Scary Christian writer?

I was surprised to hear a Christian writer I respect say that Trump's first 100 days were the scariest he's experienced -- referring to tariffs and Doge (I think was his reasoning). 

Really?

 
Scarier than 9/11?

Scarier than Biden's bugout in Afghanistan?

Scarier than the enormous increase in medical costs and how we were lied to about Obamacare and Covid 19?

Scarier than 4 years of not knowing if the president could do anything more difficult than ordering his favorite ice cream?

 
Scarier than the U.S. being last place in first world countries in education despite 108% (inflation adjusted) increase in spending recently--despite we were first before the Dept. of Education was created?

 
Scarier than setting learning back 2 years for all the children in public schools and knowing they have to enter the work world and compete with China with that deficit?

 
Scarier than the huge violations of our rights during the Covid shutdown, including freedom of religion when churches were closed?

 
Scarier than mandatory vaccines and the growing increase in physical harm being revealed especially among the young?

Scarier than millions of illegals flooding our borders and at least 2 million getting social security cards so they can vote?

 
Scarier than Americans thinking USAID was about "aid" and not about agency for international development (aka foreign influence and control)?

Scarier than having Democrats create and use Lawfare to destroy the Republican candidate?

 
Scarier than knowing Democrats set Trump up for assassination because who else hated him that much and were terrified that he would uncover their crimes?

 
Scarier than what's been uncovered by Doge--payoffs to the media, grants frittering away American billions on foolish and dangerous political agendas harmful to our nation?

 
Scarier than a proxy war in Ukraine and a religious war in the Middle East?

Scarier than finding out how unfair the tariff system has been for at least 40 years and Donald Trump has been telling us that the whole time and no one listened?

Scarier than the ugly face of anti-Semitism that we see on Democrat controlled college campuses, especially the elite Ivy League 

Scarier than how the Democrat media yawned at the bombing of Jewish governor Josh Shapiro's home, but are excited about socialists AOC and Bernie fund raising? And how Democrats passed Josh Shapiro over for Tim Walz for vice president?

And I could go on, but that Christian writer needs to dig deeper. The only perfect guy with no faults rose from the dead.

Some policies of Trump I'm not enthusiastic about

There are some things in the Trump plan that I don't care for. I'd rather have Canada be a good neighbor than a sullen step-child always trying to run away. I'm not crazy about name changes--never understood why some of our bases were named for Confederate heroes, but the change back? Seems petty. But Department of Education? It's sort of a newcomer. Late Jimmy Carter idea. The main beneficiaries have been the office holders and those who received grants. (I think I may have had one.) "Crumbs," as Fancy Nancy called the money, was all that went to the children.

What's the future for Trump supporters now?

We attended a small gathering of shell shocked but jubilant voters last evening--pizza, wine, spice cake, and a lot of discussion about the future. I heard many fantastical but hopeful ideas--woke is dead, education department will disappear, border will be safe, the wars will wind down, Musk will be amazing, etc. etc. I'm happy Trump won, but he's just a man full of common sense and old fashioned American idealism. (This was called fascism by his opponents and set him up for assassination attempts.) He's not the return of Jesus.

And for all of us who were ridiculed or cancelled (in job, in family, in friendships or in church) for speaking the truth about the 2020 election, the vaccine or George Floyd, let's hope there can be the purifying effect of sunlight on those issues too. Have you seen the graph of the 20,000,000 Democrats who were in the 2020 data, but not in the 2016 or 2024? Did Biden really get more votes than Obama? When and if Trump gets some of the "cancelled" science professors--biology, medicine, virology, etc.--back on the job and in the CDC and FDA, let's hope we never again let "public health departments and politicians" take away our freedom of religion and right to speak or have opinions.

The new meme that even Don Jr. is espousing is that losing in 2020 was a good thing because he would have been continually harassed and blocked, and now he will have a much stronger team, more knowledge about who he can trust, the backing of his party (which has also been changed) and the Senate (and we hope the House) to get his appointments through to make substantive changes. Of course, he'll never have the media, academe or Hollywood, but that's not a bad thing as the new media is drawing millions away to new sources.

We'll see. Most of us won't be here for the next one, or will be too befuddled to care.

And I'm still a one-issue voter--still voting for the babies. Join me!

