I didn’t want to waste any more energy and space than I needed to yesterday on NYT wackadoodle Paul Krugman’s two-minutes-hate blog post about post-9/11 America. But on the morning after, it is worth calling out the smug coward who flung his op-ed crap against the wall and then deliberately turned off his comments section to avoid any heat in the Times’ kitchen.

After ten years, the sum total of Krugman’s 9/11 reflections can be summed up in three words:

BUSH! NEOCONS! SHAME!

He writes:

“Te (sic) atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue.”

Koward Krugman gripes about partisan hijackers, while dashing off his own petty, partisan snipes.

His 181-word turd demonstrates perfectly the leftist approach to combating Islamic jihad:

Cut and run.

My advice to Koward Krugman is that he shouldn’t be complaining about anyone else’s wedges when he’s using a pair taller than Lady Gaga’s to drive Americans apart.

I would also advise him that there are plenty of constructive ways to illuminate bipartisan government failures since 9/11. I’m reprinting my day-after-9/11-anniversary column from eight years ago below to show you how I did it.

Koward Krugman’s problem is that he’s a lazy intellectual slob who hurriedly hits the “publish” button before the sand in his little kitchen egg timer empties. He hurls Molotov cocktails at his political enemies, while hiding behind his hallowed desk at the Fishwrap of Record.

Shame on him. Shame on the New York Times.

***

Spitting on their graves
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
9/10/03

Across the nation, public officials will strike somber poses and shed television-friendly tears and bow their blow-dried heads in memory of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

They’ll hold hands, light candles, and pass around a plateful of platitudes: “Never forget,” they’ll intone. “Let’s roll,” they’ll thunder. “God bless America,” they’ll warble in perfect harmony.

They’ll assure us that they are committed to fighting terror and securing our borders and doing whatever it takes to protect the homeland from another horrific mass murder at the hands of freedom-hating fanatics. And then?

And then, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., they’ll go back to work, roll up their sleeves, and spit on the graves of the 9/11 dead.

Your pious city councilwoman will return to the office to draft a resolution condemning the common-sense detention and deportation of Middle Eastern illegal aliens suspected of terrorism.

Your politically correct police chief will refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in criminal investigations of illegal visa overstayers and border-crossers and ship-jumpers.

Your pandering mayor will stealthily renew his policy of preventing city employees from reporting illegal aliens.

Your indignant local librarian will promote fear-mongering and misinformation about the Patriot Act.

Your regional Chamber of Commerce president will join forces with Canadian and Mexican government representatives to put business interests ahead of border enforcement.

Your tuition-thirsty university president will lobby behind closed doors against federal efforts to track foreign students and ensure that they go home when required. Your vote-hungry governor will encourage document fraud through his support of insecure foreign-issued identification cards and driver’s licenses for “undocumented workers.”

Your race card-fearing congressman will court Arab and Muslim special interest groups and donors who have coddled Islamists on college campuses, in prisons, and in the U.S. military in the name of “diversity.”

Your grandstanding senator will block funding for long-delayed homeland defense measures — such as a national entry-exit system to monitor temporary foreign visitors — even as he whines about the need for more money to ensure our safety.

Your incompetent Transportation Security Administration will stonewall pilots who want training to be armed, squander tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on lucrative contracts for weapons-detection equipment that doesn’t work or get used, and continue to ban racial profiling.

Your indifferent Interior Department will look the other way as underequipped and understaffed park rangers along the southwestern border remain vulnerable to drug smugglers and terrorists.

Your bloated Homeland Security Department will keep Clinton-era holdovers in pivotal positions, reduce routine inspections at seaports in the name of efficiency, and continue to shortchange interior enforcement against deportation fugitives and asylum con artists in favor of duct tape tipsheets and cosmetic color-coded alerts.

Your corrupted State Department will appease Saudi terror-backers, reward butt-covering managers, assuage European travel industry tycoons, and continue to defend lax visa screening policies.

Your Democratic presidential candidates will unanimously endorse the very kind of amnesty policies that allowed several al Qaeda operatives to infiltrate this country and hatch terrorist plots.

And your Republican Party elites will continue to spurn immigration enforcement reformers within their own ranks for fear of alienating ethnic constituencies that will never vote for them anyway.

To those who lost their lives on Sept. 11 because their government failed to enforce its borders, laws, and sovereignty, the politicians and bureaucrats and civic leaders will ostentatiously offer one measly day a year of dedication in rhetoric — and 364 days of desecration in deed.

***

Update: Oh, dear. Krugman mustered up a few more seconds to dash out an obligatory follow-up to his weekend word turd.

Shorter Krugman: Yeah, yeah, heroes, blah blah. Bush still sucks!

Comments closed yet again on the post.

Watch this. It’s a reminder of what it was like to take the famous elevator ride up the World Trade Center to the “Top of the World.” I first rode the elevator on a visit to NYC when I was 8 years old. Still get goosebumps thinking about it:

***

Related: If you have never read Allahpundit’s poetic 9/11 Twitter memorial, read it now.

Related: Building the World Trade Center

Vigilance is a way of life, not a one-time event:

Background:

April 2005 – Mohammed Atta was on dry run flight witnessed and reported by actor James Woods.

***

Update: Reports coming in this afternoon about three passengers who locked themselves in a bathroom on American Airlines Flight 34 from Los Angeles to JFK in NY this afternoon.

Dry run? Aborted terrorist attack?

Or yet another “misunderstanding?”

We’ll see:

Three passengers caused a scare on a flight from Los Angeles to John F. Kennedy airport when they refused to come out of a bathroom.

A security official initially said fighter jets had been launched. Another security official said later that they had been set to launch and it was not immediately known whether they were in the air.

The three passengers on American Airlines Flight 34 went into a bathroom and were “not compliant.”

The passengers are reportedly now back in their seats.

The flight is set to arrive at JFK at 4:25 p.m. Investigators are waiting for the plane to land.

More updates via Twitter compiled here.

The plane reportedly landed safely at JFK; FBI confirmed that an air marshal was on board.

Update: 6:40pm …The incident has been deemed “not terror-related.” Just “some unruly passengers.”

Hmmm.

Update 8:48pm Eastern….It was three men, according to this report.

I’d like to know their names, wouldn’t you?

***

Flashbacks:

July 12, 2011 – What happened on United Airlines Flight 944?

May 13, 2011 – What Happened on AA Flight 1561?

Funny how you can scream “Allahu Akbar” at the top of your lungs and still have authorities proclaim your motives unknown.

It’s not the first time.

Flashback.

Flashback.

Flashback.

Flashback.

Flashback – It’s the jihad, stupid.

Hello—I go by See-Dubya on the web, and I used to guest-blog here for Michelle back in 2008. Then I retired from blogging, but I’m coming back just this once to tell you about my trip to 7-11.

It was actually only near 7-11; I didn’t go in. The parking lot was too crowded. It was raining and it was early in the morning and my windows were fogged up but I pulled in across the street, turned my headlights off, and one of the three or four dozen men who were hanging around the lot (despite the miserable downpour) came out to see me. One little guy in an orange shirt and a ball cap, who looked to be in charge, came up to my window, but I just smiled and waved him off and fooled with my phone. So he smiled and went back to leaning on his truck. I think he thought I wanted to pick up some day labor.

I wasn’t, but hat’s understandable: this particular 7-11 has a reputation as a place to pick up day labor. It has had that reputation for at least ten years, probably longer. Every time I’ve driven by there, there the laborers are. There’s a lot of places like this in America today, probably some of them 7-11s, where day laborers gather in hopes they’ll get picked up for a job.

This particular 7-11 (you can see the sign, and the workers, in the background, through the monsoon) is in Falls Church, Virginia, on the Leesburg Pike, just down the road from the Dar al-Hijrah mosque. Ten years ago, a charismatic imam named Anwar al-Awlaki manned the pulpit there, and a U.S. soldier named Nidal Hasan listened to his sermons in the congregation.

In fact just a little over ten years ago a couple of worshipers from Dar al-Hijrah drove up to this particular 7-11. They weren’t really interested in hiring the day laborers so much as getting someone to help them acquire forged identification. That turned out to be a fellow named Luis A. Martinez-Flores, himself an illegal immigrant, and he walked the two Arabs, Hani Hanjour and Khaled Almidhar, through the process of getting Virginia ID cards—after which they returned to this particular 7-11, withdrew $100 from the ATM, and handed it to Mr. Martinez-Flores.

