Copping Out on the Coptic Christians

It took a lot of spinning, fabulating, and outright lying to explain the attacks on the Egyptian embassy, the Libyan consulate, and the murder of J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. ambassador to Libya.  But the Media finally have nabbed their fall guy, and in true Wag-the-Dog style, they caught him in the suburbs of L.A.

The script is all set now.  The Aug. 30^th PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) has now been scrubbed for a Sept. 8^th (needs confirmation) PDB to be in sync with the release of “The Innocence of Muslims” – it took this long to find out the title because the coke heads out in Hollywood probably had to spend an all-nighter thinking it up, along with the production company name, “Pharoah’s Voice.”  Supposedly this company ran a casting an in Backstage magazine in June 2009, for a working title film called, “Desert Warrior.”  Someone named “Sam Bassiel” was listed as producer.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a self-described Coptic Christian, was taken to the Cerritos Police Station and questioned by federal probation officers.  Nakoula was arrested and convicted in 2919 on federal bank fraud charges, ordered too pay over $790,000 in restitution. and banned from using computers or the Internet as part of his sentence, the AP report states.  He was given five years’ probation.

Federal investigators are trying to see if they can get him on charges of violating his probation by using the Internet or computer, and whether he’s used the alias of Sam Bacile or Sam Bassiel.  Federal authorities have identified Nakoula as the key figure behind "Innocence of Muslims," a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Middle East. A federal law enforcement agent told The Associated Press on Thursday that authorities had connected Nakoula to a man using the pseudonym of Sam Bacile who claimed earlier to be writer and director of the film.

Nakoula is protected by our Freedom of Speech of laws, if he is in fact Sam Bacile.  Meanwhile, this event will provide weeks of fodder for the Media, scourging Nakoula for making a film that set off the riots in Egypt and Libya (it did not), causing the murder of a U.S. ambassador and four others, damaging nascent relations between the U.S. and the newly-formed “democracies” in the Middle East, and endangering the lives of Coptic Christians in those countries.

In the meantime, the U.S. will continue sending our taxpayer dollars to thugocracies that have been murdering Coptic Christians by the hundreds, if not thousands, burning down their churches, and driving surviving Coptics into exile.  We’re arming the wrong side; it’s our weapons that are killing the Coptic Christians, not some obscure movie no one, including the Muslims, had heard enough until Obama needed someone besides himself to blame for the riots.

Where has the Media been to denounce their murders, their beatings, the burnings of their churches?  Now that the stage has been set for this drama, they’ll be only too obliged to record the massacres and blame it on Coptic intolerance.  Obama’s hands are red with their blood; he planted the seeds of this Arab revolution, and now that see what sort of fruit it has borne, the Media is helping washing his hands of it, rewriting the story, revising history, and threatening anyone who tells the truth with arrest for blasphemy. 

It’s what they did upon the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  A New York paper printed a quote from him the morning he was arrested that they’d planned to blow up more [in NYC] than the Twin Towers and that they knew it.  The story ran in the paper’s online edition.  Within an hour, it disappeared.  Had I not had a photography appointment at that time, I’d have printed it out.  When I came back to my computer, the story had vanished.

In the paper’s defense, I don’t think they were given much choice in the matter.  My mother’s newspaper was forced to retract a story she had written about a radar tower in the 1940s in Westchester County.  The FBI came knocking at my grandfather’s door, as he was the radar instructor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.  Grandpa subsequently knocked at her door, in no very good mood.  For all I know, some men in black suits are about to knock at my door. 

 

Good.  I hope they do.  They can point their guns at themselves.  I tried to tell them, long before KSM’s arrest, and only a short while after 9/11 itself; I even gave them my pictures, negatives and all, and they rolled their eyes at me.   The story disappeared (and so did the photos, apparently), but no matter; I already knew the truth.  I knew exactly what he was talking about.  For a company photographer, my camera and I got around quite a bit and saw a lot of interesting things – and people.  Ask yourself why KSM went on for pages and pages about our first president in his testimony.  Ask yourself about the Islamist philosophy of "As-Sirat.”

Mom was saying yesterday that very soon all paper/plastic identity cards will be replaced with identity chips in the palm of your hands.  Who will we find when Obama holds up his hand to take the presidential oath next January, if he’s elected.  The people not only deserve to know the truth, but they need to know the truth, and listen to the truth.  When people cover up the truth, presidents are impeached, towers fall, cities go up in flames, good governments fall, tryannies arise, bridges crash, and people who have no business being president or prime minister or what have you come to power.  And once in power, there’s usually only one way to remove them.

 

 

 

 

House Passes Buck on Cutting Budget

 In order to avoid a politically-embarrassing government shut-down just before the November election, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a six-month stopgap government funding bill by a vote of 329-91.

Next week, the Senate is expected to approve the same measure, which will provide funding for agencies for the first six months of the fiscal year (October to March).  In attempt to sidestep a political showdown before the election, Paul Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee, left the campaign trail to go to Washington to cast a vote in favor of the message.

Ryan’s vote was a message to members of the GOP freshman caucus to agree to a measure that will set a $1.047 trillion funding level, according to the Washington Post, for the first half of the year, the same amount that figured in the deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling last year.

