If any more Republicans join the 2012 presidential race in this upcoming political Special Olympics, they may just put the Onion out of business. Birther king Donald Trump reminded us why we loathe him so much for the double comb-overed, pussy-mouthed misanthrope he is and before his candidacy was even announced, it crashed and burned like a Hindenburg still tied to its mooring lines.

Mike Huckabee is so boring he's not even good for laughs but he announced he wasn't interested in the presidency after being told it was mutual among the electorate.

Then there's Newt, good ole Newt, who before and after his candidacy was announced hoarsely screamed about a mosque at Ground Zero, claimed that his love for America made him fall into vaginas that weren't between his wife's legs and called the president an anticolonial Kenyan. Newly anointed as the most allegedly credible GOP candidate, Newt just couldn't live up to that elevated status and before long his spokesman came out with some of the worst poetry this side of The Stuffed Owl and tried to defend then sweep under the rug an old $250,000-$500,000 no-interest Tiffany's loan. The former Speaker then tried to claim he was a Washington outsider. The only commonsensical thing that's come out of his mouth was when he called Paul Ryan's Medicare "plan" "right wing social engineering."

Now even the Republican Party, starting with el Rushbo, hates his guts and it's obvious the Great Apostate lost all GOP support now and forever.

But what we're seeing with the unfolding Sarah Palin soap opera is unprecedented in American history. Never have I ever seen a failed Vice Presidential contender continue to be the focal point of so much blind, misguided and even sick and obsessive interest. At times, even the former Alaska governor seems to be taken aback and even scared by it, jealously guarding her privacy. And who could blame the lady?

But over the last 33 months since John McCain inexplicably named her to be his running mate, anyone even remotely connected in the most tangential way has been chased by literary agents and had multimillion dollar book contracts and TV appearances and whole series catapulted at them. Bristol Palin herself made more than $200,000 last year alone and the Palin family's yearly income from just reality TV was $3,000,000 last year. Even Levi Johnston, a 21 year-old unwed hockey dad, is making 6 figures and is coming out with his own memoirs.

Now, taking a cue from McCain, Sarah Palin has begun a whirlwind east coast tour on a bus unimaginatively dubbed, "Rolling Thunder."

Call her and her entourage Jerry Farcia and the Grateful Deadheads but Sarah Palin, whether or not she intended to, is sending Tea Baggers and others with too much spare time scrambling for Civil War battlefields like Gettysburg merely on the strength of a quote she'd used from the Gettysburg Address.

Granted, for a so-called publicity-seeking bus tour, Palin's itinerary is strangely private but if that's the way she wants it, that's the way she ought to get it. If Mrs. Palin wishes to attend a historical site without being followed by the common rabble and the "lamestream" media, then she ought to be allowed to so do.

But flocking to Civil War battlefields out of morbid and idle curiosity is something we used to do during the Civil War. We've all heard stories of the landed gentry literally having picnics on the outskirts of Civil War battlefields during the actual engagements. There's something about watching catastrophe unfolding that's irresistible to humans and perhaps the deer-on-the-headlights phenomena isn't peculiar only to ruminants. Perhaps this accounts for Palin's so-called appeal.

So now those of us in the reality-based community have to play witness to another sad chapter in American History as written by Samuel Beckett, "Waiting for G'Duh", in which Vladimir and Estragon (the American people) wait and hunt in vain for their savior. The problem is, unlike Beckett's Godot, Palin will eventually make an appearance because that is what she does for a living and nothing more.

See the video of my flight below!

The best place to see an air show is on the ground and this is where several hundred thousand New Yorkers will be for the Bethpage Air Show at Jones Beach on Memorial Day weekend. The best place to sit for the air show, however has to be the seat in front of Lieutenant Colonel John Klatt, on the aerobatic plane he flies for the Air National Guard.

When performing at shows across America, John flies in a Panzl S330  a 1,200 pound single seater - which makes it an inappropriate choice to invite a guest to ride along.

So today stunt pilot and John Klatt air show team member Bill Kerns was flying the Panzl to our starboard, a Bonanza chase plane was off to port carrying New York Times photographer Chang Lee and a CNN cameraman while John took me in the tandem Extra 300 L.

Yes, there was room for two in this plane, designed by German engineer Walter Extra.  It’s a snug fit and I was glad because when the Gs start running up and down like pianist jacked up on caffeine, what I really wanted was the airplane’s strong embrace.  

On our flight this morning over New York City and Long Island John gave a point by point explanation of how the airplane would accomplish each stunt he had planned. We did aileron rolls, snap rolls, torque rolls, barrel rolls, a hammer head turnaround, an Immelmann maneuver and some lovely loops.

 I know the loops were lovely because when the plane was nose down and I was staring at the Atlantic Ocean, I could see the plane making graceful curlicue shadows on the water.

Otherwise, I had no idea what all that fancy piloting looked like from the outside. I can only extrapolate from air shows I’ve seen in the past and You Tube videos of John’s  performances.

John’s a great pilot. His public relations staff, Rebecca Brosemer and Victoria Arocho are geniuses to offer him up to reporters for demonstration flights. A morning spent in his company and the entire world of aerobatic flying starts to make sense.

John Klatt photo John Klatt Airshow

I remember the first time I came to understand that planes fly because they are following physical laws, not defying them. Until today, though I didn’t realize that the same is true for stunt flying.

I love air shows. I’ve been to dozens of them over the years but I have to say until I got inside the plane with Klatt, I did not understand why a pilot chose to perform these seemingly suicidal acts. I failed to appreciate how aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, gyroscopic dynamics have been harnessed over the past century, enabling the air show pilot and the air show airplane of today.  It is nothing short of astonishing.

This is my takeaway from a morning spent backstage with the John Klatt Airshow. I feel a bit like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, who goes to bed in Kansas and wakes up in Technicolor. At the end of the movie, though, Dorothy pulls back the curtain to find the wizard is disappointingly less than she expected.

I have found the exact opposite. The man and the machine behind the dazzle of the air show, elevate the science and the artistry of aviation.

Tim Jarvis, Todd Kurth, Klatt, Rebecca Brosemer & Bill Kerns

See the video here

At first, the tales from female servants involving IMF Chief and French presidential aspirant Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger seem to be polar opposite stories. But there's an underlying truism lurking beneath both stories: How the rich and powerful tend to regard working people, females especially, as their sexual playthings.