Around five years ago Michelle went to this particular 7-11. She talked about what had happened there on her then-new website called Hot Air. Her video isn’t there anymore, but it made quite an impression on me. Now that I live in Northern Virginia, every time I drive past that particular 7-11 I point it out to my family. I don’t want them to forget why that particular 7-11 is special. That’s where Hani Hanjour and Khaled Almidhar ten years ago used the ID’s they bought so easily at this day labor bazaar to board American Airlines Flight 77 out of Dulles, and then to take it over and fly it into the Pentagon. They had also, according to Martinez-Lopez’s federal indictment, used these ID’s to procure ID’s in turn for three other 9/11 hijackers. “In all,” notes the 9-11 Commission report, “the five hijackers based their Virginia identification documents on the residency information of one bribed Salvadoran.”

You would think the first thing that the newly-formed Department Homeland Security would have done would be to raid this particular labor market, frequented by illegal aliens and the document fraudsters that enable them to feign legitimacy, and shut it down for good. This is the site of our immigration policy’s greatest, most shameful failure, after all. Of course, ten years on, it’s just business as usual and the shame and failure continue unabated. There’s no marker to commemorate what happened there. You’d never know anything historically significant had happened there ten years ago.

You’d have no indication at that particular 7-11 what a petty, commonplace, wretched little conspiracy was committed, and what a dreadful, monstrous crime was thereby abetted. That was where and when our self-deception about the illegal labor market and the security risks it presents caught up to us. Everyone should know this place. Everyone should vow that what happened there will never be permitted to happen again.

But everyone won’t know; the memory is fading. Like the pictures of the man jumping from the Twin Towers, like the pictures of the rejoicing Middle East, this is one story that you never see in the “respectable” media accounts of what happened a decade ago.

I just drove by there the other day to remind myself. And ten years later it looks like nothing has changed, especially not the policy permitting this market to occur. When Michelle made her video for Hot Air five years ago we were in the midst of debating President Bush’s new policy of amnesty for illegal immigrants, a policy which was just beginning to erode the support of his conservative base. And today the current President has just recently opened yet another door to illegal alien amnesty.

One more thing remained the same: Writing in Human Events about that particular 7-11 in November of 2001, Timothy Carney and Terence Jeffrey noted that Fairfax County police cars often stopped there in the mornings and kept an eye on the crowd. And sure enough, this week, right there in front of that particular 7-11, in the midst of the mob of day laborers (no doubt enjoying Fairfax County’s ongoing status as a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants,) there was parked a Fairfax County police cruiser, just waiting, watching the traffic. Hoping, perhaps, to find some illegal activity going on.

Keep watching! Another ten years, and you may start to see something.

[This post was written and researched on my own time, on my own equipment. Opinions are strictly my own.]

Earlier today, former President Bush placed a wreath at the Pentagon, and this afternoon he delivered a powerful speech at the dedication of a memorial for those who were aboard Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11/01:

(h/t Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

All the wrong 9/11 lessons
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Are your kids learning the right lessons about 9/11? Ten years after Osama bin Laden’s henchmen murdered thousands of innocents on American soil, too many children have been spoon-fed the thin gruel of progressive political correctness over the stiff antidote of truth.

“Know your enemy, name your enemy” is a 9/11 message that has gone unheeded. Our immigration and homeland security policies refuse to profile jihadi adherents at foreign consular offices and at our borders. Our military leaders refuse to expunge them from uniformed ranks until it’s too late (see: Fort Hood massacre). The j-word is discouraged in Obama intelligence circles, and the term “Islamic extremism” was removed from the U.S. national security strategy document last year.

Similarly, too many teachers refuse to show and tell who the perpetrators of 9/11 were and who their heirs are today. My own daughter was one year old when the Twin Towers collapsed, the Pentagon went up in flames and Shanksville, Pa., became hallowed ground for the brave passengers of United Flight 93. In second grade, her teachers read touchy-feely stories about peace and diversity to honor the 9/11 dead. They whitewashed Osama bin Laden, militant Islam and centuries-old jihad out of the curriculum. Apparently, the youngsters weren’t ready to learn even the most basic information about the evil masterminds of Islamic terrorism.

Mary Beth Hicks, author of the new book “Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid,” points to a recent review of 10 widely used textbooks in which the concepts of jihad and sharia were either watered down or absent. These childhood experts have determined that grade school is too early to delve into the specifics of the homicidal clash of Allah’s sharia-avenging soldiers with the freedom-loving Western world.

