Archive for August, 2010
HillBuzz on the Radio: The Andrea Shea King Show, 8/31/10 at 9pm EST/8pm CST
We’ve been invited to appear on one of our favorite shows tomorrow, The Andrea Shea King Show. It will be at 9pm EST/8pm CST.
We’ll be talking about the Restoring Honor rally and the elements of it that we believe are going to have a big impact on the November elections.
Please tune in if you can. Here’s a link for the show.
Andrea Shea King is delightful and informative so if you aren’t already a daily listener, we’d highly encourage you to do so. She’s a hoot, always has interesting guests, and most importantly, is a very nice person who loves this country as much as we do.
Hope you tune-in!
Monday Open Thread: August 30, 2010
What’s on your minds this Monday?
It’s the start of a new week, and the first day of my posting here at Hillbuzz as an official contributor.
I am a longtime reader and frequent commenter here. I’m a former Republican-turned-Independent who found Hillbuzz back in the first few weeks of operation, and quickly grew to love the Boyz’ snark and insight.
I also know a bit about the web and have offered to help K. and the crew any way I can, whether by contributing articles, helping transition to a new site, or just trolling the spam filter in the wee small hours of the morning when the whole wide world is fast asleep.
Hopefully, between the Boyz, Chrissy, and myself we can keep all your comments rolling in without needing any one of us to spend extraordinary amounts of time hunting for those few legitimate posts from among the hundreds (or thousands!) of spams that come in each day. I’ll also be doing what I can to improve the spam filter in any way possible.
So, hello fellow Hillbuzzers! I’m pleased and honored to be posting, and look forward to getting my feet wet with an actual article in the near future.
*******
Today in History: 148 years ago the second battle of Bull Run concluded with a sound defeat of the Union army by the Confederates. Nearly 20,000 Americans (from both sides) were killed or wounded during that battle.
Upon reading the comments of Union Brigadier General Alpheus Williams about the Union commander of that battle (John Pope), one cannot help but compare the relevance to a certain leader of today. Here are a few excerpts:
His pompous orders issued in Washington and published in the daily telegraphs all over the country with great commendation of the press and apparently of the people greatly disgusted his army from the first.
…when, in short, from a snug hotel in Washington he issues after-dinner orders to gratify public taste and his own self-esteem, anyone may confidently look for results such as have followed the bungling management of his last campaign.
I dare not trust myself to speak of this commander as I feel and believe. Suffice it to say … that more insolence, superciliousness, ignorance, and pretentiousness were never combined in one man. It can with truth be said of him that he had not a friend in his command from the smallest drummer boy to the highest general officer. All hated him…
Instead of hopeful and confident feelings we are all depressed with losses and disasters. … What a change!
Strange how the words of years long passed seem so relevant to the present.
RESEARCH: Retail purchasing patterns, trend forecasting, and how professional buyers do their jobs
There’s an essay we’re working on for the coming week about something we’ve noticed here in Washington, DC while in town for the Restoring Honor rally.
It’s about the Sarah Palin merchandise EVERYWHERE in the city, and what we think this means for the 2012 presidential campaign.
Here’s what we’d like from you:
(1) Anyone who has ever been any sort of buyer, store owner, retail worker, or the like, we need to know what you can tell us about how products are chosen to be featured in stores. Particularly high-profile products in large stores and chains. What makes someone decide to place those big orders, and what’s at risk for a retailer if the products chosen bomb?
(2) How do retailers forecast what sorts of products consumers will want in the future? How far out do trend watchers scry, and how do they do their prognasticating?
(3) What else can you tell us about what you know about the planning, development, and production of commercial products for sale, focus group research, and the like?
Add whatever industry knowledge you can to this thread. It will be a big help pointing us to the information we need for the merchandising crystal ball piece we’ll have up on Tuesday.
If you help us do this research legwork, together we can craft an essay that will be much stronger than what I’d come up with freeforming it off the cuff.
