OBAMA: 9/11 was a "failure of empathy"

Eight days after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, Obama -- the man who would be Commander in Chief -- blamed the terrorist attacks on "a failure of empathy."

The July 20 issue of the New Yorker magazine got a lot of attention for its cover, which carried a "satirical" cartoon depicting Michelle and Barack Obama that Obama supporters found tasteless and offensive. Buried inside that issue's feature story, however, was a reaction by Obama to 9/11 that all voters should find even more tasteless and offensive.

The article reprised a piece published in Chicago's Hyde Park Herald on Sept. 19, 2001, and written by a then-unknown and otherwise undistinguished state senator from Illinois. The senator, a former community organizer, wrote that after tightening security at our airports and repairing our intelligence networks, we "must also engage . . . in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness."

According to Barack Obama, the madness that drove terrorists to turn passenger jets into manned cruise missiles aimed at our centers of finance, government and military power "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

As if the answer to the attacks should have been food stamps for al-Qaida.

Sen. Obama advised caution and warned of overreacting. "We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad," he wrote. "We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent."

We should also be just as concerned, he felt, with American anger and bigotry as we were about al-Qaida.

In an opinion piece in Commentary magazine, writer Abe Greenwald commented on Obama's belief that the 9/11 attacks were rooted in poverty and despair. "Strange," he called it, "considering our attackers were wealthy and educated, connected and ecstatic."

As Greenwald put it, Obama "could have asked (terrorist and colleague) Bill Ayers, 'Bill, did your 'failure of empathy' stem from your impoverished upbringing as the son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison?" Did poverty and despair also cause the Weather Underground member and host of Obama's first fundraiser to bomb government buildings?

Fact is, the roster of terrorists and their handlers reads like a list of of Ivy Leaguers:

Osama bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire, studied engineering. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, architect of 9/11 and other major attacks, has a degree in mechanical engineering. Mohammed Atta, who flew a jet into the World Trade Center, is the son of a lawyer and earned a master's degree in urban planning at Hamburg University. Ayman al-Zawahri is an eye surgeon. Seven doctors were involved in the London-Glasgow bomb plots.

You get the idea, even if Barack Obama doesn't.

In a speech before a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush pointed out the real reasons Islamofascists hate us: "They hate what they see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Bush aptly called the 9/11 terrorists and their ilk "the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century."

"By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism," he said.

Knowing the nature of your enemy is the key to victory. On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, we should all thank President Bush for keeping America safe. Along the way, he brought freedom and democracy to the Middle East, draining the terrorist swamp.

Bush gets it. So does John McCain. This is one thing we shouldn't want to change.

I have no idea how Obama's comments have failed to resonate with the American people. Hopefully, those words will resonate before it's too late.

credit: Gull

Obama: "I was before I wasn't ... uhhh...."

Freudian slip? Not good timing, Ohblahma. Not good timing ....



Uh huh.

Next question: "What were your favorite courses in college?"

"well ... uhhhh ... you see ... I was .... wait a minute ... uhh .... errrr .... "

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Romney: Leader for Tomorrow

We need Mitt Romney today --




Fact: America needs Mitt Romney.

Felons Removed From Clinton Team

Making this announcement during the holiday may be an excuse for MSM to "ignore" this revelation, but for most who read it, it will be nothing unusual for the Clinton campaign.

What will Hillary do about the other questionable team members and supporters?

The spin may be as interesting as the actual story!

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The Phelps Family: A Stain on America

They are the group that protests at funerals of fallen soldiers. They associate national calamity and distress as God's wrath against homosexuality.

This is the family that isolates itself from reality, yet attempts to interject its distorted perceptions into mainstream life. Like an oozing sore -- a stain on the fabric of society.


The Most Hated Family in America

History: The anti-Phelps Underground

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The DC Protest Spin

THIS is the message (and photo) you won't see in the MSM.

It's the message hired protesters wanted to convey this weekend in Washington.

Message received.

Now, take your Soros-funded anti-America protest-for-hire money and return to the rock you crawled out from under.

God bless our troops and their families.

Thanks to the thousands of Eagles and GOE III participants who confronted the clowns and cowards in Washington this weekend.

EAGLES UP!!!!

hat tip to Gull.

A Day of Destruction -- 79 A.D.

It was on this day in 79 A.D. that the one of the most destructive volcano eruptions in recorded human history occurred when the volcano Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman city of Pompeii. Pompeii was a resort town for citizens of Rome at the time, located on the Bay of Naples. People there probably didn't even know Mt. Vesuvius was a volcano. There hadn't been a major eruption in 800 years. But there were frequent earthquakes, and in the two weeks leading up to the eruption, there had been thin clouds of volcanic ash drifting down from the mountain, which people had been sweeping off the streets.

Then, on the morning of this day in 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius exploded with a force 100,000 times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion sent a cloud of ash 12 miles into the air, completely blacking out the sun. The mountain was almost five miles away, so some of the people in the city didn't evacuate right away. They thought they would have time to flee if necessary. What they didn't know was that the volcano had spewed toxic gasses along with molten rock. Birds began to fall dead from the sky, and then the city was blanketed with volcanic rock and ash, at the rate of six inches an hour. By the end of the day, not a single living thing remained in Pompeii. The city was buried under more than 20 feet of debris.

The molten rock that covered the city kept it preserved for more than 1,750 years, until the mid-1800s, when stories began to circulate in the area that you could dig around in the dirt and find treasures. After years of pillaging, an archeologist was finally hired in 1860 to perform an official excavation of Pompeii. It turned out to be one of the most important sites in the history of archeology.

Most of the city was preserved exactly as it had been at the moment of destruction. Archeologists could examine what pictures ordinary people had painted on their walls, what cutlery and cookware they kept in their kitchens. They found graffiti written on bathroom walls and legal documents written on wax tablets. Most of what historians know about everyday life in Ancient Rome is based on what archeologists found in the perfectly preserved city of Pompeii.
And archaeologists also found the bodies of the people who died in the eruption. The volcanic ash had molded to the bodies of the victims, leaving a perfect imprint before the bodies decayed. Archaeologists poured plaster into these molds, and the result was detailed replicas of the victims at the moment of death, down to the wrinkles in their clothing and the expressions on their faces. On the floor in a house they found a father and son. The young boy was on his back, looking up at his father, and they were holding hands. They found adults with their arms outstretched trying to protect children, a family of eight rushing toward the sea, and dogs straining against their leashes.

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-- From Garrison Keillor

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