Remembering 9/11

Today marks the first national service day. Obama made 9/11 a day of service because I guess he didn't think Patriot Day or a day of remembrance was enough. In my opinion not remembering 9/11/01 is the BIGGEST disservice this country can do to itself. So for service day I'm going to write about my personal story of 9/11.

The day started out like any other day. I drove my wife to work, and was on my way to the bank to deposit the left over money from our vacation. I was listening to Howard Stern as I pulled up to the bank. He was reporting that a plane hit the world trade center. I figured it was a small Cessna type plane, as I went into the bank. By the time I got to the teller I found out the truth. The AM station in the bank suddenly broke into a live ABC radio report. It reported that a commercial airline crashed into the north tower. When I got back in the car, I did something I never did before, I changed the radio to AM. I have never changed back. At the time I worked for my dad at his gas station. I remembering walking into the station, and asking my dad if he heard that a plane crashed into the world trade center. He thought I was messing with him. So I turned on the radio and a minute later we heard about another crash into the south tower. The guy that worked for us said "you think this has something to do with Y2K?" and my dad said "its terrorism, not Y2K!". That day was hard, having to wait on customers and trying to listen to the radio at the same time. We told every customer that didn't know about it. It was easy to see who knew and who didn't, the ones that didn't know were still smiling. Somewhere around 9:45am we heard that a plane had crashed into the pentagon(actually first reports said an explosion). We were talking about some of our customers that commute to D.C. every day, and hoped that they were alright. Suddenly live on the radio we heard the south tower collapse. You could have heard a pin drop. My dad turned to me and said "you know how you always wondered how I felt when Kennedy was shot, its just like this" I can't describe how I felt. I was angry, sad, scared all rolled into one. Its a feeling that I hope my son will never have to feel. A little after ten I remember a Marine came in frantic. He was on his honeymoon and was called back to his post at Camp David. After he left another customer came in to tell us he heard there was another plane hijacked and headed our way. He thought they were aiming for either Camp David or the Gettysburg National Military Park. After he left my father said to me "Today you will learn how dumb people can be when they are scared". The phone rings, its my wife, a travel agent. She told me that its like a ghost town in her office with the exception of one person that came in around 9:30 for airline tickets. They had no idea what was going on around them. She also told me her mom wanted her to go home for the day, for fear a plane could crash into her office. I reassured my wife that no plane would crash into a strip mall in a small town in Pennsylvania, they have bigger plans in mind. I get off the phone with her and hear about the north tower collapsing. Not long after that we learned about flight 93. I walked outside to have a smoke and try and relax. As I was standing there I realized there was no sound. Hardly any cars were driving by the interstate next to us, but more importantly there was no noise from any plane above. Our location is on the outer most circle of flight plans going into BWI. It was eerily quiet. Through out the morning the news would tells us unverified news about explosions in DC, another plane being hijacked heading for DC, more proof that my dad was right. Later that afternoon a truck load of local firefighters came in for gas. They were heading for NYC in the hopes they could help. They didn't know anyone that was in either world trade center. They felt it was their duty to try and see if they could help rescue anyone that might be alive in the rubble. These wouldn't be the only firefighters we would see that day. The National Firefighter Academy is in Emmitsburg, MD about 10 miles away. We saw over a dozen cars and trucks filled with firefighters heading to NYC, some of their colleagues were heading to DC to help with the Pentagon. The rest of the day we stood by the radio hoping that we wouldn't hear about more planes being used as missiles. I got a phone call from my other job(I worked part-time on the local radio station). My boss told me that I wouldn't have to come to work tonight, they decided to just simulcast CNN news instead of other programming. Days later I would find out that the news anchor I was friends with owned part of the property in Shanksville that flight 93 crashed on. I called my wife to tell her I didn't have to work that night and I was going to pick her up after she got off. The ride home was completely silent. We just listened to the radio all the way home. When we got home we turned on the TV, and after seeing the famous scenes of the carnage, and how people chose to jump out of windows instead of burning to death, it sunk in even more. We never ate dinner that night, as we just stared at the TV and tried to reason why someone would do this.

Until 9/11 I thought that the space shuttle explosion was the worst thing I would have witnessed. After 9/11, I hope that nothing will surpass it.

Obama lied not Rep. Wilson!

Last night Rep. Joe Wilson spoke for most of us that have read the health care bill when he yelled "YOU LIE"! I wasn't surprised when all the news wanted to talk about was how terrible it was that a congressman would yell at the president. I didn't even bat an eye when they failed to mention the fact that democrats booed President Bush. I am shocked(although I shouldn't be) is that they didn't ask the question "why does he feel this way?" If they did they would look at the ways and means committee that struck down an amendment that Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) that actually would have used the IEVS(Income and Eligibility Verification System) and SAVE(Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) to make sure the people using Obamacare would 1. need it, and 2. be legally able to!

