The 9/11 Surfer urban legend? It actually happened. Meet Pasquale Buzzelli.

by Jack Brummet, NYC Editor

Eleven years ago today, Pasquale Buzzelli survived the attacks of Sept. 11 when he rode a wave of debris as he fell 20 stories inside the tumbling World Trade Center North Tower.

I remember hearing this story in the days after 9/11.  Everyone talked about it for a while, and then the news reports quits calling it hearsay and started reporting it as fiction.  And then it fell out of the news; everyone assumed it was an urban legend, or a hoax.

There is a documentary out now, featuring Buzzelli, his family, first responders and others.  And apparently, it actually did happen.  He has come forward to tell his story in a Discovery channel special, “The 9/11 Surfer."

He and his wife, Louise, have written an e-book, “The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer: We All Fall Down.’’

“It was very  difficult telling the story then,’’ Buzzelli told Savannah Guthrie on The Today Show. “I couldn’t. I was going through post-traumatic stress and survivor guilt from that. It took a long time to heal from that. I forced myself to do that, to try to give something back. Eventually I came to accept what had happened to me. I was able to go on and mourn. I feel now that it’s an important story to share with others.’’

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Copyright (C) 2012 by All This Is That. All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com). 

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Larry Flynt's latest $1 million reward: Send me Mitt Romney's tax returns

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor 

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for the NewsTip!

Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, and self-described free speech activist, is offering $1 million for anyone who will provide him with Mitt Romney's financial records.  In the past he has offered $1 million for various celebrities to pose naked,  for evidence refuting the Warren Commission report, for evidence that Presidential candidate Rick Perry was guilty of infidelity, and during the Clinton impeachment trial, for evidence any of the committee members had been guilty of similar transgressions.

Flynt, 69, purchased full-page ads in Sunday's Washington Post and the Tuesday, September 11, issue of USA Today.  "What is he hiding?" the ad text reads. "Maybe, now, we'll find out."  The ad also includes a phone number and email address where anyone with information can contact Flynt (at http://larryflynt.com/).  

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Paul Ryan: "Trust Us On This!"

By Mona Goldwater, Economics Editor


Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan asks us to trust him on how they will make their $5 billion tax cut work.  He isn't sure how it will work, but he knows it will. . .

Transcript from ABC’s This Week:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you make the math work without eliminating the big deductions that middle-class families rely on?
RYAN: Well, first of all, that — those claims have been pretty discredited. There have been five different studies –

STEPHANOPOULOS: How have they been discredited?

RYAN: — that show — that this — that this plan works. So the analysis you’re citing wasn’t even an analysis of the Romney plan.

But here’s the point I am trying to make here, George. We think the secret to economic growth is lower tax rates for families and successful small businesses by plugging loopholes.

Now the question is, not necessarily what loopholes go, but who gets them. High-income earners use most of the loopholes. That means they can shelter their income from taxation. But if you take those loopholes, those tax shelters away from high-income earners, more of their income is subject to taxation. And that allows us to lower tax rates on everybody — small businesses, families, economic growth.

Here’s where the president wants to take the country. He wants to add a job-killing small-business tax increase on top of the current code, add even more loopholes and deductions to the code, more Washington picking winners and losers. That will crush jobs. You have to remember, George, that most of our small businesses, they pay their taxes as individuals. Most of our jobs come from these successful small businesses. So we’ve shown — look, the Princeton study, the Harvard analysis, they have shown that you can lower tax rates, broaden the tax base, and, yes, there is still room left for broad-based policies that the middle class enjoy so that nobody has a tax increase. We just stop picking winners and losers in the tax code.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Congressman, as you know –

RYAN: When Reagan did this, it worked –

STEPHANOPOULOS: — many say it’s difficult –

RYAN: Go ahead, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: — to accept your word if you’re not going to specify which tax loopholes you’re willing to close. Don’t voters have a right to know which loopholes you’re going to go after?

RYAN: So Mitt Romney and I, based on our experience, think the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress to do this. That’s how you get things done. The other thing, George, is–

STEPHANOPOULOS: Isn’t that a secret plan?

RYAN: — we don’t want to — no, no. No, no. What we don’t want is a secret plan. What we don’t want to do is cut some backroom deal like ObamaCare, and then hatch  it to the country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But why not specify the –

RYAN: We want to do this –

STEPHANOPOULOS: — loopholes now?

RYAN: — out in the open –

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not say right now –

RYAN: — because we want to do this –

(CROSSTALK)

RYAN: — we want to have this — George, because we want to have this debate in the public. We want to have this debate with Congress. And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people, and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them.

And our priorities are high-income earners should not get these kinds of loopholes. And we should have broad-based policies that go to middle-class taxpayers, to make sure we can advance things that we care about, like charities. But that is a debate we shouldn’t cut in a back room, shouldn’t hatch a secret plan like ObamaCare. We should do it out in the public view where the public can participate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, having it in public before the election so voters can have that information before they make up their minds.

RYAN: We think the best way to get — look, I’ve been in Congress a number of years. I’ve been on the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. And we think the best way to do this is to get this framework in place, and then negotiate, work with Democrats, work with people across the aisle, have these kinds of hearings, have this conversation to get this objective.

