Vinny officially endorsed President Bush this evening, and his post was quite compelling. In fact, I have yet to read such a comprehensive, heart-felt endorsement of President Bush. Vinny covers every aspect of the election and the issues that should matter to us, as a nation.

He quickly reminds us how it all started back in 2001,

When the President took office in January of 2001, the United States was coming off one of the worst stock market crashes in recent years. The .com bubble had burst, the artificially inflated stock market of the 1990?s was in the midst of the biggest and fastest correction in history, and because of numerous legal challenges didn?t even have a cabinet fully in place until right before his innauguration. A crashing headstart to his presidency.

So many people seem to forget that the economy was crap when Bush took over. I remember. Gidget and I had our own dot com business and things were definitely not looking good. Not because of our business, but because everyone we were doing business with seemed to be folding left and right, therefore straining our company to it's limit. It was by the grace of God we were spared from the dot com fiasco, as one of our biggest clients actually hired both of us full time, thus saving us from dot com extinction.

Vinny's personal reflections of September 11th brought back all sorts of feelings, none of which could ever compare to those he had that day, or that others who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center had that day.

You see, I lived through the 9/11 attacks first hand. I didn?t watch it on television. I didn?t read about it in newspapers. I watched those buildings hit the ground from the roof of my office. I sat in stunned silence on the highway heading to work as I listened to news reporters frantically relaying messages from the NYPD to all officers that there was a total recall and all officers were to return to work immediately.

I watched people heading, hanging out of pickup trucks, to downtown Manhattan to take bodies out of the wreckage, but hoping they would find survivors.

I watched it. And I prayed that day that it would never happen again. I thanked God that we had a leader with the moral clarity to do what was right for this country, and to avenge the death of 3,000 people, some of which I knew. Iraq had to be dealt with. Not by inspectors, who Saddam systematically deceived, but by the end of a gun and the tip of a bomb. Iraq had to be dealt with because the intelligence we had at the time was warning us that if we didn?t deal with it, we?d almost be guaranteeing that Saddam?s weapons would end up in the hands of a terrorist organization and we?d be even worse off than we were on 9/11.

Maybe that doesn?t mean a lot to you if you live in Kansas, or Arizona, or Wyoming, but it means a lot to me because Arab terrorists seem to have a fetish for my hometown, something I wouldn?t expect anyone who hasn?t been through it to understand.

Vinny concludes his endorsement with the following statements, which I find very compelling,

You?re probably wondering what I think about the other ?pressing? issues of the campaign. Frankly, beyond national security, I don?t think much else really matters much.

Do I think gay marriage matters in terms of the elections? No.

Do I think the government should be giving medical care to everyone and handing out healthcare a la Canada and England? Nope.

Do I think the economy is bad? Frankly, no. By the measure that others use, I?m doing great. I?m making much more money than I was in 2000. My retirement plan is worth double what it was in 2000, and that?s with two years of not participating in it at all. My wife is making almost $15,000 more than she was in 2000. I?m almost out of debt, our wedding is finally paid off, and we?re saving money. Do I owe that to the President? Absolutely not. I owe it to me.

Whenever I hear the question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

The answer is yes.

And I have every confidence that four more years under President Bush will mean that when that question is asked again in 2008, I?ll be able to say yes again.

National security should be the main issue of the campaign. Without national security, none of the other issues would exist. You cannot have gay marriage, healthcare for all, more jobs, more income, more houses, or anything else if there is no nation, let alone security within the nation.

One aspect of my life that is different from Vinny's, is my financial situation. Due to the economy, Gidget was laid off and my pay was cut 50% (yes, 50%) when ALL of the employees of the company took a pay cut in order to save the company. It resulted in a 66% pay cut for us overall, and it has been rough. That happened almost two years ago, and only a very small portion of my salary has been restored since. But do I blame President Bush? Hell no. The policies that affected my situation were in place long before W took office. In fact, without his policies I suspect things would have gotten far worse.

So? Am I better off than I was four years ago? No, I am not.

BUT

I have every confidence that four more years under President Bush will mean better national security, a stable and viable economy, and a much better life for me, my wife, and my children. In 2008, I have no doubt my answer will be yes.