Lets look at some other lies our President said last night.

1. " Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have"

This is actually a half-truth. The reason is he used the word "requires". No it doesn't require it, however it puts so many taxes on your employer that they have to decided on profits(and re-investing in their company) or cutting costs and putting you on the public plan. However if you have a high deductible with an HSA plan, this plan would eliminate it! What's more unless you are enrolled in a private health plan before 2013 you CAN'T get private health care!

2. "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to the deficit now or in the future"

The CBO has stated it adds 220 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. However, this might work out for him. Friday he told congress he needed the deficit ceiling raised to over 12 trillion dollars. I guarantee this is how he can justify not adding to the deficit.

3. "Under our plan no federal money will be used to fund abortion"

Another half truth. All health care bills will mandate all private insurance companies to have abortions covered in their plans. Rep. Johnson(R-TX) and Rep. Canton(R-VA) tried to pass amendments against this. Canton specifically wanted to add an amendment to make sure no taxpayer money went to funding health care. It was defeated.

4. "A claim made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple"

No sir you are lying! H.R. 3200 wants to increase CER(comparative effectiveness research) to determine which treatments are the most cost and/or clinically effective in handling particular cases. Back in 2003 France was in a heat wave. Over 17 thousand people died, because the government could save money by letting doctors go on vacation, instead of saving lives. Just like the evil insurance company it came down to the bottom line.

5. "Requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives."

1/3 of this is a lie. It makes sense and it saves lives, however it does not save money. The reason being not every person needs this preventive care. For instance lets say you check 1 million people. Only 100 have a disease. The check up costs $50. You've just spent 50 million dollars. The treatment costs 50 thousand dollars, that adds up to $500,000. So how can you say this saves money?

The problem with a half-truth is its still a lie!

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/03/the-house-health-bill-the-house-ways-and-means-amendments/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5ewCvsGcSPBeHJurb6qYZLVU8OgD9AKAF902

Great quote

I have a great quote for you today:

"Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren, America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”

Sounds good right? What staunch conservative said this? Goldwater? No. Regan? No. Perhaps its a Friedman quote? No. Give up its a quote from a plucky young Senator from Illinois in response to Bush raising the deficit ceiling. That's right I'm talking about the big O here, and I don't mean Oprah. Now I know this may come as a shock that he's done an about face and now wants to raise the deficit ceiling yet again! I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact he has stated time and time again that his "hellcare" won't raise the deficit. Of course not, you're moving it so it won't!

I plan on being in Washington D.C. on 9/12, and I think I'll use Obama's quote on my picket sign!

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/57493-senate-must-raise-debt-ceiling-above-12t

Comrade Obama

More proof that our President is a communist. According to china daily website (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-07/13/content_8422505.htm) our President, and his administration, will allow the Chinese flag to be flown at the White house on Sept. 20th! Why....to celebrate 60 years of the People's Republic of China. Chen Ronghua, chairman of Fujian Association of America told reporters that:

"their application was approved not only because of sound Sino-American relations, but also China is a responsible country"

Responsible? Ask those students in Tienanmen square, a Christian, Muslim or Tibetan or Taiwanese people how responsible they are!

Maybe this is Obama's way of thanking China for allowing a joint venture with GM(now Government Motors) and China's FAW auto group.* You see while GM is closing plant here, they're bolstering China's economy. Maybe its a thanks for buying GM's hummer line**. Obama and his "greenies" could never allow his company to build an anti-eco monstrosity, however allowing China to do so is ok to them. Maybe its a thank you for staying communist for so long, proving to Obama(and his administration) communism can work! Or maybe its a way to thank them for giving our government more money to print worthless paper. If anything the Chinese should be thanking us, for showing them how they can defeat capitalism(something the Soviet Union couldn't do). Lenin once said "the capitalist will sell us the very rope to hang them with". It looks like comrade Lenin misspoke. In fact we'll buy the rope from the communist and vote in a comrade to hang us all with it!

I know how can I say that our President is a communist? That's crazy talk! Let's look at the facts; his mother was a communist sympathizer(a fellow traveler), his mentor Frank Marshall Davis a communist, his community organization in Chicago was molded from Saul Alinsky's(communist sympathizer) book, he was hand picked by outgoing incumbent Alice Palmer(executive of the US peace council, the US affiliate of the world peace council a communist front group funded by USSR), and backed by weather underground terrorists and communists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. He has now put a communist in charge of creating green jobs, Van Jones. The real question we should ask Obama is "why'd it take you so long to show your true colors?"