That’s actually a huge goal of mine: to tap into you readers as a research to improve what we do here and make us one of the best political analysis and strategic thinking sites around. I’d love to see you take the step from being readers and occasional commenters into being our support team, coast to coast, expanding our team from just us five to a larger team of thousands.
Just think of what we could accomplish if we’d make that happen…and then put that resource to work against the Left, and on behalf of Momma Grizzlies everywhere.
Choosing Her Next Vacation
Where will she burn through taxpayer money next?
One of the things I heard constantly during the Restoring Honor rally yesterday was how disgusted people were whith Michelle Obama’s lavish spending, and her ridiculously inappropriate European vacation this month…while so many Americans are unemployed and suffering, the current First Spouse is off in Spain, burning through close to a million dollars in taxpayer money that was used to cover transportation and security costs for her and a coterie of hangers-on larger than anything Queen Marie Antoinette traveled with in her excursions afield of Versailles.
Shame on Michelle Obama.
It was repeated over and over again, from housewives, mothers, grandmas, dads, you name it.
Today, I found the above photo of Michelle Antoinette, depicted the way I see her in my head. If I had any photoshop skills, it’s an image I would have made of her a long time ago. It’s just perfect, and captures her attitude and disregard for taxpayers completely.
I’m wondering today where you think the First Spouse will burn through taxpayer money next?
The tropical paradise of Bora Bora?
The mysterious-sounding island of Vanuatu?
Fhloston Paradise?
Is there a limit to where the First Diva would go, or how much she would spend to get there?
If the current White House was occupied by people of any decency, and a boondoggle like Michelle Antoinette’s lavish vacation happened somehow, by some sick accident, we think decent people would realize the horror Americans feel about this — and they would reimburse the Treasury for this trip.
It was not official business. It was not a working trip for Michelle Antoinette. Dressing inappropriately and having lunch with royalty at their summer palace is not a good enough reason to burn a million dollars by taking dozens of people along with her for an extravagant vacation.
The Obamas made something like $7 million last year.
They need to write a check to cover Michelle Antoinette’s poor decision on this.
They won’t, of course.
But I’m telling you, first hand, for anyone at the White House reading this, that a million people assembled in Washington yesterday, and every one of them I talked to, and my friends talked to, think Michelle Antoinette needs to apologize for her lavish spending and reimburse taxpayers for that.
If she did this, we swear to you, it would go a long way towards mitigating the PR disaster that is the current East Wing…before it gets to the point where Michelle Antoinette has her own “let them eat cake” moment.
That’s something which hasn’t happened — yet — but is bound to happen if she keeps things up on the course she’s headed.
My favorite thing I saw at the Restoring Honor rally yesterday: people brought trash bags and made sure the garbage was taken out as they left, so that the rally area was CLEAN after we all departed
This is the mess the Obama cult left behind on the National Mall on his Inauguration Day. The Leftists didn't think to cleanup after themselves. Speaks volumes, doesn't it?
Today, I received an invitation to take a guided tour of the Marine Museum here in Washington, DC, given to me by two former Marines who are deeply involved in this institution. If you know me at all, you know this is like Santa showing up on Christmas Morning here at Buzzquarters with a large sausage-and-marshmallow After School Special pizza and a complete set of Buffy DVDs…all for me…the best treats ever.
As much as I wanted to go, I had to take a rain check because I want to get as much as I can written for you about what it was like attending Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally, and I want to do it as timely as possible so you can share it with every American who wished they could have been there. I am honored that we at HillBuzz were able to be a part of this, and I feel a duty to report back to you all the things I know the state media won’t actually report.
So, I’m camped out in a Starbucks near the White House, writing today, instead of spending time with some Marines, learning about the history of the Corps, and taking that VIP private tour. If you ever doubted I love you, let this put an end to that. It’s a sacrifice I thought I had to make so that I could tell you all just how remarkable this rally was, and what I think it says about the character and true nature of all those who are part of the American Resistance to the Left.
