Perhaps the best way to make sure the terrorists don’t win is to figure out what they want and do the exact opposite no matter how difficult, painful or even self-destructive that might be.

lhp – I think most people understand where you and Steve and others were coming from and it’s a pretty raw time – so you’re entitled, whether people agree or not.

Every time I pimp Jonathan Tasini’s primary challenge against Hillary Clinton tomorrow, I expect to get a reprimand, and if I do, I’ll respect my host and stop. (Only one more day and I’ll stop anyway.)

well, you’ll have a smidge of company on that one, then. i’m thinking i’ll be the only vote tasini gets in my little precinct.

I would like to apologize for my choice of language last night. I need to learn to stay out of the toobz when I am angry.

Path to 9-11 made me furious. I should have kept to myself with all that hostility.

I do want to clarify a couple things i said in the last thread because I think I said them inartfully.

I do not disapprove of people who are not from NY coming to see Ground Zero. I don’t disapprove of that at all. This was a national tragedy and I do equate it with Pearl Harbor. Moreover, the entire purpose of building the proposed memeorial, like the memorial at Pearl Harbor, is to create a place for people from all over the world to come to “connect”.

I’m fine with that. What I am not fine with, are these dreadful parisites hawking Tee shirts and pictures and those god awful commemorative coins made from silver in the vaults under the WTC. Have you seen those commercials?

The one and only time I went to Ground Zero, there were these tourists, bargaining with a vendor of really really exploitive souveniers and taking pictures, smiling and clowning in front of the hole.

When they asked me to use their camera to photograph them –smiling and waving in front of a mass grave– is when I lost is and began to cry.

Someone said they made the time to visit Dachua while on a business trip. I sincerly doubt there are any pictures of that commentor exhibitng hilarity at such a somber site.

People coming to NYC and stopping by Ground Zero to say a prayer or contemplate the wound to our collective American– no, collective human– psyche, is just fine.

Souvenier shoppers, grief tourists, exploitors of any kind–I’m sorry, trigger a whole lotta words my mommy doesn’t like me to use.

Bush exploited a tragedy that happened to NY and by using this rallying cry that it happed to all the US, used it, used our personal grief as a shield and a sword to do more harm to this country than Osama ever could.

So, I get why Steve does not like it when someone who was not in harm’s way, who did not lose a loved one tries to appropriate to themselves the personal grief of New Yorkers.

That’s what Bush did to us.

He stole our pain and wrapped himself up in it and used our loss to justify his actions.

Then he cut our Homeland Security funding by 40% to give out political pork to red states.