Most Republicans went along with the bill in order to avoid a budget battle in the shadow of the upcoming election.  They would have preferred deeper spending cuts, along the lines of Ryan’s own budget, which would set funding for the fiscal year at $1.028 million.

“We have to pass this important bill to maintain the continuity of our government and to prevent its shutdown,” said Representative Harold Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

The Washington Post reports that the conservative Club for Growth (as well as the Tea Party Patriots) “had urged Congress to oppose the bill, arguing that it did not cut spending deeply enough.

“The stopgap measure means spending policies in place for the past year will merely be extended for another six months, with a slight funding boost.

According to Reuters News Service, “By keeping the government's agencies and discretionary programs funded through March 27, lawmakers buy themselves some breathing room in the post-election "lame duck" session to tackle more difficult questions - how to avoid $109 billion in automatic budget cuts that start on January 2, and whether to extend some or all of the tax cuts enacted under former President George W Bush, which expire December 31.

“The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the U.S. economy will experience another recession next year if these issues are not resolved. Moody's Investors Service warned on Tuesday that the United States could lose its top-tier credit rating if Congress fails to take action to reduce U.S. debt.”

“Rival ratings agency Standard and Poor's cut its U.S. rating last year after a grueling battle over raising the debt limit brought the government to the brink of a historic debt default.

“That standoff resulted in a budget deal that led to the automatic spending cuts, known as a sequester, which were intended as a painful incentive for Congress to come up with $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reduction. That approach failed and a "meat axe" of $109 billion in across-the-board cuts evenly split between domestic spending and military programs is scheduled to fall on Jan. 2, 2013.

The Washington Post notes, “Members of both parties say they would prefer to update policies, based on a reexamination of priorities and program efficiencies. However, it proved impossible for Congress to come to an agreement on the updated full-year appropriations measures, making the short-term extension necessary.

“Passage of the continuing resolution means funds will be available to keep the government running through March, after President Obama or Mitt Romney are sworn in as president in January.

“But it does nothing to avert deep automatic spending cuts and dramatic tax increases now scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, which the Congressional Budget Office has said could send the country back into recession.

“On a party-line 223 to 196 vote, the House also passed a measure Thursday that would require Obama to produce a plan to avert military cuts, a symbolic gesture intended to show Republican resolve to avert Defense Department reductions.

“The Senate has no plans to take up that measure, and Congress will take up real negotiations over how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff after the election.”

This is a fine time for our representatives to realize that we’re about to go over a fiscal cliff.  Instead of backing us away from the fiscal cliff, they’ve stopped the car on the edge of that cliff, teetering back and forth while they try to wrest control of the national steering wheel away from one another.

 

With the country now $16 trillion dollars in debt, it’s hard to imagine how they could justify spending another dime.  But that’s what happens when any addict tries to quit cold turkey, including spending addicts, when deprived of their substance of choice:  they sweat and tremble, they weep and rage, they can’t sleep and pace the floor desperately trying to think of a way to get their “fix”.  Without it, they’ll go off the deep end, and take us with them.

 

Apologizing From the Hip

Apologizing from the Hip

 

The Obama Administration’s first reaction to the news of the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and the attack on the Libyan consulate and the Egyptian embassy was to apologize, condemning:

 

“…the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

 

GOP candidate Mitt Romney rightly condemned the U.S. Egyptian statement as an unnecessary apology.  Obama attacked Romney on CBS’ 60 Minutes, saying that Romney “seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later,” and that the episode should have taught Romney a lesson about what it really means to be president.

 

“You have to make sure that the statements you make are backed up by the facts, and that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make them,” our Apologizer-in-Chief brayed.

 

Really?  Well, the Apologizer-in-Chief should have first found out whether the video depicting Mohammed in a bad light had been posted on You-Tube before the riots broke out.  Then, he should have determined whether the protesters had even seen this little documentary.  They had not.

 

Being that the attacks occurred on September 11^th, he should have considered whether the rioters had another motivation for attacking on that particular date.  If he had read his presidential briefing on Aug. 30, he would have learned of an Islamic extremist promise to attack on Sept. 11^th in retaliation for the imprisonment of the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind of the original, 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center and other New York City landmarks, and the very likely inspiration for the more successful attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and the thwarted attack on the U.S. Capitol on 9/11.

 

 Islamist terrorists don’t believe in coincidences.  If Mohammed Atta’s route took him over the George Washington Bridge on 9/11/01 (friends trapped on the bridge on that morning saw and felt the plane go past) and the other pilot flew past the Statue of Liberty on his way to the South Tower, it was for a reason.  That we didn’t lose those two landmarks that morning were either acts of luck or acts of God.

 

Here’s another fact you should know about our First Apologist:  he’s invited the new Muslim Brotherhood president to the White House at the end of this month to discuss the release of this Blind Sheikh on the grounds that instigation isn’t enough grounds to imprison someone for life.  If those are their grounds for amnesty, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was on the same mission, will also walk free.

 

Neither man would walk free if I had anything to say anything about it.  I sure wish someone would ask me.  For the love of God and for the sake of all those people who died on 9/11 and those who will surely die if KSM and the Blind Sheikh walk free, ask me!  I’ve been waiting these eleven years for you to ask me. 

 

What are you waiting for?  What are you afraid of?