As I work on the larger essay on what it was like to be on the ground for the Restoring Honor rally, I keep coming back to what’s the most awesome thing I saw yesterday: and it was the simple fact that scores of rally attendees brought GARBAGE BAGS with them, along with all their coolers and bags of goodies, so that they could not only make sure they took out all the trash they created that day, but also had EXTRA garbage bags to make sure that NO ONE AROUND THEM made a mess, either.
This, of course, is in stark contrast to the way Obama supporters left the National Mall after his Inauguration, where they turned the Capital into the set of a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-styled, WALL-E distopia. I will never in my life forget that image of the Obama cultist in a wheelchair, surrounded by mounds of trash, with tumble weeds of garbage, in a sea of refuse and chaos, with the Smithsonian Castle behind her in the distance. On his first day in office, his followers created an indelibly prescient image of what his presidency would be, and what it would do to this country. Obama’s supporters showed their true colors that day, with the filth they left behind them after they assembled to celebrate their Lightbringer.
They made such a mess that I’ve been told Washington was filthy for days after the Inauguration. So much was needed to clean up after the Obama cultists that the US Government still, to this day, has an appropriations code in its system for INAUGURATION 2009 expenses. This is a system that is updated regularly, with drop-down menu codes for all the things the federal bureacracy pays out every day. At the rally yesterday, I talked with some federal employees who say the cleanup after Obama’s followers was so Herculean, so labor-intensive, so MASSIVE of a mess that there are vendors STILL BEING PAID, to this day, for services rendered in the January 2009 cleanup.
That mess, as seen above, probably cost as much as what’s being spent in some states on the Obamaspill Gulf diaster.
So, I have to say that I cheered out loud yesterday when I saw the first rally attendee (first of MANY) bring out her garbage bags, and shout to all who could hear that she had extra in case they had trash too. I went up to this woman, thanked her for doing this, and she told me there was “no way in Hell I was going to allow a mess to be left behind, not like what Obama did to the mall after his Inauguration”.
So, evidently, I am not the only one who is still disgusted by how Democrats behaved on January 20th, 2009.
I also keep thinking about how Democrats behaved at the Denver Convention in 2008, where they threw away small American flags, in giant garbage bags. Remember that?
At the Republican Convention in Minneapolis, they collected the flags from attendees after they were done, and conservatives took those flags to cemetaries and decorated graves with them on Veterans’ Day. What Democrats saw as garbage, conservatives saw as a way to recylce stage props into something to honor our fallen troops.
I can’t possibly say this enough in a single lifetime, but I love every single person who wears, has ever worn, or will ever wear a service uniform with all of my heart. I am deeply shamed that every man, woman, and child in this country does not do something each and every day to show support for our troops…and immense gratitude for those who aren’t with us now, because they lost their lives standing between American freedom and the chaos and evil of the world.
It hurts my heart, and sickens me, that the party I belonged to for 32 years of my life has such little regard for our flag, such contempt for our military, and such complete and utter disregard for our public spaces, like our National Mall. It was an immense insult for the Democrat Party to throw those flags away in Denver, and an even bigger slap to the nation to trash the National Mall at Obama’s inauguration. I would say that I’m surprised Obama supporters didn’t defecate and urinate all over the mall that day too, but I have no evidence they DIDN’T in fact do that, and I’m not about to put it passed these people.
In as loose a meaning of the word “people” as possible.
The fact people brought garbage bags with them to make sure we left the rally grounds pristine when we left speaks VOLUMES about the people backing the Tea Party, the American Resistance, Governor Palin, Glenn Beck, and the growing tsunami of renewed conservativism in this country than I could ever say here.
It was humbling, to me, that it didn’t occur to me to bring garbage bags too. I intended to make no mess, take all my trash with me, and not contribute to any mess that was there…but I was not aware enough to realize I, too, should have been prepared to help clean up as well.