Yet, many of the same protectors of fragile elementary-school pupils can’t wait to teach them all the ins and outs of condoms, cross-dressers and crack addictions.

We pulled our daughter out of a cesspool of academic and moral relativism and found a reality-grounded, rigorous charter school where no-nonsense teachers refuse to sugarcoat inconvenient facts and history. Many of the students are children of soldiers and servicemen and women who — inspired by the heroes of 9/11 — have voluntarily deployed time and time again to kill the American Dream destroyers abroad before they kill us over here.

There’s no better way to hammer home the message that “freedom is not free” than to have your kids go to school with other kids whose dads and moms are gone for years at a time — missing births and birthday parties, recitals and soccer practice, Christmas pageants and Independence Day fireworks.

But instead of unfettered pride in our armed forces, social justice educators in high schools and colleges across the country indoctrinate American students into viewing our volunteer armed forces as victims, monsters and pawns in a leftist “social struggle.”

A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Blame America-ism still permeates classrooms and the culture. A special 9/11 curriculum distributed in New Jersey schools advises teachers to “avoid graphic details or dramatizing the destruction” wrought by the 9/11 hijackers, and instead focus elementary school students’ attention on broadly defined “intolerance” and “hurtful words.”

No surprise: Jihadist utterances such as “Kill the Jews,” “Allahu Akbar” and “Behead all those who insult Islam” are not among the “hurtful words” studied.

Middle-schoolers are directed to “analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history.” And high-school students are taught “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” – pop-psychology claptrap used to excuse jihadists’ behavior based on their purported low self-esteem and oppressed status caused by “European colonialism.”

It is no wonder that a new poll released this week showed that Americans today “are generally more willing to believe that U.S. policies in the Middle East might have motivated the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon,” according to Reuters.

To make matters worse, we have an appeaser-in-chief who wrote shortly after the jihadist attacks a decade ago that the “essence of this tragedy” derives “from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others.” A “climate of poverty and ignorance” caused the attacks, then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama preached. Never mind the Ivy League and Oxford educations, the oil wealth and the middle-class status of legions of al-Qaida plotters and operatives.

9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us no matter how much we try to appease them.

The post-9/11 problem isn’t whether we’ll forget. The problem is: Will we ever learn?

Before considering her argument, it’s worth noting that this analysis is from the same Science Laureate who doesn’t believe fire can melt steel.

Transcript from Radio Equalizer:

ROSIE O’DONNELL (Tuesday 24 May 2011 46:45): It’s hard to find a reason that is not environmentally centered, that [doesn't have] something to do with global warming or what the planet is going through. The amount of tornadoes…it’s like three times the highest amount ever before, right? Something weird is happening with all of these natural catastrophes.

JANETTE BARBER (executive producer): It’s global warming. People can say whatever they like. It’s global warming.

At least Rosie’s having trouble finding a reason the cause of tornadoes isn’t environmentally-centered, so maybe there’s hope for her yet.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

You just knew this was coming:

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations’ top human rights official called on the United States Tuesday to give the U.N. details about Osama bin Laden’s killing and said that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law.
[...]
“This was a complex operation and it would be helpful if we knew the precise facts surrounding his killing. The United Nations has consistently emphasized that all counter-terrorism acts must respect international law,” Pillay said in a statement issued in response to a Reuters request.

These are busy days at the White House, so to save them a little time I’ve taken the liberty of preparing a response that US officials should feel free to send to the United Nations as a reply to their request:

Full size memo here.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Yesterday I spent much of the day near Detroit at a family member’s wedding and reception. That means I got to visit with a couple of relatives I haven’t seen in a long time and spend some quality time with them sitting in a car in the parking lot listening to the Michigan/Notre Dame game, so I didn’t run across this gem until this afternoon:

“They may seek to spark conflict between different faiths, but as Americans we are not — and never will be — at war with Islam. It was not a religion that attacked us that September day — it was al-Qaeda, a sorry band of men which perverts religion. And just as we condemn intolerance and extremism abroad, so will we stay true to our traditions here at home as a diverse and tolerant nation.”

“A sorry band of men”? Only Barack Obama could make a murderous global Islamic terrorist organization sound like the Bay City Rollers.