 

 

D.C. Doppelgangers Set to Fund O’Care

When we sent a Republican House to Washington in 2010, we assumed they would do the right thing.  Among the rightest of the things we expected them to do was set to work repealing Obamacare.  The first step, they said, would be to  defund it, until we could get a Conservative majority in the Senate in 2012.

Okay, we said.  Do it.  Defund Obamacare.  At least it’s a start.

However, Tea Party Patriots (God bless them for keeping us informed) just sent out an e-mail.  The House of Representatives plans to pass, with bipartisan support, a six-month budget that includes full funding for the Affordable Care Act.  The vote is tomorrow.

Were our candidates wearing ear plugs when we told them their first job was to trash Obamacare?  Couldn’t they see all our home-made, anti-Obamacare signs through their expensive Ray-Ban sunglasses?  Were their operatives standing behind them chanting some hypnotic mantra that they will support Obamacare, they will support Obamacare, they will support Obamacare?  Or did they put their good twins up on the podiums across America, promising repeal Obamacare, while their evil twins went to Congress, sneering at the suckers who fell for their guile?

Well, they’re elected now and they want to know what we’re going to do about it.  Hold a rally?  Make more home-made signs?  Send them an e-mail that their secretary will delete?  Who do we think we are?  The American people?  Don’t make them laugh; their tans might crack.

They’re in the seat of power.  The captains of government and industry.  We didn’t really believe we could take them on.   Come back and talk to them when you have a $2 billion check in your hand. Then maybe they’ll listen.

Oh there are a few good scouts like Michelle Bachmann and Scott Garrett.  Too bad we can’t clone them.  We’ve seen what good it did voting Republican.

Whether we’re dealing with Evil Twins or not, Tea Party Patriots ask that everyone e-mail or call their representative and remind them of where their loyalties lie and to whom they are ultimately accountable.  Who needs enemies when we’ve Congress?  What was your price, you turncoats?  Your own private dacha?  Free junkets to Honolulu?

In God, we trust.  In government…not so much.

 

 

The Difference Between a City and a Community

Last night, as they have done for the last 11 years, the towns of Bloomingdale and Butler gathered together to commemorate the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.  Never mind that it was over a decade ago that nearly 3,000 people perished at the World Trade Center, a half-four trip through northern New Jersey, across the GW or through the Lincoln Tunnel and then some ten miles to Lower Manhattan.  It’s even further to the Pentagon and Somerset, Pa.

Never mind that the little Brownie Scouts and the Cub Scouts hadn’t even been born yet or that the high school students who sang “God Bless America” were in nursery school or kindergarten at the time.  Many of our community band members weren’t members at the time.  That Tuesday night was just like this one, if not quite so chilly.  There was no rehearsal at all that night, in deference to the tragedy that occurred.

The New York Times decided that they’d done enough 9/11 coverage.  Although the Bergen Record carried a photo of the Jersey City Memorial, along with stories about 9/11.  Only one network – Fox News – carried the live memorial service at Ground Zero.  Other papers and networks decided to leave it to individual preference as to how best to remember 9/11.

That’s the kind of callousness you can expect to find in a big city.  Building One America wants to turn our small towns into callous cities, where people don’t know or care about one another – or history.  They certainly don’t want us to remember events like Washington’s visit to the Bloomingdale area, or the Union soldiers from Bloomingdale who went South to fight the Civil War, with their families following them to serve as cooks, medics, and bands.  They’d rather we didn’t remember the Hindenburg Disaster or Pearl Harbor.  And the Liberals certainly would rather we forget 9/11.  They’re quick to remind us of Hiroshima, though.

Butler and Bloomingdale didn’t let their communities down by leaving 9/11 to fashion.  They planned a ceremony and invited the community to participate.  Although they’re two separate towns, the candlelight walk began at Bloomingdale’s Municipal Building and ended at the park in Butler.  This year, it was Bloomingdale Mayor John Dunleavy’s turn to give the speech.

There were prayers, songs from the children, a locally noted singer who sang two songs, and of course, the Bloomingdale Cornet Band.  That’s what a community is all about:  everyone coming together as neighbors.  For a solemn event that occurred eleven years ago, it was quite a good turnout.

Thank you, citizens of Bloomingdale and Butler, for not forgetting 9/11.

The Towers of York - A 9/11 Ballad

                

The Towers of York – A Ballad   By Carole J. Rafferty

I.   Not Today (Yesterday)

 

Many yesterdays ago, in a feverish time,

When Hell bent the world in a peaceful sign,

High over York rose a towering display.

Alas for that hope evil was born to betray.

 

At his birth seers warned, “The end of the world is today.”

 

Travel’d we there to gaze at the sight,

To witness this twin silver monument to might.

It soared to the clouds, to conquer the sky.

While others exclaimed, I only could sigh,

 

“Shadows fall over a day far from today.”

 

Fearfully I stared at the façade’s Gothic arch,

Then up the sleek girders gusted by March.

“What think you,” asked they, “of buildings so tall?”

Said I, with a shudder, “York’s Towers shall fall.”

 

“How say you so, miss?!  They rose only today!”

 

“Peevish nonsense,” cried they, “from a girl of thirteen!

‘Tis but dizzy heights imagination has seen.”