That’s a life lesson, there. I, and you with me, need to be taking garbage bags to big events I attend. I need to not only enjoy the event, but do my part to clean up afterwards. I need to take that step, and take responsibility for what’s happening around me…and urge my fellow citizens to do the same thing.
We ALL need to provide leadership like this.
Even if it’s leadership as simply as providing garbage bags at moments that need it…times when you’re part of what’s standing between an Obama Inauguration-grade filth storm and keeping our public spaces as clean, pristine, and ordered as they deserve to be.
K. D.
Washington, DC 8/29/10
Happy Sarah Palin Day
Via Conservatives4Palin, we realize today is the two-year anniverasy of John McCain introducing Governor Palin to the nation — thus earning his place in American history by opening the door to a national political career for the woman who will become our 45th president.
It was the single smartest and most important thing Senator McCain did in his many years of service to this nation, and no matter what you think of anything he does, we want you to always show this man some respect for making it possible for President Palin to answer her call to defend, protect, and lead this nation. The RNC, McCain’s team of Romney Republican advisors, and the state media all tried to stop Senator McCain from elevating the Governor from her status as a little-known (outside of Alaska) public servant by giving her the platform the VP nomination allowed her to have.
Governor Palin was incredibly presidential yesterday, as she spoke to a crowd of a million people in front of the Lincoln Memorial. She was sharp, focused, passionate, and inspiring.
It was very clear to us the Governor is, daily, becoming increasingly more focused and comfortable with the mission she’s on, the one she’s being called for. The love the crowd showed for her, and the rousing shouts of RUN!, SARAH RUN! that we heard as she was introduced to speak were testament to strength the Governor already has.
She’s the real deal, folks. She is actively honing her skills, sharpening her craft, and becoming the political force we know she is destined to be.
We believe her presidential campaign has already begun, and her speech yesterday made us realize that we need to work harder every day to give her the support she will need on the ground to defeat the Romney Republicans and Soggy Sandwich society of the cucumber-and-mayonnaise Republican establishment. It’s going to be harder for the Governor to win the GOP nomination than it will be for her to clean Obama’s sorry clock in the general election, because the establishment is already pushing Romney as the “it’s his turn” candidate they love so much to run.
Together, we can stop this…and deny Obama that second term he needs to tank this country.
So, Happy Sarah Palin Day. We could honestly, with great pleasure, spend hours in this post talking about that day two years ago when the Governor spoke in Dayton to the American people for the first time. But, we’ve told that story before, and as much as we love reveling in it, we want to focus on getting the essays about the Restoring Honor rally written so those of you who were so kind and generous to help us get there and be present in Washington yesterday can have an on-the-ground detailed report of what the experience was like.
AND you’ll get to hear every detail of what it was like to hear Governor Palin speak to that large of a crowd, all of whom left the rally having taken in what we clearly see as a 2012 campaign speech in utero.
The last thing we’ll leave you with on Sarah Palin Day before we get back to work on those essays is this little anecdote.
As we were leaving the Lincoln Memorial area, and walking up 23rd street near some State Department buildings, we spotted two black African vendors, selling buttons, pins, and tee shirts to the Mississippi-grade river of people leaving the million-strong event.
The vendors had plenty of Palin 2012 materials, and they were selling as fast as the pair could hand them out to people.
They were shouting, as loud as they could, “Get your Sarah Palin buttons! We have Sarah Palin butons for 2012! Get your Sarah Palin shirts! Sarah Palin will be the next president! Get her buttons now!”.
In their accented voices, in all sincerity, they were stating something we believe is clear FACT: that Sarah Palin will be our next president, and that people in the merchandising world realize this.
It’s what we noticed the moment we landed in DC and walked through the concourse at Reagan National: the shops selling political items treat Sarah Palin as if she is already president. On the shelves, these stores have small bobble-head dolls of presidents from the past: Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, etc. Obama is up there too. And right next to him is Sarah Palin, in either a red jacket or the black outfit she wore when she spoke in Dayton, Ohio on August 29th, 2008.
