Where I Was On September 11 By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)

12 Years On, But Not Forgotten

Until September 11, 2001, I worked in the World Trade Center, halfway up Tower One. I wasn’t doing political blogging at the time, but was writing “the Baseball Crank” as a weekly baseball column for the online edition of the Providence (R.I.) Journal. Here’s my account of that day, written for ProJo two days later while it was all still fresh. We run this every year on the anniversary.

On Tuesday, they tried to kill me.

I am ordinarily at my desk between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning, in my office on the 54th floor of one of the World Trade Center’s towers. Tuesday, I was running late – I stopped to vote in the primary election for mayor, an election that has now been postponed indefinitely. Thank God for petty partisan politics.

Around 20 minutes to 9, as I have done every day for the past five years, I got on the number 2/3 train heading to Park Place, an underground stop roughly a block and a half, connected underground, to the Trade Center. The train made its usual stop at Chambers Street, five blocks north of my office, where you can switch to the local 1/9 that runs directly into the Trade Center mall. The subway announcer – in a rare, audible announcement – was telling people to stay on the 2/3 because the tunnel was blocked by a train ahead of us. Then he mentioned that there had been “an explosion at the World Trade Center.”

Now, I grew up in the suburbs, so maybe I’m not as street smart as I should be, but after living in the city a few years, you develop a sense of the signs of trouble (like the time there were shots fired in the next subway car from mine). I didn’t know what the explosion was, maybe a gas leak or something, but I knew that I was better off getting above ground to see what was going on rather than enter the complex underground. So I got off the train to walk to work.

Via: Red State

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One year later, families have few answers on Benghazi attack

WASHINGTON –  On the one-year anniversary of the brutal terror attacks in Benghazi, the 

families of the four murdered Americans are still no closer to the truth about what happened to their loved ones than they were 12 months ago.

Five House panels and an internal investigation later, no one has been arrested, no one has been fired or held accountable, and the communication between the families of the victims and the State Department and White House has become almost non-existent.

“When I was there in Washington, when this first started, the FBI had me in a room to tell me what they were doing,” Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, one of the Americans killed in the terror attacks, told Fox News.

Smith says President Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the FBI promised her that finding out who killed her son Sean, an information specialist working in Benghazi, would be a top priority.

But it’s a commitment Smith says the president hasn’t kept.

Via: Fox News Politics

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AFL-CIO Convention Report #3: Union Bosses Commit To Targeting Southern Workers For Unionization

This is the third installment of the AFL-CIO convention report.

As 1,600 union bosses and their Marxist allies meet in Los Angeles through Wednesday to focus on rebuilding union power, one of the resolutions passed has been Resolution 26–to “Develop a Southern Organizing Strategy.”

This, of course, is by necessity, as most Southern states have workforces that are ninety-five percent (or more) union-free and companies, fed up with unions and their tactics, have been moving South for decades.

As the North Carolina AFL-CIO stated on its website to its national AFL-CIO delegates:

…Given the region’s culture and laws, unions have not invested heavily in organizing the region. And so, it’s no surprise that voters in the South keep electing state and federal officials who vote time and again against workers’ interests.

The anti-worker culture of the South has an impact far beyond the Mason-Dixon line. Southern Tea Party conservatives block progressive policies in Congress. Companies are increasingly moving to the South in order to lower labor costs and avoid union contracts…

…If unions grow this movement by investing in southern states, we can change the South and by doing so, we can change the nation. [Emphasis added.]

Via: Red State

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Priebus: Obama Speech 'Rudderless Diplomacy'

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama's Syrian speech reflected the administration's "rudderless diplomacy."

"The administration's handling of the U.S. response to Syria has been so haphazard it's disappointed even the president's most ardent supporters," Priebus said in a statement. "This rudderless diplomacy has embarrassed America on the world stage."

Via: Newsmax

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The Defund-Obamacare Civil War

A handful of conservative Republicans walked into a meeting with Majority Leader Eric Cantor Monday night anticipating a discussion — an effort to find consensus.