Dazzling towers I’d view’d that rose to great heights.

But no pinnacle had crush’d the heart with such fright.

 

“The Towers will fall!  I’ve seen enough for today!”

 

A bright future those slender arches belied;

Beyond their façade lay the ruins of pride.

Above their cold shadow, silver met the gold sun.

But its weight poorly borne, frail beauty’d succumb.

 

“Pray God, should they fall, let it not be today!”

 

Up we sped through the tower, my mind ill at ease,

Fears foster’d in magnitude by brothers who tease.

In mind’s eye did approach future terror on wing.

‘Twixt heav’n and earth, no refuge to cling.

 

Mist-vanish’d fate’s bolt would not strike today.

 

“How come you to think of such gloomy disaster?

Give us some reason for this Armageddon of plaster!”

“Perhaps an explosion, like the ones that wrack Eire;

A bomb in the basement, or maybe the spire.”

 

“One tower may explode, but not both in one day!”

 

“To accomplish that feat would need an army of men

To go unseen from floor one to one hundred and ten!”

“A storm then,” tried I, “with a wind of such power

To shatter the glass and send it down in a shower.”

 

“The sun shines brightly!  There’s no danger today!”

 

“Its supports are outside,” one yielded, “’tis true.

A fire could melt it, but could a fire melt two?

For lightning to strike twice would be quite a plan.”

Said I, in a caution, “Don’t underestimate Man.”

 

“We promise the Towers won’t fall – not today!”

 

Man builds empires up to the sky;

The physical materials God does supply.

But the material world’s the Devil’s to rule.

Against Man’s ambition, he plots chaos most cruel.

 

Man can’t reach Heaven with towers of steel

Nor trade for God’s love by making a deal.

Yet York’s Towers won’t fall by God’s loving hand -

The spiteful Devil shall knock down our castles of sand.

 

“The Towers won’t fall.  What more can we say?!”

 

Away in disgust my audience drew.

‘Twas impossible for a girl to know what I knew.

Not for my pleasure did I divine the Unknown.

Sight came unbidden, unwillingly shown.

 

“They won’t see the truth.  Oh no, not today.”

 

 

II.                  Signs of the Times (Today)

 

Now it’s today and people are weeping.

From the inferno, the hopeless are desperately leaping.

One tower wobbles, wagging its finger,

“Calamity’s upon you, dare not you linger!”

 

At Hudson’s last bridge, they look’d for a sign;

Their target in sight, with Fate they align’d.

Like a bird in whose reflection an enemy glares,

They slamm’d through the glass with their innocent fares.

 

To fight such a blaze needs an army of men

To climb from floor one to one hundred and ten.

Ten claxons clang for the World Trade Center;

Into the fiery maw, only the bravest dare enter.

 

Heroes and victims pass on the stairs.

Fate’s the precarious splitting of hairs.

Gasping for breath and toting their gear,

Those who go up must set aside fear.

 

York halts in horror to stare at the sight;

Billows of smoke turning day into night.

How, on this perfect day of sky blue,

Could tragedy strike, such hatred spew?

 

Stop up your ears to the thunder of rubble,

To the explosion of rage bursting our bubble.

To safety the panicking crowds madly run

From the hideous cloud that wipes out the sun.

 

All that is left of the towers I saw

Is the skeleton clinging to life by a claw.

Nothing is left to bury the dead.

Their ashes have buried the city instead.

 

The shadow of silence befalls our great land;

All music and laughter – even our band.

Not a bird, not a plane, not a single sweet note.

Every sound but crying has the enemy smote.

 
Six weeks has it taken for peace to return.
Even now, the smoldering ruins still burn.
“How could this happen?” ask we, wringing our hands.
“America was surely the safest of lands?”

Long is the story of sorrow and grief,

Of how America fail’d to keep out the thief.
Of closing our eyes and our ears to the fey.
Of saying too often, “Oh no, not today.”

Into our country fanatics were welcome,

No matter how dang’rous their activities made them.
Political correction corrupted the rules,
Allowing them to march onto our planes with their tools.

The mind guards fast an obstinate gate

Against the grim specter of unthinkable Fate.
When safe in the present Men warnings ignore,
The future’s a battlefield scarred by war.

III.               The Test of Time (Tomorrow)

The long years have passed and now it’s tomorrow.

Fate’s spared us to finish the tale of our sorrow.
The fall of York’s Towers caus’d the breaking of hearts,
Suffr’d even by those with the smallest of parts.

On that terror-fill’d day, York stood not alone;

Against other symbols was death being flown.
Anxiously, Americans scanned the blue sky
For zealots who were praying to Allah to die.

For three harrow’d days after the fall,

O’er York hung bleak a dust-poisn’d pall.
For three days more, the cold North Wind flew,
Restoring the sky to that morning’s true blue.

In funerals and ceremonies to honor the dead,
Sad songs were sung and eulogies read.
The Towers deflated to a six-story pile;
An anguish to clear in air cindr’d vile.

One sleepy dawn came a low distant thunder;
With a roar it rent the stricken silence asunder.
The eagle was bound for strife-ridden lands,
ringing justice’s wrath to those hid in the sands.

The grief-stupor’d nation awakened at last.

