I’m sure by now you’d all heard the disturbing news : Britney, J. Lo, and Madonna are going to sing together at the VMA’s tonight. Okay, just kidding.

Seriously, authorities in New York are set to release the 911 calls from 9/11 :

Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, authorities prepared to release transcripts Thursday of emergency calls made from inside the twin towers.
. . .
The victims who identified themselves in the emergency calls and radio transmissions or whose voices were recognized by co-workers include 19 Port Authority police officers, 14 civilian Port Authority workers and three people who did not work for the agency, the newspaper said.

Catherine Pavelec, the Port Authority’s manager of administration and protocol and a survivor of the attacks, said the tapes give “a very real sense of how many people needed help and how short a period of time we had to help them.”

I have a feeling this is going to reopen a lot of old wounds. My hope is that in reminding the public of how desperate the rescue situation was, that the media takes a hard look at how much has been done in the last two years to help make us safer. At the very least, I’d like to see some stories like this one getting more attention :

The firefighters? union president raged at President Bush Wednesday for blocking an extra $150 million in FIRE grants and millions more in 2002 emergency funding for first responders, but other fire service leaders are taking the loss in stride.

The funds, part of a $5.1 billion 2002 emergency appropriations bill, were likely lost forever with a stroke of President Bush?s pen on Tuesday.
. . .
In addition to the FIRE Grant funding, Bush blocked other homeland security funding earmarked for first responders, including $90 million for long-term health monitoring of emergency workers at Ground Zero; $100 million for interoperable communications systems for firefighters, police officers and EMS personnel; and $82 million to enhance the FBI’s counterterrorism technology.

“Don?t lionize our fallen brothers in one breath and then stab us in the back by eliminating funding for our members to fight terrorism and stay safe,” [International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) General President Harold} Schaitberger says. Bush had already agreed to approve the $5.1 billion, and he “reneged on his promise. And in the process, he killed millions of dollars in funding for firefighter health and safety and other critical fire service initiatives.”

As Bill Maher said in his most recent “comedy” special, “They’re our heroes, remember? Or is that why they’re our heroes, because they work cheap?”