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Alien Lore No. 240 - The Arecibo Message we sent into space

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Editor


The Arecibo Image is a short binary message the U.S. beamed into outer space. When decoded, it creates an image like something from a 1980's videogame.

Dr. Frank Drake, of Cornell University, wrote the message, with help from Carl Sagan, and others. The encoded message has seven parts:

1)  the numbers one (1) through ten (10):

2)  the atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus which make up DNA

3)  the formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA/the number of nucleotides in DNA

4)  a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA
5)  a graphic figure of a man, the dimension (physical height) of an average man, and the human population of Earth

6)  a graphic of Earth's solar system

7)  a graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension (the physical diameter) of the transmitting antenna dish. [Ed's note: Arecibo in Puerto Rico sends messages to the universe, and is the site where SETI attempts to track blips in the universe and link them to other intelligent beings.]

It will take 25,000 years for the message to reach its target of of stars (and, presumably, an additional 25,000 years for the return trip for any reply). Interestingly, the stars the message is aimed at will no longer be there when it arrives. According to a Cornell News press release of Nov. 12, 1999, the real purpose of the message was not to make contact, but to demonstrate the capabilities of newly installed equipment.

Copyright (C) 2012 by All This Is That. All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

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Bill: President Clinton's barnburner speech for BHO

Mona Goldwater, Democratic Party Editor
illustration by Jack Brummet

One of my political heroes, and a master retail politician, Bill Clinton, gains even more stature after his masterpiece speech on Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention.  He becomes an even greater man, in the aftermath of his impassioned speech, and I don't mean that facetiously.  The Man on Horseback that so many of us love--warts and all--gives maybe the speech of his life, systematically demolishing *every* single GOP/Tea-Party charge against BHO with facts, figures, and love. For 48 minutes. And he got into some fairly wonky and granular details on some of the issues--he never explained what the doughnut hole was, although he referenced it several times. I'm guessing that maybe ten percent of the viewers would understand the reference. But this is nitpicking. This is the best speech by an Ex-Pres at a convention ever.

And he did all this for a guy he doesn't particularly like. I bow down to Bill tonight for setting it all aside and stepping up, not for the Democrats, not for the Bill Clinton legacy, but for the--I know it sounds corny--99%., and for our party.

Wednesday night, POTUS 42 took apart the lies, and the insinuations the GOP/Tea Party promulgates. With facts. He handed BHO a road map to victory; a blueprint to saving The White House.

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The Hole Book by Peter Newell (don't worry, it's SFW)

By Jack Brummet, Poetry and Books Editor

While fiddling around with a gun, Tom Potts shoots a bullet that seems to be unstoppable. 

A literal hole on each page shows the bullet’s trajectory as it rains destruction across a myriad of everyday scenes until it finally peters out, lodged in a cake. 

Peter Newell was loved in the late 19th century/early 20th for his humorous drawings and poems.  The Hole Book is strange, probably politically incorrect, and delightful. 

Newell later wrote and drew popular children’s books, like Topsys and Turvys (which could be read either upside-down or right-side-up).  A particularly bizarre book--The Slant Book--told the story, in a rhomboid-shaped book--of a baby carriage careening down a hill. 

You can download a PDF, or Kindle, or other version here (free!) from archive.org (a national/world treasure) for free:  http://archive.org/details/holebook00newe

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Lanky Link: Abraham Lincoln's many losses along the way to the White House

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor

• When he was 22, his business failed. 
• At age 23, he lost a bid for U.S. Congress. 
• The next year, another business he started went under.
• Finally at age 25, he was elected to the state legislature. 
• When he was 26, his girlfriend died. 
• At 27, he had a nervous breakdown. 
• When Lincoln was 29, he was beaten in the race for the post of Speaker of the House Illinois legislature. 
• When he was 31, he was defeated as an Elector (you, know - the electoral college). 
• At age 34, he was beaten when he ran for congress, 
• When he was 37, he ran for Congress once again and won, but, alas, two years later, he was not re-elected.  When he was 46, he ran for the Senate and lost. 
• The next year year, he ran for Vice President and lost. 
• At the age of 51, he was elected President of the United States.

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Ike Willis and Pojama People plays at Seattle's The Mix

Pojama People is a five piece Frank Zappa tribute band fronted by a Zappa veteran, Ike Willis. They put on an amazingly tight show, with a great selection of songs from Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, both from Ike's time with the Mothers, and from the albums previous to that.

We saw them Saturday at a small club--The Mix--in Seattle's Georgetown. Highly recommended, both the club and the band.

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Weird Presidential pets

By Jack Brummet, Fauna Editor/Presidential History Editor

When Lewis and Clark were exploring the West, they sent two young bear cubs back East to President Tom Jefferson.   He kept the bears in a cage on the White House lawn and sometimes went on walks with them. 

President Calvin Coolidge owned a raccoon, a bobcat, a donkey, a wallaby, a pygmy hippo, a small antelope, and a black bear.

John Quincy Adams kept an alligator.

