On the 19th, I posted a forward titled Did You Know? without examining all the facts. Remember the adage that “assume makes an ass out of ume?”

I was instantly called on it by fellow blogger Pat’sRick in my comment section, and he added a couple of solid links to back him up.

In the forward I posted, the author defined many of the friezes and other symbols as connoting religious reference. In addition to Pat’sRick’s links, I did some further research and while Moses holding two tablets of stone does appear, the Ten Commandments are not engraved in the tablets.

So, I offer both my thanks to Pat’sRick and my apologies to any readers who might not have been as well informed as my fellow blogger from Alabama.

Blogger Dan Trabue, of A Payne Hollow Visit, who disagrees with me on everything no matter what but is well intentioned and well reasoned on his own side of things, commented that:

Did you know that James Madison also said:

And my reply was:

Dan–

FYI, I am Jewish. I don’t practice as devoutly as I might, though I try to live as I was brought up to live. My point here is that unlike other Jews who are liberals, I fully support the idea of America as a Judeo-Christian society.

Basically, the author of the forward in question was trying to make the point that I made in my reply to Dan’s comment, that America was founded on religious principles. Whom do you suppose the pilgrims were thanking on that first Thanksgiving? Hint, a three letter name, and the same entity we’ve thanked every Thanksgiving since. One of the things I thanked Him profusely for was my grandmother’s awesome chestnut stuffing.
I’m fanatical about looking at potential coincidences, and here’s something I’ve noticed: Ever since the atheists won their battle to take God out of our public schools, there has been serious deterioration in a vast number of children’s respect for authority figures, parents and one another as well as a massive increase in violence among young people. Are these issues related, or coincidental?

It would seem that President George W. Bush’s efforts to spread democracy into Islamic society as a way of curbing the recruitment of the young to the “causes” of terrorists are beginning to show results as more and more Muslim journalists and “listened-to” Arabs speak out against terrorism and the Islamic states’ positions that encourage its growth. Kira Zalan links to some excellent examples here. Go and have a good read, see you when you get back.

You have to realize that Islamofascist terrorism could not flourish as it has with so many of its practitioners remaining at large if there was a serious effort on the part of the governments of Muslim countries, their clerics and worldwide Islamic communities to do something about it, and if there were no Islamic governments, such as “our friends” the Saudis, Syria and Iran lending support to terrorist organizations.

I very definitely take umbrage with the American left’s position that those who indulge in hate speech here in the west are entitled to do so under the umbrella of “freedom of speech,” as Kira’s first commenter implied, “chastised” thereupon by a number of right-thinking commenters. In order to live in a free society, one must understand that every freedom comes with unspoken responsibilities that are there to prevent abuse that can endanger or otherwise infringe upon the rights and freedoms of others. In the case of Muslim clergy and others who speak to incite fellow Islamics to commit violence upon the rest of us, they are abusing the right to freedom of speech and for the safety of everyone else, despite the portside diatribes to the contrary, need to be removed from our community. There is little to choose between them and those who actually commit acts of terrorism. This ACLU/liberal view that we have to wait until a bunch of innocent citizens are blown up or otherwise butchered before any action is taken is obscene as it demonstrates a total lack of respect for human life.

The Academy For The Constitutionally Challenged weighs in on the reality of the situation here.

Before we continue, you need to understand something, if you haven’t figured it out already. These people hate you. They don’t want to understand you, and they don’t want to be your friend. They don’t simply hate your government; they don’t merely hate your religion. They hate you and me and our families and our friends. And they won’t ask you if it’s okay to kill you. They won’t file suit in court to find out if it’s constitutional. They won’t take a vote. They’ll just kill you, and I hope to prove that to you.

Read the rest, it pretty much encapsulates the entire issue and is extremely well put.

In the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Gary C. Gambill puts out an interesting analysis on Democratization, The Peace Process, and Islamic Extremism. It’s definitely worth reading.

Terrorism is an issue that has been politicized by the left, who seem to believe that trying to get their candidates elected by slandering and obstructing our president and his administration at every turn is more important than the lives of potentially thousands of their fellow Americans. Shame on them, they ought to find another country to live in instead of sabotaging this one.

Apparently in their case, the lesson of 9/11 means nothing.

This is the content of a forward sent me today by a friend and I thought I’d pass it on as it is so relevant in view of the attacks on America’s relationship with God by our country’s atheists(liberals, the ACLU and other assorted treasonous flotsam). The composition is attributed to Andy Rooney:

DID YOU KNOW? As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S. Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world’s law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view … it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!

DID YOU KNOW?

As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.

DID YOU KNOW?

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall,
right above where the Supreme Court judges sit,
a display of the Ten Commandments!

DID YOU KNOW?

