A Quick Visual: The Washington, D.C. Tea Party

There has been quite a debate going on about the number of people who showed up in Washington D.C. last weekend for the Tea Party. I have heard everything from "scores of people" to "2 million." For those of you that don't know, a "score" is a group of 20. "2 million" is 100,000 scores. There's quite a big difference here. Those who are trying to downplay the size of the Tea Party will use the words "score" or "tens of thousands." Their agenda is pretty transparent in their vocabulary. On the flip side there are some who are undoubtedly trying to exaggerate the size of the Tea Party. They are just as guilty as the downplayers. The truth is that the real number is somewhere between "scores" and "2 million." At the very least, folks should be using the phrase "hundreds of thousands." My personal feeling is that there had to have been at least a million people there, but not 2 million. However, you won't hear me describe the crowd as "fifty thousand scores," because a truthful person doesn't manipulate that word in such a manner. I'm not getting this number from any news report. I'm seeing it for myself. You can too.

First take a look at this picture from Obama's inauguration. This event was described as having "millions" of attendees.


Now take a look at a screenshot of the Tea Party (apologies for the fuzzy picture, but it's the only one from this angle I could find) that I got from C-SPAN. It's the exact same angle from which the inauguration shot above was taken, and the amount of people in view looks to be about the same.

It's amazing how similar these photos look! Is it possible that everyone could take a look at the solid visual evidence and see that were a lot more than "tens of thousands" or "scores" of people in attendance last weekend? Why is there such a debate over this? The answer is pretty clear.

P.S. - For those of you who are about to email me saying "there weren't millions of people at the Tea Party!! You just said that the amount of people was the same as Obama's inauguration!" please stop now and take note of the fact that I said "amount of people in view."

9/11/2001

September 11, 2001: I was a freshman at the University of Georgia. I had returned to my dorm room after my 8 AM English class with absolutely no knowledge of what had already occurred while I was in class. My roommate's father was leaving a message on our answering machine saying that there had been an attack. I immediately turned on the television to see the horror that was unfolding in New York City and Washington D.C. It wasn't until later that we learned of the brave men and women who fought and took the plane down in Pennsylvania. I stood there in complete shock as various people on my hall were still waking up and hearing the news. We watched in silence.

Then the first tower collapsed.

More shock.

Absolute silence......silence, not out of reverence, but that which stems from a total and complete lack of not words but vocabulary, because the English language does not contain vocabulary capable of describing what we were seeing. Words are created in reaction to tangible things or events coming about. Nothing like this had ever happened. The dictionary still lacks any words or vocabulary that can describe what we saw.

Then the second tower collapsed.

More shock.

More confusion.

More emptiness.

Words cannot describe it.

Only numbers.....

9/11/2001.

We sit here now, eight years past that day, and while no one has forgotten what happened that day, many of us no longer feel that day; myself included, until Wednesday night when I watched a powerful 9/11 documentary on the National Geographic Channel. It all came back.... the shock...... the confusion.... the anger..... the emptiness. What also came back was the patriotism. I realized that to remember that day is to truly feel it. To really do justice to the day you must relive some of it in your mind. A history book can only recount the events of that day to students who are too young to remember and/or weren't even born at the time. But history books contain only words, and like I said, the English language does not contain the words to describe 9/11. They, like us, must see it for themselves. No, it won't be the same, because they have the benefit of knowing up front that four planes are involved. They know the towers come crashing down. They know the passengers on the fourth plane rallied against the terrorists, and they know exactly what time the third plane crashed into the Pentagon. They expect it. We who lived it did not, but our feelings still dwindle.

President Obama and Congress have created a National Day of Service and Remembrance to honor the events of 9/11. Call me irreverent, but I am going to be the guy that calls him out on politicizing September 11, 2001. The president released a letter a few weeks ago that included the following excerpt:

We can rebuild out schools, but we need mentors and tutors to guide our students. We can modernize our health system, but we need volunteers to care for the sick and assist others in leading healthier lives. We can invest in clean energy, but we need people to maintain energy efficiency in their homes and help create a green economy.

Eight years after this tragedy, President Obama is sticking to Rahm Emanuel's tactic of never letting "a serious crisis (sic) go to waste." This day should be called the National Day of Remembrance and Service. We remember first and then we serve only because we remember; it's not the other way around. The president continues to push his agenda in the letter quoted above by urging people to "help create a green economy" and "modernize our health system." I am absolutely not saying that the concept of the National Day of Remembrance and Service is a bad idea. It's a great thing, and it should continue. My problem lies with the way that it's being carried out and the politicization of it by the president. Leave politics out of it. This day is about one thing and one thing only: 9/11/2001.

The day should start off with people watching the following videos (or similar ones). Yes, they are tragic. You will see people jumping from the burning towers and hear them crashing on top of the lobbies of the buildings. You will see the planes hitting the towers and the buildings crashing down. It's not irreverent. It's real. It's irreverent not to truly remember, to truly feel. It's irreverent to go through the motions of this day and remember it as a history book remembers it. It happened, and people need to see it. They need to see it so they do not forget. Those who did not live through it need to see it so that they may feel some of the emotion that we did on that day. Those like myself who may have lost some of the emotional remembrance must see it again. If we do not then 9/11 will simply become another day where we'll have a moment of silence, but no one will truly remember why they must be silent. We must feel the silence as those who watched the towers come crumbling down felt the silence of shock. Yes, the videos are graphic and traumatic, but unless one experiences that trauma one cannot fully understand. More importantly, one cannot truly honor the day.

Listen to the commentary. Listen to the news anchors' complete lack of words and understanding of the events transpiring before them. They cannot speak, because they cannot imagine what is happening, even though they watch it live. It's still a nightmare that will end when they wake up. The firemen in the lobbies of the towers cannot fathom what they are hearing. They want to believe that the sounds are coming from debris falling, but the sounds are created by the impact of those escaping the fires hundreds of feet above. They want to ignore it, but they know it is real. Please watch.

First Plane Hitting the Towers:

Second Plane Hitting the Towers:

Plane Hits Pentagon:

People Jumping:

First Tower Collapse:

Second Tower Collapse:

Let us not let 9/11/2001 become just another day of flags at half mast dotted with moments of silence. Let us weep as we did on that day. Let us be angry as we were on that day. Let us gather together, talk, vent, scream, volunteer, be silent and any number of other things that we did/were on that day. And let us pass it along so that no one will ever forget.

The President's Health Care Speech

Many of you may have watched President Obama's address last night to a joint session of Congress. Maybe it's just me, but I did not see very many new ideas. What we did see is some change in rhetoric, but largely it's the same old stuff the president has been touting all summer. In the end, it's all rhetoric. The real test will be the language in the final bill. To President Obama's credit, many of the things he spoke of sounded great. However, given his track record I'm not going to hang my hat on his words. Randy Pausch gave some dating advice to his daughter in his book, The Last Lecture, saying "when it comes to men that are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do. It’s that simple. It’s that easy." The same can be said for politicians, and yes, it's that easy. Here are some random thoughts on the speech.

President Obama said last night "Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close. These are the facts. Nobody disputes them." Um, what about $800 billion "stimulus" packages and $700 billion bank bailouts? And what about Congress raiding the Social Security Trust Fund and replacing dollars with IOUs in the form of Treasury Bills? I could fill pages upon pages with accounts of wasteful government spending programs that sit at the core of our deficit problem. These are the facts, and we most certainly dispute those which the president is attempting to present. Apparently the president didn't hear anything about the town hall meetings held throughout the month of August that were comprised largely of people disputing the "facts" that the president would like us to believe. Much to the president's dismay, something does not become a fact just because a politician says it.

I took particular note of the president's mentions of "one man from Illinois" and "another woman from Texas" each having trouble because they were denied coverage by their insurance companies. Notice how he doesn't use names. It's an easy CYA (Google it if you don't know what it means.... it's the first result) to use so that it's more difficult to investigate his claims. Apparently he learned from the S-CHIP debate to tread carefully when citing individual cases.

President Obama said that his health care reforms "will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance." Actually, that's not true. Like most Americans, I get my health insurance through my employer. If these reforms are passed then I will actually feel less stable and secure, because I'll be worried that my employer may drop my health coverage. The bills include huge economic incentives for employers to do so, because many of the changes implemented will make private insurance much more expensive. Going back to the August town hall meetings, it's clear that I'm not the only one concerned about this matter.

Of course, we can't have any sort of bill passed in Congress that doesn't include some sort of welfare program. The president stated last night that "for those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, [the government] will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need." The new term for welfare in Washington is "tax credits." If you didn't know that then please take note. It's wealth redistribution, plain and simple.

President Obama also announced the creation of "a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange." I can't help but be a little cynical when I say Wow, a government program that doesn't make a profit! Who ever heard of such a thing? You mean Medicare and Medicaid don't make profits? Oh, that's right, they're going to be bankrupt by 2017. Of course the government option will be not-for-profit. That's the whole idea. The government program can run at a loss year after year. This is exactly how the government option proponents plan to eventually eliminate private insurance entirely and create a single payer (read: government controlled) system.

One of my favorite lines from the President was when he told the American people "if you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out." Actually, he is the one misrepresenting what is in the plan, and we are the ones calling him out. For what other reason than that would he have had to give an address to Congress last night? His statement would more truthfully be written as follows: "If you say anything that we disagree with, we will call you out, regardless of whether or not what you say is true." Going back to the "only pay[ing] attention to what they do" theme, we have already seen instance after instance of this happening over the past couple of months.