President Harry S. Truman had a boa constrictor for a pet. 

 James Buchanan kept an elephant at The White House.  

Not surprisingly, President Teddy Roosevelt had a zebra (although I'm surprised he didn't own a lion, hippo, or elephant, since he enjoyed plugging them so much).

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Poem: So blue against the dream

by Jack Brummet, Poetry Editor

Auto-poem created by the "Language Is Virus Poetry Generator":



1
Strangely poisonous before the light
You excrete huge signs before the dreamscape
Word! The pleasure has vanished
All murky beneath the towers
I pull transparent sensations before the fire
Be luminous. The sin felt good
Sinful and glowing about the towers
I breed transparent tomb stones beyond the towers
Beware! The Knight gets weird
wary wanting
crossing the frontier
a backward glance
With what memories
such a man
make his way
when the world was new

2
So blue against the dream
So big beneath the air

3
Evil and dry against the flock
You summon musty feet behind the water
Can you dig it? The evil was hard
Dark and wanting near the spirits
I see dank witches before the air
Yo! The vision has vanished
So blue against the dream
I find luminous teeth above the spirits
Heavy! The Queen has fled
translucent grieving
trying to recall
an old passport
On what journey
the other
miss his chance
in a different light

4
Quite scary on the mist
I squeeze evil wraiths within the trees
Can you dig it? The day will come
Totally huge below the virgin
We examine florescent flames beyond the spirits
Word! The Knave will come again
So big beneath the air
You meet rabid meaning beneath the sea
Ahhh! The life is done
luminous grieving
walking out of the world
a trace of sadness
With what regrets
my father
chase his dream
trying to remember

5
Sinister and grotesque under the land
We condemn florescent fears above the mud
Take cover! The vision has vanished
All quiet under the earth
You battle wanting flames beside the fire
Zounds! The fun is good
I am peaceful against the tomb
We stretch yellow eruptions under the rain
I reach! The day will vanish
wavering fighting back
crossing the frontier
nothing to lose
In whose heart
my likeness
seek shelter
in a different light

6
All heavy behind the fog
You conjure bright women under the gods
Awake! The feeling has vanished
So murky on the vapors
We taste misty feet before the sky
Repent! The Knight is good
Evil and yellow under the slime
We eat florescent snakes near the slime
Way cool! The fun will vanish
opaque curious
turning away
an unreliable map
From which dreams
the sailor
seek shelter
not knowing why

7
All mammoth beside the light
We confound dream-like faces below the fire
Alass! The bastard will go
We are dry under the mud
We summon quaking sensations in the shadows
We Reach! The Queen is vanishing
Sinful and violet against the flock
You swallow electric rats behind the towers
Whoa! The evil gets weird
unafraid hesitant
at a crossroads
something missing
In whose arms
the sailor
chase his dream
before help could come
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Presidential truths, zingers, bloopers, and misstatements

by Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor 
illustrations edited by Jack Brummet

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
- Dan Quayle

"I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again."
 - Bill Clinton

"Look, when I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
- Barack Obama

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
- Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952

"Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening."
–Bill Clinton

"I am convinced that UFOs exist, because I have seen one." (1976)
- Jimmy Carter

"Half the time, when I see the evening news, I wouldn't be for me either." (1995)
- Bill Clinton

"There are only so many lies you can take, and now there has been one too many. Nixon should get his ass out of the White House today." [in 1974, after some of the more damaging revelations implicating Nixon in Watergate emerged]
- Barry Goldwater (who didn't like Nixon in the first place)

"I'm the only President you've got." (1964)
- LBJ

“Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.”
- LBJ

"Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside pissing in." [re: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover]
- LBJ

"So dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time." [re: Gerald Ford]
- LBJ

"I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is." (1986)
- Teddy Kennedy

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I wouldn't want to wake up next to a lady pipefitter." (1971 - quoted in Ms. magazine)
- Richard Nixon

"I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall--plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up, or anything else. If that will save it, save the plan." (1973 - to his subordinates in the White House during Watergate)
- Richard Nixon

"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook." (1973 - to the press during Watergate)
- Richard Nixon

"Well, I screwed up real good, didn't I?" (1974 - to Al Haig just before writing his resignation speech)
- Richard Nixon

"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal. But I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and twisted it with relish. And I guess that if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing." (1977)
-Richard Nixon

"When I first came to Washington, for the first six months I wondered how the hell I ever got here. For the next six months, I wondered how the hell the rest of them ever got here." (1940)
- Harry S. Truman

"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." (1984 - testing a microphone before a radio broadcast)
- Ronald Reagan

"After seeing the movie Rambo, I'll know what to do the next time something like this happens." (1985 - referring to the TWA hostage crisis)
- Ronald Reagan

"I've often wondered, what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer--a power from outer space, from another planet?" (1988)
- Ronald Reagan

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- Dan Quayle

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
- Dan Quayle

“Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." [during a September 6, 2004 speech in Poplar Bluff, Missouri]
- George W. Bush

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Drawing: Wooden Man/Willie Loman, Jr.

By Jack Brummet

[drawing on 13" x 5" fir wooden cut out]

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