To be fair to the Republican Schwarzenegger, Mildred Patricia Baena fared much better than the Socialist Kahn's conquest. The movie star paid his servant $1200 a week and when she retired he set her up in a four bedroom house with a swimming pool and a generous retirement package. The unnamed victim in the alleged Kahn rape was forced to perform down-and-dirty oral sex before he scuttled out of town.

The last story I reported for The New York Times and the one running tomorrow, talk about the amenities offered to fancy pants fliers, the folks who get to sit on the front end of the airplane and I'm not talking about the pilots. Premium class travelers get lots of jazzy extras including the services of flight attendants like Kimberly who works for Emirates. If asked, Kimberly will make the cushy business class seat into a lie flat bed and put the linens on for you. Yep turn-down service at 36,000 feet.

But there's something else that Kimberly will do that is even more valuable. Kimberly can save your life.


Randy Babbitt didn't mention Kimberly, of course, but this is the crux of the message the Federal Aviation Administration's boss, delivered in a joint statement with the president of the Association of Flight Attendants union, Veda Shook.

Because too often flight attendants must often be the "voice of no" - NO, you can't switch seats, NO, Coca-Cola isn't free, NO, you cannot recline your seat back, go to the bathroom or use your cellphone - travelers have tuned them out in much the same way that my children tune me out when I tell them to clean up after themselves. I don't like being a nag, and neither do the flight attendants. Nevertheless, turning airline passengers into beings who will take responsibility for themselves is part of the job; a big, thankless, part of the job.

That responsible behavior doesn't come naturally to all air travelers is evidenced by the fact that Shook and Babbitt, presumably busy honchos of their respective organizations felt the need to issue today's statement. After all what does it say that we haven't heard before?

• Pay attention to the safety briefing and take a gander at the safety card
• Keep your seat belt fastened
• Use a safety seat for infants
• Turn off portable electronic devices

These instructions, the white noise of pushback, are largely not followed.

The FAA tells parents that babies under 40 pounds should be in safety seats, the thinking being that engineers who have worked for decades on the problem have designed a more effective restraint than parents' arms. Meanwhile mom and dad keep bringing children onto the airplane and rolling the dice.

The FAA tells travelers to keep seat belts fastened all the time, even when the seat belt sign is turned off. The photo below I've used in posts to illustrate the use of electronic devices on airplanes, which I'll get to in a minute.

Note the illuminated seat belt sign

But what I want to point out in this photo today is that while the PED user and his companion are happily sharing whatever interesting information is on the tiny screen he is holding, behind him the "fasten seat belt sign" glows heedlessly behind them. That is why I took the photo. I was just waiting to see how long it would take Mr. and Ms. Oblivious to recognize that when the flight attendant asks everyone to return to their seats and fasten seat belts he was including them, too. 

You've read my reporting on the potential for consumer electronics to interfere with flight instruments before. (You haven't? OK, go here, here and here.) Another, as yet unexplored risk is how these devices can divert the attention of passengers, and even prevent them from hearing emergency announcements. Unlike airplane-supplied entertainment where the audio portion is overridden by the cabin communication system, to get the attention of passengers tuned into their own audio would require a person-by-person check of the entire airplane.

Safety issues on airplanes: babes in arms and devices in hands

On a recent flight to Oklahoma, I watched a young man talk on the phone until the time the flight attendant asked us to turn them off. At which point he put away the phone and plugged into his iPod.


Look, as the new owner of a Kindle, I'm as tempted as anyone to power up my gadgets as soon as possible, especially during that long wait for takeoff. But using these devices is not without its downside, distraction being a very big one when used in a variety of places from texting while walking to bus driving while reading.

With the summer travel season about to begin, the simple message from the chief aviation safety executive and the men and women who must turn his policy into practice is this: when it comes to aviation safety, a flight attendant like Kimberly can save your life. But she can't do it without your help.

Maybe I was sitting on the toilet when the Rapture occurred last night. Maybe it bypassed me because Mrs. JP and I were watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Maybe it came and went while we were listening to the Red Sox get blown out by the Cubs in their milkmen uniforms last night.

Or maybe I haven't been sufficiently religious enough during my life. But apparently, the baby Jebus either didn't think I was as pious as the 200,000,000 pre-chosen or... Or maybe it didn't happen at all.

Anyway, consider this an open thread to tell me what you did to prepare for the Rapture (Gotta admit, it was awfully convenient for that 89 year-old crackpot to choose a Saturday for the grand Skyline moment).

My Dell shit the bed... again. So we're back down to one laptop. I don't have the money to fix it right now nor do I have the money to buy even a used one. Keeping a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs and the utilities on is more important. Plus it's going to be a brutal summer because renewing./converting Barb's license to Massachusetts this July, renewing our auto insurance (June 24th, 20% down again) and renewing AAA in August will cost upwards of $450 or more.

So whatever help you could give us in even the smallest measure would be immensely appreciated and would certainly make a difference.

To the cocksucker who recently keyed my car:

I know you're now reading this. Chances are I know who you are. Ergo, if I catch you on my property even once, there won't be enough left of you for the local constabulary to arrest. You think that's funny?

Try me. Give an excuse.

Last fall, shortly before Qantas Flight 32 gave a hairy, scary ride to 446 people on the Airbus A380, I was invited to tour the Airbus Training Center in Miami, Florida, given a detailed tutorial on the Airbus design and safety philosophy and  just for fun - allowed to pilot the A340 simulator.

These high-tech simulators can be programmed to fly any flight when the data has been captured, so we flew USAirways Flight 1549, better known now as the "miracle on the Hudson". This was, at the time, the most famous example in aviation of turning chicken s**t into chicken salad.

Airbus and Chesley Sullenberger may differ over how important the fly-by-wire design was to the successful water landing of the A320 after geese disabled both of the airliner's engines. But the point is that the opportunity to analyze and re-analyze the flight through simulators is beneficial, hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

Photo courtesy ATSB

Of course, the tan I acquired in Miami was barely fading when USAirways Flight 1549 was eclipsed on November 4, 2010 by the near disaster of Qantas Flight 32, the result of another engine failure, this one endogenous. Within weeks, investigators with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau determined that a burst engine disk on the left inboard engine was the result of a manufacturing defect in the production of the Rolls Royce Trent 900 engine. 