The Ground Zero flag flew from Ted’s mast.
No more taken for granted the Stars and the Stripes;
Freedom’s banner wav’d defiant in all sizes and types.

On went the descent of the now-aging year,
Yet the season of fall was loth to appear.
Springtime’s red robin, driven off by fall’s crows,
Returned to the garden and sang in the boughs.

Straight through the winter robin sang a bright tune.

The rose bloomed at Christmas as though it were June.
A balm of peace offr’d at the gift-giving season.
God’s mercy and pity transcend human reason.

Travel’d we back to gaze at the site;

Gone is the twin silver monument to might.
Where once lofty arches loomed fragile but fair,
Naught now remains but columns of air.
 
Tis lighter and warmer, but the shadows are chill;
Disbelief and mute awe do the empty void fill.
In the ruins the echoes of footsteps still clatter
And the wind carries whispers of long-ago chatter.

“Sixty years when I’m old?” asks a young voice from the past.

"Will that be how long York’s Towers will last?”
“More like thirty;” says the elder, “’tis I who’ll be gray.”
Twenty-nine years and six months, give or take an odd day.

When view’d from the past, tomorrow’s but today.

Always in mem’ry may York’s Towers arise;

Remember their splendor and not their demise.
May those who were lost be found in God’s glory
And granted a happier end to this story.

The Towers of York – A Ballad

Copyright Ó2001 Carole J. Rafferty

9/11 - Eleven Years Ago

It’s a Tuesday, just as it was eleven years ago.  The sky, at least at 8:46 a.m., is the same amazing blue it was on September 11, 2001, though the temperature is chillier than it was then.  But this is a peaceful morning.  I no longer work in the building I worked in then.  In fact, I’m no longer employed at all.

The shock and the sorrow of that day and the following months have long since subsided.  But I haven’t forgotten.  Since I lost my job I had to cancel my cable TV subscription so I can no longer watch the September 11^th memorial documentaries, although perhaps I can find them on the Internet.

I need no electronic device to remember the photo on my boss’ computer screen, showing a plane sticking out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  It was still shot.  Later, we’d learn it was no small plane but an enormous jetliner whose fire would take down the entire building.

I will never forget my co-worker and I trying to do our best to do our jobs while the rest of the office ran about in a frenzy, people looking for phones, for televisions, for more news of what happened, while our female coworkers sat at our community table weeping.

I watched the television coverage in our manager’s office as the second plane hit the South Tower and knew this was no accident.  All we could think of all those people; people just like us.  I remember the emptiness and disbelief as the last tower collapsed into dust.

We seem to be safer now.  Justice has been done unto Osama Bin Laden.  But we’re still waiting for justice to be done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and word in the National Security Community that Obama, whether he’s re-elected or not, will release the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rothman, who masterminded the Landmark Plots, and for whom some rumor, the 9/11 plot was engineered as a revenge for his imprisonment.  Rothman’s release will be Obama’s token of “good will” to the newly-

elected Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama was said to have issued a proclamation in honor of 9/11.  The man has no conscience.  This is the same man who castigates Wall Street brokers as evil, greedy millionaires; the same 2,700 people who were murdered in the World Trade Center.  The 9/11 terrorists thought the same thing about “evil millionaires.”  What’s more, while the replacement tower is still not built and its original name – The Freedom Tower – has been banished, a Muslim mosque and “community center” has been built in record time, in the remains of a building that was destroyed by the fuselage of one of the hijacked planes.

I remember watching the enormous cloud of smoke billowing from lower Manhattan as I stood on Alps Road in Wayne, N.J., thinking of all the lives lost.  I remember interviewing all the family members and witnesses for our magazine.  I remember my boss desperately trying to call his friend on the 104^th floor of one of the towers and later that day, talking about seeing his abandoned car at the train station.

I also remember in the ensuing days how we finally remembered we’re all Americans.  Eleven years later, many people have forgotten.  They’ve forgotten what it means to be an American.  They elected a president who is on record as saying he’d gladly throw out the Constitution, bows to foreign potentates, and never bothered (for his fine words about the military in his DNC acceptance speech about the military) to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Now-Known soldiers on Memorial Day.

He said he wants to transform America.  Thank you very much, but American was already “transformed” on September 11, 2001.  I know I was.  I was only two years into a job in which I was extremely happy from the first day to the last.  But every day since 9/11, something was gnawing at me.  Happy as I was (and I still miss all my co-workers), as each day went by, there was something else I needed to be doing.  Every day, I covertly read the news reports.  Things were going wrong and I wanted to be part of it.  I felt guilty.  I believe in doing the job for which you’re paid.

When I was laid off (it was finances not a job action), I wasn’t all that sorry.  I could do my part now.  Until I could find a paying job where I could follow my Conservative passion, I’d be free to educate myself on the subject matter of politics, work on my blog each day, and get ready to pass the GRE so I can get my Master’s Degree (probably in Library Science).

As for the victims of the 9/11 attacks eleven years, we have not forgotten you and never will.  God be with you.   And God bless America.

 

PILOT Program Stalled

The Bloomingdale Town Council was supposed to hold a public forum and then an immediate vote on the PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) program the Avalon Bay/Bloomingdale Urban Renewal LLC rental development t being constructed on Union Avenue.