What they got instead was a perfunctory heads-up about his plan for the upcoming fight over the “continuing resolution,” or CR, a bill to continue funding the government when the current appropriations run out. Under Cantor’s plan, the House would pass two different bills, a standard CR and a measure to defund Obamacare. Through parliamentary wizardry, though, the House would keep the Senate from voting on the CR bill until it had also voted on the Obamacare measure.

The meeting was part of what has been a difficult rollout for the Virginia Republican’s proposal, which is facing significant opposition from conservatives who would like to push harder to defund or delay Obamacare. The vote on the measures, planned for today or tomorrow, could easily go down in flames.

First, influential conservative outside groups such as the Club for Growth trashed the plan. Then, Senator Mike Lee, the original architect of the use-the-CR-to-defund-Obamacare strategy, ripped Cantor’s idea as a “face-saving” gimmick that added insult to the injury of abandoning the grassroots’ calls for a do-or-die fight on Obamacare. “It is not a plan to defund Obamacare — it’s a plan to facilitate the passage of a CR in a way that allows people to claim that they’re defunding Obamacare without actually doing so,” Lee told me.

Via: National Review Online

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AFL-CIO slams Obama over deportation rate

AFL-CIO delegates denounced President Obama's record on illegal immigrant deportations Tuesday, saying the White House should put the brakes on the process while Congress is debating a comprehensive reform bill.

"When we have a bill for 11 million immigrants to become full Americans, we should not be, in the middle of this, deporting them," said Tefere Gebre, director of the Orange County Labor Federation, at a press conference during the AFL-CIO's quadrennial convention in Los Angeles. Gebre was joined by "several of the nation's top labor leaders," according to the L.A. Times.

Obama has deported more than 1.5 million immigrants in his first term and has maintained an aggressive approach, deporting an average of 34,000 a month in the last fiscal year alone. Obama has boasted of his administration's track record on deportations, even as he softened immigration policy in other areas.

The AFL-CIO has been supportive of comprehensive immigration reform, backing the bill that passed in the Senate earlier this year. It nevertheless has concerns of its own and fought to limit guest-worker programs authorized by the Senate bill. Several unions have opposed those programs, arguing they take jobs away from domestic workers.

A proposed immigration resolution on the federation's convention website states: "Immigration reform must fully protect U.S. workers, reduce the exploitation of immigrant workers and reduce employers’ incentive to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers."

It lays out its main interest regarding immigration later in the resolution: "Specifically, the AFL-CIO will promote organizing of immigrant workers who seek to have union representation at their workplace."

Via: Washington Examiner

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DNC CHAIR DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ’S STATEMENT ON COLORADO RECALL ELECTION RESULTS

OBVIOUSLY NOT A VERY GRACIOUS LOSER. BLAME EVERYTHING ON AN HONEST ELECTION.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz released the following statement in response to yesterday's recall election of Colorado Senators Angela Giron and John Morse:

”The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing the will of the legislature and the people. This was voter suppression, pure and simple.

“Colorado voters are used to casting their ballots by mail, but because of lawsuits filed by opponents of common sense gun reform, voters were not mailed their ballots in this election. Those who intended to vote in person did not learn their polling locations until less than two weeks before Election Day. Tuesday’s low turnout was a result of efforts by the NRA, the Koch brothers and other right wing groups who know that when more people vote, Democrats win.

"But any electoral victory that hinges on impeding access to democracy is a hollow one, and ultimately, the NRA did not get what it wanted. The recall results will do nothing to change the Democratic control of the Colorado House, Senate and Governor’s office. And the commonsense gun laws that were passed by popular vote in Colorado will remain intact, including provisions like universal background checks and restrictions on the size of ammunition magazines. This will make residents safer from acts of violence.