So the passengers and flight crews who have or will in the future be traveling on the mammoth A380 - now the world's largest passenger jet - should take comfort in knowing that the ATSB has been flying simulations too. 

I've been blogging for a while about how this accident seems to implicate more than the engines, it raises concern about the airplane itself. Capt. Richard de Crespigny, commander of the five man crew (and who now can choose among several media-bestowed nicknames, Capt. Courageous, Capt. Marvel and my personal favorite, Capt. Fantastic) flew the plane in crisis with this help for two hours that day in November. He continues to praise the A380 for holding up while error messages spat out of the flight computer at a startling clip. Still, the overriding question remains; why did so many things go wrong?

In an announcement today, the ATSB promised it is still looking for the answer. By examining the damage to the plane and its systems it hopes "to understand its effect on those systems and the impact on flight safety. That includes their effect on the aircraft's handling and performance and on crew workload."

The airlines that fly the Airbus A380, Lufthansa, Air France, Emirates, Singapore, and soon, others, consistently fly them with two-person crews. Only luck or Providence is responsible for the fact that on the Qantas flight five highly experienced airmen were on the flight deck trying to sort out the problems.

So before the investigators wrap up the Flight 32 investigation, they should be darn sure Qantas Flight 32 isn't written up as a near-disaster, successfully completed by a crew of heroes and an exceptional plane. They should fly the simulator and make sure that this airplane isn't too big and too complicated for two pilots to handle when things go wrong.

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari Goldstein.)

"(Y)our music is very positive. And you're known as the conscious rapper. How important is that to you, and how important do you think that is to our kids?" - Fox "News" reporter Jason Robinson to rapper/poet Common, October 2010.

"Oh lovely, White House." - Sarah Palin on Twitter

I'm thinking of Robert Lowell. Specifically, I'm thinking of Robert Lowell in 1965. I'm also thinking of Plato's The Republic and how the right wing seems to have misinterpreted one of his and Socrates' dictums.

LBJ had an inferiority complex regarding the Kennedys and for good reason. While JFK and Jackie held lavish parties honoring Nobel laureates and other men and women of distinction in the sciences and humanities, Johnson was letting loose with war whoops in the Taj Mahal and picking up dogs by their ears.

So it came as no surprise to those in LBJ's inner circle as he sought to show they were just as cultured as their predecessors when Lady Bird Johnson organized the Festival of the Arts for the middle of June, 1965. But when Lowell was invited to participate in the Festival, he knew who'd actually tendered the invitation. Like any other American, Lowell at first accepted then thought better of it.

On May 30th, 1965, he sent Johnson a letter which was published in the NY Times the following June 3rd. Declining the invitation, it read,

Dear President Johnson:

When I was telephoned last week and asked to read at the White House Festival of the Arts on June fourteenth, I am afraid I accepted somewhat rapidly and greedily. I thought of such an occasion as a purely artistic flourish, even though every serious artist knows that he cannot enjoy public celebration without making subtle public commitments. But, after a week's wondering, I am conscience-bound to refuse your courteous invitation. I do so now in a public letter because my acceptance has been announced in the newspapers and because of the strangeness of the Administration's recent actions.

Although I am very enthusiastic about most of your domestic legislation and intentions, I nevertheless can only follow our present foreign policy with the greatest dismay and distrust. We are in danger of imperceptibly becoming an explosive and suddenly chauvinistic nation, and we may even be drifting on our way to the last nuclear ruin.

I know it is hard for the responsible man to act; it is also painful for the private and irresolute man to dare criticism. At this anguished, delicate and perhaps determining moment, I feel I am serving you and our country best by not taking part in the White House Festival of the Arts.

It was said the roar from the Oval Office could be heard all over the White House. Just as the 1964 general election was to be a referendum on how much LBJ was loved by the post-Kennedy electorate, so the 1965 Festival of the Arts was supposed to be a referendum on how cultured the Johnsons were. Then along came that troublesome poet Robert Lowell. As with virtually everything save his successful domestic legislation, Vietnam emerged and defined even something as non-political as Johnson had hoped the Festival would be.

Lowell was pragmatic enough to know that anything of this nature was all window dressing that would be forgotten in a day. He would write to a contemporary about how poets would be feted one day at the White House then in the next he'd read in the paper about the administration sending more troops to Vietnam. At least as far as politics went, Lowell was much more pragmatic and realistic than the Republican Robert Frost, who was so desperate for public honors in the last years of his life that he shamelessly sucked up to the liberal Kennedy administration.

Yet for all our 235 year history, there is no single, annual event that honors distinguished people of the sciences and humanities, at least nothing at the same time of the year and under one name. We have the Easter Egg roll in the spring, the pardoning of the national turkey in November and the lighting of the White House Xmas tree in December.

The Bush administration made one abortive effort to prove its cultural bona fides until they got wind of some left wing poets protesting the event and canceled it by taking Plato's and Socrates' theo-fascist take on banishing poets from the Republic a little too literally.

Then a week ago, Fox showed its true color (I'll give you three guesses which one that would be and the first two don't count) by posting a blurb with the headline, Michelle Obama Hosting Vile Rapper at White House?

Vile, huh? See epigraph above.


As usual, the message was quickly organized and strictly enforced at The Reichstagg Fox News HQ and the usual suspects were quick to jump on the rapper it had once deemed "responsible" and a "positive" influence on kids. Along with Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity was already chomping at the bit when news of this window dressing at the White House was put up front and center as if this was the biggest news story they could find. And even though no one in the MSM has come out and said it, it's essentially the same old meme that Fox was peddling in 2007, 2008 and even up to the present day: Warning white people about Angry Black Man Syndrome.

Common, you see, had in the past defended Assata Shakur, a woman convicted of killing a New Jersey cop in 1973. Exhibit A is the song, "A Song for Assata." Common, to those of us who aren't motivated and guided by racism, was merely questioning whether or not Shakur got a fair trial.

Hannity dutifully trotted out two African American right wingers to prove there was no racial bias whatsoever, although it's tough to see how the pair of panelists could be construed as experts on or even having any sensibility for rap music or modern day poetry.

Eventually, even Sarah Palin, another white person and one who's no friend to the Alaskan State Police, chimed in from her little Twitter balcony.

How soon Fox forgot and how completely bereft of irony they were in condemning a man today for a song he wrote and sang years ago since they sang his own praises just last October. How how fast they forgot about how they embraced and defended Ted Nugent's more legitimate white rage at then Senator Obama by telling him to suck on his machine gun and how he's "a piece of shit." (For good measure, the aging rocker also spewed misogynistic diatribes against future Secretary of the State Senator Hillary Clinton and future Speaker of the House Representative Nancy Pelosi.)

But we all know that Fox "News" and its Republican Party ventriloquist dummies are insensible to irony and even the most universally acknowledged and abstract truths.

Lowell, in his own unintentionally loud way, criticized the establishment for the "strangeness of (its) recent actions." He had taken a brave stand by banishing himself from one day in the Republic without any of the Republic's help. Common's only mistake seems to have been defending someone whom he thought had not received a fair trial regardless of the heinousness of the crime.

Fox's mistake was in lauding the usually noncontroversial Common then turning on him when an administration led by a black man decided to invite him for a fluffy poetry reading before the president went back to killing innocent Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis. Suddenly, it was, Angry Black Man Goes to White House to Read for Other Cop-Killing-Condoning Black People.

It stands to reason that if Bono or Bruce Springstein or Bob Dylan or any other white person had written "A Song for Assata" this issue would've been a non-starter.

But the folks at Fox "News" seem to have taken Plato's and Socrates' theocratic-based fascism to heart (although it's tough at best to imagine anyone in Rupert Murdoch's circle having even read Plato's The Republic) when they called for the banishment of poets from the state.

The draconian call for the banishment of poets was based in part on Plato's and Socrates' belief that all poets not divinely inspired be expelled from the polis on the grounds they would eventually delude and mislead the public (Socrates, ironically, was executed exactly for the same charges). While not touching what exactly constituted "divine" inspiration in the polytheistic world of ancient Greece, their intentions were morally pure in calling for a stringent set of guidelines for all poets past, present and future: Thou Shalt be Honest, Truthful and Work for the Public Good.

Like Jon Stewart, I can't speak for Common or any other poet but one must assume he felt his song had at least hugged the baseline of truth in questioning if Shakur's conviction was a just one.

Plato's greatest inspiration was his mentor Socrates, a man who never put pen to paper because he was illiterate. It's ironic that Fox's contributors are also functionally illiterate when they, too, start chasing phantoms out of their vision of the Republic based on words they truly cannot read.

Layne Murdoch/NBAE/Getty Images

The term “play ball” is a metaphor for all sorts of transactions outside of sports. But it was the refusal of United Airlines to “play ball” with Oklahoma City that has brought the the Thunder to tomorrow night’s NBA playoff match with the Dallas Mavericks.  Before the basketball team was even a gleam in the eye of the Sooner State, beleaguered citizens were casting about for ways to pump life into Oklahoma.

Along came United Airlines in the early nineties, flirting with communities in the Midwest for a place to build a massive maintenance and repair operation. When the Chicago-based airline finally selected Indianapolis despite the fact that Oklahoma City had offered a $200 million incentive package, the story goes that the then Mayor Ron Norick called United and bluntly asked, “Why not us?” 

As Dave Lopez, the state’s secretary of commerce and tourism told me at a breakfast last month, the answer was as mortifying as being the last kid picked for a sandlot ball game; United executives "couldn’t imagine living in Oklahoma.” 

That kick in the gut was prelude to the much more horrifying event to come, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. The bombing “laid to waste the core of downtown,” said Victor Bird, director of the Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission. But like the rejection of United and several other economic development efforts, it brought Oklahoma City to a period of serious self-reflection.

“Our backs were against the wall,” Victor told me remembering that time. “If we want a place where our kids can stay and attract other talented individuals we’re going to have to make this city a better place.”

So Oklahoma City enacted a series of taxes for metropolitan projects - a penny-a-dollar contribution that would be a pay-as-you-go plan for rejuvenating downtown and beyond. One of those projects was a sports arena, built in 2003 as a place where the city might - if it was lucky - convince a hockey team to come stay. An effort to do just that was in the works in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina chased the NBA Hornets from their home in the New Orleans Arena and the team needed temporary quarters. 

“It had sell-out crowds. It was one of the top teams for attendance” said Harve Allen, who was a press room manager for the Hornets while they were playing in Oklahoma City and now does the same work with Thunder in addition to working for the aeronautics commission.  “Not only did it surprise the NBA, but in New Orleans and maybe even here, and we started thinking, ‘We could possibly do this.’” 

When NBA basketball arrived, it united a state long-divided by college football rivalries. This is after all, a place where residents define themselves by their allegiance to either the Cowboys or the Sooners.  When the Hornets decided to return to New Orleans, Oklahoma City - with a feeling of new possibilities - approached the SuperSonics who were looking to leave Seattle in 2007.  As it had with United Airlines, Oklahoma City offered financial incentives and an eager population. This time, it worked.  

Peter Gretsch talks to reporters touring FAA in Oklahoma City

And while United’s long-ago rejection is not forgotten, it has been put in perspective. “If it weren’t for our interest in aerospace, the chain of events leading to the Thunder being in the playoff would never have occurred,” the commerce secretary Lopez told me. 

We were together on a tour of the state intended to demonstrate just how successful Oklahoma has been in developing an aerospace economy. The new sports fan base and enhanced quality of life, were just interesting extras as far as I was concerned. (As was the ironic conclusion to the United- in-Indianapolis story.  The airline closed the facility in a cost-saving measure in 2006.) 

When I heard the news this morning of the Thunder’s latest victory I had to know what the folks in Oklahoma were thinking.

“It was one of those circumstances where God has other plans,” Dave Lopez said, positively giddy to see a place United executives once “couldn’t imagine living”, in the company of great cities like Miami, Chicago and Dallas. “The city’s team,” Dave says enjoying the metaphor, “is flying high.”

Last night on NBC, billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump announced that he will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president next year. While maintaining he could easily win the nomination and the general election, Mr. Trump stated he was not ready to leave the private sector. But his statement provided other reasons for not running. What were they?

10) Said his hair wasn't in it.

9) Fears Russian spy satellites will discover secret to patented combover.

8) The Apprentice was renewed by NBC and Trump heard rumors he would be replaced as host by fellow billionaire George Soros.

7) Speaker of the House John Boehner privately informed him Washington DC wasn't big enough for two orange men and that he couldn't carry the Oompa Loompa demographic.

6) Presidential run would distract him from planned hostile takeover of Hair Club For Men.

5) The president showing his birth certificate and killing Osama bin Laden within days deprived him of vital "I am a querulous, racist douchebag" political platform.

4) The multibillionaire was skeptical he'd have the cash flow all but guaranteed to Obama's reelection campaign.

3) Was recently told proposed running mate Daddy Warbucks didn't actually exist.

2) He couldn't guarantee he'd still be a Republican by the end of the election.

1) Ex-wife Ivana would've proved Trump's combover actually started as a prop in 1980 during their socialite/gigolo role-playing sex game.

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

It's been said many times before that media saturation in the 20th and 21st centuries puts a politician or political candidate's personal life under a microscope. With television in the mid-20th century and the rise of the internet these past 20 years, a public figure's personal life now is grist for the mill of public opinion, a grist mill that historical political figures perhaps wouldn't have survived.

For instance, suppose television and the internet had been around in the 19th century. Suppose these twin juggernauts had given us a presidential candidate who'd never been to college, was reputed to have suffered from depression and had bankrupted a business. That plus his ungainly appearance and high, squeaky voice would've all but guaranteed that Abraham Lincoln never would've been elected as our 16th president. Yet all historical scholars agree that Lincoln was perhaps the only man who could've kept the nation together during and after the Civil War. If anyone else had been elected president in 1860, the United States would be a radically different country (or two).

It's also been said that public opinion is almost always in the wrong. And media saturation and manipulation makes public opinion even more susceptible of being misled than ever before. While effecting the illusion that an intrusive 24/7 news cycle makes us closer and chummier as a nation, it also insulates us from politicians and candidates who are essentially chosen and rejected despite our wishes and whose carefully-chosen words are spoon-fed to us in what are known as "sound bites."

Opinions and the right to express them regardless of political ideology is a cherished American right granted to us by the First Amendment but in the present day and age where we're no longer restricted to three networks, the endless opinions of endless talking heads can. understandably, bewilder an already bewildered and apathetic electorate. A political platform during an election year is instead a microscope slide, with the microscope being the electronic media. We the people take turns looking through the eyepiece and see different things.

So the question becomes an increasingly relevant one: Should a presidential candidate's life pass a public litmus test in order to be suited for the highest elected office in the land?

The jury is still out on President Bill Clinton's ultimate place in history. Yet, if you were to ask 100 conservatives and 100 liberals as to whether his own moral turpitude should've gotten him thrown out of office 13 years ago, your answers will likely be along party lines. The same proportions would no doubt be reiterated were you to ask those same 100 conservatives and liberals whether or not the 42nd president should've been impeached for lying to a grand jury.

But one ought to also keep in mind the hypocrisy of the right wing in spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in assembling a grand jury and investigating a presidency over what amounts to a blow job. And one also ought to keep in mind the chief force behind that impeachment, Newt Gingrich, the soon-to-be-disgraced Speaker of the House who was secretly conducting his own extra-marital affair with a staffer who was even younger than Monica Lewinsky. Plus, at the time of President Clinton's infidelity, First Lady Hillary Clinton wasn't in a hospital bed recuperating from cancer surgery.

Yet how much should our moral belief system be allowed to inform and make our decisions regarding the fitness of certain presidential candidates and incumbents? We on the left and many in the center who decry the government legislating morality from the wells of the House and Senate as well as from the Oval Office hypocritically have no problem whatsoever in using that same morality rubric when deciding who our next president will be.

Otherwise, if we do not allow our moral belief systems and religious mores to inform us during an election, then we must look beyond the candidate's personal life and look to his/her prior statements and review their positions, which is also a slippery slope to 55-60% of an electorate that chooses to stay home every election day.

Outwardly, if we're to use a superficial rubric such as family and the stability it promises, George W. Bush would've been a far more appealing candidate than William Jefferson Clinton were the two men to run against each other. Clinton came from a broken home and spent much of his childhood hovering right around the poverty line. His estranged father was a used car salesman. He also dodged the draft. Hardly what one would call a presidential upbringing, if there is any such a thing.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, was the scion of a powerful political family, with a Senator for a grandfather, a former CIA Director, vice president and president for a father, a sober and religious man blessed with a beautiful family consisting of an educated wife and lovely twin daughters, a successful businessman, a military veteran and, like Clinton, a state governor. And, best of all, not a hint of marital infidelity.

At least that's what the media insisted on showing us. When Dan Rather tried to puncture the military palimpsest that had been wallpapered over Bush's real Texas Air National Guard past, he was forced out of the business. When John Kerry, a real war hero, ran against the sober, God-fearing military man from Texas, the media gave Kerry's detractors much, much time and got just enough of us to believe that perhaps Bush was the real deal and Kerry was the fraud. It was the political version of OJ Simpson all over again.

Otherwise, if we the people had allowed our own native moral belief systems to make a more informed choice in both 2000 and 2004, the world and our nation would be radically different today.

So what place should our own mores have on who ought to be President or not? Should it have a place in the electorate's decision-making process or not? Should we let Christian virtues color our perception of a candidate or should our focus be on more secular matters? And is it even possible for any of us to make such a distinction?

Only one answer is for sure: Men like Dominique Strauss-Kahn rarely make it easy for us to decide whether or not he's fit for the highest office in the land but Strauss-Kahn proves that we need to set some moral parameters. If we had, perhaps we wouldn't be too mired in two unwinnable wars with the incumbent afraid to pull out and look weak against terrorism, an incumbent who gratefully accepted the neofascist infrastructure left to him by his sober, God-fearing predecessor.

(This is a challenge purportedly written by Amy Meyers of Cherry Hill, New Jersey to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN-6).)

Dear Representative Bachmann,

My name is Amy Myers. I am a Cherry Hill, New Jersey sophomore attending Cherry Hill High School East. As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted. The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter.

Though I am not in your home district, or even your home state, you are a United States Representative of some prominence who is subject to national media coverage. News outlets and websites across this country profile your causes and viewpoints on a regular basis. As one of a handful of women in Congress, you hold a distinct privilege and responsibility to better represent your gender nationally. The statements you make help to serve an injustice to not only the position of Congresswoman, but women everywhere. Though politically expedient, incorrect comments cast a shadow on your person and by unfortunate proxy, both your supporters and detractors alike often generalize this shadow to women as a whole.

Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education:

I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.

Hopefully, we will be able to meet for such an event, as it would prove to be enlightening.