That’s just one step away from “wascally wabbits” isn’t it?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

It took just 410 days to build the quarter-mile-high, 102-story Empire State Building.

It took just 33 months to build Oriole Park at Baltimore’s Camden Yards.

It took just 2 years to build Qwest Field for the Seattle Seahawks.

It took just three years to build the old, 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago.

It took just 66 days — several months ahead of schedule — to rebuild two major Santa Monica Freeway bridges in the heart of Los Angeles that were decimated by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Nine years and one day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, this is what we have to show for the heroes and innocents who died at Ground Zero:

Ground has been broken. A few surrounding buildings and a little placeholder replica of the Freedom Tower have been erected. Ceremonial beams of light have been displayed where the Twin Towers once loomed.

But as the Bergen (NJ) Record put it: “We are supposed to be pleased that One World Trade Center is rising, that work on that national Sept. 11 memorial is well under way, as is the transportation hub and one of three additional commercial towers. And we are pleased that these projects are moving along. But it has been nine years. Nine years and nothing is completed.”

Let me repeat that: Nine years and nothing is completed.

Steve Cuozzo at the NYPost identifies the villains of delay:

The chief culprits of the go-slow were the Port Authority and then-Gov. George Pataki — whose absent leadership, absurd design directives and destructive meddling are ancient history to site-watchers.

Until Ward’s arrival in 2007, the agency’s six-year delay in excavating the site’s eastern side was entirely to blame for Larry Silverstein’s inability to build.

But there were many enablers of the PA’s dereliction and of Pataki’s fecklessness. In the aftermath of 9/11, many leading business advocates sounded willing to cede Downtown planning to Mohamed Atta. Even New York City Partnership head Kathryn Wylde unfathomably argued that Downtown’s commercial-center days were over before 9/11 (despite all-time low vacancy as of Sept. 10, 2001) — so why bother rebuilding offices?

The let’s-go-slow crowd included the think tanks like the Regional Plan Association, for whom no rebuilding would do without a utopian fantasy of parks and transit amenities.

Mayor Bloomberg (who’s since bravely changed his tune) undermined Silverstein and Downtown. He assailed the developer for asking proper rents for his new 7 WTC, neglected horrendous street conditions and proposed a “vision” for the area that included everything but new offices.

Rudy Giuliani, a great mayor (and great wartime mayor), lent the obstructionists a patina of moral authority by absurdly advocating to make a memorial of the whole 16-acre site.

Nervous real-estate developers, fearing competition, lobbied behind the scenes to delay reconstruction. Only one had a very public instrument of propaganda: Boston Properties Chairman Mort Zuckerman, who is also publisher of the Daily News.

Zuckerman never got over Boston’s early 2001 loss in a bidding war for the Twin Towers to Silverstein…

…The New York Times, meanwhile, made such a stink over preliminary reconstruction plans in 2002 that it cowed Pataki into yanking them for a time-consuming design competition. That set everything back a year and yielded Daniel Libeskind’s unworkable master site plan — which had to be revised again and again.

But the source of America’s monumental shame goes much deeper than turf wars, bureaucratic delays, and regulatory obstacles. America had no shared sense of urgency, no will, no ineluctable drive to build a great and proper tribute to the 9/11 fallen as quickly as possible. Government and business leaders failed. Miserably.

That abject failure was exacerbated by a culture of capitulation and dhimmitude reflected in appalling battles over 9/11 monuments not only at Ground Zero, but in Shanksville, Pa., and Arizona.

Let me give you some infuriating reminders.

Before the Ground Zero mosque controversy, 9/11 families had to battle NYC elites and left-wing George Soros radicals in 2005 to stop the 9/11 memorial from becoming a progressive human rights playground. The planners — whose board included prominent Gitmo opponents and transnationalists — proposed a moral equivalence museum dedicating 300,000 square feet to a “history of freedom” while sparing only 50,000 square feet to the actual memory of the 9/11 victims. Only after a grass-roots and blogosphere campaign called “Take Back the Memorial” broke through did the politicians scrap the plans.

Before the Ground Zero mosque controversy, 9/11 families had to battle far Left architects and do-gooders in 2005 who sought to convert the Flight 93 memorial at Shanksville, Pa., into a New Age, wind chime-filled field wrapped in a red crescent of embrace.

