WhatsaMatterU

*Writer - sharing thoughts, feelings, and knowledge *Advice - on Parenting, Relationships, Education, and Life

[Russell from NYC @russellworld]

@VividProwess Islam at work

[Elaine larsen @ElaineLarsen2]

@VividProwess How can you take the innocence of a child away, and say you love them!……i believe this statement, says it all!

[GAZAWOOD - The Pallywood Saga - Official @GAZAWOOD2]

@VividProwess Was just asking the same
https://t.co/BQhQZiaQto

[Mary 🇺🇸 @MaryRoss815]

@VividProwess

[🎼🌺Music Love♥️ @ThoNg676733]

The 17 Minutes That Changed the History of America and the World

Surely, many people still remember September 11, 2001 — the day images from New York were broadcast around the world and became one of the defining memories of the modern era.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into floors 93 through 99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At the time, many people still had no idea what was really happening. But just 17 minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck floors 77 through 85 of the South Tower.

The appearance of the second aircraft completely changed the way people understood what was happening. This was no longer an isolated aviation accident, but a coordinated and deliberate attack. From Brooklyn Heights, cameraman Park Foreman captured one of the most widely recognized images of that day, as the Boeing 767 slammed into the South Tower and a fireball erupted.

After that, events unfolded at a speed few people could have imagined. Just 56 minutes after being struck by the aircraft, the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. At 10:28 a.m., the North Tower collapsed as well.

According to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the collapses were caused by a combination of the aircraft impacts, the dislodging of fireproofing from structural steel members, and large fires spreading across multiple floors. Together, these factors severely weakened the buildings' structural systems, ultimately leading to their collapse.

In less than two hours, what had once been an iconic part of New York had become a site the world would later come to know as Ground Zero. A total of 2,977 people were killed in the September 11 attacks. At the World Trade Center alone, 343 members of the New York City Fire Department, 23 NYPD officers, and other law-enforcement personnel died while responding to the disaster.

But the attacks did not take place only in New York. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, home to the U.S. Department of Defense. The attack killed 125 people inside the building and all 59 people aboard the aircraft.

Meanwhile, United Airlines Flight 93 was heading toward Washington, D.C. After learning what had happened through phone calls with family members and people on the ground, a group of passengers decided to fight back against the hijackers. Their attempt to regain control of the aircraft ended when Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the aircraft's intended target may have been the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

After that day, America began to change in ways that perhaps no one could have imagined that morning. In aviation, Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November 19, 2001, laying the foundation for the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and establishing a new federal system for screening passengers and baggage.

Those changes extended far beyond airports. On the international stage, the United States launched its war in Afghanistan in 2001 and later expanded its military intervention into Iraq in 2003. The Costs of War project at Brown University has documented the enormous human, financial, and social costs of the post-9/11 wars, as well as consequences that continued long after major military operations officially ended.

Looking back at September 11, 2001, what makes the event such a historic turning point is not only what happened during those few short hours. It is also what changed afterward: how a nation viewed security, how people moved through airports, how the United States exercised military power, and how the world understood the threat of terrorism.

And perhaps that is why, more than two decades later, images from that morning still make people stop and watch. Because sometimes history does not begin with a grand declaration. Sometimes, it can begin with just 17 minutes — the span of time between two aircraft striking two towers, yet enough to change America and open an entirely different chapter in world history.

[Overton @overton_news]

This was an incredible segment.

Before ending his interview with CNBC Squawk Box this morning, CMS Administrator Dr. Oz took a moment to sound the alarm on America’s $100 BILLION healthcare fraud epidemic.

And then he dropped a line that really says it all:

“They’re not just stealing your money, they’re stealing your health.”

DR. OZ: “Can I touch on one last thing before I leave you?”

BECKY QUICK: “Yeah, I was going to ask what your biggest goal is for this year?”

DR. OZ: “We have got to deal with the fraud issues, and here’s why.”

“They’re not just stealing your money, they’re stealing your health, because if they don’t care about stealing from poor people, they’ll take your health away, and they’re stealing the nation’s trust.”

“Medicare and Medicaid were created in a high trust environment.”

“We assumed people would do the right things. We now are experiencing about $100 billion of theft a year, much of it because of the Covid pandemic impact on teaching criminals to move into healthcare.”

“And we believe if we could just take the fraud out of Medicare, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare trust fund, which means not only would you have it for your retirement, but it could be there for your kids as well.”

That last point is the bigger issue Oz was getting at.

And if the administration can actually recover a meaningful portion of that money, Oz says the payoff could extend far beyond the current generation of Medicare recipients.

[Buzz Patterson @BuzzPatterson]

I was flying for @Delta that day. To NYC. It was insane.

Thanks, @BillClinton.

[TONY™ @TONYxTWO]

38 people shot in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. Eight of them are dead.

Al Sharpton: silent.
Ben Crump: silent.
NAACP: silent.
BLM: silent.

President Trump has offered help more than once:

“The city will die if the Federal Government is not invited in by the Mayor or Governor to HELP. I am awaiting the call… Governor Pritzker, CALL!!!”

Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson rejected it.

Same pattern. Same cities. Same result. Failed leadership at its finest.

[Brit Hume @brithume]

Quote: “…one can dislike Trump and still recognize the accomplishments are real and laudable. If personal dislike for the president prevents someone from seeing that, the real bias problem is with them. “

[Conrad Black @ConradMBlack]

We are approaching the fifth and last biennial election in the Trump era, and the president has asked voters to make it a referendum on him. Let's take a look at his record.