The mayor did not have enough council members present to bring the issue to vote:  Councilman Glenn Schiffman was absent from the meeting and had recused himself because he lived too near the project.  Councilwoman Jo-Ann Pituch was on vacation, and Councilman Mark Conklin was absent due to a family emergency.  That only left Councilman Ray Yazdi and Councilwoman Linda Shortman, who said she had only heard the details of the plan at the closed meeting on Tues., Sept. 4.

Much of the public debate revolved around the fact that Avalon Bay would be getting tax breaks other apartment building owners had not, and would not be receiving.  At the Sept. 4^th meeting, Mayor Dunleavy noted that development of the Union Avenue tract and the larger Meer tract, which is still in limbo, were both court ordered through the Mount Laurel housing edict, forcing towns to accept low and moderate income (COAH) housing.  Both Bloomingdale Joint Venture (the Meer tract) and Avalon Bay waged successful builder’s remedy lawsuits against the town, alleging that the borough had not met its Council on Affordable Housing Fair Share Plan.

Avalon Bay will involve 174 rental units.  The Meer Tract, if developed, will host 360 residential units, including 72 low and moderate income units on Federal Hill. Though the Meer tract is not imminent, the builder does have court approval to develop the land.

Bloomingdale has had a long, bitter battle over the Meer tract, which would virtually eliminate Federal Hill, the site of the infamous Pompton Mutiny during the Revolutionary War.  The Union Avenue site, Avalon Bay was the likely site for the execution.  Somewhere between the Pompton Mutiny and the present day, the land was declared a “redevelopment zone.”

If you want to know just how underhanded all this is, I recommend you read “Cities Without Suburbs” by David Rusk, one of Obama’s Zombies.  Rusk encourages cities to aggressively “annex” their suburbs to break up their peaceful communities and use their tax money to support the crumbling cities and their entitlement programs.

New Jersey is a number one target and the only thing preventing annexation is the suburban towns’ incorporation.  So they’re using COAH as a back door to our taxes.  Once annexation is accomplished, we’ll have taxation without representation.  The next meeting will be Sept. 18.

 

 

 

 

Obama's DNC Speech - Do the Arithmetic

My apologies to my faithful readers for being absent from my blog for so many days.  I was quite ill.  I’m still not up to speed.  However, I couldn’t let any more days go by with responding to Obama’s DNC nomination acceptance speech.

He began his speech by going back eight years to 2004, when he addressed the DNC as its keynote speaker.  The keynote speaker is generally regarded as front-runner for the next election.  By all accounts, he gave a great speech.  The reason it was a great speech was because it was a Conservative speech aimed at swing voters.  They remembered his speech – and what a great speech they thought it was – and voted for him.  His 2008 opponent, John McCain, a notorious moderate and aisle-crosser, white-haired and hand-picked by RNC Chairman Michael Steele, was a sure-loser.

Obama’s policies over the last four years have failed miserably.  The country is $16 trillion dollars in debt.  We’re practically owned by China.  If any U.S. companies are solvent it’s because they’ve been bailed out by the government, otherwise known as the taxpayers, or they’ve moved their operations overseas.  The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world.

The first time I addressed this convention, in 2004, I was a younger man — (laughter) — a Senate candidate from Illinois who spoke about hope, not blind optimism, not wishful thinking but hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, that dogged faith in the future which has pushed this nation forward even when the odds are great, even when the road is long.

Eight years later that hope has been tested by the cost of war, by one of the worst economic crises in history and by political gridlock that's left us wondering whether it's still even possible to tackle the challenges of our time. I know campaigns can seem small, even silly sometimes.

Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. The truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. And if you're sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me, so am I.

Silly?  You mean like decades—old  tax returns?  Bringing out opponents divorce records?  Or maybe birth certificates that your own attorneys admitted were forged?  Or your wife’s outrageous fashion expenses or extravaganzas to exotic locales?  Are those trivial distractions you’ve spent an “avalanche of money” trying to bury?

Or is the truth about the $900 billion dollars you sent to Palestine to flower the Arab Spring while you admittedly plan to downsize our own military.  You had a lot of nerve touting our own military, which your opponent admittedly did not do.  Only he isn’t planning to downsize the military until they’re paper soldiers with nothing to fight with but slingshots.

You think the economy is doing better at 8.5 percent.  If anyone is working it’s your union buddies in the manufacturing and education industries, not to mention your Wall Street cronies who supported your campaign in a trade-off for regulatory favors and considerations.   Sure they’re doing fine and we’re not.   It’s our money and jobs you gave them.

Over the next few years big decisions will be made in Washington on jobs, the economy, taxes and deficits, energy, education, war and peace — decisions that will have a huge impact on our lives and on our children’s lives for decades to come.

And on every issue, the choice you face won’t just be between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America, a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future. Ours is a fight to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known —  the values my grandfather defended as a soldier in Patton’s army, the values that drove my grandmother to work on a bomber assembly line while he was gone. They knew they were part of something larger — a nation that triumphed over fascism and depression, a nation where the most innovative businesses turn out the world's best products, and everyone shared in that pride and success from the corner office to the factory floor.

My grandparents were given the chance to go to college and buy their home — their own home and fulfill the basic bargain at the heart of America's story, the promise that hard work will pay off, that responsibility will be rewarded, that everyone gets a fair shot and everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules, from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, D.C.”