Do we need the federal Department of Education?

From time to time, I read that some conservatives want to dump the federal Department of Education because of the poor performance of our public schools. But before moving on that, one should take a look at the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of that department. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe? And "take a look" is the right phrase because it is a very confusing maze of tables, charts, graphs, essays, compilations, and mismatched years. The latest date of the report is 2023, which actually is for 2021, and various sections within the report contain the latest data for 2016.

I won't get into the weeds, but will note the report's priorities. The second item in the report after demographics (make up of families, race, enrollment) is crime. Not math or science or even attendance. The drop out rate is buried elsewhere--that's the one that uses 2016 data. Do we need drop out data that is 7 years old to hold schools accountable?

The crime rate is more up to date than drop out; it uses 2020-21 data, and the stats are a bit confusing because many students weren't on campus during the pandemic. That said, crime on school campuses had significantly dropped since 2000. So the definition changed by adding in cyber bullying and sexual assaults, moving the statistics back up. Also, school shootings statistics weren't too useful since it includes incidents AT school and AWAY from school. In the tiniest footnotes possible, I read that school shootings include all incidents that guns are brandished or fired on school property or a bullet hits school property for any reason, even if the number hit was zero. It can be any time of day or week or reason, even domestic violence or gangs. All the information on crime in schools in this federal report comes from a private database created by one private citizen, the K-12 School Shooting Database.
Also, the racialists are losing ground in this report. Hispanic (a term coined in 1980 by an HHS employee) enrollment is almost double that of Black in school enrollment, and yet because so many Hispanics are white by anyone's eyeball guess, the activists stirring up trouble about Jim Crow 2.0 will increasingly have to dig up micro-aggressions to vilify whiteness.

The report does include salary information: Annual base salary of full-time public school teachers (10 months) is $66,000--it's $69,000 in latest BLS statistics. Remember, that's base salary, for 10 months.

And one more thing. Abraham Lincoln had one year of public schooling yet became one of the most famous public speakers in the country, and then became the most famous, eloquent and successful president of all time.

Our taxes pay to glorify a cult--21 federal agencies

This is disgusting. I want my money back. 

• Are there no homeless on the streets? 
• Are there no 18 year olds aging out of foster care? 
• Are there no rivers to clean up? 
• Does Flint have clean water yet? 
• Are there no forests that need a controlled burn? 
• Are there no parks that need lights replaced? 
• Are there no potholes in DC that could be repaired? 
• Are there no pre-schools that need appropriate children's books? 
• Are there no babies to save from the abortionist cabal?

Surely our taxes can do better than paying to advertise a religious cult. Talk to any gay man or lesbian and you'll find out this is not about them, it's about transagenda.

Examples: Taxpayer Dollars Fund Federal Pride Month Celebrations (dailysignal.com)

 
"Department of Education: Rather than focus on increasing the overall math, science, or literary scores of American children, the Department of Education decided it was more important to create this pride post on Twitter: “Our message to LGBTQI+ students, teachers, and staff as we begin #PrideMonth: ED has got your back.”" ED also means erectile disfunction, something the children they are maiming will have as adults.

"The Smithsonian Museums: The taxpayer-funded museums offer a lineup of LGBTQ events for the month of June, including sexuality talks and “drag story hours” featuring “drag queens” reading books to children." Although called a "non-profit" (over 1.5 Billion income) this clump of many museums gets over half its funding from the government and enjoys all the special perks of government agencies, including obscene salaries for its executives.

"Veterans Affairs: Under the theme “We All Have a Seat at the Table,” the United States Department of Veterans Affairs is holding its third annual “virtual Pride Month.” This monthlong event features online seminars on topics that include “A Legal Guide to LGBTQ Couples,” “Healthcare and Fertility Preservation for Transgender Patients,” and “A Clinical Guide to Gender-Affirming Prosthetics,” to name a few. " Gender affirming Prosthetics? I guess that's fake breasts so veterans can prance around the White House with naked chests during Pride Month.

Joe Biden worsens the danger for children--Why do Democrats support him?

 " . . . when a school strives to create a “safe, welcoming, and inclusive” environment for transgender-identified students, it greatly increases the chance that children who might otherwise go through a temporary stage of identity exploration or confusion will reject their bodies in favor of a risky experimental medical protocol."

The School-to-Clinic Pipeline | City Journal (city-journal.org)

50 + Years of Upward Bound—Is it working?

Today I received an article about Upward Bound summer institute at Ohio State University, https://odi.osu.edu/upward-bound/ . Launched in 1965, Upward Bound (UB) is one of the flagship federal college access programs targeted to low-income or potential first-generation college students.  So it’s now 50+ years old. The article included several photographs, and I noticed there were no white students, even though whites outnumber blacks and Hispanics in the low-income and disadvantaged statistics, which the program is supposed to address.
Then I began the tedious search for outcomes—the program is part of the War On Poverty and is 50+ years old.  I found a lot of on-line help in applying for a grant if I were an educational institution (that’s where the money goes,over 4,450 per student).  I found an annual report for 2015-16 published in 2018, but that was all about the tutoring programs, counseling, help with applications—numbers of students—all looked like things I thought schools were already doing.
The FY 2017 budget from the federal government was $312,052,710, with 70,000 participants, at $4,458 per participant. https://www2.ed.gov/programs/trioupbound/funding.html 
Finally I found an assessment for the 2004-05 school year “POLICY AND PROGRAM STUDIES SERVICE, REPORT HIGHLIGHTS, The Impacts of Regular Upward Bound on Postsecondary Outcomes, 7-9 years after scheduled High School Graduation, final report. (2009)
Scanning that, I came to these depressing conclusions.
“For students offered the opportunity to participate in the Upward Bound program, the study found that:

• Upward Bound had no detectable effect on the rate of overall postsecondary enrollment, or the type or selectivity of postsecondary institution attended. About four-fifths of both treatment and control group members attended some type of postsecondary institution.
• Upward Bound had no detectable effect on the likelihood of apply for financial aid or receiving a Pell grant.
• Upward Bound increased the likelihood of earning a postsecondary certificate or license from a vocational school but had no detectable effect on the likelihood of earning a bachelor’s or associate’s degree. Estimated impacts on receiving any postsecondary credential and receiving a bachelor’s degree are 2 and 0 percentage points, respectively, and are not statistically significant.

Upward Bound increased postsecondary enrollment or completion rates for some subgroups of students. For the subgroup of students with lower educational expectations at baseline—that is, the students who did not expect to complete a bachelor’s degree—Upward Bound increased the rate of postsecondary enrollment by 6 percentage points and postsecondary completion by 12 percentage points. Because targeting on the basis of lower educational expectations could create an incentive for applicants to understate their expectations, further analyses were conducted to examine the effects of Upward

• Bound on subgroups that could be more readily targeted. These exploratory analyses suggest that UB increased enrollment for students who were in tenth grade or above at the time of application, students who took a mathematics course below algebra in ninth grade, and students with a ninth grade GPA above 2.5.
• Longer participation in Upward Bound was associated with higher rates of postsecondary enrollment and completion.”

It would be political suicide to ever cut this program even though there is no detectable effect on the billions spent.

Let's get rid of the Department of Education

Canada is a federation of 10 provinces and three territories. Under the Canadian Constitution, provincial governments have exclusive responsibility for all levels of education. They do not have a Department of Education sopping up tax dollars to feed a massive bureaucracy, and yet Canada's students score much higher in math, science and reading than U.S. students.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/

If the Department of Education were eliminated it would be a savings of $50 billion. It hasn't improved test scores and is the main reason for the high cost of college, with student loan debt now over $1 trillion, more than credit card debt of about $700 billion. (The Cato Institute)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXyJ9hpX0Vo

Betsy DeVos and The Department of Education

I didn't feel strongly about DeVos--except the teachers' unions were against her and that's a pretty good clue. The two Republicans who didn't support her are well funded by teachers' unions. I do wonder about the purpose of the Department of Education except to hand out grants to their favorites and fiddle around with reports no one ever reads or follows. Now, there's been an historic attempt to block the president's choices and an historic vote to break the tie. So far, in two weeks, Democrats have just made themselves look weak and whiny. Something to remember in the 2018 vote.  Teachers' unions have done an excellent job of keeping salaries/benefits high (ca. $58/hour according to BLS) and a poor job of releasing trapped poor kids from their district schools. No wonder they are against DeVos and for all Democrat politicians. Life long politicians need life long victims.