I also found it very interesting that the president asserts that "instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics." He then goes on to say:

"Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true."

Mr. President, aren't these the very scare tactics that you denounced earlier?

Finally, the president gave the appearance of bipartisanship by announcing plans to reform the tort system. He called the "demonstration projects in individual states" a "good idea" and said that he is "directing [his] Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative." This is simple lip service. If he were really serious about tort reform then he would have gone ahead and cited successful initiatives that have already been implemented in states such as Texas. He knows full well that there is no need to "test these issues." It's already been done. He and other members of Congress are simply too scared to take on the trial lawyers.

These are my thoughts. I'd love to hear yours.

*** Update 9/10/2009 ***

I was just re-reading this post and it occurred to me that I'm probably going to hear some comments like "You don't offer any solutions yourself! You only criticize and react to people!" To appease these folks I simply want you to know that I have already proposed solutions here, so go ahead and read them.

Obama's School Address

By now we have all heard about President Obama's upcoming address to the nation's students. Many conservatives are in an uproar about this, calling it "indoctrination" and various other insinuations of Marxism and all-things-left. Let's pause for a moment and think about this. First of all, those who are keeping their children home from school on Tuesday and creating such an uproar over this address are making some assumptions. They assume that President Obama is going to deliver a "government-is-great/don't-think-for-yourselves/worship me" message. These assumptions aren't entirely baseless given President Obama's track record, but they are assumptions, nontheless.

The fact is that we do not know what, exactly, will be the content of his speech. We can garner some of it based on the classroom activities listed on the Dept. of Education website. There is one set for grades pre-K through 6 and one for grades 7-12. One of the discussion questions for the 7-12 group mentions that "we heard President Obama mention the importance of personal responsibility." What is wrong with Obama talking about personal responsibility? If we had a conservative in the White House giving an address to students would people be as outraged? Would they hold a conservative president to the same set of standards? What if his speech went something like this:

"Students of America, I am calling on you to work hard in school and learn everything you can. Think for yourselves and do not rely on the government for your well being. You alone are responsible for yourself and your own well being. You are responsible for taking charge of your own life, making responsible decisions and providing for yourself and your family. The government will not do any of these things for you. Stay in school. Do not engage in risky behavior such as partaking in drugs and alcohol. Study hard. Earn your way into college and become the most productive, most responsible, most self-sufficient American citizen that you can be."

No, it's probably not what he's going to say, but we do know that he is going to mention personal responsibility. However, what if he did say it? Would people be as outraged as they are now? Would they give him credit for making a speech that is in line with what they believe? Or would they denounce it simply because it came from the mouth of Barack Obama?

The truth is that there really isn't anything wrong with the president addressing the nation's students. In the end there may be plenty of fault with the content of his message, but there is no reason to boycott the speech and/or be outraged over the concept of the address. Many of these students respect the president for no other reason than the position he holds. They're young, and they don't know politics. They only know that you're supposed to respect the president. Many of them are minorities who will be watching the nation's first black president address them directly. If the president tells these kids to stay in school and practice personal responsibility, what's so bad about that?

We don't need to boycott Obama's address next week. What we need to do is be vigilant. Watch the address. We'll be able to watch it live here. Watch what the president says to the kids, and ask yourself if you would agree with the message if it were someone else giving the speech. We are right to be skeptical of the address. President Obama could very well come out next Tuesday and ask students to kneel at the altar of the government. If he does, let the outrage begin! However, until then let's calm down a bit, listen to what he has to say and continue our vigilance.

Isn't the President Supposed to Serve Us?

Many of you may have seen this video already as it's been making the rounds over the past day or so. It was directed and edited by Demi Moore, and it features more than a dozen celebrities pledging to do various things such as "help[ing to] end hunger in America," and "volunteer[ing] more."

Many of the things mentioned are very worthwhile and honorable goals. However, the video ends with a "pledge to be a servant to our President and all mankind."

Excuse me? Did I hear that correctly? Since when do we serve the President? Our elected officials are supposed to serve America and its citizens. We do not serve the President. He serves us. We do not serve Congress. The members of Congress serve us. Article II Section I of the Constitution describes the President's duties as "services." If you look up "service" in the dictionary you will find the following:

Main Entry: ser·vice
1 a : the occupation or function of serving b : employment as a servant
2 a : the work performed by one that serves

Where does anyone get the idea that we are supposed to serve the President? We elected him. We pay his salary. We are the people whom he serves. We do not take orders from him, and we sure as heck don't serve him. Am I the only one incensed by just the thought of this?