We don’t remember the merchandising world treating Hillary Clinton with this certainty back in 2006. We saw plenty of Obama materials, but nothing for Secretary Clinton that early. Even in the heat of the campaign, there was never as much Hillary merchandise…as if the people who make, produce, purchase, and distribute this stuff didn’t believe it had a shelf life long enough to produce so much of it.
With Sarah Palin, there is an enormous amount of merchandise out there, geared both towards people who love her and the Left who wants to buy things to mock her (like the Hillary Clinton nutcrackers that were made to appeal to those on the Right who still are afflicted with Clinton Derangement Syndrome).
We have a good friend who is a buyer for a major department store. She says that trends are followed closely in the merchandising industry, with prognasticators looking far into the future to determine what consumers are going to want not today, or tomorrow, but far enough into the future for companies to get rich cornering a market on something the public will have an insatiable desire for.
People, these trend-followers, who earn enormous salaries for being RIGHT about what American popular culture is going to look like in the years ahead, have identified Sarah Palin as a source of immense merchandising revenue.
They are treating Governor Palin as a viable, lasting brand and retailers are placing her alongside the current and past presidents as an equal on par with them. The Palin bobbleheads are not displayed next to the Michelle Obama or Ben Franlin ones, which were the only two non-presidential dolls we spotted (there were no Hillary ones, and no Bill Clinton ones either, but there were dolls of Franklin Roosevelt standing that were unrecognizable because we never picture FDR that way).
Since Governor Palin is not a current or former US President, and is just a private citizen now, she should rightly be grouped with Franklin and Michelle Antoinette, if retailers were grouping these dolls as presidents on one shelf, and other politically-realmed figures on another.
It just looks RIGHT for Governor Palins’ dolls to be up there with the “president” ones.
That’s where customers appear to look for her, so that’s where retailers place her.
It is all part of the larger fact that, culturally, America is indeed trending towards accepting the reality that Governor Palin will indeed by our 45th president, elected in 2012.
You betcha.
I can't believe I forget the best part of that run-in with loony Keifer last week — the part about Sarah Palin "coming to get us"
Last week, I told you a personal story about a run-in I had with a guy named Keifer here in Chicago, at the Holiday Club, where he tried to pick me up at a birthday party until he figured out I am not only a supporter of Governor Sarah Palin’s, but I’m going to be one of the people on the ground working to make her our 45th president. You betcha.
This made Keifer degenerate into a sputtering mess of Leftist cliches, lashing out, name-calling, and generally making an ass of himself as he followed his Lefty operating program and attacked me, with everything he had, because I don’t belong to the Cult of Liberalism (never have, never will, folks, so deal with it).
Well, in telling you the story, while here in Washington all revved up about the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally the next day, I forgot the VERY BEST part of the exchange. Looking through my little moleskin notebook, I just had to tell you this bit, and will have to go back to the original post and add it in, because I think it’s just too funny.
At some point in screaming and yelling at me in the Holiday Club, after calling me “an evil celebrity”, and telling me he knew who I was because I’m so frequently excoriated in the gay papers here in Chicago and in the Leftysphere in general, Keifer went on a wild tear about how much he hates Governor Palin, and I asked him why that was, and he said, “Becuase she is coming to get us”.
“Get us what?,” I asked. “Lemonade? What’s she getting us?”
“No, she’s coming to get us. She’s coming to take us away.”
“Take us where? Alaska? I’ve always wanted to go there. She can take me anytime. Sure would love to try a mooseburger.”
Unintelligble barnyard noises from Keifer followed, which I think meant he was frustrated to the point of serious mental illness, and his blood pressure was going up, up, up.
“She’s coming to get us. She wants to kill us,” Keifer growled, getting edgier and more irrational by the minute.
