Christian leaders in the West.

Please pray for the persecuted Christians in Nigeria.

💔💔💔💔

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

A Muslim jihadist cut off the hands of a Christian girl because she refused to marry him and become a sex slave. She managed to escape before he tried to behead her.

This past year, more Christians have been killed in Nigeria than Palestinians in Gaza.

The media remains silent.

[Neo @Realneo101]

DON’T LOOK AWAY.

The Islamic regime is planning to hang Saghar Gholami simply because she protested in the January uprising in Iran.

This girl is only 19.
Share her name before they kill her.

[Joe Moorman @JoMoHappening]

https://t.co/DE7lJwlPWT

[I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 @ImMeme0]

Some crazy psycho in LA started harassing a peaceful Christian street preacher. She aggressively grabbed his arm, tried to unplug his mic, and tried to kick his speaker.

Make her famous and let’s send a message, if anyone messes with one of us, they mess with all of us.

Does anyone know who she is? Help me identify her!

[Right Angle News Network @Rightanglenews]

BREAKING - The woman who made a video hoping Iran would find the downed service member and hold him hostage as leverage against the US has been identified as Melissa Halverson, who works as an administrative assistant at the Green Apple Pantry in Michigan.

You know what to do.

[Liza Rosen @LizaRosen0000]

They discipline women like zoo trainers.

Women and girls in Afghanistan are treated worse than animals, but no one in the international community cares.

Please share if you do!

[Lucy @TheLucyShow1]

🇺🇸🙏On April 18, 2011, Captain Lisa Jade Head walked straight into hell.

As a U.S. Army bomb disposal officer in Afghanistan, she faced down deadly IEDs every single day knowing one wrong step would be her last.

That morning, she calmly defused one bomb. Then she went back for the explosioripes hera second
Gravely wounded and bleeding, she stayed conscious while her team fought desperately to save her.

They gave everything. It wasn't enough.

The next day, at just 29 years old, Captain Lisa Jade Head became the first female bomb disposal officer killed in action.

She ran toward danger so others could live.

God bless this fearless hero forever.
💖