Before the Ground Zero mosque controversy, Arizonans battled anti-war zealots in 2006 — supported by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano — who turned the state’s 9/11 memorial into a Blame America complex. Some of the commissioners actually wanted to add 19 more characters to represent the deaths of the 19 terrorist murderers who killed the victims. These are actual photos of the memorial:

America can build sports palaces and skyscrapers in record time. We have the brightest engineers and architects, the best-equipped builders and manufacturers, the most generous private entrepreneurs and philanthropists. And yet America has failed to build a single, soaring monument that matches the heroism, greatness, sacrifice, and spirit of freedom that a 9/11 memorial should represent.

Nine years and one day after 2,977 innocent men, women, and children gave their lives, nothing is completed. This is a national disgrace. It’s time to stop burning and unite behind building. Jihadists destroy. America creates.

Where is the urgency, dedication, speed, strength, and clarity to show them how we roll?

If “never forget” is our post-9/11 mantra, why the hell is it taking so long to build fields and halls and museums of remembrance unsullied by political correctness and anti-American pandering?

At 8:46am this morning, nine years ago, murderous jihadists crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

At 9:03am this morning, nine years ago, murderous jihadists crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

At 9:37am this morning, nine years ago, murderous jihadists crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

At 10:15am this morning, nine years ago, the official notification of the downing of United Airlines Flight 93 into a field at Shanksville, Pa. by murderous jihadists was received by the feds.

This is a day to honor the 2,977 innocent men, women, and children slaughtered by evil Islamic jihadists — and to resolve that “Never again” remains America’s operational stance, not an empty slogan.

Let nothing overshadow their memories today.

Remember: “Let’s roll!”

Remember: The heroes.

Remember: The angels on loan from God.

Remember: The 9/11 babies.

Remember: Falling Man.

Remember: Barbara Olson.

Remember: Father Mychal Judge.

Remember: Rick Rescorla.

Remember John O’Neill.

Remember: Kevin Cosgrove.

Remembrance is worthless without resolve.

Resolve is useless without action.

Start with a renewed pledge:

Lan astaslem: Arabic for “I will not submit/surrender”

I wrote this column seven years ago, on the 2nd anniversary of the 9/11 jihadi attacks. Sad to say, I could have just as well written it today.

Spitting on their graves
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
9/10/03

Across the nation, public officials will strike somber poses and shed television-friendly tears and bow their blow-dried heads in memory of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

They’ll hold hands, light candles, and pass around a plateful of platitudes: “Never forget,” they’ll intone. “Let’s roll,” they’ll thunder. “God bless America,” they’ll warble in perfect harmony.

They’ll assure us that they are committed to fighting terror and securing our borders and doing whatever it takes to protect the homeland from another horrific mass murder at the hands of freedom-hating fanatics. And then?

And then, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., they’ll go back to work, roll up their sleeves, and spit on the graves of the 9/11 dead.

Your pious city councilwoman will return to the office to draft a resolution condemning the common-sense detention and deportation of Middle Eastern illegal aliens suspected of terrorism.

Your politically correct police chief will refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in criminal investigations of illegal visa overstayers and border-crossers and ship-jumpers.

Your pandering mayor will stealthily renew his policy of preventing city employees from reporting illegal aliens.

Your indignant local librarian will promote fear-mongering and misinformation about the Patriot Act.

Your regional Chamber of Commerce president will join forces with Canadian and Mexican government representatives to put business interests ahead of border enforcement.

Your tuition-thirsty university president will lobby behind closed doors against federal efforts to track foreign students and ensure that they go home when required. Your vote-hungry governor will encourage document fraud through his support of insecure foreign-issued identification cards and driver’s licenses for “undocumented workers.”

Your race card-fearing congressman will court Arab and Muslim special interest groups and donors who have coddled Islamists on college campuses, in prisons, and in the U.S. military in the name of “diversity.”

Your grandstanding senator will block funding for long-delayed homeland defense measures — such as a national entry-exit system to monitor temporary foreign visitors — even as he whines about the need for more money to ensure our safety.

Your incompetent Transportation Security Administration will stonewall pilots who want training to be armed, squander tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on lucrative contracts for weapons-detection equipment that doesn’t work or get used, and continue to ban racial profiling.

Your indifferent Interior Department will look the other way as underequipped and understaffed park rangers along the southwestern border remain vulnerable to drug smugglers and terrorists.