“Well, I met the Governor a few months ago with my friend Joaquin. Her staff was so kind to me, and I got an invitation to go backstage at a reception for her and she took the time to speak with me, and she was so very kind, and knew exactly who I was, and that I’m a gay Hillary former Dem who supports her. So, if she wanted to “get me”, or “get Joaquin”, or just “get” two gay guys, whatever “get them” means, she had a perfect opportunity to do so. There she was, right in front of me, and she shook my hand. Right there, she could have grabbed me, shouting “GOTCHA!”. Todd was standing right there, watching, so she could have barked at him, “Get moving, hot stuff, grab those ropes. I got ‘em, so tie ‘em up and let’s get ‘em back to Wasilla. Ha, ha, ha, my plan worked! I got ‘em! Ha ha ha ha!”.
I’m not going to write another word about Todd Palin tying me up with ropes and taking me to his snow machine, because that’s just pregnant with all sorts of unintended potential, but if the Palins are supposedly so determined to “get us”, as Keifer insists, they seem to have all sorts of chances to do that, but never seem to follow-through.
What’s happening here is that the Left is trying to start a meme in the gay ranks that Governor Palin is the second coming of Anita Bryant. The Governor is a conservative woman, so to the majority of gay men she’s evil on two counts. She’s “the other sex”, which is berated, degraded, and (most importantly) FEARED BEYOND ALL REASON, by misogynistic gay men who are horrified by the wombs they were formed in, let alone the rest of the female anatomy, which they believe is Lovecraftian plumbing culminating in Cthuthlu. Most gay men are Peter Pans who evolve no further than 12 year old boys at eternal summer camps, terrified of cooties, reveling in all things rude, crude, and He-Man-Woman-Hating.
I never went to summer camp, and don’t reside there now, so WHY these guys are like this is as mysterious to me as it is to you, but I’m telling you this is what I have to deal with here in Boystown on a daily basis.
And quadruple this insanity when it comes to conservative women, like the Governor, or Representative Michele Bachmann, or authors Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. I like all of these women very much, and have agreed with almost everything they have all said in the last two years. And I defend every last one of them when they are attacked here in Boystown, not because I don’t think they can take care of themselves, but I just refuse to be a guy who stands there, silently, while misogyny’s put on display by any Peter Pan, uninformed, loudmouth vomiting more of the DNC-approved talking points for gay men.
I refuse to allow the DNC to spread the idea in our ranks here in Boystown that Governor Palin is “out to get gays”, because that’s just lunacy. Like I said, she had a great opportunity to “get me”, and “get” Joaquin too. All I “got” from the Governor that day was a handshake, a smile, respect, and her promise to work hard for America and do all she could for this country. As long as she keeps this up, she’s “got” a lifetime supporter in me, no matter who out there tries to shout me down.
While this incident with Keifer has become par for the course for me ever since Fran Eaton at Illinois Review outed me and the Left declared open war on me, on a personal level, for speaking out against Leftism and vocally supporting Governor Palin and other conservative women, and conservativism in general, it is memorable as the first time I ever saw a Leftist actually run screaming and muttering away from me, into the night, like in a cartoon, because he just couldn’t process the fact that he met a gay guy who is determined to see Governor Palin become our next president.
No matter what happens to Keifer, or where he goes in life, I’m sure he won’t ever forget meeting me. Maybe he’ll join the ranks of the other Lefty loons who write libelous, vile, threatening filth about me because I don’t toe Leftism’s approved line for gays.
I realize I’ve reached a major turning point with all of this garbage, in that I just don’t care what these people do to me anymore. This nation is in a lot of trouble, and the Left is behind all of it. Whether I like it or not, this is my watch, my time in life to stand up and do something about this, and through HillBuzz and in my daily, personal life I need to be who I am and stand up for what I believe in…no matter what the Left, in all its forms, throws at me.
If Governor Palin is coming for anyone, if she’s out to get anyone, then she’s out to get the Leftists and push them out of office and influence in America.