If America elects you, they’ll be electing you Liar-in-Chief.  Who do you think you’re kidding with that blarney, “Ours is a fight to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known?”  Your own avowals have been to turn us into a Third World country – to make us equal to the poorer countries in the world.  Don’t you remember your Berlin speech:  “America thinks it’s exceptional the way every country think it’s exceptional; the way Great Britain thinks it’s exceptional.  The way Greece thinks it’s exceptional.”  Yeah, Greece is exceptional, all right; exceptionally bankrupt.

You certainly trot out your grandparents when it suits your political convenience.  According to our biography, “Dreams From My Father,” they were wealthy enough to own their own home in a middle class neighborhood, saved enough to send you to the exclusive Punaho School, yet you were ashamed of your middle class upbringing when you were invited to swim in wealthier classmate’s pool.  Yet still, you longed for the swampland, Indonesia home of your stepfather Lolo, where you had to watch out for alligators.

According to rumors, you weren’t above using your stepfather, Lolo Soetoro’s name to get into private schools in Hawaii, as a foreign exchange, and then into Occidental and Columbia.  But you consider those college records trivial matters that would be a waste of taxpayers’ money to pursue.  Still, you want to see your opponent’s previous tax returns for whatever class warfare dirt you can dig up.

Those independent voters you’re courting, the middle class suburbanites you deign to protect should know just how much your hate and despise them.  They should know of your Building One America plans to destroy their suburbs, to warehouse suburbanites in high-rise buildings and cluster buildings, how they plan to annex entire suburbs under the auspices of one city, so that you can appropriate their tax money.

“Dreams From My Father,”  “Cities Without Suburbs” and “Metropolitics:  A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability” all drip with such loathing for the middle class.  In “Dreams From  My Father” Obama calls his black grandfather, Oniyanga, a “House Nigger” [his words, not mine] for allowing himself to be educated and acculturated by the British, and for opposing his father’s marriage to a white woman.

Obama must have read the polls for he backtracks on his stance on Israel and Iran.  But remember:  this is only a speech to win an election.  He has to try to win over a doubtful Jewish vote.                

Terrorist plots must be disrupted. Europe's crisis must be contained. Our commitment to Israel's security must not waver, and neither must our pursuit of peace. (Cheers, applause.) The Iranian government must face a world that stays united against its nuclear ambitions. The historic change sweeping across the Arab world must be defined

He goes on to brag about how he ended the War in Iraq (wasn’t it already over by Bush’s administration?) and will end the war in Afghanistan.  That might not be as easy as he thinks.  There are two problems:  The Taliban, which just won’t seem to go away with a wave of O’s magic wand, and China.

My opponent — my opponent said that it was tragic to end the war in Iraq. And he won't tell us how he'll end the war in Afghanistan. Well, I have, and I will. (Cheers, applause.) And while my opponent would spend more money on military hardware that our Joint Chiefs don't even want, I will use the money we're no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work — (extended cheers, applause) — rebuilding roads and bridges and schools and runways, because after two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it's time to do some nation building right here at home.

We owe China a whole bunch of money, and with our increasingly devalued currency, if China calls in the debt, we'll be in a big hole.  What China wants isn’t our worthless money, though; what she wants is our energy-rich land – and Afghanistan’s, which is chock full of rare earth minerals.  Even though she has more manpower, as part of our debt, she wants the U.S. to spend our blood and treasure to get rid of the pesky Taliban.  Once they’re out of the way, China can safely mine all the deposits she’s laid claim to.

Finally, Obama promises to protect the middle class financially.  What middle class?  By the time he’s through in another four years, there won’t be a middle class.  There will only two classes:  an upper class running the government-chosen industries and the lower class, dependent either on low-paid union jobs with no chance of advancement or on the government largesse.

Here’s Obama’s “American Dream”:

You can choose a future where we reduce our deficit without sticking it to the middle class.  Independent experts say that my plan would cut our deficit by $4 trillion. And last summer I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut a billion dollars in spending, because those of us who believe government can be a force for good should work harder than anyone to reform it so that it's leaner and more efficient and more responsive to the American people.

I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 —  the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president, the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history and a whole lot of millionaires to boot.

Maybe it’s because he grew up in a backwards country like Indonesia, and took his life’s trek from Kenya, but Obama equates tax breaks and cuts with an increase in taxes.  What tax cuts means are cuts in budgets, not taxes.  Cutting budgets saves taxpayers money, although those benefitting from government programs don’t work out so well; like the college kids getting government college loans, failing businesses receiving stimulus money, and people who can’t afford homes getting CORA grants.  What Obama wants to do is take away money from the military (although he oozed with love for them) and give them to people who can afford to buy their houses.  Thanks to Building One America, though, they will.  The plan is to squeeze us taxpayers into housing projects and send the no-income squatters to occupy our homes.

Then there’s Social Security and Obamacare:

And we will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it, not by turning it over to Wall Street. This is the choice we now face. This is what the election comes down to. Over and over, we've been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way, that since government can't do everything, it should do almost nothing. If you can't afford health insurance, hope that you don't get sick.  If a company releases toxic pollution into the air your children breathe, well, that's the price of progress. If you can't afford to start a business or go to college, take my opponent's advice and borrow money from your parents.