There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and Monuments in Washington, D.C.

DID YOU KNOW?

James Madison, the fourth president, known as “The Father of Our Constitution” made the following statement:

“We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said:

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ”.

DID YOU KNOW?

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher, whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

DID YOU KNOW?

Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members of the established orthodox churches in the colonies.

DID YOU KNOW?

Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy,the rule of few over many.

DID YOU KNOW?

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said:

“Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers.”

How, then, have we gotten to the point that everything we have done for 220 years in this country is now suddenly wrong and unconstitutional?

It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, it is very hard to understand why there is such a mess about having the Ten Commandments on display or “In God We Trust” on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don’t we just tell the other 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!?

Hat tip, Jodee.

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This morning I got in a cab and told the driver to take me to Ground Zero. The trip from midtown to downtown took perhaps twenty minutes, and then we were on a familiar street, yet unfamiliar at the same time because there was nothing in front of us but sky and a metal fence where there should have been–
The driver, an Arab, said nothing as he pulled up to the curb before the fence. The fare was ten something, I was so mesmerized by what I saw — or more accurately what I didn’t see, the entire area looked suddenly alien to me and I actually felt momentary fear for some reason I can’t fathom, I handed the cabbie a twenty, got out of the taxi and walked slowly to the fence, to that great cavity beyond that simply didn’t belong anyplace in my memories, didn’t belong in New York and I gazed out upon it, my emotions a mess so that I actually wanted to cry — but didn’t, I just looked and looked, and walked, and looked, and felt… I don’t know, tragic. It was so difficult to picture the two awesome towers that had stood there when I had last been here in New York.
There was a sense of loss within me that was as profound as those when I lost my grandparents and my mother, an uncle and numerous friends in years gone by, some of whom had died in my presence. But there was something different here, something really terrible and unearthly, like I was coming home to a mountain that had become a valley in my absence, all its residents gone, dead.

Dead.

Murdered in the name of God. Someone else’s god, a god of destruction and murder, not the God I believe in. Not my God, not the God I worship as a Jew, not the God worshipped by Christians. I knew some people who worked there, friends who on the 11th of September, 2001, ceased to exist. In the name of Allah, the Muslim god, the god presiding over the so-called Religion of Peace.

Sure, I had been through the same uncomprehending to shocked to sad to angry succession most Americans had undergone on that morning in September, 2001, but it had been an emotional reaction from 3,000 miles away, the outrage viewed on television.

Here I was, standing on very familiar ground that had been the site of commodity exchanges I had been to often in the course of a former line of work, the offices occupied by friends and acquaintances, now gazing at an alien landscape that was in reality a kind of graveyard peopled by both innocent human beings and heroes who had attempted to save them and died en masse in the process.

I felt numb when I finally walked away, then, walking aimlessly along Trinity Place, I felt a rage building up inside me and I murmured thanks to President George W. Bush for being the American leader he is and mobilizing the wrathful might of our military in a war on the terrorist scum who had done this to us, overthrowing two dictatorships that had owned some of the responsibility for the mass murder in New York and elsewhere, either by harboring, helping finance, providing training facilities for or by sponsorship of other preparations for what those bastards did to us.

Payback for the grief those godless sons of bitches caused thousands of American families but at least equally as important, the self defense of America in an all-out war declared upon us and all western nations by a satanic enemy purporting to represent all of Islam.

Our President initiated a global war on terror and was followed into the breach by numerous other leaders who realized that we are, indeed, at war, not by our choice but by the declaration of war by the worst enemy we have faced in the entire histories of the United States and the western world.

He was opposed by nations whose reticence was dictated by profit concerns as they violated UN sanctions they themselves had signed off on, by the UN itself as the organization’s very leadership was making money off corrupt transactions with Saddam Hussein. He was opposed by American traitors whose opposition stemmed from pure internal partisan politics or from political leanings that by their ultimate nature are against the principals that have made America the world leader we are.

To this day he is villified by those same treasonous entities, but George Bush is willing to weather the abuse in order to carry on a mission whose success will guarantee the perpetuity of those same dissenters’ right to criticize their own government, those assholes like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, San Francisco and Berkeley socialists and others who would see the United States of America destroyed if they had their way. As far as I’m concerned, those anti-American, pro-Islamofascist, liberal traitors can leave this great country and move to France, Canada or some other country that embraces their socialist needs.

For me, Ground Zero represents every reason why we need to decimate every last vestige of fundamentalist Islam on earth, by any means necessary, and those who endeavor to obstruct our doing so can go to fucking hell.

Today was kind of a longish day for me, I’ve been awakening early for some unearthly reason, and getting my day started with the usual long dose of news website and blog reading, answering emails that came in at hours when even I’m asleep and those that arrived early.