This will REALLY make the Keifers run screaming, burbling, and muttering away…but in this regard, I’m happy to say I’m right there with the Governor, and I hope all of you are coming to “get” the Left too.
Let’s all “get” them, because we all collectively “get” the rotten things they are trying to do to America and we just shouldn’t ever take that.
Got it?
K.D.
Washington, DC 8/29/10
New functions: Share HillBuzz posts on Facebook and Twitter
Yesterday, in the crowd at the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally, Robby ended up meeting a nice family from Kansas, who actually turned out to be readers (by way of the mom, who found us through our Open Letter to George W. Bush last y ear). In talking to them, the daughter in the group explained to Robby how to setup Facebook and Twitter reposting functions for our posts.
It looks like it worked, because we see these new buttons on the bottom of posts to share items via Facebook and Twitter.
Many of you have been asking for these, but we never knew how to do this…so please tell us if it’s what you wanted and if it’s working for you.
Just another of the great things that came out of the Restoring Honor rally.
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UPDATE: Someone asked how we added those buttons to the posts, and it was actually easier than we imagined.
This must have been a WordPress update we didn’t know about, because here’s all we had to do, using the backstage area at WordPress (that you have access to if you have a WordPress blog site).
* Go to your dashboard
* Look in the left hand column for the Settings icond; it looks like a tool box.
* In Settings, look for SHARE function
* Click on SHARE, and then a list of things pops up, that includes Facebook, Twitter, and those other things we don’t really understand, like Reddit, and DigDug, or BurgetTime or whatever
* Drag the Facebook, Twitter, and whatever you want down from the top and put it into the box that says THESE THINGS TO BE SHARED, or something to that effect
* Then, at the bottom, click “Open in New Window” so that the shared items, when click open a new window instead of taking someone away from the regular page
* Click UPDATE at the bottom, and it’s done
This was very simple, and we know it didn’t exist when we started the site, or the last time we looked into it, so it’s really providence and part of our quest that Robby ran into that family and found out about it through that very nice girl.
There were EASILY a million people at the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally in Washington, DC yesterday. And the state media does itself, or Democrats, no good by lying about it.
Click above to embiggen
We were all on the ground at the Restoring Honor rally in Washington, DC yesterday.
We took positions at different parts in the crowd, so we could talk to as many people as possible, and meet as many Americans (and readers) as we could, getting a full picture of just how big a response Glenn Beck got to his open call to come to the Capital and help restore honor to the country.
There were EASILY a million people there…not the “several thousand” the state media is reporting.
This was a running joke on Beck’s part through the rally, saying the media would report there were 100,000 or maybe 300,000 people there.
Well, Beck told us that the area arround the reflecting pool alone held 250,000 people or so. As you can see in the photo, that area was jam=packed.
Beck also told us the field to the left of the reflecting pool holds 300,000-400,000 people itself. That area was filled to bursting.
Additionally, attendees for the rally filled the WWII memorial space and spilled across the street and onto the hill where the Washington Monument stands. There were people in the spillover areas to the right of the reflecting pool as well, going down to the Vietnam Veteran’s memorial too. That adds probably another 200,000 people to the total.
Math majors, this means 250,000 + 400,000 + 200,000 = 850,000 people, at least, using conservative estimates for that crowd. We think it was easily a million, though, based on what everyone else in the crowd was telling us about their own experiences with crowd-counting.
We met cops, coaches, city planners, and business people (who work in skyscrapers overlooking parade routes in large cities) who all told us that the size and depth of the crowd, its density, and the length of time it took for people to disperse when the rally was over all made them believe more than a million people were there that day.
RIVERS of people flooded every street once the rally concluded.
We remember watching the crowd at Grant Park for Obama’s crazy cult rally the night he won the election in 2008. We had a bird’s eye view of that event, which the state media claimed at the time was a million people. It was 150,000-200,000 people if that…and the site was cleared of people in about 15 minutes after the rally ended that night. We saw the size and shape of that crowd, because we were in the hotel across the street, watching it, and it was nowhere as dense, as large, and as overflowing as the crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial for Glenn Beck’s rally yesterday. Yet, the media called it “a million people”, because the media lies.