“The Democratic Party has already bolstered its effort to expand voting rights through the National Voter Registration Project, an outgrowth of our belief that when more citizens are involved in the political process, the better it is for the country. I have faith that the outrageous events in Colorado will bring more activists to join our cause, because the American people understand that the right to vote is a fundamental feature of citizenship that must be protected against assault.”

Via: Democrats Press

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Obama Talked War Tonight, But Lucked Into Peace

President Obama’s East Room speech tonight was unusual, and probably unique, because it raised throughout the question: Why are you giving this speech? It was originally conceived as an argument for military action in Syria, but then two things happened in quick succession to make that moot. First, public opinion turned from skeptical to wildly hostile, especially among Republicans, killing any chance of passage in the House. Next, John Kerry, or perhaps Albert Brooks, set off an accidental chain of events that relocated the crisis into the diplomatic realm.

But the case for war is still necessary, since, after all, the diplomacy is only going on as a way of averting military action. The moment Bashar al-Assad loses his fear of a cruise missile strike is the moment diplomacy ceases. And Assad’s eagerness, at least rhetorically, to sign the Chemical Weapons Ban rebuts the commonly made argument that he didn’t fear air strikes and might even welcome them as a unifying event.

Obama briefly made the case that the United States had a national security interest in upholding the international ban on chemical weapons, but the caseremains absurd. No enemy states are in position to gain an advantage by using chemical weapons against the United States, nor does the ban on such weapons discourage them from illicitly funneling such weapons to terrorists if they so desire.

The real argument, the one he emphasized at more length, remains persuasive, if marginally so: If we don’t impose a cost on the use of chemical weapons against civilians, then Assad and other dictators will proceed to use them more frequently. Stopping Assad from gassing civilians is a small step in the context of a murderous civil war, but it is something. It was only after laying out the case for war for more than ten minutes that Obama even mentioned the possibilities of diplomacy, and promised to give it a chance, using the threat of strikes as a leverage point.

Via: NYT

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The Syria Solution: Obama Got Played by Putin and Assad

This, apparently, is how diplomacy happens these days: Someone makes an off-hand remark at a press conference and triggers an international chain reaction that turns an already chaotic and complex situation completely on its head, and gives everyone a sense that, perhaps, this is the light at the end of the indecision tunnel. 

Speaking in London next to British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that perhaps the military strike around which the administration has been painfully circling for weeks could be avoided if Bashar al-Assad can "turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that.” 

The fact that Kerry immediately followed with, “But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously,” didn't seem to bother anyone. (Probably because they were focusing on his other slip-up: callingthe promised strikes "unbelievably small.")

The Russians immediately jumped on the impromptu proposal, calling Kerry to check if he was serious before going live with their proposal to lean on Syria. An hour later, they trotted out Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Mouallem, who said he too was down with the proposal, which was a strange way to get the Syrians to finally admit they even had chemical weapons to begin with. Before long, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, the English, and the French were all on board, too.

Via: New Republic

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Fox & Friends Hosts Bash Obama’s ‘Pointless’ Speech: ‘He’d Already Booked the Room’

The hosts of Fox & Friends savaged President Barack Obama’s performance during a Tuesday night address to the nation regarding the evolving plan for responding to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. The hosts were unclear about what Obama was attempting to accomplish with that speech, given that his policy toward Syria has been in flux over the last week. They agreed that the proposed diplomatic resolution to the crisis is not feasible. 

“I’ve watched it twice now in its entirety — I don’t know why he gave it,” Brian Kilmeade said of Obama’s speech. “I have no idea what it accomplished. And I cannot believe how our diplomacy, even if it works out in the end, how this has all been one stumble into the next mistake, and next thing you know, ball is in your court, Vladimir Putin. Bail us out.”

Gretchen Carlson said that the president had no choice but to give the speech given that he had already announced that he would, even though the president appeared to shift his resolve from military action to continued diplomacy.

“But he’d already booked the room,” Steve Doocy joked.

