[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS? (Be SURE to check in on Sunday for an explanation of GENday.);(2)BEFORE Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America" or see the film "2016" that based on it.(see trailer at http://www.2016themovie.com/media/ You only THINK you know our President.]
P.S.- Be sure to be REGISTERED TO VOTE. To get details of doing that in your state, go to > http://www.cbn.com/special/register-to-vote/
- For a review of the CRITICAL ISSUES to consider in your voting, please go to > http://www.truthinaction.org/PDF/Final_Voters_Guide.pdf
- Finally, BEGIN PRAYING FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS; Download a free prayer guide at > http://www.prayerconnect.net/resources/prayer-guides/2012-election-prayer-guide
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"New Wave of Attacks on U.S. Embassies"- Amy Payne, September 13
Protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen today and set fire to a building. Like the mob in Egypt on Tuesday, they tore down the American flag. Reports are also circulating of a separate protest in Tehran today with about 500 Iranians chanting “Death to America.” Meanwhile, a onetime mentor of Osama bin Laden called on his followers [1] to replicate what happened in Libya and Egypt.
Following the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff, it is realistic to fear other attacks on U.S. diplomats [2].“Our men and women—in and out of uniform—are out there every day, protecting us and our interests. And that will always make them a tempting target,” Heritage expert Jim Carafano reminds us [3], commenting on the attacks in Libya and Egypt. Heritage’s Jim Phillips wrote in June about a larger Iranian campaign to assassinate foreign diplomats, including Israeli and Saudi diplomats, in at least seven countries over 13 months.
At this time, America’s first priority is the security of our personnel, and President Obama has ordered heightened security at America’s posts around the world.
We cannot allow terrorists and rioters to dictate U.S. missions and policy, and Washington must avoid knee-jerk reactions, such as yanking foreign aid, before we know the facts on the ground. As Phillips explained [4],the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt reflects the internal divisions in that country. At the same time, while there are dangerous anti-American factions in Libya, there are also many that appreciate the U.S. assistance [5] and, and according to some reports, fought to help protect the U.S. compound before it was overrun.
There are still too many questions to be answered about the origins of the attacks, the state of security at the U.S. facilities, and the responses of the host governments. We should get the facts before we draw too many conclusions about what happened and why, much less what this should mean for the future of U.S. policy.
That said, this is no cause for declaring a moratorium on debate about U.S. policy in the region. There is plenty worth debating. President Obama has consistently shown more enthusiasm in engaging hostile regimes in the Middle East than in protecting the interests of allies such as Israel. He has shown more concern about restraining Israel from acting [6] than stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
In fact, this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. is “not setting deadlines” for Iran and still considers negotiations “by far the best approach” to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public response was that “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” President Obama made matters worse by declining an offer from Netanyahu to meet when Netanyahu visit the U.S. later this month—despite the fact that Obama found time in his schedule for an appearance on David Letterman’s late-night comedy show and an interview with Miami rapper and radio personality DJ Laz.
The United States’s dysfunctional engagement with Israel and Iran is not the only problem. From North Africa through sub-Saharan Africa, al-Qaeda and its affiliates seem determined to plant the flag for new Afghanistans. Across the Middle East, the Arab Spring is far from unfinished business. Current U.S. policies clearly aren’t working. It is time to change course.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Other News Items:
•An al-Qaeda leader has “called on all Muslims to back the rebels in Syria, saying the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad would bring them closer to the ultimate goal of defeating Israel,” Reuters reports [7].
•The Environmental Protection Agency is spending between $250,000 and $350,000 a year to fund the Chesapeake Bay Journal, a newspaper that covers environmental issues [9].
•A federal investigation concluded that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius illegally campaigned on the taxpayers’ dime. Heritage’s Lachlan Markay broke the story [10] yesterday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org; URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/13/morning-bell-new-wave-of-attacks-on-u-s-embassies/
URLs in this post:
[1] called on his followers: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/world/middleeast/mideast-turmoil-spreads-to-us-embassy-in-yemen.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
[2] attacks on U.S. diplomats: https://webmail.heritage.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=7251af884e264d1f8b673eb541fa5ff0&URL=http%3a%2f%2fblog.heritage.org%2f2012%2f06%2f02%2firan-targets-u-s-diplomats-for-terrorist-attacks%2f
[3] reminds us: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/249129-bedlam-in-benghazi-what-next
[4] explained: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/11/islamists-storm-u-s-embassy-grounds-in-cairo/
[5] appreciate the U.S. assistance: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/does-not-represent-us-moving-photos-pro-american-rallies-libya/56803/
[6] restraining Israel from acting: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/21/obama-administration-errs-in-pressuring-israel-rather-than-iran/
[7] reports: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/13/us-alqaeda-zawahri-idUSBRE88C0KT20120913
[8] in class by Friday: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-both-sides-see-progress-as-teachers-strike-reaches-day-4-20120912,0,482612.story
[9] newspaper that covers environmental issues: http://www.washingtonguardian.com/epa-environmental-press-agency
[10] broke the story: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/12/investigators-sebelius-illegally-campaigned-on-taxpayers-dime/
Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
#320(9/13)- Teachers BEFORE Children - The Chicago UNION Strike
[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2) Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America" or see the film "2016" that is based on it. see trailer at http://www.2016themovie.com/media/ You only THINK you know our President.]
URGENT PRAYER REQUEST: American Embassies Attacked!
•LET'S BE SURE TO CONTINUE PRAYING FOR THE SAFETY OF ALL OUR EMBASSIES WORLDWIDE
•For the families and colleagues of Ambassador Stevens and the others who were killed by the attacks in Benghazi.
•About the U.S. relationship between Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Islamic controlled nations.
•God's wisdom as to whether to suspend foreign aid to countries that threaten Americans and American interests.
Chicago Teachers Union Strike:•For a rapid end to the strike, and those who are negotiating it.
•For the more than 350,000 children who will not be in school, and for their families who must find alternate ways of providing for them.
•For public safety in Chicago and environs as bands of unsupervised children take to the streets.
Churches Open Doors to Kids During Chicago Strike - CBNNews.com, September 11, 2012,http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2012/September/Churches-Open-Doors-to-Kids-During-Chicago-Strike/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[NOTE: I offer the following explanation of the Chicago teachers UNION strike to supplement the article I posted on Tuesday (#318)on what is wrong with education in America today. Please note the additional related article posted afterwards.- Stan]
"25,000 Chicago Teachers Walk Off the Job"- Amy Payne, September 10
[Beginning Tuesday]morning, about 350,000 students in Chicago Public Schools [have been] without teachers. While the 25,000-plus unionized teachers take to the picket lines in a strike over benefits and teacher evaluations, working parents are scrambling to figure out what to do.
“We know a strike is really going to be painful. People will be hurt on both sides,” Jay Rehak, a union delegate and high school English teacher, told the Chicago Tribune [1]. “But in the end, it’s like saying, ‘I’ll be bloodied and you’ll be bloodied, but at least you’ll know not to bully me again.’” [italics mine; what does it say when this kind of violent wording is used?]
Among other demands, the Chicago Teachers Union had asked for a 30 percent [!; Question: Who in ANY economy, let alone today's economy, asks for that kind of raise? Most are just grateful to have a job.] a pay increase—despite the facts that just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and just 56 percent of students graduate in the district. The school board ended up offering a 16 percent pay increase over four years, but as last night’s midnight deadline for strike negotiations neared, the union rejected the offer.
The average teacher in Chicago Public Schools—a district facing a $700 million deficit—makes $71,000 per year [2] before benefits are included. Reuters reports that “Chicago Public Schools has projected a $3 billion budget deficit over the next three years and faces a crushing burden [3] of pensions promised to retiring teachers.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, formerly President Obama’s White House chief of staff, is getting an advanced class in union power [4]. He came into office last year and asked the teachers to accept a 2 percent pay raise instead of 4 percent to try to address the $700 million budget shortfall, and the union refused. He did reach a deal to lengthen one of the country’s shortest school days. As the Tribune describes: “In exchange for the longer school day—an additional half-hour in high schools and 75 minutes in elementary schools—CPS agreed to rehire nearly 500 teachers in non-core subjects from a pool of teachers who had been laid off. That kept the hours in the work week the same for full-time teachers.”
The most reliable [5] data show that teachers in general work no more than private professionals in a typical workweek, even when off-site work on evenings and weekends is included. Yet the CPS school day is among the shortest for teachers in the nation.
Heritage’s Jason Richwine and the American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew Biggs did an extensive study of teacher compensation [6] and followed up [7] with additional discussion of controversial issues. When it comes to teacher pay, Richwine sums up [8]:"Because the average public-school teacher already receives above-market compensation, policymakers should avoid across-the-board pay raises. Instead, they should focus on rewarding high-quality teachers with targetedsalary increases."
Of course, teacher compensation is much more than just wages. Part of Chicago Public Schools’ financial problems is the guaranteed pensions for retired teachers. Richwine explains [8] that these defined-benefit plans, which cost [9] several times more than the typical retirement plan in the private sector, are a bad deal for taxpayers: "Since benefits accruing to today’s workers need not be paid now, states can promise generous benefits without feeling the full fiscal impact for years or even decades. Benefits to workers are guaranteed, meaning taxpayers are ultimately responsible for any shortfalls in their states’ pension systems—and there are many shortfalls.
