Some of the local SEIU members showed up at Al Sharpton's counter rally on Saturday and were proudly displaying this banner:
If only that had been a teacher's union. Oh well, I guess the SEIU version of the American Dream doesn't include a quality education.
Whenever you criticize the Left's insane spending spree that has resulted in huge deficits, the Iraq War always comes up on their end of the argument as the "real" cause of our current fiscal calamities. They claim that Iraq was an unfunded war that costs us, according to some lefty pundits like James Carville, upwards of $3 trillion. Well, that talking point has just been ripped to shreds by the facts as presented by the latest analysis from the CBO. Here's a chart breaking down the spending ratios from 2003-2010:
Wow, that chart seems to show deficits decreasing during the peak of the war from 2004 through 2007. Only in 2008 did we see a big jump and then a veritable explosion in the deficit in 2009 and 2010. What happened in 2009 to start that trend? Oh right, the Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency, and started treating our tax dollars like monopoly money. Also notice the amount of spending allocated to Iraq each year ... not exactly "breaking the bank" as the Democrats would lead you to believe.
So what was the total cost of the Iraq War? According to the CBO report, it was $709 billion spread out over 8 years - not $3 trillion - and as Randall Hoven at American Thinker points out, that's only a 323% margin of error from the Left's claims. Considering the math they've used to come up with their employment "success," that's not too bad considering.
Some other facts from the CBO report that Hoven points out in his piece:
* Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.
*Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.
*Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.
*Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.
*Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.
*The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).
*During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)
So it might be time to reframe that talking point Lefties, because as always, the facts have exposed your frivolous claims. The “real” reason our huge deficits exist today is due to your out of control spending. Period.
The fact checkers will be busy tonight…Obama is playing us all for fools. Anyway, here's the play by play of the SOTU:
910 Pelosi introduces Obama as POTUS. Still can't believe he's POTUS.
912 Civil war/Omaha Beach/Black Tuesday reference…
913 Two wars, etc. 2nd depression…we acted and the worst has passed. Huh?
914 Is Pelosi a cougar? I'm thinking yes.
914 What's smarter, Biden or my toothbrush? Debating…debating…
915 Populist Wall Street reference in first 5 minutes…winner! Took the over.
916 Never been more hopeful for America's future than he is tonight...huh? What about one year ago when you took over, champ?
918 Banks. Uh oh…here we go….
919 Blaming Bush but recovered "most" money lent to banks. Wall Street, big bonuses, rescue...all BAD!
920 He's repeating…he cut taxes. No Republicans are standing.
So the Obama speech to some of the Nation’s students went off as planned and I’m sure the numbers will be filtering in as to what schools watched it and what schools did not. There was a lot of controversy prior to the speech, regarding politics in school and the creation of a lesson plan that asked students initially what they could do “to help the president.”
The larger point, in my opinion, is the narcissistic feel of that lesson plan and the speech itself, as well as the pattern of all things being about Obama.
First off, Obama should have asked students what they could do to help their country, not their president. Can you imagine JFK saying “ask not what your president can do for you, but what you can do for your president?” The way it was initially worded made it seem like we were all loyal subjects to King Obama. Somewhere in our political universe the fact that politicians were elected to work for us and not the other way around has been lost. We need to get that back.
Secondly, why is everything ALWAYS about Obama? The majority of his speeches, regardless of topic, include numerous references to himself. Ed Morrissey ran his speech today through a word frequency counter and came up with the following analysis:
56 iterations of “I”
19 iterations of “school”
10 iterations of “education”
8 iterations of “responsibility”
7 iterations of “country”
5 iterations each of “parents”, “teachers”
3 iterations of “nation”
In other words, Barack Obama referenced himself more than school, education, responsibility, country/nation, parents, and teachers combined. And to think that people accused Obama of self-promotion!
It was all about him! Check it out tomorrow night in his speech to Congress. Play the Obama drinking game...take a drink anytime you hear him say “I.” Play at your own risk though and I would strongly recommend getting a designated driver.
Kids returning to school on Tuesday may be forced to watch President Obama give a speech that school districts nationwide are being “urged” to show . Many are upset about the government injecting itself into the school curriculum and a growing number of school districts are refusing to show it:
"As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education—it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
Arizona state schools superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican, said lesson plans for teachers created by Obama's Education Department "call for a worshipful rather than critical approach."
There is a lesson plan attached to the speech that initially asked students “what they can do to help the president." That little bit of recruitment propaganda has since been revised by the White House after they admitted that it was “inartfully worded, and we corrected it.”
This is part of Obama’s ideology however, as he displayed when he was on the same board with Bill Ayers (remember him?) at the Chicago Annenburg Challenge (CAC). Their philosophy was to inject their skewed political beliefs into the schools to recruit political activists:
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism.
So with that history, you really can’t blame anyone who objects to their kids being forced to watch this speech. Unless of course, you want your child recruited into a radical political activist society that rewards levels of activism and shuns aside actual educational performance. Kind of like a minor league for ACORN.
To be fair, George Bush 1 spoke to school children in 1991 and received a bunch of flack from Democrats when he did. He didn’t have a history however, of using schools as recruitment grounds to advance his political ideology.
Obama does and that’s a justifiable reason for many parents to keep their kids home on September 8th.