I called the concierge in my DC hotel and asked her to get me shuttle flight reservations to New York and hotel reservations as well — hotels offer all sorts of useful services and when you’re travelling a lot, using them makes life much easier. She talked me into taking the Amtrack Acela(a high speed train shuttle), pointing out that it would mean not having to show up an hour early at the airport and do the security routine, giving me more personal time to have a few brews with some friends before grabbing a cab for the short ride to Union Station.

Skipping the airport security routine was a winning idea: I’m not what you’d call a neat, orderly packer and when my checked luggage goes through the X-ray machine, the quagmire within nearly always attracts the beady eyes of the idiotic, boneheaded, otherwise unemployable buffoons who seemingly rejoice in making sure they wrinkle up every damn pressed or neatly folded article of clothing in your suitcase that the TSA hires to open your bags and search them when they observe said quagmires.

As an experiment, a friend of mine recently put these people to a test at one airport. Cigarette lighters, for some inexplicable reason or other, are now forbidden aboard commercial airplanes. I suppose they’re afraid Mohammed and Ibrahim are going to leap up from their seats midflight yelling, “Nobody move! We hev Zeepo! Alahu Akbar!”

Anyway, my friend stashed four cheap disposable lighters in his carry-on bag, and after a lengthy search{each time a lighter was found, they searched harder} they managed to find three of them, then they let him go through.

The only difference between the pre and post 9/11 passenger screening agents is that the post ones have “guard card” type training, the kind of thing that can be referred to as an upgrade on paper for liability purposes, more official looking uniforms, federal employee status and a slightly higher pay check. Granted, the upgraded procedures make it more difficult for a terrorist to smuggle the tools of his trade aboard a plane, but it also brings more business to hotel valets when a hapless passenger needs to have his clothes pressed thanks to those heavy handed….

Anyway, this post isn’t supposed to be about those inept excuses for security personnel, it’s supposed to be about my coming to New York. Though I will say one thing, and that is that there seem to be an awful lot of young Islamic males handling security at our airports, and you fellas and fella-ettes at the ACLU take that any way you want, there’s no political correctness at this blog.

So I got to New York at 7:00 P.M., checked into my hotel an hour later(Saturday evening traffic here is like Saturday evening traffic noplace else, it’s like one solid vehicle with a lot of moving parts that don’t seem to move all that much) and went out to explore. I grew up here and have dwelt here for much of my adult life, but I haven’t lived here for over 6 years and a lot has changed. My hotel’s in midtown Manhattan on the east side, a nice area, but I headed downtown to Washington Square in the West Village and then wandered over to Bleeker Street in search of a bar where I might relax and enjoy a couple of drinks.

Fuggedadboudit, every watering hole for blocks was packed to the point of people spilling out the doors, and the sidewalks were as crowded as Times Square on New Years Eve. Like I said, it had been a long day and it was more than a little muggy, so I wasn’t really into the human density thing, so I decided to return to my hotel.

Tomorrow I plan to go to Ground Zero for the first time, last time I was there we still had those two magnificent towers there and I was taking the E Train out of the subway station underneath. Then there are friends I want to contact whom I haven’t seen for several years.

But don’t for a minute take the impression that I am in any way feeling even the most remote disparagement where New York is concerned, I was just kinda worn out from the day’s travel, the humidity and so forth and was in a listless mood.

New York is the greatest city on earth. There is an invisible yet somehow tangible energy about this town that never stops, no matter what the hour or the day, an electricity in the air, something… In every direction you look there is something to see, monotony remains forever outside the city limits. The people you meet are filled with charactar and possessing of a lively sense of humor, quick on the uptake, constantly busy at something or nothing, but busy just the same, yet appreciative of all that transpires around them and forever ready to give their honest opinions at the drop of a hat. Even immigrants from slow, laid back, “manana, manana” type countries are infected with the pulse of New York, their own personalities adjusted by the powerful ambience of the city to match those of the natives so that ethnic differences are much less apparent here than in other cities, despite the multiculturalism forced upon New York by its liberal majority.

Of course, being a New Yorker who has been living in San Francisco, I have to say that there is a large difference between New York liberals and California liberals. The former base their thinking in reality and as such can give you a more reasoned argument to back up their political beliefs, wrong or otherwise — they have the intellectual ability to put together facts and come up with arguments based on those facts rather than on slogans and bumper sticker fodder, and when it comes to taking action in time of need, they usually do the right thing. The latter are wingnuts, pure and simple, who will follow a baseless line of reasoning right into the jaws of hell before they’ll consider the stupidity of their position.

So my first evening in New York has ended with a room service smoked salmon omelet, a pot of coffee and some brandy, and tomorrow will be an active day for me, reintroducing myself to my exciting, beloved home town.