Your bloated Homeland Security Department will keep Clinton-era holdovers in pivotal positions, reduce routine inspections at seaports in the name of efficiency, and continue to shortchange interior enforcement against deportation fugitives and asylum con artists in favor of duct tape tipsheets and cosmetic color-coded alerts.

Your corrupted State Department will appease Saudi terror-backers, reward butt-covering managers, assuage European travel industry tycoons, and continue to defend lax visa screening policies.

Your Democratic presidential candidates will unanimously endorse the very kind of amnesty policies that allowed several al Qaeda operatives to infiltrate this country and hatch terrorist plots.

And your Republican Party elites will continue to spurn immigration enforcement reformers within their own ranks for fear of alienating ethnic constituencies that will never vote for them anyway.

To those who lost their lives on Sept. 11 because their government failed to enforce its borders, laws, and sovereignty, the politicians and bureaucrats and civic leaders will ostentatiously offer one measly day a year of dedication in rhetoric — and 364 days of desecration in deed.

Every blogger worth his salt knows “Islamic Rage Boy.” He represents the professional Muslim grievance-monger, always at the ready to protest whatever manufactured insult could be exploited to curse the West. Christopher Hitchens wrote on the futility of appeasing the worldwide Rage Boy mob — a theme I’ve struck here for years, which bears repeating as we prepare to mark the 9th anniversary of 9/11, and which I reiterate in my syndicated column today. We didn’t start the fire.

***

The eternal flame of Muslim outrage
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Shhhhhhh, we’re told. Don’t protest the Ground Zero mosque. Don’t burn a Koran. It’ll imperil the troops. It’ll inflame tensions. The “Muslim world” will “explode” if it does not get its way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national security-threatening impudence, but when is the “Muslim world” not ready to “explode”?

At the risk of provoking the ever-volatile Religion of Perpetual Outrage, let us count the little-noticed and forgotten ways.

Just a few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they thought was a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors. The mob shut down businesses and clashed with police over the blasphemous skivvies. But it turned out there was no need for Allah’s avengers to get their holy knickers in a bunch. The alleged mosque was actually a building resembling London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. A Kashmiri law enforcement official later concluded the protests were “premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere.”

Indeed, art and graphics have an uncanny way of vitiating the Muslim world’s atmosphere. In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer with death after she wore a Karl Lagerfeld-designed dress printed with a saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall 800,000 shoes because they claimed the company’s “Air” logo looked like the Arabic script for “Allah.” In 1998, another conflagration spread over Unilever’s ice cream logo — which Muslims claimed looked like “Allah” if read upside-down and backward (can’t recall what they said it resembled if you viewed it with 3D glasses).

Even more explosively, in 2002, an al-Qaida-linked jihadist cell plotted to blow up Bologna, Italy’s Church of San Petronio because it displayed a 15th century fresco depicting Mohammed being tormented in the ninth circle of Hell. For years, Muslims had demanded that the art come down. Counterterrorism officials in Europe caught the would-be bombers on tape scouting out the church and exclaiming, “May Allah bring it all down. It will all come down.”

That same year, Nigerian Muslims stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death 200 people in protest of the Miss World beauty pageant — which they considered an affront to Allah. They shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” And “Down with beauty!” And “Miss World is sin!” Contest organizers fled out of fear of inflaming further destruction. When Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel joked that Mohammed would have approved of the pageant and that “in all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them,” her newspaper rushed to print three retractions and apologies in a row. It didn’t stop Muslim vigilantes from torching the newspaper’s offices. A fatwa was issued on Daniel’s life by a Nigerian official in the sharia-ruled state of Zamfara, who declared that “the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed. It is abiding on all Muslims wherever they are to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty.” Daniel fled to Norway.

In 2005, British Muslims got all hot and bothered over a Burger King ice cream cone container whose swirly-texted label resembled, you guessed it, the Arabic script for “Allah.” The restaurant chain yanked the product in a panic and prostrated itself before the Muslim world. But the fast-food dessert had already become a handy radical Islamic recruiting tool. Rashad Akhtar, a young British Muslim, told Harper’s Magazine how the ice cream caper had inspired him: “Even though it means nothing to some people and may mean nothing to some Muslims in this country, this is my jihad. I’m not going to rest until I find the person who is responsible. I’m going to bring this country down.”

