Birmingham is mini-Pakistan. I have posted elsewhere that UK and France will become Islamic majority states by around 2025. My advice to non-Islamic British and French is to reproduce like rabbits!

Birmingham? Sister city to my birthplace in Alabama? I hope you Brits step up to that before everyone starts calling it "Bombingham."

I was at a loss of where to post this, so I chose the 9/11 celebration thread. INHO, this is news to celebrate. From today's AP wire: "NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- About 24 tons of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center is being melted down to form part of a new Navy ship that will be named the USS New York. Casting of a section called the bow stem was set for Tuesday at a foundry in Amite. The section will later be shipped to Northrop Grumman Corp.'s shipyard at Avondale, just outside New Orleans. "Symbolically, the World Trade Center steel will be the first part of the ship slicing through the water," said Ed Winter, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman's shipbuilding division. "That's in honor of the victims and the heroes of the 9-11 tragedy." The steel, primarily from a section of beam about 20 feet long, was salvaged in December from a New York landfill that received much of the debris from the twin towers. It was believed to have been part of the south tower, the second of the skyscrapers hit by hijacked airliners but the first to collapse. Winter said the construction of the $850 million ship will take about three years to complete." The motto of the U.S.S. New York will be "Never Forget".

I saw that too and it sent chills down my spine. Kind of reminds you of having the Essex-class carriers in WW II named for earlier carriers lost against the Japanese and then the new ones going out and ripping the guts out of Japanese Navy. I intend to spend tomorrow thinking of my three friends I lost that day at the Pentagon. And then I am going to realize that OBL may have made a new video, but its while he is hiding in the hills somewhere and not running anything. I will then go to work for the US Army, just like I did on that day 2 years ago, take my son to soccer practice and drink a few Silver Bullets, and toast everyone in uniform, be they nurse or Navy, Air Force pilot or paramedic, cop or Coastie, fireman or fire controlman, soldier or surgeon, Marine or mentor, and say, Thanks for your service. And then I'm going to have a few more and watch some baseball.

I don't know how you could do it any better than that, but, there's lots of folks here that could share their plans for tomorrow. How about it? Anyone want to share their plans?

>>Birmingham? Sister city to my birthplace in Alabama? I hope you Brits step up to that before everyone starts calling it "Bombingham."<< Brum got bombed heavily in WW2, since then Its had a famous IRA attack on pubs and evry so often, a bomb threat at New Street Station. (I think Alabama's Brum was named after the west midlands!!!!!!!!) :)

Where the names are the same, the American location was almost always named after the one found on Great Britain. (The "New", if there is one, is usually a hint.) In other instances, the names were original, but followed old English naming conventions. (e.g. Hartford.)

Two years ago Saddam gloated over the success of the 9/11 attacks. Today Americans are holding 9/11 memorial services at his palaces. I hope Saddam spends the day cursing the name of Osama bin Laden.

I think it's beautiful that the USS New York will be made from the steel of the towers. I attended a memorial service in O'Fallon, MO which unveiled a new monument that included some debris from the World Trade Center. It's the closest I've come to physically seeing the devastation of 2 years ago with my own eyes, a small part anyway.

Birmingham, Alabama was named for Birmingham, England because of the steel industry in both cities. Birmingham, Alabama's moniker of "Bombingham" goes back to the civil rights struggles of the 1960's, when the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party (the KKK) was bombing black churches.