To understand why Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating, all you need to do is look at this analysis done by The Gainesville Tea Party.

Even liberals should be able to figure this one out. Especially the last line that shows how serious Washington is about restoring fiscal sanity and our economic health.

Why S&P Downgraded the US:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000

Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700

Money the family spent: $38,200

New debt on the credit card: $16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

Total budget cuts: $385

Set that aside for now so you can concentrate on how Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt is sending 19 American NGO (non governmental organization) workers to trial for ‘crimes’ like promoting democracy and human rights and for receiving funds to support them and their mission.

The Muslim Brotherhood used the NGO’s to help overthrow former President Hosni Mubarak. The ‘democracy’ that got rid of Mubarak is no longer needed. Now, they are holding 43 of them prisoner and moving to the oppressive Sharia law.

One of the Americans held captive is Sam LaHood, the son of Secretary of  Transportation Ray LaHood. Sam LaHood is the head of the Egypt office of the Washington-based International Republican Institute.

I don’t attribute any of that as, like Joe Biden had warned, that President Obama will be tested on the international stage. This is a result of a combination of his inexperience, naivety, and his pre-occupation with transforming the United States into some form of government-controlled society where the federal government makes all decisions for you.

Three years ago, then Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said . . .

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.

And they have not stopped.

Makes one wonder if Biden made that statement because he knew what would follow when the top of the ticket is clueless on any subject besides ‘social justice.’

Link: Egypt sends American workers to trial

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission with the mission of overseeing the observance of the MLK holiday was created in the bill signed by Reagan.

In May 1989, Coretta Scott King was made a member of the commission for life by Republican President George H. W. Bush.

Democrats today are trying to usurp Dr. King’s legacy, when it was the Democrats who Dr. King was fighting. See the below article for details.

* * * * * * * *

Democrats Smeared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960′s

By Frances Rice

Character assassination. That’s the tactic used by Democrats in the 1960′s to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican who was fighting the Democrats and trying to stop them from denying civil rights to blacks.

The relentless disparagement of Dr. King by Democrats led to his being physically assaulted and ultimately to his tragic death. In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Prior to his death, Democrats bombed Dr. King’s home several times. The scurrilous efforts by the Democrats to harm Dr. King included spreading rumors that he was a Communist and accusing him of being a womanizer and a plagiarist.

An egregious act against Dr. King occurred on October 10, 1963. With the approval of Democrat President John F. Kennedy, Democrat Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy – President Kennedy’s brother – authorized the wiretapping of Dr. King’s telephone by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Wiretaps were placed by the FBI on the telephones in Dr. King’s home and office. The FBI also bugged Dr. King’s hotel rooms when he traveled around the country.

The trigger for this unsavory wiretapping was apparently Dr. Kings’ criticism of the Kennedy Administration, according to the author David Garrow in his book, “Bearing the Cross”. The justification given by the Kennedy Administration publicly was that two of Dr. King’s associates, including David Levinson, had ended their association with the Communist Party in order to work undercover and influence Dr. King. However, after years of continuous and extensive wiretapping, the FBI found no direct links of Dr. King to the Communist Party.

The unrelenting efforts by Democrats to tarnish Dr. King’s reputation continued for years after his death. To his credit, Republican President Ronald Reagan ignored the Democrats’ smear campaign and made Dr. King’s Birthday a holiday.

Today, while professing to revere Dr. King, Democrats are still trying to tarnish his image by making remarks that diminish his civil rights achievements and continuing to claim that Dr. King embraced Communism – a system that is secularist and socialist.

In reality, Dr. King was a Christian who held deeply religious beliefs and was guided by his faith and his Republican Party principles in his struggle to gain equality for blacks. He did not embrace the type of socialist, secularist agenda that is promoted by the Democrat Party today, which includes fostering dependency on welfare that breaks up families, supporting same-sex marriage and banning God from the public square.

An understanding of who the real Dr. King was can be gained from a glimpse of Dr. King as a young man who participated in an oratorical contest when he was 14 years old. The title of his speech was “The Negro and the Constitution” which had the following sentences: “We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance…We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule….”

If Dr. King were still alive, he would be slandered by Democrats in the same way that they smeared him in the 1960′s and demean all black Republicans today.

Bio: Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She can be contacted at: www.NBRA.info/

The stimulus bill turned out to be a slush fund to award green energy grants to big campaign contributors and to buttress under-funded labor union pension and benefit plans in the states. And the green technology jobs went to China. Feeling stimulated yet?

It also marks the third anniversary of the death of the ‘media watchdog.’

Instead, this is what we get from The White House . . .

Iran’s latest warning “reflects the fact that Iran is in a position of weakness,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, adding that Tehran’s threats suggest “a measure of the impact that the sanctions have been having on Iran.”

It was the media, coupled with Obama’s own audacity, that made President Obama. Set him up to be the messiah. The One who would turn radical Islamists into friends and neighbors, change the climate and lower the sea level. So where are they now?

If there were a diagnostic list for the symptoms of a regime gone rogue, Iran would tick off every box. Taking hostages? Check. Sponsoring terrorism? Check. Covertly pursuing nuclear weapons? Check. Under international sanctions? Check. Repressing its own people? Check. Threatening to close the world’s oil highway, the Strait of Hormuz, in international waters? Check.

And where is our President on this? He is not found in the Oval Office, addressing the American people on Iran’s threats. He’s on the back nine. Obama’s absence on this topic shows Iran Obama’s weakness. It’s a real knee-slapper for Iran. And for Obama, it’s like ‘voting present.’

How’s that ‘improving our image” around the world and in Islamic countries working out?

via Exxon Mobil: $908 M awarded in Venezuela dispute – Yahoo! Finance.

String Bands Division, Woodland . . . 94.4

Fancy Brigade Division, Downtowners. . . 174

Fancy Costume Division, Hog Island . . . 1603

King Clown, Polynesian Volcano Dancer (Hog Island). . . 75

Juveniles, Struttin Ms Daisy (Hog Island). . . 30

Comic Division, Murray . . . 8760

Brigade, Two Street Stompers (Goodtimers) . . . 200

Most Original Character, Occupy 2nd Street Those Dirty Dancing Mummers (Landi). . . 200

Most Original Costume, Mummers’ Dance Studio (Murray) . . . 200

Wenches, Mardi Gras (O’Malley). . . 125

The total list of 2o12 Mummers Results and the 2012 Mummers Videos of all the bands and brigades.

And the good news is . . . ‘Hollywood’ reports that movie revenues hit a 16-year low.

The result: projected domestic revenues for the year of $10.15 billion, down 4 percent from 2010′s, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Taking higher ticket prices into account, movie attendance is off even more, with an estimated 1.275 billion tickets sold, a 4.8 percent decline and the smallest movie audience since 1995, when admissions totaled 1.26 billion.

So why is that good news? It’s ‘Hollywood,’ that’s why.

Adam Carolla explains the OWS crowd’s self-entitlement mentality.

‘Too big to fail’ is one thing. Try this, ‘Too big to save.’

The teachable moment here is, unless we turn this ship around, you’re looking at our future by looking at the economic situation in Europe today. Good too for the Brits continued refusal to adopt the ‘solution’ the European Union has in mind. It’s best not to board a ship while it is sinking. Besides, they have their own problems.

And like last year, after the parade, all the band videos will be captured into video clips and be available for viewing anytime.

Link: PHL-17 video link