By the time Obama was ready to run for the Illinois senate, he was already married to Michelle.  He couldn’t tell her, though, that he’d already rented the office but didn’t have the money for the next month’s rent, the staff, or the literature he’d need.  So, he had to beg from every big Fat Cat Democrat donor in Chicago in the city to raise the money, not to mention the dirt-diggers to get all the bad news on his opponents, who all wound up dropping out of the race.  But that’s not what we’re all about.

You know what, that's not who we are. That's not what this country is about. As Americans, we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, rights that no man or government can take away. We insist on personal responsibility, and we celebrate individual initiative. We're not entitled to success. We have to earn it. We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk- takers, the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system, the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world's ever known.

Doesn’t that just sound so wonderful?  So inspiring coming from a young man whose stepfather adopted him as an Indonesian and supposedly enrolled in college as a foreign exchange student – Barry Soetoro?

But we also believe in something called citizenship —citizenship, a word at the very heart of our founding, a word at the very essence of our democracy, the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.

Not to sound like a “birther” but if he entered school as a foreign exchange student, when exactly did he become an American citizen again?

We believe that when a CEO pays his autoworkers enough to buy the cars that they build, the whole company does better.

I’ve never heard of an autoworker who couldn’t afford to buy the car his company manufactured.  I’ve heard of autoworkers who wouldn’t buy the car.  In any case, union workers make better salaries than the rest of us.  Unless they worked for Mercedes Benz or Lamborghini, it’s hard to imagine they couldn’t afford to buy their company’s car.

We believe that when a family can no longer be tricked into signing a mortgage they can't afford, that family's protected, but so is the value of other people's homes — and so is the entire economy.

                                   
Tricked?  Tricked?!  There wasn’t a single homeowner during the housing crisis who didn’t understand what an ARM (Adjustable Rate Mortgage) is.  They were playing the Ponzi Numbers game and they knew it.  Some broker offered me an ARM and my brother tried to urge me into one.  I told them to go fly a kite to the moon.  I do have a problem with town councils that gave the thumbs-up to McMansion developers, knowing that future owners would default on their mortgages and houses.  I took just a dim view of cluster housing and apartment buildings with renters who would pay no property taxes and tangle up their towns with impossible traffic.  I feel no sympathy for any of them and resent the fact that my taxes are bailing them out.

Over and over, we've been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way, that since government can't do everything, it should do almost nothing. If you can't afford health insurance, hope that you don't get sick.

Believe it or not, you can get low-cost health care.  I just signed up for some today.  Mind you, it’s the very basic, bare bones care.  For $192, I get hospitalization, accident, dental, vision, and prescription drugs.  The one item the policy doesn’t cover is catastrophic illness.  I figure if I have a cat illness and they take my house, I’m not going to need it anyway.  The other thing it doesn’t cover is doctor visits.  It even covers vitamins.  When I consider my employer’s plan basically cost me my job (even for the COBRA extension, the cost was $520 a month), $192 per month isn't so bad.

Finally, at the end of Obama’s speech, he enjoins with these parting words:

If you reject the notion that this nation’s promise is reserved for the few, your voice must be heard in this election

Well, since it’s Obama’s notion, not ours, we certainly do reject it – and Obama

If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election.

Another reason to reject Obama; he was responsible for selling out us to the highest bidder.

If you believe that new plants and factories can dot our landscape, that new energy can power our future, that new schools can provide ladders of opportunity to this nation of dreamer.

So long as we tax corporations at usurious rates, no plant or factor in its right mind will do business in America, unless the government bails them out.  So long as schools teach socialism and climatology, instead of basic education, our students will be the idiots carrying baskets of rice for the Chinese.

If you believe in a country where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules, then I need you to vote this November.

Everyone in America already gets a fair shot.  Not everyone does their fair share, collecting welfare and other government entitlements.  And you, Pres. Obama, are the last person to play by the rules.  How many Executive Orders have you passed now?

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won't promise that now. Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place.  Yes, our road is longer, but we travel it together.

No, you never said it would be easy.  What you said was you would transform American and spread the wealth.  Your road is certainly going to longer because it is not going to lead to a better place.  Your road is longer because we have no intention of traveling it together; we will do everything to wake America out of the stupor in which you placed, throw roadblocks in your way, and reveal to American the truth about what you are.

We don't turn back. We leave no one behind.  We pull each other up.  We draw strength from our victories. And we learn from our mistakes. But we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon knowing that providence is with us and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on earth.

You don’t turn back because you’ve been indoctrinated in socialism and communism for decades.  You’ve left plenty people of behind, particularly the middle class because they represent success, exceptionalism and peace.  Socialism and Communism have been around for over a century and you still have learned from the mistakes; in fact, you go out of your way to repeat them.  I wouldn’t count on providence being with you; providence doesn’t favor liars and manipulators don’t point to a distant horizon that is a mirage.  Finally, we already are the greatest nation on Earth.  If we’ve tumbled from our pedestal

 Thank you, God bless you and God bless these United States.

God may bless those of us who believe in the United States, and He may be bless and protect our country.  But unless I’m very much mistaken, God has a very different fate in store for you and your followers, Barrack Hussein Obama.