Thank you Vinny for reminding all of us where our priorities should be during the most important election of our lifetime.

Seriously ill and perhaps fighting for his life, Yasser Arafat was rushed Friday to a military hospital near Paris that specializes in blood disorders. Supporters holding flowers and waving Palestinian flags greeted the Palestinian leader as he was wheeled into the hospital.

It was the first time Arafat has left his Israeli-besieged West Bank headquarters in nearly three years. The 75-year-old Arafat has been sick for the past two weeks and blood tests have revealed he has a low platelet count ? a possible symptom of leukemia or other cancers, as well as a number of other maladies.

…

"I am waiting for Yasser Arafat, to tell him that we are with him," said Fatima Mera, a 35-year-old French woman of Moroccan origin. "We hope he will leave here and continue the struggle for the Palestinian people."

Arafat's presence in France also stirred controversy. Families of French victims of terrorist attacks in Israel plan to ask judicial authorities to question him, attorney Michel Calvo said. The request was to be presented to France's chief anti-terror judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere.

The pursuit of any criminal probe against Arafat is bound to complicate the French government's diplomatically sensitive decision to provide him with medical treatment.

God forbid people might actually want some answers for the atrocities committed while he has been in power. And we all know how much the French hate complications… with their allies, at least.

Osama bin Laden, reading a statement to the American people in a new videotape aired Friday, directly admitted for the first time that he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks and said "the best way to avoid another Manhattan" was to stop threatening Muslims' security.

It was the first footage of the al-Qaida leader to surface in more than a year. The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera, showed bin Laden with a long gray beard, wearing traditional white robes, a turban and a golden cloak reading from papers in front of a plain, brown curtain.

In Washington, the FBI and Justice Department had no immediate assessment of the meaning of the bin Laden tape. Officials said one part of their analysis will be to discern whether there may be hidden messages or clues about a possible future attack against the United States. But they said it was too early to know that yet.

There was no way to determine when the tape was made, although it did refer to next week's presidential elections in the United States.

"We decided to destroy towers in America," bin Laden said, referring to the World Trade Center.

"God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind," he said.

He accused President Bush of "misleading" the American people since the 2001 suicide airline hijackings that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said.

Well, well, well. The only thing this tape reveals to me, is the fact that the bastard is still alive.

A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday to say a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa arms-storage facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003.

Maj. Austin Pearson said at a Pentagon news conference that he was tasked in the days after the fall of the Iraqi regime with a mission to secure and destroy ammunition and explosives. He led a 25-man team called Task Force Bullet.

His comments were the latest twist into the mystery of what happened to 377 tons of explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency reported missing from Al-Qaqaa. The IAEA reported the matter to the United Nations on Monday and said it feared that looters may have stolen the explosives.

Ok, question. Okay two questions. Three questions, max.

Was it 377, 250, or 3 tons of explosives?

Were the explosives gone when we got there, looted after we left there, or disposed of by the 3rd Infantry Division?

Does anyone really know the answer to either of these questions?

European leaders on Friday signed the EU's first constitution, a diplomatic triumph they hope will give the union a sharper international profile and speed up decision-making in a club now embracing 25 nations.

The treaty was the result of 28 months of sometimes acrimonious debate between the 25 EU governments and now faces ratification in national parliaments. At least nine EU nations also plan to put it to a referendum, increasing chances that it may not take effect in 2007 as scheduled.

A "no" result in any country would stop the constitution in its tracks.

…

The constitution was signed in the sala degli Orazi e Curiazi, the same spectacular hall in a Renaissance palazzo where in 1957 six nations – Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – signed the union's founding treaty.

EU leaders signed the constitution in alphabetical order by country, led by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.

"The seeming madness of our founding fathers has become a splendid reality," Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian premier, said in a speech earlier. "Never in history have we seen an example of nations voluntarily deciding to exercise their sovereign powers jointly in the exclusive interests of their peoples, thus overcoming age-old impulses of rivalry and distrust."

I just thought you might like to know.