Parteibuch Aggregator Feed - Items from date 2010-09-05

The Central Texas 9-12 Project: Restoring Honor Rally Changes Hearts and Minds

The Central Texas 9-12 Project — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:18:01 +0000

Saturday, August 28, 2010, my husband, two daughters, and I attended the Restoring Honor rally in Washington D.C. It was a wonderful experience for us all. The crowd was huge 500,000 + people , very peaceful, and individuals were kind and patient. You might think that the important part of the weekend was the three and a half hours or more that we spent together during the rally. When I was sitting under the bright, hot sun with my friends from Texas, I thought so too. But I was wrong…

During the first leg of our trip from D.C. to Chicago, our two daughters, ages 22 and 16, sat next to an African-American gentleman wearing an Obama inauguration t-shirt. After take-off, he mentioned to them that he had travelled to D.C. to attend Al Sharpton’s Reclaim the Dream rally. Our older daughter told him that they were in D.C. for the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally, and the conversation took off from there.

The gentlemen told my daughters that he went to the Restoring Honor rally with several friends because Al Sharpton told them that we were holding a negative protest that was against MLK’s message and against those who had gathered for Rev. Sharpton’s rally. He said that when he and his friends arrived that they didn’t see anything that they expected, so they stayed a bit to listen. They realized that Restoring Honor was not anything like what Rev. Sharpton told them to expect. They then returned to the Sharpton rally to try to tell several people that what Rev. Sharpton was saying about our rally was not true. He saw that our rally was not a political or hateful rally, and that it was not meant to divide Americans. He tried to get a message to Rev. Sharpton prior to his speech, but either he didn’t get the message or he ignored the message. Rev. Sharpton went forward with his original speech as planned.

This kind gentleman then told my daughter some things that amazed us. He told them multiple times that he was a Democrat, and that the tide had turned since MLK’s day, and that the civil rights movement had not changed with it. He asked the girls to watch Al Sharpton on CNN. He thought that Sharpton looked ridiculous on CNN because it was the perfect opportunity to say that he was sorry for his criticism of the Restoring Honor rally. Then they discussed the media. He and the girls agreed that the lack of truth in the media and the lack of individuals’ willingness to do their own research would be our country’s downfall. He followed up by saying that Glenn was something special and possibly the modern day MLK. He said that from now on when Glenn spoke he would take the time to listen, and that Glenn or someone like him would be the next great President. The girls told him that they felt sure that Glenn would never run.

The girls asked if he would come to the rally if we had another one. He said maybe, it depended on what was going on in his life but, he would be with us in spirit for sure.

During the last few days I talked with folks and I came to understand two things:

First, the event wasn’t for or about 9-12ers, Tea Partiers, or those of us who have become politically active during the last year and a half. It was for ALL of America — every single person that we hope will be inspired to put God, integrity and honor first in their lives. It was for the majority of Americans who may even be watching from the sidelines, but who believe that the priorities of Faith, Hope Trust , and Charity.

Second, there is REAL hope that Americans of all ethnicities and faiths can peacefully unite around our common desire for truth in our lives and in our country. We cannot give up and we must continue to build relationships, one person at a time through kitchen table conversations. We must help every American know that they are not alone and that there are many folks who will unite with them around our honorable founding principles.

Pretty strong stuff. Our 16 year old told me that the weekend experience changed her life.

Obama Nation: A Cunning Plan

Obama Nation — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 20:07:03 +0000

David Bossie: Real Change Is On The Horizon

David Bossie — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:02:27 +0000

We are in the midst of a national debate over the size and scope of government and I am hopeful. Conservative Republican Joe Miller’s remarkable victory in the Alaska Republican Senate Primary should have Americans feeling optimistic about the prospects of real change coming to Washington in 2011. Miller’s victory over incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski is just the latest jolt to an establishment that has paved the way for an unsustainable $13.3 trillion national debt and record budget deficits.

My PAC, Citizens United Political Victory Fund www.cupvf.org has a goal for the 2009-2010 election cycle to recapture the majorities in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives by helping to elect candidates who will fight for conservative principles and challenge the agenda of the Obama Administration. To date, CUPVF has made more than $300,000 in direct contributions to 53 federal candidates who are campaigning to put an end to this fiscal insanity.

If Miller is elected to the Senate in November, along with fellow fiscal conservatives Pat Toomey PA , Marco Rubio FL , Sharron Angle NV , Ken Buck CO , and Rand Paul KY , business as usual in Washington will be over. And good riddance! After all, one U.S. Senator has the power to bring the legislative and appropriations process to a halt. Imagine what this group of potential newcomers, with a clear mandate to stop the spending, could do to get America’s fiscal house in order! Establishment incumbents from both parties should beware that the taxpayer funded party is about to end. Voters are giving the order: enough is enough.

Who would have believed 18 months ago that President Obama’s big government agenda and ultra-liberal ideology would actually be the catalyst for bringing real change to Washington? I think it’s fair to say that if Obama had governed moderately as promised, the level of fiscal change that is rapidly approaching would not have been possible. Obama and the liberals completely misread their mandate and this is the result. Americans voted for pragmatic governance in 2008 – not a continuation of the LBJ welfare state on steroids.

The task at hand is not going to be pretty. Nothing but the toughest of decisions will have to be made to pull us back from the cliff we will be falling off if we stay on our current path. The Federal budget has to be severely slashed. The same goes for state budgets, because the bailouts from the feds are going to come to a screeching halt. Meaningful entitlement reform and dramatic earmark reform are absolutely necessary. This is our generation’s real Apollo project. Do we have the mettle to do the tough things for the sake of our children and grandchildren, or will we just do the easy thing and vote to increase the debt ceiling on our way to bankruptcy?

I believe in American exceptionalism, and if we succeed in this daunting mission, the rest of the world will once again believe as well.

Chris Muir: Unbelievers.

Chris Muir — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:29:01 +0000

Morgen Richmond: An Industry by Industry Look at the Stimulus Failure

Morgen Richmond — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:19:02 +0000

You are probably familiar by now with this infamous graph published by the White House in January 2009 highlighting their expectations for the impact of the Recovery Act on the rate of unemployment. Far from leveling off at 8% and then declining, the actual unemployment rate ran up to 10% by the end of 2009 and has declined only slightly since to 9.5%, largely due to a decline in labor force participation. This in spite of the rapid passage of the massive $787 billion stimulus bill in February 2009. Geoff at the Innocent Bystanders blog deserves everlasting credit for being the first to point out this disconnect.

With the White House and other Democrats resolutely sticking to their claim that the stimulus bill “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that the very same January 2009 White House report also included an industry by industry forecast of where these 3-4 million jobs would come from. Here it is:

Thanks to the inclination of economists to model verifiable data even when they are pulling numbers out of the sky , these industry categories happen to align perfectly with employment data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus we can easily compare the actual changes in employment to the figures forecast by the White House. In the table below, I’ve calculated the net change in employment by industry from February 2009, when the stimulus bill was passed, to July 2010, using the latest data available from the BLS. Click row headings for data source.

	Jobs Created Forecast Q4-2010	Jobs Created Actual 2/2009 to 7/2010
TOTAL	3,675,000	-2,629,700
Mining	26,000	-14,000
Construction	678,000	-862,000
Manufacturing	408,000	-660,000
Wholesale Trade	158,000	-173,900
Retail Trade	604,000	-288,900
Information	50,000	-161,000
Financial Activities	214,000	-321,000
Professional and Business Services	345,000	-246,000
Education and Health Services	240,000	+473,000
Leisure and Hospitality	499,000	-86,000
Other Services	99,000	-71,000
Utilities	11,000	-11,400
Transportation and Warehousing	98,000	-143,500
Government	244,000	-64,000

The figures speaks for themselves, but note that the difference between the total number of jobs the White House forecast would be “created” and the actual number of jobs lost represents an astounding delta of over 6 million jobs. Six million! Where are the jobs, indeed.

Remarkably, even the total number of government jobs dropped, I imagine due to job losses at the state and local levels. And how can the Recovery Act be considered anything other than a complete and utter failure with over 1.5 million fewer construction jobs than forecasted? In spite of endless propaganda over shovel-ready projects, and the nation littered with roadside signs touting Recovery Act projects.

Most damning of all I think is that the job losses I’ve highlighted occurred after President Obama assumed office, and by and large after the stimulus bill was passed and the money began to flow. These are not “inherited” job losses by any stretch.

Defenders of the White House argue that the economy was in more dire shape than they realized at the time, and that the employment situation would be worse without the stimulus bill. This may be the case, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Administration and their allies in Congress rammed through an unprecedented $787 billion in spending – much of it having little to do with economic stimulus – based on flawed assumptions and overly optimistic forecasts.

It’s simply irrefutable that the Recovery Act has not had the beneficial impact projected by the White House. In fact, based on the data alone it’s arguable that the net impact has been detrimental to the economy, especially in combination with other legislation and policy changes enacted by the Administration and the Democrat-led Congress.

While Democrats would like to blame their declining political fortunes on a climate of fear stirred up by the GOP and conservative media, mainstream America recognizes incompetence and mismanagement when they see it. Saddling our children and grandchildren with $787 billion of debt plus interest , while presiding over the loss of millions of more jobs – and yet brazenly claiming that they somehow “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs – is a disgraceful legacy of failure and deceit from which there is no escape. November is coming.

Sunday Open Thread: Philadelphia Edition

Sunday Open Thread — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:37:57 +0000

Today, in 1774, the first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia.