Remembering 9/11, Texas Classrooms and Black Bears on the Move

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Doug Pike (0:53)

Looking up at the clock on the wall, it reminds me that it is time to start the show. Welcome to Fifty Plus during this week, leading up to our remembrance of 9-11, the day on which Islamic terrorists crashed airliners into New York City's Twin Towers, the Pentagon and even an open field. On that day, 2,977 innocent people were killed, as were the 19 suicidal hijackers.

I bring this up because I saw a story about how New York City Mayor Moran Zamdani after signing an official document that declared 9-11 a citywide day of remembrance, then handed the ceremonial pin to his chief council, Ramzi Qassem, who also happened to represent a convicted al-Qaeda member whose brother-in-law was one of the hijackers on board the jetliner that struck the Pentagon. And just then, I actually left out a very important detail about how the pin got from Zamdani to Qassem. In onlooker positioning that I am absolutely certain was no accident, Mamdani placed between himself and that attorney, the New York City Police Commissioner, and she did not look all too happy to have been put in that position to hand that man the pin. But that's the way Mamdani works, that's the way socialists work. They make things uncomfortable for the rest of us and then just dare us to say anything. And for the record, the Commissioner did not say anything. Mamdani just continues to parade his disdain for America and for Americans quite openly now. I guess because he thinks he's been in office long enough to become invincible. And if you think he's unlikable by people of sound mind and body now, wait until you see how he polls after his city run grocery stores open next year and then close in far less time than it's taken to get him off the ground. And in generally sad news, not that anybody in this audience would know who these people are. It just struck me as something somber and worth acknowledging. Members of a Miami family are mourning the losses of a grandfather, grandmother and two of their grandchildren. Now those grandchildren, a man and woman, were 28 and 22 years old respectively. And that makes sense then because the grandmother was 79 and the grandfather was 80 Sadly, they disappeared yesterday after the private plane piloted by 80-year-old Mario Lamar, who's been a pilot for more than 40 years. The plane disappeared from radar shortly after 11 a.m. near the western side of Andros Island in the Bahamas. Bad weather delayed the initial search effort, but all available assets, including US. Coast Guard vessels and aircraft, were expected to join the search today.

I've flown in my share of little bitty airplanes, and I'll admit to occasionally feeling somewhat hesitant, especially to climb into the tiny space behind the pilot seat in a plane that seats fewer than around eight people. Years ago, when I was writing for the paper, I wound up covering a single-engine plane crash on the Katy Prairie just because I lived close out there.

The details are a tad grisly, but going out there and actually seeing where it happened was quite an emotional event. And true to my assignment, though I couldn't allow any of that emotion to creep into the words I chose, it's not really easy to tell the story of a lost life, especially in a plane crash, without feeling some pretty unusual emotions, whether you can share them or not. On occasion, I've actually wondered, you know, if I were in a plane that had stalled and was plummeting toward the earth, I've wondered whether I'd keep my eyes open in case somehow I might survive and be able to pull the plane out of its horrible fall, or maybe survive the crash, who knows? Maybe need to scramble out of the airplane, or would I just shut my eyes and say a prayer? And to this day, I'm honestly not sure. I think I would be praying though, either way, eyes open or eyes shut. I'm just, one more chance, God, that's all I'm looking for. Help me get through this. And I guess if it's my time, it's my time, but I hate hearing stories about family members losing. They lost four family members, this one family did, all in a single moment. That's just, that's a horrific loss. God rest their souls. All right, moving back to politics a little bit, because I kind of have to, as we get closer to the midterms, from the James Talerico desk, in a Breitbart story yesterday, and this desk is gonna need some big drawers to the way things are going right now, were that Talerico once denied that Jesus Christ is the way to truth, and he kept his mouth open long enough also to say that Allah and other religious paths can lead us to the same divine truth.