David Keck says (on Facebook): " The reason the NEA and AFT want the Department of Education in the first place has no connection to what is best for kids. What it does is provide a permanent ear and funding stream for their lobbyists in Washington for their own agenda. And the Common Core thing is just the example that it never stops with where they are when they get this department. It always gets bigger. The fact that so many districts and states kowtow to Common Core shows that they are not just "helping" or assuring rights for kids - they are imposing a national curriculum. Yes, I know it is voluntary. So is state highway money. See if you get it if you don't cooperate with the feds' latest crime of the month, e. g. seat belts, uniform speed limits, or whatever.

Don't forget that Reagan campaigned on getting rid of the DOE. He then hired Terrell Bell from Wyoming to run it, and he initiated the "A Nation At Risk" report. I had one of Bell's minions as a professor and he was quite proud of the fact that they snookered Reagan. He said so."

http://nypost.com/2017/02/05/the-war-on-betsy-devos-is-all-about-the-teachers-unions/#.

Common Core is dumbing down our children

Yes, Common Core is a problem, but it is also a symptom--points back to the creation of the federal Department of Education in the 1970s. Like Obamacare, if you'd ever been allowed to vote on this, it wouldn't have passed. Compared to Common Core, Obamacare is a model of transparency--it was at least talked about and debated. It was in 46 states before people even heard the term! Public schools are supposed to belong to the public. I've included some information from this excellent talk given at a church in California.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRr6nBEnz4

Summary: First, he stressed that families and religion are the enemies of teaching sexuality and Common Core and must they be silenced. He gave some examples from curriculum required in many schools and it definitely isn't age appropriate and is useful for nothing except warping the minds and propaganda.

Common Core is the brain child of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.  What are Bill Gates' credentials--he bought public education for $6 billion. What if it were the Koch Brothers? Would you hear about it in the media? There is no "benchmark" because the goals of Common Core have never been tested, and they are inappropriate in the lower grades. What are Department of Education Arne Duncun's qualifications? He's a sociologist not an educator, but Obama put him in charge of education. Medical clinics are being made part of the school system--can gather data on your children without your permission. Provide birth control and referrals for abortion with no input from parents.

Our Constitution's 10th amendment prohibits the federal government from meddling in state education. ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.") The Federal government pressured governors to accept Common Core or no grant money. But states have to pay all the costs and the costs swamp the piddling amount received.

The most dangerous lie in Common Core is that your teachers are free to teach. Gates claims you have to align tests to (his) standards. Gates did a great job with Microsoft--why are we letting him control our country's education system? ARRA money went to create Common Core tests--but no curriculum had yet been created. How's that for teaching to the test? David Colman who is the architect of Common Core, now controls College Board (SAT--the exams your kids need to get into college) and he has no credentials in education, has never taught, hasn't written scholarly articles. Even he claims he has no authority, not just other people--watch the fascinating introduction in the film. No one appointed him either, nor was he elected and he controls our entire education system.

"Common" in Common Core means drag everyone down to the lowest level; it's not fair that some kids are good in math and others aren't, so we offer lowest level possible not acceptable at any college with selective standards. The year before becoming president Barack Obama knew the truth about education, then he flipped when getting in office.  Be sure to watch the interviews of the people who grade the tests who earn $9/hr, an essay every 5 minutes.  They were recruited on Craig's List, no experience in education necessary. (Compensation is now up to $11/hr--I just googled it.) Ted Kennedy wrote the "No Child Left Behind" legislation, not George. W. Bush; then the worst of it was remodeled by Common Core which made it bigger and worse.

Arne Duncan was stunned that Republicans supported ESSA, “Every Student Succeeds Act”. It's a real mess.  Hillary supports Common Core--government control of your children, 24/7. Education is not a family issue, according to her. Now it's a federal village, not just any old village where you know your neighbor and her children and values.

