EVOLUTION…… for September 11, 2011

I want to introduce you guys once more to a man I met through a mutual friend. He and I “hit it off” and started out e-mailing one another. This led to phone calls, and I swear, in no time at all AP, and his wonderful wife Heide, became extended members of our family. AP is in his nineties, a veteran of WWII, and he became a very successful business man. He’s a great guy, and boy is he a go getter!

He started writing “Evolution” on a weekly basis. It was first titled “Revolution,” but since the election of a Republican majority in the House, and a closing of the gap in the Senate, AP became a little optimistic about the direction of our Country, he dropped the “R,” and now it’s “Evolution.” Sure hope he’s right in regards to his optimism!

I hope you enjoy his opinions, as he, like so many others that are trying to help in keeping you and I abreast of the goings on taking place today in this great Country of ours. I feel very proud to call AP my friend, he’s a great American!

AP has been under the weather the last few days, and I’d like to ask you guys to please put him in your prayers.
And now…Evolution.

“COURAGE “WINSTON CHURCHILL SAID “IS THE FIRST OF HUMAN QUALITIES BECAUSE IT IS THE QUALITY THAT GUARANTEES ALL THE OTHERS”

NO FIRE MEN AT GROUND ZERO THIS 9/11….. In our darkest hour, they gave us hope-the firefighters of September 11th. In the chaos of the World Trade Center, the rigs pulled up, the men climbed out, retrieved their rolled up hoses, and marched stalwart to the towers. Carrying nearly one hundred pounds of equipment, they climbed the stairs: flight after flight after flight.

When they arrived at the base of the towers, there were “jumpers” by the score. Two firefighters, terrible, were struck. There was no other way to put it” an EMS who witnessed it said,” “they just exploded”….and still they went in…..

In the lobby the men gathered, awaiting their orders, outside bodies rained down. Before a blown out elevator laid two victims, their clothes burnt off, their bodies charred. The huge glass windows were shattered, stone walls were cracked, there was constant reports that there more planes had been high jacked on their way to New York City……….and still they went up….

In the South Tower, Chief Oreo Palmer. A marathon runner, he ran up the stairs, by 10 a.m. he had reached the 78th floor, the point where one of the planes contact. Fires were raging “send up two engine companies” he radioed down, “and we will knock this thing down”……..minutes later the building collapsed.

When the South Tower collapsed, its debris blew into the North Tower, killing FDNY Chaplin Father Michael Judge and destroying the lower lobby, the ceiling caved in, all the lights were knocked out. Now injured and bloody, four office workers climbed out of the debris, breathing dust, they gazed about in pitch darkness, thinking they had come all this way, only to die , just steps from escape…….then they saw the light, the fireman at the exit was still there, waving his small flashlight showing them the way out, to safety….As they crossed the plaza into daylight, as they looked back, the fireman was still there, standing his ground in case others needed help…….and there he was when the full 110 story tower came down on him….

As of that date, life in the United States changed, for the better or worse, only time will relate the history of this horrific moment…..

LARRY SILVERSTEIN and the WORLD TRADE CENTER…….if there is one person who never gave up his desire to rebuild the destroyed WTC, despite all the obstacles, that man is a friend and former partner, Larry Silverstein…….who by a miracle was not in his office at the time of the attack, only by the insistence of his wife, he kept his dentist’s appointment went to the dentist…….For him and many others, what came next was painful and embarrassing….. For years there was a constant battle as who should be the architect. With every politician, from the Governor, the Mayor, the Port Authority each wanting a particular architect, many designs were submitted, by famous designers, for various reasons, all ended in the trash can, meanwhile Larry had this debt to pay, and time was not in his favor. Some even called it Gov. Pataki’s PIT……”and I never had any doubts, this is New York the day you don’t get criticized is the day you don’t get up and breathe, but doing it right is the ultimate” so said former Gov. Pataki…..