The Chicago strike, highlighting the urgent need for education reform, comes at a time when lack of confidence in public schools [10] is at an all-time high—and support for school choice [11] is also at an all-time high. Is it any wonder?
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org; URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/10/morning-bell-25000-chicago-teachers-walk-off-the-job/
URLs in this post:
[1] Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-public-schools-chicago-teachers-union-contract-talks-strike,0,2062807.story?page=1
[2] $71,000 per year: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/12/chicago-teachers-union-demands-30-percent-pay-raise/
[3] crushing burden: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/usa-chicago-schools-idINL1E8K93JC20120910
[4] union power: http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/09/05/the-machine-the-truth-behind-teachers-un
[5] reliable: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
[6] extensive study of teacher compensation: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/10/assessing-the-compensation-of-public-school-teachers
[7] followed up: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/01/critical-issues-in-assessing-teacher-compensation
[8] sums up: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/04/a-better-way-to-pay-five-rules-for-reforming
[9] cost: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/05/the-real-cost-of-public-pensions
[10] lack of confidence in public schools: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/21/lack-of-confidence-in-public-schools-at-an-all-time-high/
[11] support for school choice: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/22/back-to-school-support-for-school-choice-reaches-all-time-high/
[12] links: http://www.chicagonow.com/wee-windy-city/2012/09/oh-wow-this-is-really-happening-what-to-do-with-your-kids-during-the-cps-teachers-strike/
Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.
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Chicago Teachers’ Strike: Unthinkable and Intolerableby James Sherk,September 10; http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/10/chicago-teachers-strike-unthinkable-and-intolerable/
“Unthinkable and intolerable.” So President Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered strikes by government employees. Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), has a different view. She called a strike to block Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s (D) education reforms.
Chicago Public Schools have a 40 percent dropout rate. Emanuel considers that unacceptable. He has proposed evaluating teachers on how their students learn. With Chicago’s finances tight, he proposed giving teachers a raise of “only” 8 percent.
Chicago Public School already teachers enjoy the highest average pay of any district in the nation—$76,000 a year, plus benefits. (The CTU argues it is only $71,000 after taking out contributions for their pensions and health care.) The union wanted a 30 percent raise but has indicated it could settle for the 16 percent the city is now offering (raising average annual pay to $88,000).
But the union adamantly opposes the mayor’s education reforms. They want the teacher evaluations watered down. They also want the school district to rehire teachers who lose their jobs in layoffs or school closings—no matter how ineffective they are. Emanuel refused, so the union shut down Chicago’s schools.
The union has a great deal of leverage in its strike. It can prevent more than 350,000 children from receiving an education. It has forced parents to find other ways of caring for their kids while they work. Many children will wander the streets—police are beefing up patrols to forestall trouble.
The union prefers having children pay this price to letting the district fire bad teachers. This is not exactly surprising. Unions serve their members’ interests first. No union would sacrifice its members’ job security to spare parents from a strike.
This is why collective bargaining does not belong in government—and why more states should emulate Governor Scott Walker’s (R–WI) reforms. No competitors exist to pick up the government’s slack. Unlike in the private sector, a government strike shuts down vital services entirely. The government exists to serve the common good, but unions exist to serve themselves. They should not have the power to shut down the government to get their way.
FDR agreed: "Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
URGENT PRAYER REQUEST: American Embassies Attacked!
•LET'S BE SURE TO CONTINUE PRAYING FOR THE SAFETY OF ALL OUR EMBASSIES WORLDWIDE
•For the families and colleagues of Ambassador Stevens and the others who were killed by the attacks in Benghazi.
•About the U.S. relationship between Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Islamic controlled nations.
•God's wisdom as to whether to suspend foreign aid to countries that threaten Americans and American interests.
Chicago Teachers Union Strike:•For a rapid end to the strike, and those who are negotiating it.
•For the more than 350,000 children who will not be in school, and for their families who must find alternate ways of providing for them.
•For public safety in Chicago and environs as bands of unsupervised children take to the streets.
Churches Open Doors to Kids During Chicago Strike - CBNNews.com, September 11, 2012,http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2012/September/Churches-Open-Doors-to-Kids-During-Chicago-Strike/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[NOTE: I offer the following explanation of the Chicago teachers UNION strike to supplement the article I posted on Tuesday (#318)on what is wrong with education in America today. Please note the additional related article posted afterwards.- Stan]
"25,000 Chicago Teachers Walk Off the Job"- Amy Payne, September 10
[Beginning Tuesday]morning, about 350,000 students in Chicago Public Schools [have been] without teachers. While the 25,000-plus unionized teachers take to the picket lines in a strike over benefits and teacher evaluations, working parents are scrambling to figure out what to do.
“We know a strike is really going to be painful. People will be hurt on both sides,” Jay Rehak, a union delegate and high school English teacher, told the Chicago Tribune [1]. “But in the end, it’s like saying, ‘I’ll be bloodied and you’ll be bloodied, but at least you’ll know not to bully me again.’” [italics mine; what does it say when this kind of violent wording is used?]
Among other demands, the Chicago Teachers Union had asked for a 30 percent [!; Question: Who in ANY economy, let alone today's economy, asks for that kind of raise? Most are just grateful to have a job.] a pay increase—despite the facts that just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and just 56 percent of students graduate in the district. The school board ended up offering a 16 percent pay increase over four years, but as last night’s midnight deadline for strike negotiations neared, the union rejected the offer.
The average teacher in Chicago Public Schools—a district facing a $700 million deficit—makes $71,000 per year [2] before benefits are included. Reuters reports that “Chicago Public Schools has projected a $3 billion budget deficit over the next three years and faces a crushing burden [3] of pensions promised to retiring teachers.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, formerly President Obama’s White House chief of staff, is getting an advanced class in union power [4]. He came into office last year and asked the teachers to accept a 2 percent pay raise instead of 4 percent to try to address the $700 million budget shortfall, and the union refused. He did reach a deal to lengthen one of the country’s shortest school days. As the Tribune describes: “In exchange for the longer school day—an additional half-hour in high schools and 75 minutes in elementary schools—CPS agreed to rehire nearly 500 teachers in non-core subjects from a pool of teachers who had been laid off. That kept the hours in the work week the same for full-time teachers.”
The most reliable [5] data show that teachers in general work no more than private professionals in a typical workweek, even when off-site work on evenings and weekends is included. Yet the CPS school day is among the shortest for teachers in the nation.
Heritage’s Jason Richwine and the American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew Biggs did an extensive study of teacher compensation [6] and followed up [7] with additional discussion of controversial issues. When it comes to teacher pay, Richwine sums up [8]:"Because the average public-school teacher already receives above-market compensation, policymakers should avoid across-the-board pay raises. Instead, they should focus on rewarding high-quality teachers with targetedsalary increases."
Of course, teacher compensation is much more than just wages. Part of Chicago Public Schools’ financial problems is the guaranteed pensions for retired teachers. Richwine explains [8] that these defined-benefit plans, which cost [9] several times more than the typical retirement plan in the private sector, are a bad deal for taxpayers: "Since benefits accruing to today’s workers need not be paid now, states can promise generous benefits without feeling the full fiscal impact for years or even decades. Benefits to workers are guaranteed, meaning taxpayers are ultimately responsible for any shortfalls in their states’ pension systems—and there are many shortfalls.
The Chicago strike, highlighting the urgent need for education reform, comes at a time when lack of confidence in public schools [10] is at an all-time high—and support for school choice [11] is also at an all-time high. Is it any wonder?
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org; URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/10/morning-bell-25000-chicago-teachers-walk-off-the-job/
URLs in this post:
[1] Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-public-schools-chicago-teachers-union-contract-talks-strike,0,2062807.story?page=1
[2] $71,000 per year: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/12/chicago-teachers-union-demands-30-percent-pay-raise/
[3] crushing burden: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/usa-chicago-schools-idINL1E8K93JC20120910
[4] union power: http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/09/05/the-machine-the-truth-behind-teachers-un
[5] reliable: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
[6] extensive study of teacher compensation: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/10/assessing-the-compensation-of-public-school-teachers
[7] followed up: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/01/critical-issues-in-assessing-teacher-compensation
[8] sums up: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/04/a-better-way-to-pay-five-rules-for-reforming
[9] cost: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/05/the-real-cost-of-public-pensions
[10] lack of confidence in public schools: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/21/lack-of-confidence-in-public-schools-at-an-all-time-high/
[11] support for school choice: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/22/back-to-school-support-for-school-choice-reaches-all-time-high/
[12] links: http://www.chicagonow.com/wee-windy-city/2012/09/oh-wow-this-is-really-happening-what-to-do-with-your-kids-during-the-cps-teachers-strike/
Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Teachers’ Strike: Unthinkable and Intolerableby James Sherk,September 10; http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/10/chicago-teachers-strike-unthinkable-and-intolerable/
“Unthinkable and intolerable.” So President Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered strikes by government employees. Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), has a different view. She called a strike to block Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s (D) education reforms.