In 2007, Muslims combusted again in Sudan after an infidel elementary school teacher innocently named a classroom teddy bear “Mohammed.” Protesters chanted, “Kill her, kill her by firing squad!” and “No tolerance — execution!” She was arrested, jailed and faced 40 lashes for blasphemy before being freed after eight days. Not wanting to cause further inflammation, the teacher rushed to apologize: “I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone, and I am sorry if I caused any distress.”

And who could forget the global Danish cartoon riots of 2006 (instigated by imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips)? From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey and in between, hundreds died under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight, and brave journalists who stood up to the madness were threatened with beheading. It wasn’t really about the cartoons at all, of course. Little-remembered is the fact that Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time. Yes, it was just another in a long line of manufactured Muslim explosions that were, to borrow a useful phrase, “premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere.”

When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah’s avengers, it’s a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Korans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago.

Well, this might be one way to get somebody on the left to care about an overbearing tax system.

From the New York Post:

The mosque developers are tax deadbeats.

Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show.

El-Gamal’s company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department.

The delinquency is a possible violation of El-Gamal’s lease with Con Edison, which owns half of the proposed building site on Park Place. El-Gamal owns the other half but must pay taxes on the entire parcel.

Maybe El-Gamal should take a page from John Kerry by admitting to no wrongdoing, but paying the taxes he owes anyway, and then moving the entire mosque to Nantucket. Let’s put that “religious freedom” thing to a real test by building it on Thurston and Lovey’s front porch.

Some of the ground zero area mosque’s defenders — Pelosi, Obama, Bloomberg, etc. — embrace political philosophies that are the reason the levels of regulation and taxation are higher than a bedbug in Paris Hilton’s “makeup” bag, which increases the likelihood that people will try to dodge them. So it’s a little ironic that those same mosque defenders could in part be the very undoing of the progressive cause célèbre of 2010.

Whatever happens, Sharif El-Gamal has at the very least seemingly qualified himself for a cabinet position in the Obama administration.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Have you noticed how the Democrats have trotted out Michigan’s failure of an outgoing Governor, Jennifer Granholm, more and more lately on a national level? I think it’s because she’s one of the few people Democrats can find who has done a worse job than President Obama (it’s the political equivalent of the old adage, “if you want to look thin, surround yourself with fat people”).

Granholm was on Meet the Press this morning and told David Gregory that Feisal Abdul Rauf is a “bridge building Imam.” She might be onto something, provided we were only talking about building a bridge near ground zero. So, who told Granholm that Rauf is a “bridge building Imam”? Another Imam. I’m satisfied.

I’ll include this transcript (via HAP) because the video connection doesn’t seem to be working very well at the moment:

GREGORY: “This was a hedge, an attempt to walk back his previous support. Has this been an example of strong leadership by the president to walk into this issue and make statements on this?”

GRANHOLM: “Any time someone stands up for the constitution which is what he did. There’s no disagreement that they have the right to worship and build on private property. The question is whether it is a good decision on their part, the question is what is the nature of this particular Imam. It’s a sect that’s supposed to be the most peaceful of all, that sect is under attack by al qaeda. the question is we need to hear from the imam, it’s a teachable moment.

In anticipation of this question — Michigan has the largest Arab American population outside of the middle east — I called one of our Imams yesterday, what can you tell me about it? He said he’s the most bridge building imam, one of the most in the country, he’s an American of course, we ought to hold that kind of leadership rather than brushing all Muslims with this brush that affiliates them with Al Qaeda. they’re being attacked by al qaeda too, they’re just as offended or maybe more so because of what the splash back is on all Muslims. We ought to be hearing from them.

Isn’t it great how this mosque debate has suddenly brought about a newfound appreciation for constitutional rights? Granholm mentions that she’s the governor of a state with an enormous Arab population, but she doesn’t mention that in Dearborn, Michigan you often have to check your constitutional rights at the door for risk of offending.

Here’s the Meet the Press clip:

Granholm is fond of the term “teachable moment.” Another “teachable moment” is Michigan. Look at what Granholm and her cohorts have done to the state — counter-productive, boneheaded, short-sighted and dim-witted initiatives that Obama and the Democrats have been gracious enough to roll out nationally — and you’ll have all the evidence you need as to why any advice from Jenny G. should be heeded by doing precisely the opposite, or ignoring it altogether.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe