A couple weeks ago my good friend and gifted songwriter/musician Andrew (BigDawg), Co-Founder of BigDawg Music Mafia, and I were tuned in to “America Akbar” on Radio Jihad Network, a weekly internet radio show hosted by our good friends Gadi Adelman, a counter-terrorism expert, speaker, and author; and his lovely co-host/producer Reese Ccup.  During the show, a gentleman named George called in to share some of his thoughts about 9/11 as he was one of the firefighters there that day who lost so many of his brothers when the towers collapsed and is personally suffering from health issues brought on from the Ground Zero toxins.

Reese wanted George to hear a song they often play on their show that Drew and I had written in 2009 called “A Hero’s Creed” – a tribute to all the 9/11 first responders and our military members fighting the war on terror.  There was a line in the original version that said “Eight years have passed…no attacks on our land…we owe it to those who heed the call.” Sadly, since the new administration moved into our nation’s capital, we can no longer say that.

We needed to update the song, so we did.  Somehow, however, through a slight miscommunication regarding our updating of the song, Gadi was under the impression we were working on a brand new 9/11 tribute song and would have it ready in time for his 9/11 Tribute show on 8 Sep.  We knew we had to write a new song for Gadi’s show.

YouTube "Stairs To Heaven" by Lisa Mei Norton & Andrew (BigDawg)

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It did not take long for us to come up with the concept for the song:  a young girl who lost her father – one of the 343 firefighters who died when the towers collapsed – who is now a young woman looking back with sadness on all that she lost that day and a determination to follow in her Dad’s footsteps and serve her country in uniform…knowing one day she would meet him again.

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So whenever I see someone wearing a t-shirt with an edgy message on it, I always wonder why the person never wears it where it truly matters. Fact is, a hipster never dons his stupid Che shirt in places where it might cost him teeth.

Which brings me to this shirt, created by some teens at Edsel Ford High School, in Dearborn Michigan.

Here, take a look at it:

Apparently, the students belong to the 2011 class, and the number is said to resemble two buildings, with the school’s mascot – a thunderbird – flying toward them. Printed beneath the image are the words, “You can’t bring us down.”

Now that’s school spirit! Go flying terrorists! (more…)

Offspring#2 steps into our bedroom and says:

“Do you know what’s going on in New York?”

My wife Karen and I look at each other, baffled.

“Better turn on the TV,” says Offspring#2.

Black smoke is rising from one of the Twin Towers. A newscaster tells us that a passenger jet airliner has hit the World Trade Center.

Ariel, our son, senses that something is happening. He tears himself away from his Talmud study and steps into our bedroom, gazes at the TV screen.

“How many people work there?” Ariel asks.

“Thousands, tens of thousands, it’s an entire world.” (more…)

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

“We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama

In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President Obama has designated 9/11 as “The National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Personally, I liked the ring of “Patriot Day,” and what does “service and remembrance” mean, precisely ? The idea is to get Americans to “engage in meaningful service to create change…in four key areas”: education, health, energy/environment and community renewal. None of these seems to have anything to do with honoring 9/11, but that seems to be the point: in the Huffington Post, Muslim-American playwright Wajahat Ali wrote, “In the US, we are trying to move away from focusing on 9/11 as a day of horror, and instead make it a day to recommit ourselves to national service.” An excellent Spectator article provides a blunter translation: “Nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.” Why? ”They think it needs to be taken back from the right.”

In other words, they resent the surge of patriotism and righteous outrage stirred up by the attacks, sentiments that empower the political Right. In order to advance the leftist agenda of dismantling American exceptionalism and recasting ourselves as the villain in our history books, they need Americans to put 9/11 behind us, forget the victims, forget that our enemy danced in the streets in celebration, forget that Islamic terror plots on our very shores continue to be disrupted, and forget that our rights and freedoms are under assault by a subversive civilizational jihad. (more…)