Chicago Public Schools have a 40 percent dropout rate. Emanuel considers that unacceptable. He has proposed evaluating teachers on how their students learn. With Chicago’s finances tight, he proposed giving teachers a raise of “only” 8 percent.
Chicago Public School already teachers enjoy the highest average pay of any district in the nation—$76,000 a year, plus benefits. (The CTU argues it is only $71,000 after taking out contributions for their pensions and health care.) The union wanted a 30 percent raise but has indicated it could settle for the 16 percent the city is now offering (raising average annual pay to $88,000).
But the union adamantly opposes the mayor’s education reforms. They want the teacher evaluations watered down. They also want the school district to rehire teachers who lose their jobs in layoffs or school closings—no matter how ineffective they are. Emanuel refused, so the union shut down Chicago’s schools.
The union has a great deal of leverage in its strike. It can prevent more than 350,000 children from receiving an education. It has forced parents to find other ways of caring for their kids while they work. Many children will wander the streets—police are beefing up patrols to forestall trouble.
The union prefers having children pay this price to letting the district fire bad teachers. This is not exactly surprising. Unions serve their members’ interests first. No union would sacrifice its members’ job security to spare parents from a strike.
This is why collective bargaining does not belong in government—and why more states should emulate Governor Scott Walker’s (R–WI) reforms. No competitors exist to pick up the government’s slack. Unlike in the private sector, a government strike shuts down vital services entirely. The government exists to serve the common good, but unions exist to serve themselves. They should not have the power to shut down the government to get their way.
FDR agreed: "Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
#319 (9/12) - "9/11 Belongs To Us"
[FYI - (1)My GENday is NEXT WED, Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America" or see the film "2016" that it's based on.(see trailer at http://www.2016themovie.com/) You only THINK you know him.]
P.S.- Be sure to be REGISTERED TO VOTE. To get details of doing that in your state, go to > http://www.cbn.com/special/register-to-vote/
- For a review of the CRITICAL ISSUES to consider in your voting, please go to > http://www.truthinaction.org/PDF/Final_Voters_Guide.pdf
- Finally, BEGIN PRAYING FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS; Download a free prayer guide at > http://www.prayerconnect.net/resources/prayer-guides/2012-election-prayer-guide
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
[NOTE: I came across this beautiful essay after I posted yesterday's item. I hope you enjoy reading it and share in its sentiments as I do. - Stan]
By: John Hayward, 9/11/2012; http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/11/911-belongs-to-us/
Back in 2009, President Barack Obama tried to appropriate 9/11 as a “national day of service.” The effort plods along to this day, resulting in this year’s detailed list of official White House instructions for how 9/11 should be observed. Among them are orders to “minimize references to al-Qaeda,” on the grounds they have become “increasingly irrelevant” ever since their leader, Osama bin Laden, died from an acute case of Navy SEAL.
“I call upon all Americans to join in service and honor the lives we lost, the heroes who responded in our hour of need, and the brave men and women in uniform who continue to protect our country at home and abroad,” read the President’s proclamation.“Working together, we can usher in a new era in which volunteering and more service is a way of life for all Americans. Deriving strength from tragedy, we can write the next great chapter in our Nation’s history and ensure that future generations continue to enjoy the promise of America.”
The Americans who died on September 11, 2001, were not engaged in “volunteering and service.” They had jobs. His attempt to turn 9/11 into another day to worship the government is not just an innocent mistake. It completely subverts the meaning of that terrible day.
Many of the passengers aboard those jets were businesspeople. The planes were commercial airliners, piloted and crewed by people who had just punched into work for the day. When the terrorist animals pulled out their box cutters, they lunged at flight attendants who were trying to get through one more shift of a demanding job.
Todd Beamer, who delivered America’s battle cry for the War on Terror, was an account executive for Oracle. Those who rose with him to defeat al-Qaeda aboard United 93 were ordinary people on their way to visit families or take care of business. Their actions made them war heroes, not community service volunteers.
The buildings torn out of the New York skyline were known as the World Trade Center. They were attacked precisely because of their prominent role in commerce, and the Western affluence they represented. The towers were filled with thousands of working people. It was just another weekday for them, until they found themselves racing down smoke-filled stairwells, or falling thousands of feet past flaming wreckage. Some of the people who got out ran back into the collapsing buildings to rescue others… and never came out again. They were not “volunteering for community service.”
The Pentagon was likewise staffed by professionals, not community activists. The fighting Americans who took the battle to the enemy – from Afghanistan and Iraq, to bin Laden’s ugly den in Pakistan – were professional soldiers, who dedicated great portions of their lives to training and deployment. Their salaries, and the weapons they wield with such courage and skill, are furnished through taxes paid by working men and women. It is our industry that provided the tools for their gallantry.
A military that can operate within highly restrictive rules of engagement, with limited manpower, to complete objectives with minimal collateral damage, is an expensive proposition. The quality of troops and technology required are beyond the reach of basket-case collectivist economies. Our veterans honor us by accepting a difficult and dangerous job with horrible hours and terrifying work environments. It is in no way comparable to Obama’s notion of “volunteering and service,” not even at a symbolic level.
The valiant first responders who charged into the flaming hell of al-Qaeda’s murderous atrocity were also highly skilled and dedicated professionals. Their fearful trade is not something to be mastered through a couple of days of “community service” every now and then. Their equipment and training are an expression of American economic strength… and thank God we can afford them.
[Yesterday], we ... solemnly observe[d] the eleventh anniversary of a day that belongs to allof America, not just politicians and community activists. The reasons for the attack, and the power of our response, have nothing to do with the weak and inadequate philosophy behind President Obama’s attempt to transform the day into a celebration of socialism. [This emphasis MINE.]
Do you really want to help “write the next great chapter in our Nation’s history and ensure that future generations continue to enjoy the promise of America?”Do you want to commemorate those who died, and help your nation prepare its defense against the next brutal attack? Then do your job, and do it well. That’s what everyone was doing on the morning of September 11, 2001, in he moments before we found ourselves at war. [emphases in this paragraph mine]
P.S.- Be sure to be REGISTERED TO VOTE. To get details of doing that in your state, go to > http://www.cbn.com/special/register-to-vote/
- For a review of the CRITICAL ISSUES to consider in your voting, please go to > http://www.truthinaction.org/PDF/Final_Voters_Guide.pdf
- Finally, BEGIN PRAYING FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS; Download a free prayer guide at > http://www.prayerconnect.net/resources/prayer-guides/2012-election-prayer-guide
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[NOTE: I came across this beautiful essay after I posted yesterday's item. I hope you enjoy reading it and share in its sentiments as I do. - Stan]
By: John Hayward, 9/11/2012; http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/11/911-belongs-to-us/
Back in 2009, President Barack Obama tried to appropriate 9/11 as a “national day of service.” The effort plods along to this day, resulting in this year’s detailed list of official White House instructions for how 9/11 should be observed. Among them are orders to “minimize references to al-Qaeda,” on the grounds they have become “increasingly irrelevant” ever since their leader, Osama bin Laden, died from an acute case of Navy SEAL.
“I call upon all Americans to join in service and honor the lives we lost, the heroes who responded in our hour of need, and the brave men and women in uniform who continue to protect our country at home and abroad,” read the President’s proclamation.“Working together, we can usher in a new era in which volunteering and more service is a way of life for all Americans. Deriving strength from tragedy, we can write the next great chapter in our Nation’s history and ensure that future generations continue to enjoy the promise of America.”
The Americans who died on September 11, 2001, were not engaged in “volunteering and service.” They had jobs. His attempt to turn 9/11 into another day to worship the government is not just an innocent mistake. It completely subverts the meaning of that terrible day.
Many of the passengers aboard those jets were businesspeople. The planes were commercial airliners, piloted and crewed by people who had just punched into work for the day. When the terrorist animals pulled out their box cutters, they lunged at flight attendants who were trying to get through one more shift of a demanding job.
Todd Beamer, who delivered America’s battle cry for the War on Terror, was an account executive for Oracle. Those who rose with him to defeat al-Qaeda aboard United 93 were ordinary people on their way to visit families or take care of business. Their actions made them war heroes, not community service volunteers.
The buildings torn out of the New York skyline were known as the World Trade Center. They were attacked precisely because of their prominent role in commerce, and the Western affluence they represented. The towers were filled with thousands of working people. It was just another weekday for them, until they found themselves racing down smoke-filled stairwells, or falling thousands of feet past flaming wreckage. Some of the people who got out ran back into the collapsing buildings to rescue others… and never came out again. They were not “volunteering for community service.”
The Pentagon was likewise staffed by professionals, not community activists. The fighting Americans who took the battle to the enemy – from Afghanistan and Iraq, to bin Laden’s ugly den in Pakistan – were professional soldiers, who dedicated great portions of their lives to training and deployment. Their salaries, and the weapons they wield with such courage and skill, are furnished through taxes paid by working men and women. It is our industry that provided the tools for their gallantry.
