Yesterday marked the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 and while we have made great strides as a Nation, we still have a long fight ahead of us on the war against terror. Security levels in New York City continue to remain high as new information suggests another attack might be forthcoming. Additionally, F16 fighter Jets accompanied an American Airlines flight until it landed at JFK airport due to suspicious activity onboard. Tragically, this is how our Country must operate in a post 9/11 world. Sadly enough, friends and family cannot memorialize their loved ones with true peace of mind as fears of an impending threat linger over their shoulders.

While we mourned, remembered and honored those fallen victims of 9/11, other Nations were not as kind. In Pakistan, supporters of an Islamist political party protested, burned American flags and held banners alleging American or Israeli involvement in the 9/11 attack. In Afghanistan, 77 U.S, troops were injured in an attack by a Taliban suicide bomber at an Afghan coalition base. In other parts of the world, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations continue to plot harm against the United States as is evident in documents obtained from the Bin Laden compound and trails of other information picked up on jihadist websites.

We must learn from history and never let it repeat itself. America has faced wars in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Our focus must remain on military defense. We must keep on the offensive and never again let down our guard. The bombing of the USS Cole on October 10, 2000 marked the first unofficial act of war on our Nation preceding a second, unprovoked attack on September 11, 2001, with both events affecting countless innocent men, women, husbands, wives and children who were simply guilty of going to work. The photographs of the falling man and firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero are powerful and will go down in history alongside the famous portrait of U.S. soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima. (http://www.september11news.com/news/most-powerful-911-photos-part-3/)

Our Country faces tremendous decisions in the months ahead as unemployment swells, debt increases and the deficit widens. The choices we make must not and cannot come at the sacrifice of our military and security.

For the past 10 years, America has done a remarkable job working to ensure that America remains safe. Former President George W. Bush deserves credit for making difficult decisions to build a foundation that supports security and our defense. President Obama has built upon that foundation and successfully hunted down Osama Bin Laden, while increasing the use of our military drones against the Taliban.

While our intelligence has improved, we still face threats as evident by the Christmas Day bomber. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/us/26plane.html) The moment that we let down our guard will result in a mistake of epic proportions. To this day, threats continue to be very real because people continue to hate America out of envy and the freedoms that we stand for.

The images from Ground Zero on September 11, 2011 were powerful as Paul Simon’s melody of “the Sound of Silence” overtured the ceremony and the Waterfall Memorial poured spectacularly into the two reflecting pools. Yet it is evident that politics have played a detrimental role in the re-building effort and it has taken 10 years too long to build a proper memorial. Still, we are moving in the right direction and rebuilding as we have always done – as a Nation.

The ten-year anniversary ceremony also coincided with opening day of the National Football League. In Chicago, Jim Cornelison’s rendition of the National Anthem at Soldier Field personified the resolve, courage and strength that Americans have shown and will continue to show moving forward. Chants of USA echoed throughout the Stadium and via social media, other parts of the world. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKW70IOPgM8)

Today, the Freedom Tower is considered to be the safest building in the world with a concrete structure seven times stronger than the average skyscraper. In the end we realize and will always remember that while we lost 2,976 people on 9/11, the fatalities could have been much worse if not for the valiant efforts of Firemen, Policemen and other heroes.

Even though we have our shortcomings, America is still the greatest country in the world. We stand for democracy, freedom of Speech, religious tolerance and the American dream. Let us not forget the atrocities of 9/11, remember that they can happen again, and ensure that they do not.

The U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 10.2% in October, topping the 10% mark for the first time in 26 years, the Labor Department reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls dropped by a seasonally adjusted 190,000 in October, bringing to total number of jobs lost in the recession to 7.3 million. It was the 22nd straight decline in payrolls….The report was worse than expected. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch were forecasting a rise in the unemployment rate to 10%, with 150,000 lost payroll jobs.

