Analysis:  The Tulsa County jobs and infrastructure package Vision2 provides two propositions.  Proposition 2 generates $257.9 million for city projects, $92 million for county capital projects and $12 million is the expected bond and interest cost for a total of $361.92 in improvements without increasing taxes.  If you like the individual projects and trust local elected officials, this package will earn your support.

Proposition 1 is a little more complicated, but the short take away is that facilities at the Tulsa International Airport (TIA) Industrial Complex are owned by the City of Tulsa.  We have operated them as a slumlord and failed to maintain what has provided high paying jobs from multiple enterprises that have clearly multiplied prosperity throughout the region for generations. 

Since Herman DeVry’s short flight on July 11, 1911 in his homebuilt monoplane; Tulsa has been a key city for aviation (visit the Tulsa Air and Space Museum for dramatic details).  In the 30s Tulsa was World’s Busiest Airport with 58,000 takeoffs recorded in 1939.  On March 4, 1941 Tulsans voted and approved a bond issue to purchase 1,000 acres of land to build a U.S. Air Force plant to produce bombers.  The Vision2 package is the long delayed necessary upgrade.

The inside of some buildings have not been painted since my father worked there during WWII.  At the American Airlines maintenance facility today, workers must flatten the back tires and lift the noses of newer planes just to get them in the door for work.  Over 15,000 Tulsa families depend on aerospace/manufacturing jobs at the now 639-acre complex.

Vision2 Proposition 1 improvements include: Roof maintenance, hanger modifications to support new aircraft, pavement repairs to ramps, roads, and parking lots, utility upgrades, air conditioning, and equipment specific to aircraft maintenance.

Of course the primary tenant of these facilities, American Airlines, is currently in the news with bankruptcy issues which, depending on who you ask, is either the total and complete fault of mindless management or destructive demands by unions.  Pick one or believe they are both at fault as you may, even if the company structure dissolves or another business buys them, the Tulsa facility holds capabilities that should continue to generate regional economic prosperity.

Also included in Proposition 1 is a fund to provide an expected $52.94 million to attract and keep companies that bring jobs to Tulsa County.  This money is restricted to designated infrastructure such as sewer lines, water and street improvements.  Employers are required to provide guarantees of employment levels within specific industries (aerospace/aviation, energy, health care, information security, professional services, regional headquarters, transportation, distribution/logistics).  Even if these companies later move (terms of location are required), the community infrastructure remains for other private companies to utilize.

Many who follow local issues have known of the needs at the TIA complex for years and how American Airlines was seriously concerned by Tulsa’s failure to maintain the facility.  Other cities have offered to build whatever American wanted if they would move, but the company is both loyal to Tulsa and aware that one of their competitors could easily assume operations at the complex if American should relocate.

This writer argued against the timing of Vision2 passionately with multiple elected officials, but American Airlines made a compelling case that they need a commitment from local officials on critical infrastructure as soon as possible.  Ok, fine, the greatest turning point of our nation’s history will be decided Tuesday as we choose between socialism and free enterprise, but regardless of that national outcome Tulsa’s local infrastructure requires attention.  This package does not grow government, but provides funds for bricks and mortar that support employment critical now and for generations to come.  

Tulsa Today supports Vision2 in both propositions.  For more information on Vision2, click here.

OpEd: Thursday night’s Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan perfectly illustrated the difference between the two parties.

The Democrat was dishonest, deceptive, emotional, irrational, condescending, and holier-than-thou.

The Republican was calm, earnest, rational, considered, and truthful.

Joe Biden’s total dishonesty, his offensive demeanor, and his general buffoonery demeaned the office of the Vice Presidency.

Paul Ryan provided a nice contrast holding his own against the Vice President, who was first elected to the Senate when Ryan was two. There is no doubt the debate elevated Paul Ryan as a national figure.

Appropriately, much of the coverage post debate has focused on Biden’s over-the-top performance.

While parts of it may have been effective temporarily, the net result is to discredit him and his ticket.

Vice President Biden debates using a model he demonstrated in 2008, when he closed his Vice Presidential debate with Sarah Palin by rhetorically inviting the audience on a trip with him to a certain restaurant in his home state of Delaware where we could come to understand the concerns of the average person such as himself. It turned out the restaurant had been closed since the 1980s.

His performances simply are not authentic.