A military that can operate within highly restrictive rules of engagement, with limited manpower, to complete objectives with minimal collateral damage, is an expensive proposition. The quality of troops and technology required are beyond the reach of basket-case collectivist economies. Our veterans honor us by accepting a difficult and dangerous job with horrible hours and terrifying work environments. It is in no way comparable to Obama’s notion of “volunteering and service,” not even at a symbolic level.
The valiant first responders who charged into the flaming hell of al-Qaeda’s murderous atrocity were also highly skilled and dedicated professionals. Their fearful trade is not something to be mastered through a couple of days of “community service” every now and then. Their equipment and training are an expression of American economic strength… and thank God we can afford them.
[Yesterday], we ... solemnly observe[d] the eleventh anniversary of a day that belongs to allof America, not just politicians and community activists. The reasons for the attack, and the power of our response, have nothing to do with the weak and inadequate philosophy behind President Obama’s attempt to transform the day into a celebration of socialism. [This emphasis MINE.]
Do you really want to help “write the next great chapter in our Nation’s history and ensure that future generations continue to enjoy the promise of America?”Do you want to commemorate those who died, and help your nation prepare its defense against the next brutal attack? Then do your job, and do it well. That’s what everyone was doing on the morning of September 11, 2001, in he moments before we found ourselves at war. [emphases in this paragraph mine]
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
#318(9/11) - "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of a New School Year"
PRAYER REQUEST: "Heavenly Father, on this annniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we pray for the families of the victims, the American heroes, and the thousands of American and foreign servicemen who were killed or wounded in defending our freedoms in Iraq and Afghanistan these intervening years. May we ourselves recommit to defending freedom and standing up against threats to our national security through our voices, and our actions as voters each election. In the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen." - Stan]
[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America." You only THINK you know him.]
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- By Amy Payne, September 4, 2012
As of today, the vast majority of American students have begun a new school year. As lunches are packed and carpool lines grow, Heritage reviews the good, bad, and ugly in education.
The Good >
Support for school choice is at an all-time high. In a poll released in August, school choice favorability jumped [1] 10 percentage points since last year, a sign that the proliferation of options such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and online learning is creating a welcome choice for families across the country.
Options like the education savings accounts implemented in Arizona [2], statewide vouchers in effect in Louisiana [3], and tuition tax credits benefitting children in Florida [4] provide families with greater control over education—something more and more parents are expressing they want.
Social promotion is becoming less popular. In North Carolina, legislators approved a measure to end social promotion [5]. Rather than automatically passing students on to the next grade, all third-grade students will be required to read at grade level before advancing to the fourth grade. Other states that have implemented this policy suggest that it is helpful in boosting student achievement.
Online,customized learning is on the rise. Individualized online learning options [6] allow more emphasis on areas where students are struggling, without holding back their peers who may be ready for the next level.
Teachers union membership is declining. The National Education Association is projecting a loss of 308,000 members since 2010. One of the union’s top officials, treasurer Becky Pringle, blames “stupid [7]” education reform: “We’re living with a recession that just won’t end, political attacks that have turned brutal, and societal changes that are impacting us—from stupid education ‘reform’ to an explosion of technology—all coming together to impact us in ways that we had never anticipated.”
The Bad >
The Administration is singling out minority students for government “help” instead of raising them up through increased options. Over the summer, President Obama signed an executive order to form the new White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. According to the White House, the new initiative, which will work across federal agencies, “aims to ensure that all African American students receive an education that fully prepares them for high school graduation, college completion, and productive careers.”
Parents and taxpayers would be correct to be skeptical of a new Washington initiative to improve student outcomes. A new evaluation by Matthew Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows a far more promising route [8] to improving academic opportunity for the students the President’s initiative aims to help: school vouchers. The study of low-income students in New York City found a 24 percent increase in college enrollment among African-American students who were awarded and used vouchers to attend private schools.
This success has already proven the vital role of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Students who have used vouchers to attend private schools in the nation’s capital have a 91 percent graduation rate, while graduation rates in D.C. public schools hover around 60 percent.
The Ugly >
Average per-pupil spending in public schools is reaching historic highs. Nationally, average per-pupil spending exceeds $11,400 this year, meaning a child entering kindergarten today can expect to have no less than $148,000 spent on his or her education by the time the child graduates high school. In all, more than $570 billion will be spent on public K-12 education this year.
Continual increases in the money spent per child and in overall spending haven’t led to increases in academic achievement. Heritage’s Lindsey Burke notes [7]:"We continue to fund institutions—sending that money to schools—instead of actually funding children. Imagine if a child could put those dollars in a funding “backpack” and take that $11,400 to any school—public, private, or virtual. As in every other sector of American life, we would likely see outcomes improve as a result of competitive pressure placed on the government school system."
Despite the successes of more individualized learning and school choice, the Obama Administration wants to further centralize education in Washington through national standards and tests. It has been trying to entice states with waivers from the onerous No Child Left Behind law, which it gives to states that agree to adopt the Administration’s standards instead.
Implementing Washington-controlled education standards means that states, local school boards, and ultimately parents will have less say in their children’s education [9]. This year’s homework assignment for conservatives: continue the fight for increased parental control, individualized options for students, and decreased government interference in education.
[bold and italics emphasis MINE]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org; URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/04/morning-bell-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-a-new-school-year/
URLs in this post:
[1] jumped: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/22/back-to-school-support-for-school-choice-reaches-all-time-high/
[2] education savings accounts implemented in Arizona: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/04/continuing-the-school-choice-march-policies-to-promote-family-k-12-education-investment
[3] in effect in Louisiana: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/14/louisiana-teachers-cancel-class-to-lobby-against-jindal-reforms/
[4] tuition tax credits benefitting children in Florida: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/closing-the-racial-achievement-gap-learning-from-floridas-reforms
[5] end social promotion: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/13/back-to-school-education-reform-in-north-carolina/
[6] Individualized online learning options: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/20/back-to-school-the-rise-of-customized-education/
[7] stupid: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/27/back-to-school-some-surprising-education-numbers/
[8] far more promising route: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/23/back-to-school-how-can-we-truly-help-minority-students/
[9] will have less say in their children’s education: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/05/why-national-standards-won-t-fix-american-education-misalignment-of-power-and-incentives
Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Putting the Punch in Parent Power
September 10, 2012; http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22339&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Source: Frederick M. Hess and Daniel K. Lautzenheiser, "Putting the Punch in Parent Power," American Enterprise Institute, August 29, 2012.
"For too long politics has been entrenched in decisions about education. Teacher unions, with their strong mobilization and organization have long been able to influence elections. This is why union-endorsed incumbents have a 92 percent rate of reelection. Advocacy organizations are seeking to inject a parent's voice into debates about reform to make meaningful influences on policymakers."
[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America." You only THINK you know him.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- By Amy Payne, September 4, 2012
As of today, the vast majority of American students have begun a new school year. As lunches are packed and carpool lines grow, Heritage reviews the good, bad, and ugly in education.
The Good >
Support for school choice is at an all-time high. In a poll released in August, school choice favorability jumped [1] 10 percentage points since last year, a sign that the proliferation of options such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and online learning is creating a welcome choice for families across the country.
Options like the education savings accounts implemented in Arizona [2], statewide vouchers in effect in Louisiana [3], and tuition tax credits benefitting children in Florida [4] provide families with greater control over education—something more and more parents are expressing they want.
Social promotion is becoming less popular. In North Carolina, legislators approved a measure to end social promotion [5]. Rather than automatically passing students on to the next grade, all third-grade students will be required to read at grade level before advancing to the fourth grade. Other states that have implemented this policy suggest that it is helpful in boosting student achievement.
Online,customized learning is on the rise. Individualized online learning options [6] allow more emphasis on areas where students are struggling, without holding back their peers who may be ready for the next level.
Teachers union membership is declining. The National Education Association is projecting a loss of 308,000 members since 2010. One of the union’s top officials, treasurer Becky Pringle, blames “stupid [7]” education reform: “We’re living with a recession that just won’t end, political attacks that have turned brutal, and societal changes that are impacting us—from stupid education ‘reform’ to an explosion of technology—all coming together to impact us in ways that we had never anticipated.”
The Bad >
The Administration is singling out minority students for government “help” instead of raising them up through increased options. Over the summer, President Obama signed an executive order to form the new White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. According to the White House, the new initiative, which will work across federal agencies, “aims to ensure that all African American students receive an education that fully prepares them for high school graduation, college completion, and productive careers.”
Parents and taxpayers would be correct to be skeptical of a new Washington initiative to improve student outcomes. A new evaluation by Matthew Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows a far more promising route [8] to improving academic opportunity for the students the President’s initiative aims to help: school vouchers. The study of low-income students in New York City found a 24 percent increase in college enrollment among African-American students who were awarded and used vouchers to attend private schools.
This success has already proven the vital role of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Students who have used vouchers to attend private schools in the nation’s capital have a 91 percent graduation rate, while graduation rates in D.C. public schools hover around 60 percent.
The Ugly >
Average per-pupil spending in public schools is reaching historic highs. Nationally, average per-pupil spending exceeds $11,400 this year, meaning a child entering kindergarten today can expect to have no less than $148,000 spent on his or her education by the time the child graduates high school. In all, more than $570 billion will be spent on public K-12 education this year.