RELATED: Krauthammer, Powers Pan Obama’s Syria Speech: Said ‘Nothing New,’ Will Have ‘Zero Effect’

Carlson noted that United States policy towards Syria, and the Middle East broadly, is now so ill-defined that it would be difficult to predict America’s responses.

The hosts tried to make sense of what the White House’s desired outcome is in Syria at this point. They agreed that they could not be sure what the administration’s ultimate objective is in Syria today.

“Like him or hate him, President [George W.] Bush made a decision and said ‘here’s what I think, and, you know what? You may hate me for it, but this is the direction I’m going in,’” Carlson opined.

Kilmeade observed that the plan to remove or destroy chemical weapons in Syria is nearly unworkable given the lack of security in that war-torn nation. Carlson concluded by observing that the administration’s decision to go back to the United Nations means that there will be no resolution to that conflict in the near future.

Watch the clip below via Fox News Channel:

Via: Mediaite.com

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RAND: GOP DOESN'T NEED 'INVERTEBRATE CAUCUS'

On Tuesday at the "Exempt America" rally for defunding Obamacare in Washington, D.C., Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Republicans did not need the "invertebrate caucus" to confront and fight Democrats and their policies like Obamacare. 

"If he is going to exempt his friends, why won't he exempt all of us?" Paul said of Obama and his signature healthcare legislation. "This fight is about some backbone. We need some backbone. We need some help."

Paul added, "We don't need to be the invertebrate caucus." He said conservatives needed to be the caucus with the spine, heart, and will to defund Obamacare. 

Paul said conservatives may not win the ultimate battle to fully defund Obamacare but they will never know unless they actually fight.

He also noted that the poor Americans Obama said Obamacare would help are losing insurance in addition to their jobs because of the healthcare law. 

The "Exempt America" rally was a culmination of a multi-state tour organized by Tea Party Patriots and ForAmerica.

Via: Breitbart

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[VIDEO] Cokie Roberts: ObamaCare Would Have Been Defunded If Obama Lost Syria Vote

Liberal media members are clearly overjoyed that there’s – at least for the time being – not going to be a vote in Congress concerning a military strike on Syria.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday, NPR’s Cokie Roberts outlined the left's doomsday scenario saying, “If he had lost this vote, which he was clearly about to do, it would have been everything: immigration would have been down the tubes, you know, ObamaCare defunded, debt ceiling a mess, all of it” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: Cokie Roberts, yesterday, let's talk domestic politics. Yesterday, Peter Baker of the New York Times talking about how the President - and it wasn't an overstatement - talking about how the President’s credibility was on the line like no president since Wilson was rejected in 1917. That, you know, he failed on guns, he’s failed on immigration, he's failed on so many things this year that the President's men and women were going to Capitol Hill talking to Democratic lawmakers saying, in effect, “His presidency is on the line, we need your support,” and they ignored that.

COKIE ROBERTS, NPR: That's right.

SCARBOROUGH: This is a big reset not just internationally. It's a big reset domestically for this President.

ROBERTS: If he had lost this vote, which he was clearly about to do, it would have been everything: immigration would have been down the tubes, you know, ObamaCare defunded, debt ceiling a mess...

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, HOST: Oh my Lord!

ROBERTS: ...all of it.

Via: Newsbusters

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The 12-Year War: 73% of U.S. Casualties in Afghanistan on Obama's Watch

(CNSNews.com) - Twelve years ago today, nineteen al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

In the war that Congress authorized against al Qaeda only three days after that attack, the vast majority of the U.S. casualties have occurred in the last four and a half years during the presidency of Barack Obama.

In fact, according to the CNSNews.com database of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.

The 91 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan so far in 2013 are more than those that occurred in the first two full calendar years of the war (2002 and 2003) combined, when 30 and 31 U.S. troops were killed there.

On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress approved a resolution authorizing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

CNS News

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Anthony Weiner concedes, flips off reporter

Anthony Weiner’s circus of a mayoral campaign came to a thudding halt on Tuesday as Weiner offered his concession speech, dropping out of New York City’s Democratic primary.

