Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the White House has, on a yearly basis, extended the 9/11 National Emergency act. As each September rolled around the announcement was expected almost like clockwork. With out fail, last Thursday, President Obama notified congress of the extension:

NOTICE
- – - – - – -
CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT
TO CERTAIN TERRORIST ATTACKS

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2009. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency the former President declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

The event has become so common place, the press does not even report on the extension any longer. However, this year people need to take notice… almost like the next bit of news. On Monday, 09/14/09, Osama bin Laden’s semi-annual audio warning was released on an Islamist website:

“A statement to the American people”

“The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby,”

“The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine.”

“If you think about your situation well, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups,” Bin Laden said.

“Rather than fighting to liberate Iraq — as Bush claimed — it (the White House) should have been liberated.”

“If you stop the war, then fine. Otherwise we will have no choice but to continue our war of attrition on every front… If you choose safety and stopping wars, as opinion polls show you do, then we are ready to respond to this.”

“You have only changed the faces in the White House,” he said, referring to Obama who took office this year. “Obama is a weakened man. He will not be able to stop the war.”

Also on Monday, 09/14/09, news leaked that U.S. Special Forces may have killed a wanted al Qaeda terrorist who was seeking safe harbor in Somalia:

Special Forces used a helicopter to fire on a car in southern Somalia, killing several people, including one the U.S. military believes was Saleh ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al Qaeda operative. Nabhan has been tied to several attacks in East Africa, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, according to the sources.

However, the final and potentially worrying event, on 9/14/2009 was a joint operation by the FBI and the NYPD task force on terrorism raided three residences in New York City. The believed target was a person with connections to al-Qaida.

No arrests were announced Monday but the investigation was still under way.

Authorities have not found any weapons ready for use — such as a bomb — that would indicate an attack was imminent, they said. Nevertheless, one of the officials called the threat very real and emphasized the urgency of the threat.

Obviously, the world is large and at any time a wide rage of events may be taking place. Often times the events are unrelated and are purely coincidental; however, when a pattern appears in a very short period of time I tend to take notice.

That said I’m not naive enough to think law enforcement isn’t constantly working behind the scenes. I have no doubt arrests, raids, and actions take place all the time with little or no fanfare. I simply find all of the events taking place within such a short period of time a bit coincidental.

So what does this all mean? Frankly, I have no clue. I’m simply noticing a pattern that seems to have popped up.

Was this raid due to President Obama’s stop over in New Work? Don’t know. If I look at events taking place over the next several weeks, I would be more concerned with the G20 summit heading to Pittsburgh on 9/24 and 9/25.

The G20 Summit represents 19 major world economies, as well as the European Union, that meets on a semi-annual basis to discuss macro-economic trends and how member nations should operate to keep the global economy stable.

Who represents the G20 members, you ask – the Presidents, Chancellors, Prime Ministers and Kings of the representative countries. What better target exists at this very moment for someone who wants to make a statement?

With the above events in mind, I can see why roughly 2,000 Pennsylvania National Guard will be assisting Pittsburgh police in keeping the peace during the conference. It will be interesting to see if more events take place between now and the start of the summit.

UPDATE 9/15/2009

After posting the above article, more information became available.

Hundreds of FBI agents are on the ground in Colorado, conducting round-the-clock surveillance on five suspects – including a man who recently visited Queens, sources told The News.

New York authorities searched three Flushing apartments and detained several men – later released – after getting a warrant to look for bomb-making components, explosive powders and fuses.

“The FBI is seriously spooked about these guys planning another 9/11,” a former senior counterterrorism official told the News. “This is not some … FBI informant-driven case. This is the real thing.”

Again, too many things going on all at the same time.  Someone in law enforcement is really worried.

Now this, my friends, is just plain cool.  If you happen to like history or random, seemingly pointless bits of knowledge, you have to spend some time reading Secrets of the Deep (What lies beneath the surface of New York Harbor?).  It’s a two page article at NYMag.com  

I won’t blow all the secrets for you.  I mean, I know you are lazy – who in an “on demand” society is not – but I’ll give you a few that you may find interesting.

2.Teredos and Gribbles

Two kinds of hungry pests gnaw away at the pilings that hold up structures like the FDR Drive, the U.N. school on East 25th Street, and the Con Ed plant at 14th. Teredos, which start life looking like tiny clams, grow up to be worms “as big around as your thumb, and nearly four feet long, with little triangular teeth,” says commercial diver Lenny Speregen. Like underwater termites, they devour wood. And Limnoria tripunctata, a.k.a. “gribbles,” are bugs about the size of a pencil dot that look like tiny armadillos, and eat not only wood but also concrete. Speregen says he’s seen fifteen-inch-diameter columns that have been gnawed down, hourglass style, to three inches. The city has tried jacketing pilings in heavy plastic to keep the critters out, but it hasn’t worked well: Floating ice tears up the jackets in winter. “I never said this wasn’t a war,” says Speregen. 