There's no safe place for your children in public schools--88% of the parents agree, but only 19% think their child's school is broken. Home schooling may be the only way to avoid this. If even 10% of moms and dads demanded better, this would turn around.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

"Because of the way education policy is generally decided, the Common Core was instituted in many states without a single vote taken by an elected lawmaker. Kentucky even adopted the standards before the final draft had been made public." Washington Post

"Indiana Gov. Mike Pence . . . led a repeal of the standards in his state. In the past week, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), a former advocate of the standards, signed a law pulling her state out, days after South Carolina’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, did the same." Washington Post

http://thenotebook.org/articles/2013/05/24/a-major-motive-behind-common-core-is-profit-not-education

Not even Communists and liberals like Common Core. http://www.workers.org/2014/06/17/profit-tech-corporations-gain-common-core-testing/#.V6nRQuRTFPw

Star Parker: Time to shut down the Department of Education

Not only is it one of the largest banks in the U.S. creating the next bubble (student loans), but it is also destroying our values.

Nothing could provide a better example (of misplaced power in DC) than the newly issued guidance letter that the Department of Education, jointly with the Justice Department, just sent to public school districts across the country, threatening to cut of federal funds if public schools do not comply with guidelines for treatment of so-called transgender students.

The first paragraph of the directive provides a toll-free phone number to call if you don't know the English language well enough to read the letter and then serves up this same paragraph in six different languages. Our own Department of Education is apparently of the view that familiarity with the English language is not among the responsibilities of American citizens.

The guidance letter lists requirements with which public schools must comply to demonstrate that they do not violate the alleged civil rights of transgender students.

Among these requirements are assurances that transgender students be allowed access to restrooms and locker rooms "consistent with their gender identity."

"Gender identity," according to the letter, "refers to an individual's internal sense of gender. A person's gender identity may be different from or the same as the person's sex assigned at birth."

According to a new Cato Institute report, Department of Education spending on K-12 education now stands at $40.2 billion, ten times greater in inflation-adjusted dollars than the $4.5 billion where it stood just prior to the creation of the education department. Over this period, despite the prodigious federal spending, test scores in reading and math have hardly changed. Adding in spending from federal departments other than the Department of Education on K-12 education, the total stands at over $80 billion.

 http://www.urbancure.org/mbarticle.asp?id=787&t=Time-to-shut-down-the-Department-of-Education

Government profits $51 billion from student loans

Story at Huffington Post, May 14, 2013

“The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation's most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.

Figures made public Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office show that the nonpartisan agency increased its 2013 fiscal year profit forecast for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion from its February estimate of $35.5 billion.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the nation's most profitable company, reported $44.9 billion in net income last year. Apple Inc. recorded a $41.7 billion profit in its 2012 fiscal year, which ended in September, while Chevron Corp. reported $26.2 billion in earnings last year. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo reported a combined $51.9 billion in profit last year.”

Step by step

“The U.S. Department of Education began operating on May 4, 1980, and things started to change. People’s patriotic behavior and protectiveness of their culture, of their language, of the capitalist system in general that made them the most prosperous nation on earth, began to erode more and more overtly. Among the culprits were teachers who advanced personal socialist agendas to impressionable youth who believed every word they said. “

http://usactionnews.com/2013/04/common-core-and-cscope-propaganda-in-education/

A lot of things happened in the 70s and 80s and education of children is just one component.  CSCOPE and Common Core need to be looked at very carefully in every community.  Expanding the role of the federal government into compulsory, tax-supported pre-schools needs to be stopped.

NCLB and RTTT—a comparison

Confused about how the Department of Education spreads around your tax dollar? Here's a comparison of No Child Left Behind (Bush, 2001, regular budget funding, Title I) and Race to the Top (Obama, 2009, ARRA money through grants, on top of NCLB). Bush's is a mandate; Obama's is more money for improvement—competition. Sort of a flip flop of how the right and left say they do things.

Until Obama came on the scene, Bush was the biggest all time spender on social programs; but that didn't get him any points with Democrats.

http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/rpt/2010-R-0235.htm

Jodi and Susi plan for retirement

Note: The story of Jodi and Susi is fiction--at least the main characters. The amounts and the disparities in the pensions are true. This is why I’m voting for Issue 2 in Ohio.

Jodi and Susi are both 55 and were roommates at a Christian college. After graduation Jodi went on for an MBA right away, but Susi took a teaching position in a poor community because she could get assistance paying her college loans from the government. Later she got an M.S. with assistance from the school district where she settled. Jodi spent years paying off her school loans; Susie invested her windfalls from the federal and local governments.