Sincerely yours,
Amy Myers

---

This will likely be the end result of any debate between Bachmann and anyone else:

My money's on the kid.

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

In a saga that could've been entitled Fievel Goes to Wall Street as scripted by Oliver Stone or Nathaniel West and featuring a cast of bipedaled rats, Galleon Securities’ Raj Rajaratnam was convicted yesterday in federal court of all 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. Out of the 26 people named in the indictments, 21 of them would plead guilty and testify against their former benefactor. In another delicious irony, the hedge fund titan was taken down by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, an Indian native.

It featured a sociopathic Wall Street hedge fund manager and corporate raider who's a real-life Gordon Gecko, an aging cock tease beauty queen, a down-on-his-heels middle manager and a young man named, appropriately, Adam Smith.

When midlevel Intel manager Rajiv Goel decided to crawl into bed with future convicted felon Raj Rajaratnam, he was suffering from a rat infestation in his home. Little did he realize that by doing so, he'd be letting another rat into his homestead, the biggest one of all.

Out of a cast that could've been scripted by Oliver Stone for another Wall Street sequel, Goel is undeniably the most pathetic. Called the "Sad Sack" by the NY Times' Dealbook blog, the other Raj was a hard luck cog in Intel's vast machinery who looked up to the hedge fund superman like evangelicals look up to Jesus, with this one twist: It wasn't the resurrection of his idol that drove Goel's devotion but his own. His post as a middle manager enabled him to share with his old chum insider information such as Intel's earnings statements.

Rajaratnam, a real-life Gordon Gecko in every sense of the word, typified American high finance while remaining well below the radar outside Wall Street's competitive hedge fund community. He flattered and rewarded those who'd helped him amass an ill-gotten fortune worth an estimated $1.3 billion and a portfolio worth as much as $7 billion. But when the ever-pathetic Goel wanted Rajaratnam to take notice of an award he'd gotten at Intel, the latter yawned, prompting the underling to ask, “Does it always have to benefit you?”

But among those in Rajaratnam's vast army of corporate spies, Goel's starry-eyed devotion was not unique. In the small but steadily-growing hedge fund community on Wall Street, the Sri Lankan was revered as some kind of financial Oracle of Delphi, always making the best acquisitions and deals at the best time. And never once did anyone seem to question nor care whether Rajaratnam's fabulous and invariable success could be attributed to insider trading or, in layman's parlance, cheating.

The bin Laden of Wall Street

In an eerie and almost darkly comic way, Rajaratnam and his economic terrorism that was largely made possible through the deregulation orgy of the last two decades ran roughshod over our nation's economy over roughly the same period that Osama bin Laden was enjoying his greatest influence over that same economy. The only difference is, we were looking for bin Laden since before 9/11. The federal government's investigation into Rajaratnam didn't start until 2008, when they finally got court orders to do wiretaps on Rajaratnam's office phone.


MSNBC's Rachel Maddow nailed it when she reminded us (using bin Laden's own words) that the terrorist kingpin's major interest regarding the United States was our financial downfall. Using the same exact tactics used by Ronald "Star Wars" Reagan to accelerate the downfall of the USSR, bin Laden also used our own fear, paranoia and the opportunistic instincts of the military industrial complex to bring about our own eventual downfall. The year after 9/11, the Bush administration authorized a defense budget of just over $400 billion. By the time Obama took over, we were already up to well over $700 billion, not counting another discretionary budget earmarked to fight terrorism.

Meanwhile on the home front, Rajaratnam was engaging in more than a little economic terrorism of his own. Whereas bin Laden's plane bombs were merely means to an end that all but guaranteed financial ruin, the Sri Lankan was busy collecting insider information and taking over weak companies with the intention of liquidating its assets.

In Oliver Stone's Wall Street, Charlie Sheen's stockbroker character Bud Fox, desperate to get into bed with Gordon Gecko, gave him a tip involving the failing airline for which his own father worked. Fox's real-life counterpart Smith had a similar airline moment:

In 2005 (Smith) traveled to Laguna Beach, Calif., for the bank’s annual technology industry conference. There an old colleague told him about Integrated Device Technology’s planned acquisition of Integrated Circuit Systems.

He e-mailed Mr. Rajaratnam about the tip with the subject line “the two eyes” — code for the two companies. When the companies announced the deal in June 2005 — bringing Mr. Rajaratnam nearly $3 million in profit, according to prosecutors — Mr. Smith said he felt a tinge of regret.

“I remember after the announcement having a sinking feeling in my stomach that this might be a problem,” Mr. Smith testified.

Most people, I'd like to think, would be more sensitive to conflicts of interest and breaking the rules to get ahead of more honest Wall Street speculators and would feel more than "a tinge of regret." But tweaks of the conscience will get no one anywhere on Wall Street where the business of business is business. In fact, there's a whole book devoted to the Wall Street personality. It's entitled, "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work."

Party Like it's 1999.

So why did it take the better part of a decade or more to get this other foreign-born terrorist who plied his trade not in Afghanistan's caves or Pakistan's remote suburbs but openly in our midst, on our soil and using our own financial system for personal gain?

As stated earlier, deregulation during both Democratic and Republican administrations when both parties controlled Congress certainly provides a healthy introduction as to why. It would be a stretch to say that the dismantling of the 1932 Glass-Steagall Act 12 years ago made hedge funds entirely possible. Yet, taking Glass-Steagall off the books certainly did nothing to hinder the creation and monstrous growth of hedge funds since 1999.

US Attorney Preet Bharara and his crackdown on Wall Street aside, it would be easy to use Rajaratnam's crooked exploits in gaming the system as a better argument for immigration reform than the one right wingers have been using for decades. Indeed, it's hard to see how minimum wage-earning Chipotle employees or underpaid, brutalized migrant workers toiling in Florida's tomato fields or North Carolina's tobacco fields (.pdf file) are a greater threat to our economy or national security than a Sri Lankan who stole perhaps billions through insider trading gotten through corporate and even sexual intrigue.

These last ten years on Wall Street have been the Decade of the Locust, with little accountability and even enormous help on several fronts from our government of the people, by the people and for the people. But rather than acting in good faith on behalf of the people who elect and re-elect that government, the only people they're primarily interested in helping are the corporations that are masquerading as people.