Ben Domenech said it well in his recent Transcom newsletter:
"Last night Ryan ran into one of the consummate liars and demagogues of our political age in Joe Biden, a blustering boisterous blowhard of a man who careens forward, capped teeth flashing in the sun, through inaccuracies and conflations of all shapes and sizes with reassuring emotional appeals and tough-sounding rhetoric. His entire career is built on his ability to tell blatant falsehoods and sound convincing while he does it. I actually enjoy Biden’s style – he is the ideal modern specimen of Senator qui absurdum est, his DNA strands traced to the very first braggadocios of Rome, clad in the toga candida, who so enjoyed interrupting the stammering Cicero. Joe, crazy uncle Joe, ended up as Vice President – can you believe it? Biden just thinks he’s lucky to be along for the ride, and he’s the best there is in politics at following the Costanza advice."

The famous Constanza advice from Seinfeld: "It’s not a lie if you believe it."

Indeed the number of falsehoods Biden spewed was astonishing. He claimed the Obama administration was not waging war on the Catholic church or forcing Catholic institutions to abandon their religious teachings, when it was widely reported he had advised President Obama that his policies would be considered to do just that.

He claimed the administration had not cut Medicare by $716 billion but had instead put that amount "back" into Medicare. That’s a flat out lie. The number on the size of the cut comes straight from the CBO.

He repeated Obama’s lie about Romney’s supposed plan for a $5 trillion tax cut, which even their own deputy campaign manager has acknowledged is nowhere near the truth.

Most appallingly he continued the administration’s lying about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi and the deaths of four Americans. He said the administration had never been told the facility needed more security, even after evidence has emerged to prove they had. When confronted about the administration’s bizarre, false, and misleading statements after the attack, presumably for political reasons, he shamefully put the blame on the U.S. intelligence community, contradicting numerous news reports and even his own State Department’s concession that the administration knew the truth about the Benghazi terrorist attacks within 24 hours.

The White House’s failure to tell the truth about the attacks is a scandal. Finally, the Vice President’s gratuitous dishonesty about it in the debate has shaken the media into covering it. President Obama will suddenly have an awful lot to answer for in his upcoming foreign policy debate.

A senior Republican senator Sunday accused President Barack Obama’s aides of deliberately covering up the details of the Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador so voters wouldn’t question Obama’s handling of the war on terror.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a long-time point man for the GOP
on national security issues, said he believes the administration knew
within 24 hours of the assault that it was a coordinated militia attack
and was not tied to other anti-U.S. protests across the Middle East.
According to Graham– who is investigating the attack– the administration
suggested otherwise so voters wouldn’t think Obama’s foreign policy in
the Middle East has failed.

He explained:

    “They’re trying to sell a narrative, quite frankly, that the Mid-East– the wars are receding and that al-Qaeda has been dismantled.  And to admit that our embassy was attacked by al-Qaida operatives, and [in] Libya leading from behind didn’t work, I think undercuts that narrative.  They never believed the media would investigate, Congress was out of session, and this caught up with them.  I think they’ve been misleading us, but it finally caught up with them.”

After Bob Schieffer said it was a “very serious charge” for the senator to level, Graham continued:

    “Either they’re misleading the American people, or incredibly incompetent.  There was no way with anybody looking at all that you could believe five days after the attack that it was based on a riot that never occurred… This is the same administration that leaks every detail of classified operations that are successful… When something goes bad, they deny, they deceive, and they delay.  And the truth is, we’re not safer.  Al-Qaeda is alive– Bin Laden may be dead–Al-Qaeda is alive, and they’re counter-attacking throughout the entire region.

Though many have been voicing similar opinions for weeks, Graham’s allegations are drawing particular attention to what has become a major national security issue for both candidates.  The attack on a U.S. Consulate in Benghazi– which killed four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens– has raised questions about whether the State Department denied its embassy staff adequate security, and why the White House was so slow to label the assault a “terrorist attack.”

Click here for more from The Blaze/AP.

Editorial:  Over the past few weeks, it has become undeniably clear that those supposedly in charge of our government: a) are totally unqualified to be in charge; b) have hidden policy agendas that most Americans would call treasonous; c) have instituted policies that have resulted in the deaths of at least one ambassador, two government agents, three embassy staff, hundreds of Mexican citizens, and hundreds of American soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere; and d) have brought the nation to the brink of economic and perhaps social collapse. Moreover, they have consistently and repeatedly lied, and attempted to cover up all of it. It has also become despicably clear that those supposedly in charge of our government have no intention of taking responsibility for their actions.

With both Fast and Furious and the disaster in the Middle East, particularly Libya and Egypt, investigations and indictments for at a minimum negligent manslaughter are warranted. However, given the make-up of Congress, especially the Senate, the Injustice Department, and the historically leftist and nearly always inept State Department, I doubt we will see anyone other than a few low-level scapegoats held accountable. Indeed, other than a few of us out here on the “extreme right fringe,” not one serious call has been made for Holder or Clinton to resign, much less for the Marxist Fraud in the White House to be impeached.