The tiresome and predictable criticism of a pro-Trump bias will come, as it always does when anyone tries to say anything positive about the president, but let me respond with two points. Firstly, one can dislike Trump and still recognize the accomplishments are real and laudable. If personal dislike for the president prevents someone from seeing that, the real bias problem is with them. Secondly, when 92 percent of media coverage on the president is anti-Trump, balance does not come from repeating what is already deafeningly amplified. It comes from stating the parts that are generally ignored.

The successes are significant and seldom discussed; let's look at the record that most of the press won't print:
• The illegal immigration crisis at the border has been ended
• With it, there has been a dramatic reduction in the horrors of human trafficking, the inflow of lethal narcotics, and cash flowing into the pockets of violent drug cartels.
• Inflation has been cut sharply from Biden levels.
• Crime rates across the country are much lower, with murder rates at a 70-year low.
• Capital has poured into the US in job-creating investment, and no advanced country has generated greater economic growth.
• The country has been liberated from climate theater without abandoning environmental protection.
• Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran have all been stripped of their usefulness as Russo-Chinese allies.
• The Iranian regime is being strangled (and its terrorist proxies with it) at almost no cost in American lives and only slight use of American ordnance. Despite the shrill mantra of the more radical isolationists, Trump kept his word: no forever war, no Iraq 2.0.
• Along with the Abrahamic Accords, Board of Peace and other diplomatic initiatives, despite current tensions, the scaffolding for future peace in the Middle East is the strongest it has been in decades.
• NATO has been reformed from a ragtag of slackers into a self-financing alliance.
• Ukraine has been armed to the point that Russia is fighting a war it looks increasingly unable to win, and the Russians have been forced to import gasoline and diesel for the first time in a generation because of its hobbled oil refining capacity.

This is one of the most persuasive lists of accomplishments of any two-term president since Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

That a president with this strong a record can still have such a low approval rating is unprecedented and owes to one of his greatest short-comings – the messaging problem. President Trump can draw a crowd and dazzle his supporters like no president since FDR. What he has not yet been able to manage effectively, is use a direct Oval Office address, with a nonpartisan tone, to outline the national interest and ask for the support of the American people for his worthy objectives. Perhaps he is keeping his powder dry. If so, this is the month to use it.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Imagine telling a NYer on 9/11 that this is the mayor and governor in 25 years:

[USA Day 250 @usaday250]

Update: Ceremony begins today at 10:35 am on the White House Ellipse!

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

They hanged him at dawn.💔

The Islamic Republic executed rapper Erfan Mirzaei on Sunday, September 6, at the morning adhan, in Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan. No warning. No last call to his family. The rope and the silence.

He was a young rapper. His crime was standing against a regime that kills to survive. He sang of freedom and hope in a country where a song can cost your life. Those who knew him remember a young man full of fire, art, and big dreams. The regime stole all of it in a single dawn, while the world slept.

He was arrested during the January protests and executed in secret, while the Islamic Republic continues slaughtering January protesters in Iran's prisons under a total news blackout.

His funeral is today, Say his name. Do not let the gallows have the last word.

[Bethel McGrew @BMcGrewvy]

[Disturbing footage warning]

I'm struck every time I see footage of the jumpers by the onlookers who are just beholding this horror in an age before we all had pocket cameras. Not documenting, just beholding.

[Overton @overton_news]

Victor Davis Hanson makes a great point:

Why do people like Hasan Piker, who attack capitalism, live like rich capitalists?

HANSON: "How does Ro Khanna give lectures and live in this house on a congressman's salary? Was it his father-in-law's capitalism? Yes."

"How is it Hasan can drive a $200,000 Porsche? Was it because he was a nepo baby? Yes."

"How can Mr. Mamdani lecture everybody and have a beautiful, comfortable, materialistic existence in the United States if it's not for capitalism?"

"All of these people, it's all a big show. They go out and trash people, and then they pose as anti-capitalist."

"Then you start to examine them, and they're all privileged."

The people attacking capitalism often seem to benefit from it the most.

[Hashem @HashemAllMighty]

It’s not “Islamophobic” to repost this. The entire world must see this.

[Bo Loudon @BoLoudon]

🚨President Trump just shared 9/11 footage of himself marching into the war zone of fire & ashes with an army of his own men to help save and protect Americans.

Trump has been helping save America long before he took the White House.

God bless him.

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

President Trump Just Posthumously Awarded The Medal of Freedom To The Legendary 'Man In The Red Bandana' Who Sacrificed His Life Saving Others on 9/11

Welles Crowther was a 24-year-old equities trader from Upper Nyack, New York, working on the 104th floor of the South Tower on 9/11. He was also a volunteer firefighter.

After the plane hit, he tied a red bandana over his face, found a stairwell that still worked, and went down to the 78th-floor sky lobby. Survivors later described a man in a red bandana who said “follow me.” He put out fires blocking the exit, directed people who could walk, carried a badly burned woman on his back, and led them down about 17 floors to safety.

Then he went back up. He made multiple trips between the sky lobby and the stairs. After leading a second group down, he climbed again to look for more people. He was last seen with FDNY firefighters. His body was found months later in the South Tower lobby, near firefighters and close to the exit.

Welles saved 18 lives that day.

A true American hero.

[Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 @MikeBales]

Michael Weinberg, 34. Off-duty FDNY firefighter.
September 11, 2001. He was at a golf course in Queens when the first plane hit. His sister worked in the second tower.
He left his clubs. Abandoned his car. Caught a ride into Manhattan. Geared up. Went in.
She made it out. He didn’t.
He died under a fire truck when the South Tower fell. One of 343.
He chose her in the time it takes to put down a golf club.
Rest easy, Michael.
Never Forget 🙏🏻

[Scarlett Grace @ScarlettGrace92]

“It's coming over our radio. Get out of the area. The second tower's coming down.”

They. Kept. Going.

No, New York, you are not allowed to forget.

Neither are you, @CBCNews.