#7. Surveillance Systems

The U.S. Coast Guard operates anti-swimmer sonar systems, which are moved around as they’re needed in the harbor. The gear pings signals out, and displays hits—indicating unidentified people or boats—on a video screen. The Coast Guard also does pier sweeps: “If someone puts something on a piling”—say, an electronic device—“we find it,” says USCG gunner’s mate Dave Boles. In 2007, near Liberty Island, he recalls, “someone was spotted in a black Zodiac at night, and we had to check it out.” The mystery boater was never identified. 

#24.Ice-cream Trucks

Reefs, because they are good places for edible plants and small animals, attract schools of fish. In 1969, in order to build a new artificial reef, the Department of Environmental Conservation dumped a bargeload of scrapped Good Humor trucks off Atlantic Beach, where they were eventually joined by (according to the DEC) “30,000 tires in three-tire units; 404 auto bodies; nine barges; the tug Fran S; a steel lifeboat; steel crane and boom; surplus armored vehicles; concrete slabs, pipes, culvert, decking and rubble; 530,000 cubic yards of rock from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers excavation project.” The pile is now known as a good spot for lobstering, and for catching black sea bass, blackfish, porgy, bergall, hake, and cod.

Really, go and take a read.  It is worth the 5 minutes you’ll spend.

On April 29th I was critical of Louis Caldera and his response to the Air Force One/Photo Op flyover in New York.

Why was I critical? Because he apologized. He accepted responsibility, and apologized. I felt that his error in judgment was so egregious that the ability to perform his duties was truly in question and that he should step down.

It appears that is exactly what he did.

WASHINGTON – The White House aide who authorized the controversial Air Force One photo-op flight last week around the Statue of Liberty is out of a job.President Obama has accepted the resignation of Louis Caldera, the director of the White House Military Office, the Daily News learned Friday.

A secretary of the Army in the Clinton administration, Caldera took the fall for the public relations fiasco arising from the April 27 flyover, which was designed to replace a publicity photo of Air Force One flying past Mount Rushmore with a similar shot of Obama’s 747 jumbo jet over the Statue of Liberty.

Bottom line – not alerting the public to such a fly-over was in poor taste. If you are in a position of such responsibility and do not understand the impacts of your actions, you should not be in the position. That said, he stepped up and did the right thing.

I just wish others (hello politicians!) would look to how Mr. Caldera ultimately handled the situation. There is a lot they could learn.

Who thought it would be a good idea for the Air Force to have a 747 and two F-16s buzz New York city?  Now, I can say to myself that I am a bit of an emotional cripple.  I understand that I don’t always look at things from an emotional standpoint – usually more so when I’m tired – but this decision was pure dumbass in motion.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday a photo-op featuring the presidential jet flying over the Manhattan skyline was as “stupid a thing to do as one could dream up.”

Here, here!  For once I agree with something that has come out of this man’s mouth.

White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera accepted responsibility and apologized late Monday for permitting the exercise that infuriated New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had not been alerted to the flyover.

Apologized?

He Apologized!?!

You apologize when you are rude to someone in the office, you apologize when you break something that isn’t yours, you apologize for neglecting a duty.  When you scare the ever living sh*t out of an entire city, one that is already emotionally scarred due events that closely resembled this right before planes flew into your city, you don’t apologize.  You resign.

Again, YOU RESIGN.

This is, in my view, akin to a CEO missing quarterly numbers by a billion dollars or a Director of Race relations making racist comments.  They’ve shown gross neglect in their duty and end up on street with the public “saying don’t dent my door as it hits your ass on the way out.”

Hell, a Fox News Reporter was fired recently for reviewing a pirated copy of a new movie… and he does not even come close to the level of responsibility MOD Louis Caldera does.  I don’t believe Caldera’s actions were intended to be harmful, I think it was just poor decision making. Yes that gets you fired, too.

The level of stupidity, or the lack of common sense, in this world is shocking to me.

Seeing I am feeling the stress right now, I find it oddly appropriate that Forbes recently release the top 10 stressful cities in the U.S.

The magazine determined the list by:

• Looking at the 40 largest U.S
• tracked housing affordability
• unemployment rates
• cost of living
• air quality
• number of sunny days per year
• population density

Take the results, mix, and the 10 most stressful cities are identified.  The results are a bit surprising…

10. Philadelphia, PA
9. Providence, R.I.
8. Salt Lake City, Utah
7. Cleveland, Ohio
6. San Diego, Calif.
5. San Francisco, Calif.
4. Los Angeles, Calif.
3. Detroit, Mich.
2. New York, N.Y.
1. Chicago, Ill.

Chicago?!?  Who would have suspected Chicago was the most stressful city to live in?