Doing it right meant sticking to a master plan that called for a series of skyscrapers and a huge, expensive memorial. While everyone was bickering, and the “players “kept changing, only one refused to budge—developer Larry Silverstein…..” So I have gone through four governors in the State of New York, five governors from the State of New Jersey, five eruptive directors of the Port Authority, two Mayors of New York” he said, while in the midst in a complicated insurance fight along with a battle with the Port Authority over who should build what.”

While this verbal battle went on, Mr. Silverstein, despite all the negatives, demolished the existing 7 WTC, and started rebuilding 7 World Trade Center which lies outside the WORLD TRADE CENTER footprint. Since this building was outside the WTC footprint, to show his confidence, started to rebuild 7 WTC on May 7th 2002. Larry Silverstein only needed approval from the Port Authority and building started. By March 2007, 60 % had been leased, led by Moody’s 20 year lease; construction was completed in 2006 at a cost of over $700 million.

The “gutsy “action by Silverstein, the 16 acre site regained its place as to where the future was, namely the World Trade Center. On the east side of the footprint, Silverstein will build 3 buildings; one is already over 45 stories. What once called the Freedom Tower will now be the new home of Conde Nast, to be built by the Port Authority. In promoting the return, Larry is quoted “We had to rebuild this as quickly as possible and to the best of our ability, and come up with something that’s bigger and better than anything we had on 9/11, that they sought to destroy so here we are, They didn’t destroy us, we are coming back bigger and better than ever.”….

ON 9/11 ECONOMIST, PAUL KRUGMAN……. (of Enron fame)” wrote in the NY Times an article titled “THE YEARS of SHAME” ……”is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued ?…….Actually I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd. What happened after 9/11, and I think people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not, was deeply shameful.

The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons. A lot of other people behaved badly, how many of our professional pundits….who should have understood very well what was happening….took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the high jacking of the atrocity.

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocable poisoned, it has become an occasion for shame, and in its heart the nation knows it”………

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons….Paul Krugman

THE CLOSING OF THE FIRST POST OFFICE……The Ben Franklin Post Office in Philadelphia has been informed that it will be closed down. The Ben Franklin Post Office is the only one that doesn’t fly the flag of the United States. When Franklin founded the Post Office in 1775, there wasn’t a United States flag… It was opened as a Post Office in a building owned by Franklin, with most of the space used as a grocery, etc, and opened as a post office in 1975, 200 years after Franklin was appointed the country’s first postmaster general. There are nearly 32,000 retail offices, and the Post Office is considering closing of 3,700, subject to a study presently being conducted.

WEATHER CHANNEL……….The WEATHER CHANNEL said after last week’s east coast earthquake was caused by an unknown fault line running under Washington, D.C. and through Virginia, It is now known as the “ONBAMA FAULT”, tho’ Obama claims it’s really the Bush’s Fault…..Other theories are that it was the founding fathers rolling over in their graves, or that what we all believed was an earthquake was the effects of a $14.6 trillion dollar check bouncing in Washington.?…….

..AMERICAS’ CONFIDENCE IN THE ECONOMY………is sitting at its lowest point since MARCH 2009, and in every state in the country, a vast majority of Americans see the economy as getting worse. Meanwhile, the number of people claiming new jobless benefits rose again last week. Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder the White House is doing everything it can to make even the most dismal economic news seem like a silver lining on a very dark cloud…..Enter the President’s new jobs bill, which smells like another” stimulus effort.” Plus more taxes, ESPECIALLY ON THE SO CALLED RICH.

THE SOLYNDRA SCANDAL……..The. White House pressed federal officials in September 2009 to review a massive loan to a solar panel manufacturer, in the amount of $528 million. The Washington Post and ABC News discovered a series of e-mails, that show White House officials repeating checking with the Office Management and Budget on its progress of their review of the loan ahead of the high-profile ground breaking of the company’s new factory. Vice President Biden was set to announce the loan approval of $528 million at the groundbreaking event. In checking the e-mails the OMB informed the White House, that they needed more time to finalize the agreement. White House spokesman Eric Schultz defended the various e-mails by saying “Private investors, who put up more than $1 billion of their own money on the line, also saw great growth potential in the company” Closing this green energy test caused over 1,100 jobs……..

In a SEC filing in March 2010, a year after Solyndra got the loan guarantees, but before the re-financing, independent auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers said some negative financial factors “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” This is the third green solar energy to go “south” this year, the House Energy and Commerce issued subpoenas, to which White House spokesman Carney noted, “There are no guarantees in the business world about success and failure. That is just the way business works, and everyone recognizes that” he added, “you just cannot measure success based on one company or the other”

ON SEPTEMBER 11th,THE WORLD TRADE CENTER MEMORIAL OPENED TO THE PUBLIC……….in the future one will need a pass, about7,000 people registered on line for free tickets, another 400,000 have signed up for the coming months, according to organizers of the privately operating the memorial.

FEDERAL FAMILY NEEDS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY……….President Obama continues to grab the nation by its lapels, demanding their attention, and is paying the price. The nation is no longer listening; this matters because ominous signs are multiplying. Bank of America just reported an $8.8 billion loss last quarter. Plans to lay off 30,000 employees out of a work force of nearly 300,000. The Postal Service hopes to shed 120,000 out of their work force of 653,000…..in order to reduce unemployment, the economy needs an approximate growth rate of 3%, triple today’s rate.

Just as the Obama administration HAVE DELAYED the housing market reaching a salutary bottom. Europe’s polices designed to delay Greece’s default on its debt are probably making that inevitability worse. If Italy or Spain( too big to fail and too big to bail) follow the course of Greece. We shall learn how frail Europe’s banks are, and how much U.S. banks are entangled with them.

CONNECTING THE DOTS in EGYPT…….news story by Al-Nas on TV…… “Brothers and Sisters, the Jews have two holidays…Passover and another one. What is Passover, you ask?. The Jews celebrate this holiday by eating sandwiches. What are these sandwiches…you may ask, rather they eat matzos. What are matzos made of you may ask….concentrate now. They are made of flour and, instead of water, of blood, the fundamental condition, is that the blood comes from non- Jews, and especially not from Muslims and Arabs” and this garbage goes on and on. It remains unclear what sort of regime will emerge in Egypt, the new boss is very much like the old bosses. Maybe the vaunted “Arab Spring” will amount to something someday, maybe it won’t. But as long as the same old script keeps being replayed, we will know that not much has really changed.

A UNITED NATIONS MIRACLE………here’s a story for the “man bites dog “folder……….The United Nations has conducted another inquiry into an Israeli military operation,…..and produced a report that mainly vindicates the Jewish state., in the May 2010 “flotilla incident. The Turkish government has responded to this report by withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv and expelling Israel’s from Ankara….the story that the flotilla had embarked on a “humanitarian mission”, the report acidly observes that the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, barely contained any humanitarian goods beyond some toys and foodstuffs

The report also gives weight that there were “a hardcore group of 40 activists” “from an Islamist group known as the “IHH” (.associated with Hamas), which had effective control during the journey.

SOCIAL SECURITY IS A “PONZI” SCHEME ………The use of the word “PONZI” leads one to believe that the founders of Social Security, knew that they were developing an illegal act, but one that was an investment trust. There is no account, at this point in time, that what you are paying is actually yours….Social Security is simply current workers about paying a tax that are used to make payments to current retirees.

When Social Security was enacted in 1935, the tax was 2% compared to 12.4 % today, there were over 45 people working for every retiree, compared with a ratio of 3 to 1 today, and a life expectancy then was 60 compared to 78 today. Because of these changing realities, projections show that the system will be short $20 TERILLION in meeting future obligations………even when one removes the word “PONZI”, the problem remains….

Well folks, the time has come to say, “I will see you in the funny papers, so stay well”………..AP

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