Continual increases in the money spent per child and in overall spending haven’t led to increases in academic achievement. Heritage’s Lindsey Burke notes [7]:"We continue to fund institutions—sending that money to schools—instead of actually funding children. Imagine if a child could put those dollars in a funding “backpack” and take that $11,400 to any school—public, private, or virtual. As in every other sector of American life, we would likely see outcomes improve as a result of competitive pressure placed on the government school system."
Despite the successes of more individualized learning and school choice, the Obama Administration wants to further centralize education in Washington through national standards and tests. It has been trying to entice states with waivers from the onerous No Child Left Behind law, which it gives to states that agree to adopt the Administration’s standards instead.
Implementing Washington-controlled education standards means that states, local school boards, and ultimately parents will have less say in their children’s education [9]. This year’s homework assignment for conservatives: continue the fight for increased parental control, individualized options for students, and decreased government interference in education.
[bold and italics emphasis MINE]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org; URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/04/morning-bell-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-a-new-school-year/
URLs in this post:
[1] jumped: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/22/back-to-school-support-for-school-choice-reaches-all-time-high/
[2] education savings accounts implemented in Arizona: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/04/continuing-the-school-choice-march-policies-to-promote-family-k-12-education-investment
[3] in effect in Louisiana: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/14/louisiana-teachers-cancel-class-to-lobby-against-jindal-reforms/
[4] tuition tax credits benefitting children in Florida: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/closing-the-racial-achievement-gap-learning-from-floridas-reforms
[5] end social promotion: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/13/back-to-school-education-reform-in-north-carolina/
[6] Individualized online learning options: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/20/back-to-school-the-rise-of-customized-education/
[7] stupid: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/27/back-to-school-some-surprising-education-numbers/
[8] far more promising route: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/23/back-to-school-how-can-we-truly-help-minority-students/
[9] will have less say in their children’s education: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/05/why-national-standards-won-t-fix-american-education-misalignment-of-power-and-incentives
Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Putting the Punch in Parent Power
September 10, 2012; http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22339&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Source: Frederick M. Hess and Daniel K. Lautzenheiser, "Putting the Punch in Parent Power," American Enterprise Institute, August 29, 2012.
"For too long politics has been entrenched in decisions about education. Teacher unions, with their strong mobilization and organization have long been able to influence elections. This is why union-endorsed incumbents have a 92 percent rate of reelection. Advocacy organizations are seeking to inject a parent's voice into debates about reform to make meaningful influences on policymakers."
Monday, September 10, 2012
#317(9/10)"Obama Takes Us Backward In the Worst Speech of His Career"
[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America." You only THINK you know him.]
- By: John Hayward, 9/7/2012 > http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/07/obama-takes-us-backward-in-the-worst-speech-of-his-career/
The Democratic National Convention was such a tedious flop that the third night was all reruns. It was like watching a “clip show” episode of an old sitcom. Yet another failed governor, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, rolled onstage to yell class-warfare bromides at the audience. Like every other befuddled Democrat speaker, Granholm appears to be under the mistaken impression that General Motors did not go bankrupt, and that our $30 billion taxpayer loss was actually some sort of profitable investment. The combined ignorance and dishonesty of these people explains a lot about our current economic malaise.
Then Joe Biden clumsily ran through all the old talking points one last time – the baby-talk “4.5 million jobs created” nonsense Democrats get by simply omitting the first two years of the Obama presidency, MediScare lies, the “equal pay” obsession, the financial crisis that Democrats are really happy you don’t remember their role in creating, the boundless compassion that would erase Obama’s failures if his unworthy subjects weren’t such bitter clingers, the cobwebbed line about “bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” outsourcing lies, a relatively oblique reference to abortion, and of course Blame Bush. Once again, illegal aliens were casually conflated with legal immigrants, an insult Democrats never tire of flinging at legal immigrants.
Of course, Joe Biden is an buffoon, so he had to pepper his speech with improvised abuses of the word “literally” to show how sincere he was, and he very awkwardly dragged in the phrase “fallen angels” to describe American soldiers killed in action. But don’t let his clownish buffoonery make you forget what a vicious partisan attack dog Biden is. Last night, he selectively edited a quote from Mitt Romney to make it sound like Romney didn’t want to track down Osama bin Laden, claimed Republicans are talking about job training and college education when they refer to “dependency,” and shamelessly lied about Romney wanting to raise middle-class taxes so he could give rich folks a tax cut.
Then we got to Obama, whose much-repeated claims of burning patriotic fervor were difficult to square with inviting a man who once compared American soldiers with Nazis [Sen. John Kerry] to introduce him. And there isn’t really much to say about Obama’s flaccid speech, because you’ve heard it all before. To borrow a Bidenism, it was literally scotch-taped together from his stump speeches and 2008 campaign promises – an open, somewhat embarrassing play for nostalgia, inviting the audience to remember how swell they felt when voting for Hope and Change four years ago.
Bill Clinton used his speech to say that Obama’s 2008 promises were unrealistic, and no one could possibly have delivered them. 24 hours later, Obama took the stage to make the same promises all over again. But you can trust him this time! And remember, if he should win re-election and you hold any of these promises against him in 2016, you’ll get the same treatment Paul Ryan got when he made the mistake of taking Obama’s promises in Janesville, Wisconsin seriously.
The President who promised us 5 percent unemployment if he got his trillion-dollar stimulus, and warned of 6 percent unemployment without it, once again asked us to forget the last four years and believe his projections will be accurate this time. He promised more “green jobs,” which is almost gut-bustingly funny to anyone familiar with the string of firecracker bankruptcies his previous “green jobs” boondoggles have become. A sad and desperate attempt to latch onto Bill Clinton’s faded glory from the 1990s was made, as Barack Obama – who once assured us he understood that “you don’t raise taxes in a recession” – promised us that jacking up taxes would somehow bring back the 90s tech bubble. Obama actually felt it necessary to remind the audience that “I’m no longer just a candidate, I’m the President” – a matter that might actually be in doubt among the Democrat faithful, if they’ve been taking Obama’s endless whining about the enduring power of George Bush seriously.
Obama even had the nerve to put on his tattered “deficit hawk” costume for a while… in a speech where the man who piled more debt on America than most of his predecessors combined threw out programs that must add up to at least another trillion dollars in spending, while claiming that balancing the budget depends on a tax increase that might bring a quarter of that sum, at best.
And yes, Obama still wants more money for “infrastructure.”His fingernails-on-a-blackboard portrayal of America as a Third World country in need of rebuilding, “nation-building at home,” was back. No, you’re not allowed to ask what happened to all that “stimulus” money. One of the few changes in this speech from the past few years of Obama rhetoric is that he conspicuously avoided talk of high-speed rail. That might have been the only sign of Obama’s awareness that he’s running out of other people’s money to spend. Curiously, he didn’t have much to say about his “signature achievement” ObamaCare, either.
You will search this speech in vain for any acknowledgement of error, any sense that Barack Obama understands what he has done wrong, or indeed has the faintest clue why his economy teeters on the edge of recession. We just have to try his failed ideas a little harder, with a fresh infusion of cash, and they’ll suddenly start working. And if you want to scale back his irresponsible spending – why, you want to “gut education,” and let companies release “toxic pollution into the air your children breathe.” As always, the bloated bureaucracies and billion-dollar crony deals are hidden behind teachers, cops, firefighters, and children.
“Over and over, we have been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way; that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing,” said Obama. That’s the second-most important line of his speech, because it’s the absurd reduction of his entire campaign. It’s either unlimited debt and huge tax increases to fuel a massive regulatory state and enrich Obama’s top contributors, or anarchy in the streets. Does any rational person look at the Romney-Ryan platform and believe, even with a dash of hyperbole, that it amounts to a government that does “almost nothing?” Obama expects his voters to swallow a very high dosage of absurdity. It’s interesting that he literally cannot make his case without resorting to such nonsense.
The first most important line of the Obama speech was this odious defense of Big Government’s tender sensibilities: “We don’t think government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that government is the source of all our problems – any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles. Because we understand that this democracy is ours.”
That’s another way of restating the theme of the campaign video embarrassed Democrats were racing to disavow on Tuesday: Government is the only thing we all belong to. It’s the Rousseau ideal of “general will” that has provided the moral foundation for every bloated bureaucracy and totalitarian nightmare of the past century: the State is the avatar of our collective will, acting with our unimpeachable combined moral authority. Question the State and you’re attacking immigrants and gays.
And I know that Obama’s speech is no place for logic or memory, but I’d like to ask two questions of whichever bumbling scriptwriter came up with that passage:
1. Can’t bad government policies logically be blamed for making our problems worse, even if government is not the original “source” of them?
2. Who, exactly, was the one blaming corporations that make ATMs and corporate jets for his problems a few months ago?
The downsized crowd stuffed into Obama’s reduced speaking venue applauded at the right moments, but their overall reaction was noticeably subdued. Obama’s media cheerleaders were downcast, spending much of the evening fighting the urge to blurt out that Bill Clinton’s speech was a lot better. I saw an account on Twitter of reporters asking each other to brainstorm ideas for positive things they could write about the speech. When later asked if they’d enjoyed the “great convention,” most of the crowd didn’t cheer, so they had to be asked again.