Because for every Rajaratnam and Madoff that we put behind bars, there are literally thousands of other people on Wall Street that are doing exactly the same thing with no or little fear of meeting the same fate. Because everyone on Wall Street, and the southern New York US Attorney's office, knows that our economic and financial system is predicated completely on fraud, dirty tricks and deception. They also know if the DOJ were to go after everyone on Wall Street, our nation's economy would collapse within weeks if not days.

It's not that Wall Street crooks are too big to fail. It's the sheer fact that there are too many of them to fail.

Bin Laden's Death Won't End the War on Terror Until Americans Understand the Threat Was Always Us

By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower and author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq

Some of our leaders think Americans don't need the truth about 9/11 any more, because Osama's dead and it's over.

As somebody who got brutalized at "ground zero" of the 9/11 cover up for most of the past 10 years, I could not disagree more. I'm sick of asking for a proper Congressional investigation. Congress already knows the truth about 9/11. That's why they're not poking around. However, it's a huge mistake for the rest of us who know the truth, or parts of it, to wait for permission to speak. America has trapped itself in a mythic nightmare about terrorism that exaggerates our enemies, while our leaders manipulate our sense of patriotism and effectively blind us to mistakes in national security policy. It's not a successful policy if it weakens our country.

The United States has reached a tipping point when we have to consider the end of the "American Age." In which case, an honest examination of 9/11 becomes imperative. Americans must understand 9/11, so that we can puncture the creepy bubble around the War on Terrorism, and sweep away the phony threat that's got all of Washington plotting Wars in the Middle East, bankrupting our economy with runaway defense spending, and tearing down civil rights in the name of national security.

The lie itself is formidable. Valerie Plame, a lady I greatly admire, recently tried to assure Americans that the U.S. government could never keep such a huge and devastating secret for so long. Wanna bet? Myself, I got rewarded with 5 years of indictment as an "Iraqi Agent," including one year in prison on Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas—without a trial or hearing—after I requested to testify about Iraq and 9/11.

Thirty days after I spoke with top staffers for Senator Trent Lott and Senator John McCain, the FBI showed up with a warrant for my arrest.

My 5 year indictment on the Patriot Act nicknamed me "Symbol Susan." It was not subtle. The viciousness I suffered was purposefully designed to scare off on anybody else who might consider talking. The cover ups of 9/11 and Iraq distinguished the Patriot Act as the premiere weapon to take down whistle blowers.

To those others I say, they cannot silence us if we refuse to give up our voice. I challenge Congress to put our country on the right track by holdings hearings on 9/11 to take our testimony. I will gladly swear to all of the following under oath:

THE TRUTH: A SUMMER OF ADVANCE WARNINGS

The truth is that our team, which triangulated the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, discussed the 9/11 attack in its exact scenario and time frame throughout the summer of 2001. We talked about it practically every week at our meetings. We also discussed it on the telephone, pointedly joking "Hello NSA! Pick up the phone—" knowing the National Security Agency had wire tapped my lines.

There's no question that the story of the 9/11 conspiracy was planted months in advance to prep the intelligence community for the government's reaction. And it unfolded exactly as they told us it would—with a little help from an orphan explosives team. That will be explained in a second article. The two are not contradictory.

Before we get to that, Americans must first accept the motivation for 9/11, and why the U.S. government allowed it to happen. This was a Pearl Harbor Day. And it achieved an agenda, which was already well defined.

From the first moment that I was told about 9/11 in April and May of 2001, I was informed that the United States planned to declare War on Iraq immediately when 9/11 happened. The two were already linked as cause and effect.

Threats of War Against Iraq

I can testify to that absolutely, because I was the Asset commanded to deliver those threats to Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations. I was instructed to say the "U.S. intended to declare War on Iraq if Baghdad failed to provide actionable intelligence to stop the conspiracy involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center. We would bomb Iraq more aggressively than ever before—back to the Stone Age."

My CIA handler further demanded that I stress the threat of War "originated at the highest levels of government—above the CIA Director and the Secretary of State." He considered the warnings to have more potency if Iraqi diplomats understood the muscle of those issuing the threats.

As the primary back channel to Baghdad from 1996 through 2003, I delivered that message with all precision from April and May right through August 4, 2001. I can pinpoint the day, because the conversation with my CIA handler took place on the day of the Senate confirmation hearings for Robert Mueller's appointment to head the FBI.

My CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz speculated aloud that the 9/11 attack might occur before Mueller was formally instated as FBI Director.

In the same conversation, Dr. Fuisz warned that I must not go back to New York, because the attack was "imminent" and the CIA expected "mass casualties" and a "possible miniature thermo nuclear device." Over his objections, I insisted on returning to Iraq's Embassy at the U.N. one last time to see if diplomats had received any reports from Baghdad. Then I promised I would not go back to New York until after the attack.

My meeting with Iraqi diplomats occurred two days later on Saturday, August 4. I did not return to New York until September 18.

Let me be clear: The threat was not vague or undefined. We fully expected airplane hijackings and some sort of aerial strike targeting the World Trade Center, specifically. No other target or location was ever discussed.

Details of the 9/11 conspiracy and the full history of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence are disclosed in my book, "Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq." It's a real life spy thriller, and it goes into much greater depth, whereas this article can only scratch the surface.

"Extreme Prejudice" reveals a truth that's very different from what America has been told. I challenge Congress to put me under oath and rip me with questions. Americans have the right to hear my direct testimony, which would disclose a complete chronology of our advance discussions about the conspiracy, in addition to our considerable efforts to stop the attack.

It's nothing like what you expect. As a life-long anti-war activist, I was highly agitated about the threats of war that I was commanded to deliver to Iraqi diplomats. And I'm not a passive individual. Adding to the tension, by the summer of 2001 the international community had developed a deep loathing for U.N. sanctions that were destroying Iraq's social fabric and community infrastructure. The days of U.N. sanctions on Iraq—which I reviled, too—were closing fast. The international community would have condemned any rogue military action against Iraq.

The CIA was way ahead of the curve on Iraq. Unbeknownst to the public, from the opening days of the Bush administration in January 2001, our team had begun hammering out a comprehensive framework for achieving all U.S. objectives, including weapons inspections, so that the U.S could claim a major victory while ceding to pressure for the U.N. sanctions to end. Anti-terrorism was a central part of our peace framework. In fact, Iraq had agreed to invite an FBI Task Force to conduct terrorism investigations by February, 2001. The CIA had also won Iraq's consent for major reconstruction contracts for U.S. corporations in telecommunications, hospitals and health care, transportation--- and oil. Everything the U.S. wanted was ours for the taking. And the CIA wanted it all.