With three-fifths of the vote counted, the disgraced ex-congressman had 5 percent and was in fifth place in the crowded race.

“We had the best ideas,” Weiner, who at times seemed to be holding back his emotions, said. “Sadly, I was an imperfect messenger.”

On Tuesday Weiner voted with his young son in tow, and later held an Election Night party at an Irish pub in Manhattan. His wife, Huma Abedin, did not appear with him, and she and their son weren’t mentioned in his concession speech.

(Also on POLITICO: Sydney Leathers shows up at Anthony Weiner election party)

“There was never any quit in this campaign,” he said in his concession speech, as he outlined his policy positions and thanked volunteers, family and staff — especially the “wonder women in this campaign.”

Weiner, a former lawmaker who resigned from Congress in 2011 over a sexting scandal, initially looked like a plausible candidate. But it all ended with graphic new revelations that he continued to have illicit online relationships even after leaving Washington.

When Weiner entered the race in May, he painted himself as a reformed family man and a fighter for the middle class. In a campaign announcement video, he appeared with his wife and their child.

Via: Politico

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A Difficult 2016 (For California)

2016 is shaping up to be an unpleasant year to be California’s governor. Or a legislator for that matter. Because the state might have to reckon with its bigger problems that year.

The Democrats’ fondness for temporary policies is at the root of the issue. Prop 30, the tax hike ballot initiative that has saved California (if you believe the national press), is actually based on temporary tax increases on sales and income. The sales tax increase expires that year. Without those revenues, the state budget – which remains stuck at austerity levels even with the Prop 30 increases – will look even worse. And things could look worse at the end of 2018, when the income tax increases expire.

Now comes the prison crisis, and the courts’ requirements that the state reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of capacity. Gov. Brown proposes to do that by increasing bed capacity, but the change is only temporary. The additional bed capacity lasts only through the 2014-15 budget year.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office says that the state would need to find additional solutions by the 2015-16, creating more stress then. The administration says it would then offer a long-term plan in 2015.

It’s peculiar that state leadership is being credited for taking on the state problems and fixing California. Core problems are being kicked down the road.

This is understandable – since the budget and governing systems make it so difficult to do much more than delay. But state leaders should stop pretending that they’ve dealt with the state’s budget and governance problems.

(Joe Mathews is a Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. Originally published on Fox and Hounds.)

Via: California Political Review

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[VIDEO] Obamacare Costs Thousands In Tennessee Their Heath Insurance

But Obama Says you can keep your current insurance. RIGHT!!!

Obamacares supposed goal was to provided people with health insurance. This is not the case in Tennessee were Obamacare is costing thousands of people to lose their health insurance instead.

Via: WFB

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No longer ‘Fundamental Transformation of America’ but the Free World

Obama hates America and capitalist society; doesn’t loathe Putin as much as he envies him. Totalitarianism is where Obama plans to take the US and the Free World

He’s no longer solely America’s biggest headache.

It’s now Obama’s ‘Fundamental Transformation of the 
Free World’,  and for anyone awake, it can be watched being played out day by day.

The unquenchable ego of President Barack Hussein Obama is rebuilding the Russian bear and destabilizing the entire Free World.

With 13 questionable US government YouTubes showing that chemical attacks did take place on August 21 in Syria—with no proof who was responsible for them—Obama, who was trying to advance World War III—merely stumbled back into his own trap.  And that’s only if he’s not part of the Putin act.

Last night’s address to the nation proved a walk back on the ‘Highly propagandized America Attack on Syria’. Russian president Vladimir Putin came out of this one like a John Wayne movie hero.  But unfortunately it won’t end there.

One day after Obama’s putting-Syria-attack-on-ice televised address to a captive nation,  we get to hear how Putin is now arming Iran.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin will offer to supply Iran S-300 air defence missile systems as well as build a second reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. (AFP, Sept. 11, 2013)

Via: Canada Free Press

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