Add to this the largely hushed up military debacle that Afghanistan has degenerated into, under the direction of Leon Pinetta at the Surrender Department, and the aforementioned Marxist Fraud. If I recall, this is the only military action that the “winner” of the Nobel Peace Prize thought worthy of pursuing when he was running for the office many believe he usurped. The Ministry of Propaganda, aka the “mainstream” media, has aided and abetted in hiding this growing military disaster, apparently fearful of adding losing a war to the already lo-o-o-o-ng list of Barack Hussein Obama’s failures. News of the death toll of brave American sons and daughters reaching 2000 passed without a whisper. Were it not for the Internet and “alternative” media like talk radio, these heroes would have just been more of B. Hussein’s “bumps in the road.”

It turns out, too, that the pro-Muslim Obama administration has been lying about the military destruction of al Qaeda. With the long overdue look into actual intelligence reports from the Middle East and Muslim ruled countries, we find that not only has Obama failed to defeat al Qaeda, but al Qaeda is alive, active, and has grown and spread itself and its influence into new, hitherto uninfected areas.   

On the economic front, too, failure is the name of the game. The destruction of the American economy was intentional. In spite of their lies and protestations of being defenders of the middle class, a major goal of both Marxism and fascism is the elimination of the middle class and its replacement with a permanent underclass, a lumpen proletariat, dependent on the government for all its needs. From the looting of the treasury to the government take-over of large chunks of the private sector, Saul Alinskyite Marxist Obama and neo-fascists Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi wreaked havoc on the middle class, but, ultimately, failed to destroy it.

Which brings us to the Sock Puppet’s latest failure: his complete and utter defeat in the presidential debate. His absolute inability to function without a script flashing on his teleprompters stunned his self-deluded leftist supporters. One was prompted to suggest that Obozo the Brilliant has become bored with being president, and therefore didn’t even try. Close, but not quite.

Now that Obama is finally being confronted directly with his massive string of failures, he appears to be reacting the way pathological liars and people with a narcissist personality disorder typically do. He is quitting. If he doesn’t try, then he can’t fail. If he backs out, people will shift their focus to the winner, and away from him, and he will never have to take responsibility for the death and destruction that have resulted from his absolute inability to do anything right.

People with mental afflictions like his rarely finish anything. We have seen this throughout Obama’s career. He gave up his law license and never got it back. His community organizer career was short, dumped as soon as his radical, big money contacts created a political career for him. However, he was only in the Illinois Senate for a short time, and did very little of note. He served in the U.S. Senate only 146 days, again producing little of note. And as President of the United States, his record is one half-baked policies leading to destruction and death, and pandering to the enemies of his country.

Let us, then, grant this traitorous fool one last wish, and with a landslide vote, relegate him to the garbage dump of history, to become a forgotten footnote, a bump in the road leading us back to the Shining City on the Hill that we were before he was thrust upon us.

John Nolte reports in detail on the organized terror attack President Obama doesn’t seem to remember correctly.  Good thing Obama doesn’t need to attend national security briefings before he speaks to the United Nations and on other campaign stops.  It is well worth your time in careful consideration as the story may prove to be for Obama what Watergate was to Richard Nixon.

Nolte begins:

Late yesterday afternoon, in an obvious attempt to rescue President Obama from what could and should be a brutal round of Sunday shows examining the cover up the White House is currently engaged in with respect to the sacking of our consulate in Libya, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released a statement revising its assessment of the attack. It is now the official position of the American intelligence community that what happened in Benghazi was a pre-planned terrorist attack.

The statement comes from Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence — the office that speaks for the intelligence community as a whole:

As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate.

This is not news. In the last few days, the White House and State Department have both made statements saying exactly that.  

This, however, is news and should be read carefully:

In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

There’s no question that what we have here is the DNI (Obama appointee James Clapper) attempting to fall on his sword and to put an end to the drumbeat of scandal coming mostly from Republicans and right-of-center media. What’s been exposed, just weeks before a presidential election, is the fact that in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, the White House and State Department knowingly misled and lied to the American people about what they knew and when they knew it.

But what the DNI statement is really meant to do is muddy the waters.

The statement deliberately omits any information as to exactly when the determination was made that Benghazi was indeed a terrorist attack. Most importantly, nothing in the statement contradicts numerous news reports that U.S. officials were certain within 24 hours that they were dealing with a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous protest gone bad.  

In other words, the DNI statement is so intentionally vague that it could read as confirmation that our government knew within 24 hours that Benghazi was a terrorist attack and still lied about it for days afterward.

And this, my friends, is how a cover up works.

Click here for more from Brietbart.com.