Our Team Efforts to Stop 9/11

When my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz informed me on August 2 that the 9/11 attack was in play and considered "imminent," he and I together resolved to take more aggressive action to prevent it.

I'm not telling you what somebody else did that I heard about later. I'm telling what actions I took myself in "real time" to try to stop the 9/11 attack.

On Monday, August 6, I reported to Dr. Fuisz after my trip to New York. I told him that Iraqi diplomats had thrown up their hands. They had nothing to give us. Yes, they assured me, Baghdad was fully aware that Iraq faced a threat of full scale war, if a 9/11 style of attack occurred. They understood that it would be in their greatest interest to provide us with any fragment of intelligence to help stop the attack. They understood that 9/11 would complicate our peace framework exactly at the moment when the international community was ready to throw off U.N. sanctions. Bottom line, they had nothing to give us.

I was an unusual party to this discussion, motivated by deep antipathy for sanctions, violence through terrorism and war. For those reasons, I informed Dr. Fuisz that I felt super motivated to do everything in my power to stop 9/11, both to protect the people of New York City and to prevent an unnecessary War—exactly at the moment when our team was completing this outstanding peace framework that achieved all U.S. objectives.

At the instructions of Dr. Fuisz on August 6, I personally placed phone calls to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's private staff at the Justice Department on August 7 or 8. Identifying myself as the CIA Asset covering the Iraq and Libya Embassies at the United Nations, I personally requested that Ashcroft's Office post "an emergency broadcast alert across all agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings, with a known target of the World Trade Center." I described the attack as "imminent," with the potential for "mass casualties. I asked for maximum inter-agency cooperation and urged that any information be forwarded to the CIA immediately.

Hearing my request, staff in the inner sanctum of Attorney General John Ashcroft's office gave me a phone number at the Office of Counter-Terrorism in the Justice Department, and urged me to repeat exactly what I had just told them. I did so without delay. I dialed the number. I spoke to the staff.

I wasn't taking any chances. A few days later, I visited the home of my cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. I waited in my car while his neighbors peeked out their windows, determined to warn him about our 9/11 scenario, and request cabinet level support to pre-empt the attack. Alas, Andy did not come home. When I drove away after two hours, I did so believing that I might be making the greatest mistake of my life.

There was still plenty of time for action to pre-empt the attack. Americans have a right to know how top leaders in government handled our warnings, and effectively thwarted those best efforts in August of 2001.

There was a lot of action that August—including a second set of events that I would learn about years later, involving an unidentified orphan team that would lay explosives in the Twin Towers. My next article will explain how those two conspiracies converged. Contrary to what the 9/11 Truth Community supposes, these two operations do not cancel out each other.

But first Americans must understand that 9/11 was a "stand down" operation, a true Pearl Harbor Day, meaning that U.S. and foreign intelligence understood what was coming. The leadership at the top of the U.S. government made an active decision to let the attack go ahead--- because the decision was already made that 9/11 would provide a pretext for War in Iraq. With peace breaking out in the Middle East at that very moment, the War Party required a massive scale threat to overturn the peace process. Clearly they decided that nothing would be allowed to interfere with that objective.

Once that factor's understood, 9/11 becomes comprehensible.

Some of my testimony would surprise America—like efforts by Saddam Hussein's government to guarantee Iraq's complete cooperation with global anti-terrorism efforts before and after 9/11. That will be addressed in another article.

Finally, my book, EXTREME PREJUDICE provides a full scope of the brutality by the Justice Department to silence me and other Assets, using the Patriot Act as a weapon to guarantee the success of its deception. (A hint: Assets watched the cover ups of 9/11 and Iraq on prison television. And I wasn't the only prisoner).

Oh it wasn't all bad! My CIA handler got $13 million tax-free from emergency appropriations for the 9/11 investigation in November, 2001--- He built himself a grand mansion a stone's throw from CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Not a dollar or a dime got spent on 9/11. Mind you, the government's not complaining. But shifting tax dollars away from Iraq's cooperation with the 9/11 investigation took food off my table. I paid a terrible price for it. More later in this series.

Democracy Requires Accountability

All parts of the 9/11 warnings, the cover up— the arrests and pay offs— should disturb Democrats and Republicans alike who brag about their leadership support for Assets engaged in anti-terrorism. It makes a lie of their pledge of loyalty, for sure. And it denigrates their performance as stewards of national security, which ought to be a litmus test for the 2012 Campaigns. Those who don't care for the people's business don't belong in government.

Simply put, democracy requires accountability to the people. Americans have a fundamental right to possess the truth about 9/11 and the decision to declare War on Iraq months before the attack—because national security does matter in this age. Americans require that knowledge, so as to assess the leadership performance and quality of policy making on our behalf.

Good leaders don't have to be afraid. Bad leaders should be sent packing for the betterment of government.

Most alarmingly, 9/11's legacy has proved detrimental to the security of our country. According to the National Journal, fighting this phantom demon of terrorism today involves 1,271 government agencies, producing 50,000 intelligence reports a year that for the most part nobody reads. Meanwhile, "black budgets" for intelligence operations have mushroomed to $75 billion a year, financing both domestic and international surveillance that monitors law-abiding citizens across the country. There's no federal auditing authority or Congressional oversight over "black budgets." It's all tax free and unregulated. It's a secret government gone wild.

Osama's death has been a great victory for the CIA. But it will not bring U.S. soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan, where military operations have cost $1.6 trillion and counting. It won't end the nonsense War against Libya, which has no justification at all.

Osama's death will not quash the planning stages for future wars against Syria, and God help us, Iran.

Is it really patriotic to stay silent while the military industrial complex devours our economy for its own profits? Without producing benefits for U.S. soldiers? Admiral Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn't think so. He has described America's national debt as "the greatest threat to our national security."

Our country is teetering on the abyss. If we're going to succeed in restoring the great traditions of liberty and moral authority, we've got to relearn the history of 9/11.

We must acknowledge the real threats to our quality of life are not "out there." They start right here. And those threats are perpetuated by the myths that our leaders invented that tragic morning.

There is no better time for truth than today. The success of our national security policy—and our ability to avoid future wars that are guaranteed to destroy this earth—very well depend on it.