That’s the highest since 1983.
I have been posting these numbers for the last 3 or 4 months here on our blog, and they are always “worse than expected.”  When you have an economically illiterate president, Treasury Secretary, and Fed Chairman, the public is left consoling itself with an alleged “number of jobs saved” from a huge spending stimulus bill.  And what of those jobs?  As Nobel Laureate and liberal luminary Paul Krugman points out, many of them are public sector union jobs (i.e., teachers): “If you want to see the recovery act in action, visit a classroom: your local school probably would have had to fire a lot of teachers if the stimulus hadn’t been enacted.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Obama/Biden recovery!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125261851127501015.html#mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews

Following the nature of things, the party is having an internal debate on which direction to take.  There are two, arguably three, camps in this debate.  The traditional (Reagan,  Buckley, Goldwater, talk radio et cetera) Conservatives form the first camp.  They have not had a significant leader since Newt and are eager to return to a party of limited government, personal responsibility, and winning landslides.   Having rejected all attempts to “moderate” during the campaign season and thus portraying the Obama we now know back then , the vindicated Conservatives hold a strong hand.  (They also hold the #1 NY Times bestseller for the last 11 of 12 weeks!

http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/1416562850 )

The second camp might be described as the Colin Powell, John McCain, David Brooks Republicans for lack of a -not better – name.  They consider themselves conservative, but are not looked on kindly by movement conservatives.  They are more “moderate;” this “moderate” word means, in their context, anything from eschewing most social values from the party, to increasing spending on education, healthcare, and other public programs, to only nationalizing part of the nation’s economy, to accepting immigration amnesty for tens of millions.  Most were soft on Obama in the campaign season, with Powell even voting for Obama.  They are a mostly unorganized group and have trouble presenting a platform that differs from their Democrat opponents’.  In between bashing talk radio and praising Obama for taking the middle ground, this group mostly likes talking to itself.  Their hand isn’t very strong and most will likely fall out of favor rather quickly when the part is unified.  Likely, some will then join the Democrat party out of what will be called personal courage.

The third camp, which is scarcely much larger than your average summer camp, are the libertarians.  They are nearly purists, with an admirable admiration for human liberty.  As a group, they tend to be intellectual in the Enlightenment tradition.  Unfortunately, too much of their liberty borders on license, and your average voter cannot be expected to understand economic reasoning when it is not widely taught in public schools (there is something tragically ironic in that thought).  Libertarians appear to many as focused inordinately on legalizing marijuana and every form of pornography, which does not play well to a country that (until recently anyway) had a healthy view of the nuclear family.  Appealing in message as they can be, they are hopelessly fractured themselves into a thousand mini-camps, each with stubbornly irreconcilable differences.  With the passing of the great Milton Friedman (himself a supporter of the Republican party, as he said, out of convenience), Libertarians lack a celebrity salesman.  Though they won’t win the party, they’ll always be around calling Republicans closer to their roots.

I think it’s reasonable to say that Conservatives will inevitably win this inner party battle and go on to save the country from outright socialism.  Talk radio provides the medium for organization and fund raising, as well as a giant and expanding loyal audience.  I find this heartening.

In the meantime, every Republican should be concerned with these two stories:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/third-inspector-general-controversy-emerges.html

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32380

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama stated that Iran does not pose a serious threat to the United States the way the Soviet Union did because it’s tiny in comparison. He also said that we should use our position of strength to listen to Iran and find potential common interests.

This approach is frighteningly naive because it assumes a fanatical religious theocracy that hasn’t quite left the seventh century, holds dear the values of a modern Western democracy, i.e. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Farewell Israel breaks away from the Western world view to explain the history, ideology, and culture of the Islamic world that has brought us to the conflict we experience today. Once that is understood, it becomes much easier to see why a listen, find common interests, “why can’t we just all get along”, approach will not work. There is simply nothing they (Islamofascists, Muslim terrorists, Iranian Mullahs, Palestinians, etc.) want that the U.S. Israel, or the rest of the Western world can afford to give.