And we think this does not help Democrats in any way, shape, or form.
Any logical person looking at the crowd about in that picture can see there is more than 300,000 people there. So, yet again, it’s more proof the state media lies to Americans…which is not good for the state media, by the way, because it makes them look like Saddam Hussein’s minister of propaganda when he kept claiming American troops would never take Baghdad (as tanks full of US GIs rolled passed him in the background). Every day, more Americans realize they are being lied to by the people on television and the hacks writing their garbage for the dinosaur ink and paper Obamaganda centers. Soon, the only people believing this stuff will be the people writing it, who know they are lying, but just keep writing what they WISH to be true every day, instead of what’s really happening.
For Democrats who enjoy reading the “fake news” and want to believe only 300,000 people were there, it’s like someone with no money in the bank wanting to pretend he has $10,000 in his checking. It might feel great to pretend reality doesn’t exist, but when he heads to the ATM to make a withdrawel, in say, oh, we don’t know, November, he is going to be in a very awkward and painful situation when that screen reads – $500, instead of the support level he wishcasted himself into having.
Democrats need to understand that America has not just turned against them, but is mobilizing to take them down. Downplaying the attendance at the rally yesterday might make the Leftists happy, and give them false comfort and succor, but printing that lie is not going to make those other 700,000 activists present disappear. Pretending there are fewer people who oppose you than really exist is a bad strategic move on your part, not on the part of your opponents. Because over a million people turned up yesterday, at great personal expense, from as far away as HAWAII.
People actually got on a plane and spent HOURS flying thousands of miles to stand up, be heard, and be counted. They drove in from all over the country, some spending all day and night on Friday waiting patiently to participate in this rally. Motivation and drive like that is going to be carried back to their home states, to the communities they live in, where millions MORE people, who couldn’t make the rally, are today being filled in on everything that happened…and being energized and mobilized to battle the Left at the ballot box.
Democrats can pretend NONE of these people exist, at their own peril.
Sunday Open Thread: August 29th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Sunday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Look for the thread above, on the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally and tell us what people you know are talking about that — in that thread — so we can keep all things together.
Use this thread to tell us what people are saying about other things in the news today.
We had an absolutely transcendent time in Washington, DC for the Restoring Honor rally and are working hard today to get everything we want written up about it.
There’s so much to cover, it’s going to be in five parts:
PART ONE – an experiential piece capturing what it felt like to be at the rally, for those of you who couldn’t go, so you can know what it feels like to be on the ground at something like this, which we think was a major turning point for the American Resistance that is very much now at war with the Left.
PART TWO – an analysis of the brilliant political moves Glenn Beck made at every step of the way in this Restoring Honor rally.
PART THREE – an analysis of Governor Sarah Palin’s brilliant strategic moves for 2012, as made at this Restoring Honor rally.
PART FOUR – an analysis of the themes brought out in the Restoring Honor rally, specifically on the rally’s core of Hope, Faith, and Charity…and how those can apply every day in our lives to help take back this country.
PART FIVE – what this rally, its themes, and Governor Palin’s speech mean to us on a personal level, and what we hope they will mean for you going forward in every day we have between now and 2012.
We’re tuckered out from the travel, staying up all night to camp out for good seats at the rally, the rally itself, and the beating sun coming down all day yesterday, but we think this is important enough to work hard on all day to get this up in a timely matter…so the goal is to get all five parts up, in order today…wish us luck with that.
Honestly, though, this was one of the most amazing experiences of our lives, and we are more energized than ever to do everything we can every day to defeat the Left and make Governor Palin our 45th president…so she can not only restore honor to America with Glenn Beck, but can restore prosperity, stability, and patriotism to a nation coming apart at the seams in this the Golden Age of Hope and Change.