*http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ge-omd3Vre_gXjdLDjlAtuW8JHkwD9ADRTB00

**http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/02/news/companies/gm_hummer/?postversion=2009060216

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html

Quotes for July 4th

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government

.-Edward Abbey

Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe

-John Adams

The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.

-John Quincy Adams

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

-Samuel Adams

That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression

-Alabama Declaration of Rights section 35

The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery.

-Winston Churchill

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free

-Charles S. Darrow

A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.

-Justice William O. Douglas

Americans, indeed all freemen, remember that in the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you.

-Ben Franklin

Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

-Barry Goldwater

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

-Germaine Greer

Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny.

-Thomas Jefferson

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.

-Andrew Johnson

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty

-John F. Kennedy

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls

-Wayne LaPierre

It must never be forgotten...that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.

-Richard Henry Lee

The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

-Abraham Lincoln

The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power

-Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

-James Madison

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree

-Thomas Paine

Man is not free unless government is limited.... As government expands, liberty contracts

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on them to do the same.

Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.

-Ronald Regan

Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in history text books

-Jimmy Stewart "Mr. Smith goes to Washington"

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.

-Dorothy Thompson

...So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men

-Voltaire

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend on God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

-George Washington

The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

-Daniel Webster

Obama doesn't like oppressed people

I always felt that one of America's best qualities was that it was that we spread the hope of liberty to all oppressed people. We showed that the common man could throw down the shackles of oppression to form a government of the people. We stood up to the most powerful nation(twice) and beat them. We are the first country in history that has not used our superior armies to conquer foreign nations. We have stood up to tyrants throughout history before they could conquer the world, and when we couldn't(or wouldn't) stand up we gave aid to our oppressed brothers and sisters. We started VOA(voice of America) to get our message of freedom and liberty to oppressed nations. Maybe this is a Frank Capra-ish view, but it is my view. The last 2 weeks however America has changed, thanks to the Obama administration.

First was the Iranian election. For those of you that don't know how Iran works, here's a brief rundown. The supreme leader(Khamenei) has the final say over all matters, he decides if the person elected is the one that is best for Iran's(and more importantly HIS) ideas. After the June elections Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. His opponent Mousavi and his followers cried "foul"! They took to the streets in the 100's of thousands. There were brutal crackdowns on these peaceful protests that included the now infamous killing of a young woman. After a week of protests, killings and beatings our President finally spoke to the people of Iran to give them hope by saying to the government of Iran "stop all the violent and unjust actions against their own people" Wow that's pretty harsh, what's more interesting is he made this weak statement after being pressured by his own staff to make a statement. Nothing saying America will stand with the oppressed, or anything else to give support to the Iranian people.

Now lets look at Honduras. The president (Manuel Zelaya) wanted to become a dictator by being allowed to be president longer than the constitution says. The supreme court and congress of Honduras said no to this, however he wasn't going to let his dreams of a dictatorship rest. The congress contacted the military to "get rid" of the president. Now here's the interesting thing. The military arrested the president and took him to the airport to go to Costa Rica. After doing this the military gives power BACK to the congress! They in turn vote in an interim president, who is from the same party as the ousted president! The interim president says the January elections will go on as planned and he WILL NOT run for president. This has to be the most peaceful and democratic coup of all times! When was the last time you heard of a coup that the military didn't want to control the country, and that congress put the same party back in power? Now here's how Obama reacts. He says that Zelaya is the democratic president and the coup was illegal! He does however have some people that back him on this, most notably Chavez, Ortega and the Castro bros. That's some good company for an American president to have. Take that Honduras how dare you oust a would be dictator!

What does this say to our neighbors? America will no longer stand with the just and right, and will stand with dictators and tyrants! Sorry world Obama doesn't care about your right to freedom and liberty.

Minnesota elects a comedian, and I'm not laughing!

Yesterday Norm Coleman conceded the election in Minnesota. After 8 months of recounts, and court room drama, Al Franken is now the junior senator of Minnesota! This means that King Obama now has complete control of both houses of Congress. With the cap and trade bill coming up in the Senate in a couple weeks, there is a better than good chance that the capitalist system we have all enjoyed all our lives will be gone overnight. We will be paying anywhere from 100-300% more in utilities. Not to mention prices for everything else will rise to help companies pay for the strangling yoke of cap and trade. Fraud will run rampant, as the government will decide who gets the "coupons". Fake businesses will pop up selling their "coupons" to other business that are in need of them or face fines from Uncle Sam. Other companies will realize its easier to just move outside the United States to escape restrictive government in the private sector. Smaller business that don't have this option will be forced to close. Either way millions will be out of jobs. All of this(and more) just for some pseudo-science that is global warming.