RUTHFULLY YOURS

From a statement by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) after Senate Democrats on Thursday used a filibuster to block a vote on a resolution disapproving of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran:

Political fealty to President Obama’s hoped-for legacy in foreign affairs means this dangerous deal will likely move forward, despite the overwhelming and bipartisan opposition to it in Congress and the clear will of the American people. Obstruction on the part of a minority of legislators is not the foundation on which lasting, consequential arms control agreements are built. A majority of Americans oppose the Iran deal because it compromises the safety and security of not only the United States, but also of the rest of the world.

History will remember this stunning display of partisan loyalty and willful blindness. And it will remember this Senate as the one that—when given the chance to stop the world’s worst sponsor of terrorism from obtaining the world’s worst weapons—blinked when confronted with that evil.

The Senate held its first showdown vote on the Iranian nuclear deal Thursday, with 58 Senators having declared their opposition, including four Democrats and Republican non-hawks like Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky. The American public is also overwhelmingly opposed, with a Pew poll this week finding 21% approval for the agreement versus 49% disapproval.

So it says something about President Obama’s contempt for Congress that he browbeat and threatened 42 Democrats to filibuster the vote so he can duck having to veto a resolution of disapproval. The President may think he can spin 42 Senate votes into political vindication, and we’re sure he’ll get media support for that view. But Americans should read a filibuster as a tacit Democratic admission of no confidence in an agreement they fear voting on.

President Obama told Americans he was staying out of the civil war in Syria, but the Syrian war is not staying out of America. The White House announced Thursday that Mr. Obama now wants the U.S. to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year.

That’s a sixfold increase from the number already in the U.S., and don’t expect that to be the last arrivals. The conflict may get worse, especially as Russia ignores U.S. objections and moves in to prop up Bashar Assad’s rule. Mr. Obama will be under growing pressure from a besieged Europe to accept tens of thousands given America’s larger space and economy.

Americans are generous, and there’s little doubt the U.S. can absorb these people who might otherwise be killed. But rest assured that Islamic State and al Qaeda will attempt to place some of their agents among those who will seek asylum. The burden will be on the Obama Administration to vet them.

The terror threat is growing, but our nation’s leaders are even deeper in denial than they were 14 years ago.

The anniversaries and other reminders of the Islamic extremist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stir a torrent of thoughts and emotions. But we should try to focus on those most relevant today.

A sensitive and appropriate 9/11 museum has now been built. A new tower has emerged as a great work of architecture adding to the world’s most-iconic skyline. Lower Manhattan, specifically the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center, which many of us feared might be abandoned in the wake of these attacks and constant threats of future attacks, has more than doubled in population.

It has gone far beyond the goals we set in 1994 when we secured passage of a law allowing the use of many of the older buildings and sites in the area for residential as well as office and commercial uses. All of this is a good sign that New Yorkers have not only met but exceeded the challenge I gave on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001: that New Yorkers should become stronger as a result of the attack.

It has been 5,113 days since the al Qaeda attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the failed third assault that was intercepted into a farm field in Shanksville, Pennsylviania, by American patriots. To borrow a phrase from a past generation that certainly applies to this event, it is a day that will live in infamy. But few would believe where our country is today given the events of that fateful day. Today Americans stand viciously divided in our politics as a society that rationalizes Islamofascist aggression (and, in the case of Iran, facilitates it), even as we harbor ideological factions that stand in protest of our law enforcement officers. We have moved away from the cohesive and united front we embraced shoulder-to-shoulder at the smoking pile of rubble that was the remnants of the World Trade Center; the tomb that holds so many souls.

1/Rosh Hashanah (“beginning of the year” in Hebrew) is a universal, stock-taking holiday of hope and renewal, celebrated onthe 6th day of The Creation, whenthe first human being, Adam, was produced.

Shana (שנה) is the root of the Hebrew words שנוי (change/transform) and שינון (rehearse): changing negative – and repeating positive – behavior.

The Shofar (ritual horn) is the key symbol of Rosh Hashanah, the Jubilee, Sabbatical years, new months, gathering people to the battlefield and the ingathering of Jews – symbols of Jewish unity.

On Rosh Hashanah, the Shofar gathers people to a soul-searching battle between positive and negative attitudes, sounding the gun for the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, invoking the sounds of the Shofar on Mt. Sinai, when Moses received the Ten Commandments.

The Torah does not mention Rosh Hashanah, but calls for a memorial of blowing the Shofar as a wake-up call – triggering awe – to enhance human behavior, and to remember the events/attitudes which led to the destruction of the two ancient Temples and the subsequent exiles. Rosh Hashanah is also called “Yom Te’roo’ah” (the day of blowing the Shofar). Shofar (שופר) is a derivative of the Hebrew word for enhancement (שפור), which requires humility, symbolized by the bent and non-decorated Shofar.

“Let’s roll.”

Todd Beamer, Passenger United Flight 93

Lest we forget, the first Americans who fought the war on terror were passengers on a commercial airliner. They gathered together, likely led by Todd Beamer, as the first US warriors on a hijacked flight high in the sky over Pennsylvania, and though they died, their sacrifice made it possible for our congressional leaders, our government leaders, our fellow citizens to live out the day on 9-11, unaware that Flight 93 was heading for Washington, DC.

2015

As of September 2015 Freedom Tower is built. The Memorial is open. The Twin Tower Lights will once again illuminate the New York skyline. Many will take a moment of remembrance, and think back…..

2001

The morning of September 11th, 2001 was not unlike most weekdays in America – people going to work, others enjoying their morning coffee, some admiring sky scrapers dotting the NY skyline, while tourists photographed historic buildings in the nation’s capital or along the lower part of Manhattan or on the river boat docks near the Pentagon.

“There will be bloodshed but Israel is strong.”

“Israel has been, and should be, operating under the assumption that Iran is going for and will probably acquire nuclear weaponry; there’s no doubt in my mind that this is what is happening,” former Israeli defense minister Moshe Arens told The Algemeiner on Wednesday, following the Obama administration’s securing of the support it needed to prevent a veto override in Congress over the nuclear deal.

“Whether the Iranians actually use this weaponry — or when — is a different question,” said Arens, who served several years as a Knesset member, three terms as defense minister, once as foreign minister and a stint as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. “The probability is small, but not zero.”

What is certain, he said, is that the Islamic Republic’s proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups, have been empowered.

As we approach Rosh Hashana, the people of Israel need to recognize how lucky we are. True, today, we find ourselves largely alone, set apart from our traditional partners in the Western world. But standing alone isn’t always the worst option. Today it is certainly not the worst option. Over the past several years, we have witnessed the growing radicalization and fragmentation of the societies of neighboring lands. Sunnis fight Shi’ites and one another. Minority populations are slaughtered, enslaved and oppressed. Regimes fall, rise and fall again. Today, every Arab society is either in danger or at war. And in almost every case, it isn’t good fighting evil but varying degrees of evil and barbarism fighting one another. From the PLO to Islamic State, through Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Assad regime in Syria, the ayatollahs of Iran, Hezbollah, the Erdogan regime in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and every single actor in the region resorts to some degree of torture and oppression.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s national lead over her rivals for the Democratic nomination has shrunk, and she is in a statistical tie with leading Republicans in head-to-head surveys, a new CNN/ORC poll released Thursday evening showed.

Mrs. Clinton is getting support from 37 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, with Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is running in the Democratic contest, getting 27 percent, the survey found. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is considering a run of his own and who has been included in several recent public surveys, received 20 percent support.

Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, is at 3 percent, while Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator, received 2 percent, and Lincoln Chafee, the former governor of Rhode Island, is at less than 1 percent.