Photo by ~mvi~ (flickr)

Consider what your taxes buy. 

From the White House website comes this inspirational message to Muslims everywhere on the occasion of Ramadan, that holiest of times when jihadis kill while fasting from sunrise to sunset. 

Ramadan has long been known even to Muslims as “the month of jihad,” as one prominent Islamic cleric called it, when jihad terror attacks increase in numerical frequency.

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I don’t have much to say tonight regarding this edition of the Flight 93 blogburst, because like everyone else I’ve been busy watching Sarah Palin rock the Republican house in Minnesota.  Alec Rawls, though, outdoes himself in this installment, which winds up, appropriately, at last week’s Democratic convention, where Islamic Society of North America President Ingrid Matteson spoke.

After watching Governor Palin mock and belittle the Dems, it’s hard to reflect on all their unsavory connections and associations and not feel that they deserve it.  So if some of what you read in today’s blogburst post outrages you, take heart that tonight in St. Paul an awesome lady promised to give government back to the people.  I know she’s not thinking much about the Park Service as yet, but I can’t think of a better place to start cleaning house.

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Graphic by SL-INC (flickr)

I just celebrated twenty-five years of public service as a DOL official.  The Labor Day holiday is therefore a big deal to me—mostly because it’s a day off.

That’s me on my knees, and that’s Joe Q. Public on my back.

I’m going to grill out today, as is every other red-blooded American. If you don’t have an outdoor barbecue on Labor Day, then you likely celebrate the working man on the first day of May.

Americans honor the working man on the first Monday in September, and they grill out.

I’ll have to get gas.

Alec Rawls makes an important point in today’s blogburst installment, and he is  rather perceptive in recognizing the opportunity presented by the closing ceremony at the just-concluded Olympic Games to illustrate a compelling and subtle argument.   Point is, not just any interpretation of an artistic production is possible or valid, but interpretive criticism that is consistent with relevant thematic, structural, and symbolic considerations cannot really be refuted or denied.  Art—and there can be no doubt that the architect and his supporters consider the Flight 93 National Memorial to be a great work of art—will always generate some obvious, no-brainer understandings and interpretations.

It would be laughable if the Chinese government denied the obvious symbolism in the closing ceremonies in Beijing, and it is laughable that the Park Service has denied the glaringly obvious Islamic motifs in the  memorial design.

“Crescent?  What crescent?  You mean that broken circle?”

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