And the next morning, we learned that another 368,000 people dropped out of the American workforce last month, bringing it to a 31-year low. Several Democrat speakers tried to sell Americans on the notion that Obama was making America better, because 168,000 jobs were created in July. Well, only 96,000 were added in August – a horrifying crash that will be very difficult to blame on George Bush. (And the July number got downgraded to 141,000 to boot.)
Obama gave a lousy campaign speech Thursday night, but as a farewell address, it will do.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Krauthammer On Obama: "One of the Emptiest Speeches I have ever heard on a national stage.", by Jeff Poor, 9/07, Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/07/krauthammer-on-obama-one-of-the-emptiest-speeches-i-have-ever-heard-on-a-national-stage-video/#ixzz25pvZCuHF
"Consider syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer unimpressed with President Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech...'At least Romney had a five-point plan,” he said. “What we heard from Obama was a vision. And he pulls numbers out of a hat — 100,000 new math and science teachers, 600,000 more people working in natural gas, 2 million more trainees. And he doesn’t say how we get from A to B. It’s a vision'
'I have a vision of an America where there is no disease and everybody has a private airplane, but unless I tell you how we get there, I’ve said nothing. And what is so surprising, is that all he had left — he can’t speak about his record on the economy, and it’s not a good one. As we heard earlier, he didn’t speak about achievements, the one that’s liberals like, Obamacare, stimulus and etc. because they’re unpopular.'...”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Obama Convention Speech Promises Broad Government Role in Americaans' Lives"- by Neil Munro, 09/07/2012; http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/07/obama-conve"ntion-speech-promises-broad-government-role-in-americans-lives/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A Recycled Speech of Failed Ideas and Many Straw Men"- By: Erick Erickson, September 6th; http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/06/a-recycled-speech-of-failed-ideas-and-many-straw-men/
"When you are in a tight race with your political opponent, you should not recycle a Jobs Act speech that failed to even persuade Democrats in Congress to pass your signature re-election initiative..."
- By: John Hayward, 9/7/2012 > http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/07/obama-takes-us-backward-in-the-worst-speech-of-his-career/
The Democratic National Convention was such a tedious flop that the third night was all reruns. It was like watching a “clip show” episode of an old sitcom. Yet another failed governor, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, rolled onstage to yell class-warfare bromides at the audience. Like every other befuddled Democrat speaker, Granholm appears to be under the mistaken impression that General Motors did not go bankrupt, and that our $30 billion taxpayer loss was actually some sort of profitable investment. The combined ignorance and dishonesty of these people explains a lot about our current economic malaise.
Then Joe Biden clumsily ran through all the old talking points one last time – the baby-talk “4.5 million jobs created” nonsense Democrats get by simply omitting the first two years of the Obama presidency, MediScare lies, the “equal pay” obsession, the financial crisis that Democrats are really happy you don’t remember their role in creating, the boundless compassion that would erase Obama’s failures if his unworthy subjects weren’t such bitter clingers, the cobwebbed line about “bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” outsourcing lies, a relatively oblique reference to abortion, and of course Blame Bush. Once again, illegal aliens were casually conflated with legal immigrants, an insult Democrats never tire of flinging at legal immigrants.
Of course, Joe Biden is an buffoon, so he had to pepper his speech with improvised abuses of the word “literally” to show how sincere he was, and he very awkwardly dragged in the phrase “fallen angels” to describe American soldiers killed in action. But don’t let his clownish buffoonery make you forget what a vicious partisan attack dog Biden is. Last night, he selectively edited a quote from Mitt Romney to make it sound like Romney didn’t want to track down Osama bin Laden, claimed Republicans are talking about job training and college education when they refer to “dependency,” and shamelessly lied about Romney wanting to raise middle-class taxes so he could give rich folks a tax cut.
Then we got to Obama, whose much-repeated claims of burning patriotic fervor were difficult to square with inviting a man who once compared American soldiers with Nazis [Sen. John Kerry] to introduce him. And there isn’t really much to say about Obama’s flaccid speech, because you’ve heard it all before. To borrow a Bidenism, it was literally scotch-taped together from his stump speeches and 2008 campaign promises – an open, somewhat embarrassing play for nostalgia, inviting the audience to remember how swell they felt when voting for Hope and Change four years ago.
Bill Clinton used his speech to say that Obama’s 2008 promises were unrealistic, and no one could possibly have delivered them. 24 hours later, Obama took the stage to make the same promises all over again. But you can trust him this time! And remember, if he should win re-election and you hold any of these promises against him in 2016, you’ll get the same treatment Paul Ryan got when he made the mistake of taking Obama’s promises in Janesville, Wisconsin seriously.
The President who promised us 5 percent unemployment if he got his trillion-dollar stimulus, and warned of 6 percent unemployment without it, once again asked us to forget the last four years and believe his projections will be accurate this time. He promised more “green jobs,” which is almost gut-bustingly funny to anyone familiar with the string of firecracker bankruptcies his previous “green jobs” boondoggles have become. A sad and desperate attempt to latch onto Bill Clinton’s faded glory from the 1990s was made, as Barack Obama – who once assured us he understood that “you don’t raise taxes in a recession” – promised us that jacking up taxes would somehow bring back the 90s tech bubble. Obama actually felt it necessary to remind the audience that “I’m no longer just a candidate, I’m the President” – a matter that might actually be in doubt among the Democrat faithful, if they’ve been taking Obama’s endless whining about the enduring power of George Bush seriously.
Obama even had the nerve to put on his tattered “deficit hawk” costume for a while… in a speech where the man who piled more debt on America than most of his predecessors combined threw out programs that must add up to at least another trillion dollars in spending, while claiming that balancing the budget depends on a tax increase that might bring a quarter of that sum, at best.
And yes, Obama still wants more money for “infrastructure.”His fingernails-on-a-blackboard portrayal of America as a Third World country in need of rebuilding, “nation-building at home,” was back. No, you’re not allowed to ask what happened to all that “stimulus” money. One of the few changes in this speech from the past few years of Obama rhetoric is that he conspicuously avoided talk of high-speed rail. That might have been the only sign of Obama’s awareness that he’s running out of other people’s money to spend. Curiously, he didn’t have much to say about his “signature achievement” ObamaCare, either.
You will search this speech in vain for any acknowledgement of error, any sense that Barack Obama understands what he has done wrong, or indeed has the faintest clue why his economy teeters on the edge of recession. We just have to try his failed ideas a little harder, with a fresh infusion of cash, and they’ll suddenly start working. And if you want to scale back his irresponsible spending – why, you want to “gut education,” and let companies release “toxic pollution into the air your children breathe.” As always, the bloated bureaucracies and billion-dollar crony deals are hidden behind teachers, cops, firefighters, and children.
“Over and over, we have been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way; that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing,” said Obama. That’s the second-most important line of his speech, because it’s the absurd reduction of his entire campaign. It’s either unlimited debt and huge tax increases to fuel a massive regulatory state and enrich Obama’s top contributors, or anarchy in the streets. Does any rational person look at the Romney-Ryan platform and believe, even with a dash of hyperbole, that it amounts to a government that does “almost nothing?” Obama expects his voters to swallow a very high dosage of absurdity. It’s interesting that he literally cannot make his case without resorting to such nonsense.
The first most important line of the Obama speech was this odious defense of Big Government’s tender sensibilities: “We don’t think government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that government is the source of all our problems – any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles. Because we understand that this democracy is ours.”
That’s another way of restating the theme of the campaign video embarrassed Democrats were racing to disavow on Tuesday: Government is the only thing we all belong to. It’s the Rousseau ideal of “general will” that has provided the moral foundation for every bloated bureaucracy and totalitarian nightmare of the past century: the State is the avatar of our collective will, acting with our unimpeachable combined moral authority. Question the State and you’re attacking immigrants and gays.
And I know that Obama’s speech is no place for logic or memory, but I’d like to ask two questions of whichever bumbling scriptwriter came up with that passage:
1. Can’t bad government policies logically be blamed for making our problems worse, even if government is not the original “source” of them?
2. Who, exactly, was the one blaming corporations that make ATMs and corporate jets for his problems a few months ago?
The downsized crowd stuffed into Obama’s reduced speaking venue applauded at the right moments, but their overall reaction was noticeably subdued. Obama’s media cheerleaders were downcast, spending much of the evening fighting the urge to blurt out that Bill Clinton’s speech was a lot better. I saw an account on Twitter of reporters asking each other to brainstorm ideas for positive things they could write about the speech. When later asked if they’d enjoyed the “great convention,” most of the crowd didn’t cheer, so they had to be asked again.
And the next morning, we learned that another 368,000 people dropped out of the American workforce last month, bringing it to a 31-year low. Several Democrat speakers tried to sell Americans on the notion that Obama was making America better, because 168,000 jobs were created in July. Well, only 96,000 were added in August – a horrifying crash that will be very difficult to blame on George Bush. (And the July number got downgraded to 141,000 to boot.)
Obama gave a lousy campaign speech Thursday night, but as a farewell address, it will do.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Krauthammer On Obama: "One of the Emptiest Speeches I have ever heard on a national stage.", by Jeff Poor, 9/07, Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/07/krauthammer-on-obama-one-of-the-emptiest-speeches-i-have-ever-heard-on-a-national-stage-video/#ixzz25pvZCuHF
"Consider syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer unimpressed with President Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech...'At least Romney had a five-point plan,” he said. “What we heard from Obama was a vision. And he pulls numbers out of a hat — 100,000 new math and science teachers, 600,000 more people working in natural gas, 2 million more trainees. And he doesn’t say how we get from A to B. It’s a vision'
'I have a vision of an America where there is no disease and everybody has a private airplane, but unless I tell you how we get there, I’ve said nothing. And what is so surprising, is that all he had left — he can’t speak about his record on the economy, and it’s not a good one. As we heard earlier, he didn’t speak about achievements, the one that’s liberals like, Obamacare, stimulus and etc. because they’re unpopular.'...”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Obama Convention Speech Promises Broad Government Role in Americaans' Lives"- by Neil Munro, 09/07/2012; http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/07/obama-conve"ntion-speech-promises-broad-government-role-in-americans-lives/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A Recycled Speech of Failed Ideas and Many Straw Men"- By: Erick Erickson, September 6th; http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/06/a-recycled-speech-of-failed-ideas-and-many-straw-men/
"When you are in a tight race with your political opponent, you should not recycle a Jobs Act speech that failed to even persuade Democrats in Congress to pass your signature re-election initiative..."
Sunday, September 9, 2012
#316(9/9)Sunday Special > "Thoughts (For Christians) On the Upcoming Elections"
PRAISE: Iranian pastor released|Iranian authorities acquit and free pastor Youcef Nadarkhani after three years of imprisonment; Sept.8; http://www.worldmag.com/2012/09/iranian_pastor_released [This was incredible news;I had just prayed for him again the other day!]
[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America." You only THINK you know him.]
Also, as usual on Sundays, please try to catch this week's broadcast of "Truth That Transforms."(In Central Florida, 9-9:30 am, 10-10:30 am, 5-5:30 pm; check your TV listings) or watch it at www.truthinaction.org. This week's very timely message is entitled "America Remebers" and includes an examination of radical Islam eleven years after 9/11.
P.S.- Be sure to be REGISTERED TO VOTE. To get details of doing that in your state, go to > http://www.cbn.com/special/register-to-vote/
- For a review of the CRITICAL ISSUES to consider in your voting, please go to > http://www.truthinaction.org/PDF/Final_Voters_Guide.pdf
- Finally, BEGIN PRAYING FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS; Download a free prayer guide at > http://www.prayerconnect.net/resources/prayer-guides/2012-election-prayer-guide
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- By Dr. Timothy George,Chairman of the Board,Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview;http://www.colsoncenter.org/voices/entry/43/20156
Earlier this year, in the midst of the presidential primary season, I was asked to address a group of Southern Baptist pastors on the question of Christian faith and political engagement. Though no one knew for sure who the candidates would be at that time, the first question I was asked was, “How should an evangelical Christian decide who to support in this election?” That was a legitimate question, and has prompted me to think of some wider implications.
1) We should be grateful to live in a representative democracy where the right to vote and the rule of law are respected. Such has not always been the case, even in our own country, as the history of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the struggle for civil rights indicates. Freedom is ever under assault from without and within. Religious liberty and political responsibility are closely related: If we default on the latter, we may well forfeit the former. Vote!
2) The American republic was founded on a clear distinction between church and state, as the First Amendment shows, but this has never meant the separation of faith from public life. What we believe about ultimate matters has a direct bearing on how we deal with issues of everyday life. What is a human being? How do we foster a society where justice prevails? How do we construct “a more perfect union” for the common good? These are profoundly moral and spiritual questions, as well as political ones. While IRS regulations forbid pastors and religious leaders from endorsing particular candidates (a rule that should be reversed in the interest of free speech), there is no prohibition against addressing the great moral issues of our time, all of which have political implications. Michelle Obama was completely correct in her remark at the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference in June. She claimed that “there is no better place than church” to talk about political issues because they are ultimately moral issues. Distinguish!
3) In the Manhattan Declaration(manhattan, Chuck Colson, Robert George, and I made a public argument, based on biblical wisdom and the right use of reason, that the three most pressing moral issues of our time are the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death, marriage as a lifelong covenantal union of one man and one woman, and religious freedom for all persons. Of course, there are other issues that also call for Christian engagement: racial reconciliation, care of creation, immigration, education, care for the poor, and sex trafficking, among many others. And at other moments in history, other issues have claimed the attention of believers. For William Wilberforce, it was the abolition of the slave trade. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it was the persecution of the Jews. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the cause of civil rights. But today, life, marriage, and freedom are threshold issues that provide a basis for our concern about many other things. They are also the issues most under assault at this moment in our culture. Discern!
4) There is a difference between Christian discernment and partisan politics. The Kingdom of Christ cannot be equated with any political party. Our current president, a Democrat, is the most pro-abortion president in American history, and yet Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans gave us Roe v. Wade. What Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said to Catholic voters applies to all Christians regardless of party affiliation: “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.” Examine!
Regardless of who wins the election in November, the spiritual and moral issues that ought to inform our political acts will remain on the agenda. In seeking to make a wise decision based on a rightly informed conscience, we need to listen to God’s voice in the Scriptures, learn as much as we can about the candidates and what they stand for, and turn to God in prayer. These words spoken by God to the people of Israel long ago are still pertinent today: “If my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health” (2 Chronicles 7:14, MSG). Pray!
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author: Timothy George is founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and chairman of the board of the Colson Center for Worldview.
[FYI - (1)My GENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America." You only THINK you know him.]
Also, as usual on Sundays, please try to catch this week's broadcast of "Truth That Transforms."(In Central Florida, 9-9:30 am, 10-10:30 am, 5-5:30 pm; check your TV listings) or watch it at www.truthinaction.org. This week's very timely message is entitled "America Remebers" and includes an examination of radical Islam eleven years after 9/11.
P.S.- Be sure to be REGISTERED TO VOTE. To get details of doing that in your state, go to > http://www.cbn.com/special/register-to-vote/
- For a review of the CRITICAL ISSUES to consider in your voting, please go to > http://www.truthinaction.org/PDF/Final_Voters_Guide.pdf
- Finally, BEGIN PRAYING FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS; Download a free prayer guide at > http://www.prayerconnect.net/resources/prayer-guides/2012-election-prayer-guide
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- By Dr. Timothy George,Chairman of the Board,Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview;http://www.colsoncenter.org/voices/entry/43/20156
Earlier this year, in the midst of the presidential primary season, I was asked to address a group of Southern Baptist pastors on the question of Christian faith and political engagement. Though no one knew for sure who the candidates would be at that time, the first question I was asked was, “How should an evangelical Christian decide who to support in this election?” That was a legitimate question, and has prompted me to think of some wider implications.
1) We should be grateful to live in a representative democracy where the right to vote and the rule of law are respected. Such has not always been the case, even in our own country, as the history of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the struggle for civil rights indicates. Freedom is ever under assault from without and within. Religious liberty and political responsibility are closely related: If we default on the latter, we may well forfeit the former. Vote!
2) The American republic was founded on a clear distinction between church and state, as the First Amendment shows, but this has never meant the separation of faith from public life. What we believe about ultimate matters has a direct bearing on how we deal with issues of everyday life. What is a human being? How do we foster a society where justice prevails? How do we construct “a more perfect union” for the common good? These are profoundly moral and spiritual questions, as well as political ones. While IRS regulations forbid pastors and religious leaders from endorsing particular candidates (a rule that should be reversed in the interest of free speech), there is no prohibition against addressing the great moral issues of our time, all of which have political implications. Michelle Obama was completely correct in her remark at the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference in June. She claimed that “there is no better place than church” to talk about political issues because they are ultimately moral issues. Distinguish!
3) In the Manhattan Declaration(manhattan, Chuck Colson, Robert George, and I made a public argument, based on biblical wisdom and the right use of reason, that the three most pressing moral issues of our time are the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death, marriage as a lifelong covenantal union of one man and one woman, and religious freedom for all persons. Of course, there are other issues that also call for Christian engagement: racial reconciliation, care of creation, immigration, education, care for the poor, and sex trafficking, among many others. And at other moments in history, other issues have claimed the attention of believers. For William Wilberforce, it was the abolition of the slave trade. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it was the persecution of the Jews. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the cause of civil rights. But today, life, marriage, and freedom are threshold issues that provide a basis for our concern about many other things. They are also the issues most under assault at this moment in our culture. Discern!
4) There is a difference between Christian discernment and partisan politics. The Kingdom of Christ cannot be equated with any political party. Our current president, a Democrat, is the most pro-abortion president in American history, and yet Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans gave us Roe v. Wade. What Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said to Catholic voters applies to all Christians regardless of party affiliation: “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.” Examine!
Regardless of who wins the election in November, the spiritual and moral issues that ought to inform our political acts will remain on the agenda. In seeking to make a wise decision based on a rightly informed conscience, we need to listen to God’s voice in the Scriptures, learn as much as we can about the candidates and what they stand for, and turn to God in prayer. These words spoken by God to the people of Israel long ago are still pertinent today: “If my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health” (2 Chronicles 7:14, MSG). Pray!
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author: Timothy George is founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and chairman of the board of the Colson Center for Worldview.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
#315 (9/8)- [At the DNC] "Democrats Lose Grip On Reality"
[FYI - (1) MyGENday is Sept. 19th. When is YOURS?;(2)Before Election Day, get ahold of a copy from the library of "Obama's America." You only THINK you know him.]
PRAYER REQUEST: U.S. Slips Down the Ranks of Global Competitiveness, Sept. 5th
"The United States has slipped further down a global ranking of the world’s most competitive economies, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday.The world’s largest economy, which was placed 5th last year, fell two positions to the 7th spot - marking its fourth year of decline. A lack of macroeconomic stability, the business community’s continued mistrust of the government and concerns over its fiscal health were some of the reasons for the
downgrade, according to the annual survey..." (Source: CNBC, Reuters)
As the Lord leads, please pray:
•About the nation’s loss of competitive standing in the world.
•For America’s education system and the need to improve it and other indicators to regain national productivity.
•About the decline in the standard of living being experienced by vast numbers of Americans.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
By: David Harsanyi, 9/6/2012; http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/06/democrats-lose-grip-on-reality/
"Government is the only thing we all belong to" — but, don’t worry, you won’t have to pay for any of it. That about sums up the Democratic National Convention’s case to America, a place where whatever isn’t handed to you is actually just being taken away.
Democrats like to claim that Ronald Reagan and William Buckley would be simply horrified if they saw the modern-day GOP; but please take a moment to ponder the spectacular display of bonkers in Charlotte, N.C., this week.
Here you’re free to imply or even say that a Republican is unpatriotic (I’m old enough to remember when that sort of thing was frowned upon) for conducting business outside the country. Here politicians celebrate the president’s courageous ability to use taxpayer funds to bail out a company that can only avoid another bankruptcy (barely) on the strength of foreign sales. This is called “economic patriotism” or, more familiarly, protectionism or, maybe, Hooverism — the kind of ism Democrats once rejected. Forward!
At the DNC, the head of NARAL argues that being allowed to have free abortions on demand is the high point of the American dream. And a woman whose only claim to fame is demanding free condoms is celebrated as a hero. Julian Castro, who I am assured is the charismatic mayor of San Antonio and a serious person, mocks the “magical” free markets that gave Bill Clinton the soaring economy he bragged about Wednesday night and America 25 years of unmatched prosperity.
Fortunately, Barack Obama evolved on gay marriage a couple of weeks back, or a slew of enlightened speakers would have seemed less so.
But we know that Democrats have a monopoly on caring and a solid grip on a larger moral truth. It frees them up to offer some, um, poetic truths. You know, like, Mitt Romney opposes poor people’s owning homes or Paul Ryan wants seniors to be denied medical care and he’s all for allowing pregnant women to die in the emergency room. In your hearts, you know it’s true.
Outright lies? There were many. For example, the claim that the auto bailout was paid back. Or the claim that Romney-Ryan’s Medicare plan would cost seniors $6,400 per year and force them into voucher programs. There is no study — not even one authored by an Obama aide — that backs such an assertion. Ryan’s plan allows seniors to stay on the traditional Medicare program if they choose — but we all know that choice only works in tandem with government guidance.
And when Castro, Michelle Obama, Deval Patrick and Rahm Emanuel assert that the president created 4.5 million new jobs … also not true. If a person were to be extremely generous and pretend that government created productive jobs, he’d still be hard-pressed to avoid the very real fact that though 4.5 million new jobs have been created during the Obama administration, 5.1 million jobs have been lost. As Clinton told us Wednesday night, sometimes we have to use arithmetic.
You know the other accusations: Republicans want to privatize, deregulate, voucherize, embrace unfettered free markets and cut government down to the bone. And boy, do I wish any of that were actually true.
Democrats say that things are a lot better than they used to be. And if you believe all the things we’re hearing, you might wonder: How did we survive in this Godforsaken place before 2008? Were children really left to die on the slab? Were college kids forced to pay for their own journalism degrees? Were people expected to head over to the CVS and buy their own condoms? Did we really suffer through year after year of 5 percent unemployment?
Were we really so immoral before He showed up? Apparently.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[At the DNC]"We All 'Belong to' the Government?", by Julia Shaw, September 6, 2012 http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/06/we-all-belong-to-the-government/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free World? Convention Security Resembles Police State - By John Jessup,CBN News Washington CorrespondentFriday, September 07, 2012; http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2012/September/Free-World-Convention-Security-Resembles-Police-State/
"...The host cities pick up a lot of the costs but Congress chips in some taxpayer money as well. Washington doled out $50 million to each convention for security, meaning taxpayers help foot the bill..."
PRAYER REQUEST: U.S. Slips Down the Ranks of Global Competitiveness, Sept. 5th
"The United States has slipped further down a global ranking of the world’s most competitive economies, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday.The world’s largest economy, which was placed 5th last year, fell two positions to the 7th spot - marking its fourth year of decline. A lack of macroeconomic stability, the business community’s continued mistrust of the government and concerns over its fiscal health were some of the reasons for the
downgrade, according to the annual survey..." (Source: CNBC, Reuters)
As the Lord leads, please pray:
•About the nation’s loss of competitive standing in the world.
•For America’s education system and the need to improve it and other indicators to regain national productivity.
•About the decline in the standard of living being experienced by vast numbers of Americans.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
By: David Harsanyi, 9/6/2012; http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/06/democrats-lose-grip-on-reality/
"Government is the only thing we all belong to" — but, don’t worry, you won’t have to pay for any of it. That about sums up the Democratic National Convention’s case to America, a place where whatever isn’t handed to you is actually just being taken away.
Democrats like to claim that Ronald Reagan and William Buckley would be simply horrified if they saw the modern-day GOP; but please take a moment to ponder the spectacular display of bonkers in Charlotte, N.C., this week.
Here you’re free to imply or even say that a Republican is unpatriotic (I’m old enough to remember when that sort of thing was frowned upon) for conducting business outside the country. Here politicians celebrate the president’s courageous ability to use taxpayer funds to bail out a company that can only avoid another bankruptcy (barely) on the strength of foreign sales. This is called “economic patriotism” or, more familiarly, protectionism or, maybe, Hooverism — the kind of ism Democrats once rejected. Forward!
At the DNC, the head of NARAL argues that being allowed to have free abortions on demand is the high point of the American dream. And a woman whose only claim to fame is demanding free condoms is celebrated as a hero. Julian Castro, who I am assured is the charismatic mayor of San Antonio and a serious person, mocks the “magical” free markets that gave Bill Clinton the soaring economy he bragged about Wednesday night and America 25 years of unmatched prosperity.
Fortunately, Barack Obama evolved on gay marriage a couple of weeks back, or a slew of enlightened speakers would have seemed less so.
But we know that Democrats have a monopoly on caring and a solid grip on a larger moral truth. It frees them up to offer some, um, poetic truths. You know, like, Mitt Romney opposes poor people’s owning homes or Paul Ryan wants seniors to be denied medical care and he’s all for allowing pregnant women to die in the emergency room. In your hearts, you know it’s true.
Outright lies? There were many. For example, the claim that the auto bailout was paid back. Or the claim that Romney-Ryan’s Medicare plan would cost seniors $6,400 per year and force them into voucher programs. There is no study — not even one authored by an Obama aide — that backs such an assertion. Ryan’s plan allows seniors to stay on the traditional Medicare program if they choose — but we all know that choice only works in tandem with government guidance.
And when Castro, Michelle Obama, Deval Patrick and Rahm Emanuel assert that the president created 4.5 million new jobs … also not true. If a person were to be extremely generous and pretend that government created productive jobs, he’d still be hard-pressed to avoid the very real fact that though 4.5 million new jobs have been created during the Obama administration, 5.1 million jobs have been lost. As Clinton told us Wednesday night, sometimes we have to use arithmetic.
You know the other accusations: Republicans want to privatize, deregulate, voucherize, embrace unfettered free markets and cut government down to the bone. And boy, do I wish any of that were actually true.
Democrats say that things are a lot better than they used to be. And if you believe all the things we’re hearing, you might wonder: How did we survive in this Godforsaken place before 2008? Were children really left to die on the slab? Were college kids forced to pay for their own journalism degrees? Were people expected to head over to the CVS and buy their own condoms? Did we really suffer through year after year of 5 percent unemployment?
Were we really so immoral before He showed up? Apparently.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[At the DNC]"We All 'Belong to' the Government?", by Julia Shaw, September 6, 2012 http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/06/we-all-belong-to-the-government/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free World? Convention Security Resembles Police State - By John Jessup,CBN News Washington CorrespondentFriday, September 07, 2012; http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2012/September/Free-World-Convention-Security-Resembles-Police-State/
"...The host cities pick up a lot of the costs but Congress chips in some taxpayer money as well. Washington doled out $50 million to each convention for security, meaning taxpayers help foot the bill..."
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