Both women today make $90,000 a year, Jodi as a manager of several Wendy’s restaurants working about 60 hours a week, 12 months a year, and Susi as an assistant principal working about 40 hours a week, 10 months a year. Susi goes interesting places in the summer to teach teachers in 6 week workshops, does a little touring on the side, and invests her additional summer salary, looking ahead to when she can retire with 35 years next year at 56 in the state teacher‘s system. Jodi would like to travel, but keeps it modest because she needs to invest in her 401-k and private savings, looking ahead to when she can retire at age 67 or later.

Next year Susi will begin drawing her $70,000 pension and will begin substituting in different districts, selecting carefully only those jobs she truly loves--like working with low-income children slipping through the cracks of all the regulations imposed by the U.S. Department of Education and the State Board of Education, and the local board. There are days when she's reduced to tears by the burden of what is expected of her. The school districts will benefit because they won’t need to pay her as much as a regular teacher who will need union negotiated benefits, plus she’s an outstanding teacher with experience and will do a better job than a beginner.

Jodi has another 12 years to work and pay into Social Security, to which she began contributing at age 16. When she retires, her “government” pension will be $28,150 (this figure will be larger in 2023, but that’s what it would be today). She has paid much more into FICA than Susi has paid into STRS because restaurant managers don’t have a powerful union. Technically she’s Susi’s employer so she’s also been contributing to Susi’s pension. She has also worked longer days, and more days per year than Susi. She too is reduced to tears some days as she has to do basic remediation for some of her employees who attended schools where Susi taught because they are unprepared for the work world.

Susi, by the way, never actually joined the teacher’s union, but she had to pay dues anyway if she wanted to teach in a public system in Ohio. Like the majority of teachers in the United States, she votes Republican and doesn’t like it that the unions contribute primarily to Democratic candidates and causes. She’s also pro-life, and is really bothered that teachers unions contribute heavily to candidates and organizations that support abortion, and especially to Barack Obama, who is very pro-abortion and pro-embryonic stem cell research. She contributes to pro-life organizations, but not as much as she surrenders to the union.

In any case, next year at 56 she has great plans to enjoy her retirement with her pension and her private investments. Meanwhile, Jodi puts a smile on her face, her lunch in her briefcase, and heads for the free-way.

Putting a stop to my student loan calls

Lately, we've been getting robo calls about student loans. We don't have any, of course. Neither one of us ever borrowed money from the federal government to attend college. In fact, the Department of Education didn't exist when we were in college--it's a boondoggle of a more recent era--Carter, I believe.

So I looked them up, but didn't find a way to send an e-mail without providing all sorts of personal information. These days you don't even know if a website is for real and might be stealing your information. So I phoned instead, and the first thing when I got through press one for English, and thank you for waiting all lines are busy now, was a request for my social security number and zip code, which I provided. Then the nice young lady told me I wasn't in her database. So I told her that was why I was calling. When I gave her my husband's name, she said it was him and not me they were trying to reach. I told her he was 73 and also had never had a college loan (have you noticed how college costs have increased with the availability of loans?)

So she assured me the calls would stop. I think there's an angry, stood up first wife trying to find this same guy who's delinquent on his student loan.

Secretary. of Education Urged Employees to Attend Sharpton Rally

Michelle Malkin wonders of the Department of Education employees were sent to check on the spelling of banners. A purple SEIU banner spelled American, as AMERCAN.

Even if it wasn't illegal, it was quite inappropriate for Arne Duncan to suggest in an e-mail memo that Dept. of Ed. employees spend their day off filling the seats at Sharpton's poorly attended rally which was very political and was organized hastily to counteract Glenn Beck's. Beck's event numbered about 500,000 and had a lot of racial and religious diversity. Sharpton's was . . . just Al . . . spouting off like he always does. The excitement, good preaching, and songs were over at the mall.

According to the WSJ, the Restoring Honor rally attendees left the mall cleaner than when they got there. Quite a change from the 2009 inauguration, if you remember the disgraceful piles of trash left behind by excited Obama supporters.

Michelle Malkin » Sec. of Education Urged Employees to Attend Sharpton Rally, Unfortunately Not to Spell Check Signs