Farewell Israel does a splendid job explaining the above, however at the very end it draws some conclusions that seem a bit lacking. The final conclusion of Farewell Israel is that President Bush played right into the hands of Al-Qaeda, who wanted to ignite a global conflict with the West, by invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Before you anti-Bush Obama supporters out there get too excited… Obama would not fare much better because he would invade Afghanistan to chase Bin-Laden remember?)

I would not necessarily dispute that Al-Qaeda wanted the U.S. to provoke the Islamic world, however the documentary does not discuss why a non-reaction, proving once more that the U.S. is a paper tiger, as Bin-Laden once claimed, would be any better.

If you watch the documentary, please come back and express your thoughts in the comments section.

For more on Obama’s view of Iran, please read Obama Thinks Iran is Not a Serious Threat on SocialismDoesntWork.com.

Here’s why jobs “saved or created” is shameless rhetoric:

1. There’s no way to count the number of jobs “saved or created” by stimulus spending. The way the Obama administration comes up with the 150,000 figure is to basically assume that x amount of government spending creates a y number of jobs and just declare it so.

2. The second reason is related to something I call the Instant Billionaire Formula™. I claim that with the Instant Billionaire Formula™, anyone can become a billionaire, instantly! Here’s how it works… ready? Okay, write yourself a check for one BILLION dollars! And presto, you’re a billionaire! Of course, what I failed to mention to begin with is that applying the Instant Billionaire Formula™ costs a billion dollars (you just wrote yourself a check, remember?), so overall, your net worth really doesn’t change. But if we just look at the positive side of things, then, wow, yes, you just became a billionaire! Similarly, the government can create any number of jobs by taking money from someone and giving it to someone else for say, digging a ditch and filling it back up. But considering government’s propensity for waste, is there any net gain here? How many jobs are lost due to the stimulus spending, which is money that needs to be somehow taken out of the economy before it’s put back in? How productive are the jobs “saved or created” in relation to the jobs “forsaken or destroyed”? These are questions we must answer before we can claim 150,000 were “saved or created” while the net job loss is in the millions.

I’m sure that if President Bush had tried the “saved or created” trick, he would have been ridiculed to no end.

Here’s a review of this Thomas L. Friedman article by William M. Palumbo.

Time to Reboot America

This article is written by a socialist. I mean that in the following way: it has the mentality behind it that regards government and its leaders as being the reason for progress in the world. It gives little credit to everyday individuals and looks to the Nietzschean Übermensch as the catalyst of change. This elitist charge is becomes doubly offensive to the defender of a free society because Friedman, at the same time, presumes that this person comes from government. (Keep in mind that only agents of government possess the ability to affect change through legal use of force.)

Thomas Friedman, while implicitly recognizing what sort of production actually benefits living standards and those that do not (re: his argument, that to the detriment of society, the best intellectually are entering the financial services industry and not engineering or manufacturing, etc.) does not seem to apply this argument to which direction progress should take; to what voyage should our country next embark on? Instead of leaving this uncharted course to be navigated on the free market, he presumes, incredibly, to know what must be done. For example we need investment in new energy and it should be governmentally imposed at a cost to us all, a cost presumably acceptable to Friedman and thus his class. It is an argument for how best to readjust the classes under him so as to make his own life more accommodating, and is argued in a way an aristocrat might to the peasantry if he had no worry for revolt. I believe we can see this aristocratic attitude clearly in the first three snobby paragraphs, bragging, as they are, in blasé self-contentment.

Immediately the column, as it enters America with Friedman’s JFK arrival, shifts its tone from complacency to near disgust. The “Flintonstone”-esque “ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped” and JFK had the nerve to charge $3 for luggage cart rental! Friedman whimsically muses to himself how yes, he had seen this terminal before, in 1998 Hong Kong. Hah! How dare they, err, I mean we, Americans allow this! (Consider for a moment how many Americans have not been to an airport since 1998. If this man writes for the middle class he is apparently in such high demand that they continue to read him despite being flatly put down.) Friedman then pretends, like a good steward, to be concerned with how “our kids’ future” shapes up, this, argues Friedman, largely contingent on how the bailout money is spent. The money should be invested wisely for the future in prescient projects. If it is “spent on pork, it will be the end of us.” Like a good economist, and hinting of an answer, he reminds us that infrastructure is crucial for economic expansion.

Two points here: first, the money being spent is largely on pork, and, while it will not be the end of us, it will certainly prolong this recession. Second, if we are going to spend money on infrastructure, do we really have to focus on international airport terminals before, say, roads and bridges? Is a less than 12’ high terminal really going to offend the tastes of your average business traveler enough that they stop conducting business with the largest, most productive and prolific economy in the world? I, for one, sincerely doubt that, and I also doubt that if Friedman took the time to consider his own argument as formulated he would find practicality either. The man is, in all probability, in and out of airports frequently, some surely with less than grand terminals (which speaks to how little effect they have on him business-wise) and thus views “infrastructure” not as a middle-class person or blue-collar worker, but as one of privilege.

Friedman views Americans as “dumb as we wanna be.” Besides infrastructure, his wish list includes shoveling pork to teachers (a popular idea based on the fallacy that money alone yields higher standards in education), nationalizing education standards, changing immigration laws (a very good idea, though I very much doubt Friedman would support sealing the southern border as a complement to relaxing other restrictions to increase the importing of intellectual capital), and dictating what cars private industry should produce. It’s a laundry list of which Mao would see much merit.

Back to the socialist attitude: are Friedman’s not the pretenses of every socialist? The assumptions made by one whom considers too exclusively his own position and/or personality in society, not sufficiently able to extend their ethics past current personal conditions? Friedman shows disdain for genuine choice when he states that cheap “energy prices” (that is, energy that is already inflated in price due to our own government) is delaying investment in new fuel. (He misses the fact that future research by energy companies is figured into the price.) Would he like to make gasoline $8 a gallon by tax and fund the energy research publicly rather than privately? One gets the sense he would, yet I would ask he justify subsidizing the research costs of energy companies. His instincts in problem solving have a theme of centralization, and that has proved economically, and intellectually for that matter, backwards.

Finally, the very title suggests that he views America, Land of the Free, as defunct in concept and in need of molding, hopefully by a capable, incoming President. In addition to being of the garden variety-cleverly cloaked socialist mindset too common in editorializing, Friedman also shows a political affinity towards socialists, offering his apologetic influence to Obama.

No, I’m not talking about his liberal positions, though will undoubtedly lead our economy further into the tank, among other ill effects. I’m talking about his almost parody-like, double talking duplicity when it comes to gaining political advantage. Consider the promises he’s now renegged:

1) “Disowning” Wright, only after Wright called him a typical politician
2) Embracing NAFTA, after suggesting he would renegotiate the agreement to benefit American workers
3) Supports legislative protection for phone companies who help federal agencies engage in wiretapping
4) Abandoning the public financing system system after collecting record amounts of donations – shiftily blaming this decision on Republican smear groups, of which there are effectively 0 operating at the current time. Ironically, it’s MoveOn.org, the liberal smear group, that is the most active thus far in the election.
5) The latest, most unbelievably comical example: claiming to support gun ownership in light of the Heller decision, and claiming his former stance on gun ownership restrictions was a misconception based on fallacy, after HIS AIDE checked the wrong box on a questionnaire.

There are more, I’m sure. But seriously, Sen. Obama is now trying to have the American electorate believe that an aide is responsible for his reputation as being against the 2nd Amendment. He’s bet on the stupidity of the American people, and unfortunately, according to the polls, he’s got a 50/50 shot in winning.