http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-all/visualize-data-to-win-pol_b_480493.html

by David All in the Huffington Post

Countless federal and local policies, especially the health care legislation, are being proposed and debated in Washington and across the country on an almost daily basis. Power players in these debates — including Members of Congress, think-tanks and other organizations that have a stake in the legislation being debated — must rely heavily on facts and figure to provide support for their stance on a piece of legislation. Ultimately, using these numbers serves to convince the American public of the stance being taken by the organization or individual.

While citing statistics — like the anticipated cost of a bill or how it would impact an individual’s federal income tax — in a message adds credibility to an argument, it is often difficult for members of the public to fully grasp the meaning of these numbers because of a lack of context or background information. And, unless an individual is already adequately knowledgeable on a certain issue, referring to numbers can do more harm than good by adding even more confusion to already heavily academic subject.

The key to disseminating facts and figures that are vital to building support for an argument is through data visualization. Graphs and other types of charts can be very effective because, if they are done properly, they allow people to visualize the data being cited which makes the information presented more real and understandable.

But it’s not enough to just produce the data visualization. There needs to be a coordinated, multi-channel distribution approach that focuses on persuading the audience to not only side with the position being promoted, but also to spread the information to their networks. This is the most effective way to use data visualization to have a real and effective impact on the debate at hand.

This type of approach was recently exemplified by Organizing for America’s (OFA) in its efforts to build up support for President Obama around the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus.

While Republicans in Congress and conservatives across the country pointed to the nearly 10 percent national unemployment rate as proof that the stimulus had failed to create jobs and stimulate the economy, OFA — an arm of the Democratic National Committee — launched a coordinated campaign to persuade Americans that President Obama’s administration had put the country back on a “Road to Recovery.”

The first – and main – aspect of OFA’s efforts was a chart showing U.S. job loss statistics between December 2007 and January 2010. This allowed people to compare the number of jobs lost during President Obama’s first year in office with the number of job lost during President Bush’s last year in office.

Instead of spreading the chart as a PDF that a user would have to download to view, the chart was placedon a landing page on My.BarackObama.com. The page featured share buttons which enabled individuals to spread the chart through their networks on Facebook and Twitter and with their contacts via email with the click of a button.

Organizing for America also launched a web video which really took advantage of the easy-to-comprehend chart and explained the meaning of the numbers in a more engaging and compelling way.

The video convincingly portrayed the nation’s economic situation under President Obama as much improved compared to the economic situation under President Bush. The ultimate point of the video was to convince the American public that small businesses and the unemployed are now receiving help from the government — because of the stimulus package. This, in turn, was successful in stopping even more Americans from losing jobs — in other words, it “saved” these jobs. If the chart itself didn’t do enough to make the case for OFA, the video certainly helped to convince more people of the stance being presented.

Republicans have also taken advantage of the power of strong data visualization to get a point across. One of the best examples is the House GOP’s Health Care Maze. This graphic illustrated the bureaucratic complexity inherent in the House Democrats’ proposed health care legislation. While this chart effectively portrayed the message that the House Democrat’s health care plan would create a confusing bureaucratic nightmare for America, Organizing for America’s multi-channel execution and deployment of its one-year stimulus anniversary chart took the campaign to the next level. Not only did it succeed in spreading the information in multiple channels, it also succeeded in engaging its supporters to help spread the content even further and show strong support for President Obama.

Any organization — whether it is political in nature or not — that seeks to convince the public to take a certain stance on a piece of pending legislation can benefit from strong data visualization. But it’s not enough to merely produce a chart — there needs to be a strategic, dedicated, multi-channel approach to spread the information and engage individuals in the debate.

David All is President of the David All Group and the founder of act.ivi.st, a platform for activism built on Facebook Connect. Indeed, he’s on Twitter — follow him.

The ‘left’ is so screwed up…they are up in arms over this?!?

So much for “hope & change”.

Great Vidoe, Powerful Message – Turn it Up!!!

America Rising – “We gave you power…we voted for hope”

Click on the link below…turn up your speakers…and share this with your friends.

America_will_rise_again

Please share the clip above.

Conservatives Need to Rally Behind Sue Lowden [Saul Anuzis]

Conservatives have a number of opportunities for victories in 2010, but none is more important than the chance to defeat Senate majority leader Harry Reid. We must rally behind the right candidate to ensure that we not only defeat Reid but also gain a solid conservative senator. That candidate is Sue Lowden.

I have known Sue and her family for years. I know that she has the fortitude to take on Reid and withstand the onslaught that he and his allies will unleash against her. More importantly, I know that she has strong conservative principles rooted in her personal faith and her belief in free-market ideals. (Sue recently spoke with a group of Nevada tea-party activists.) She is a proven leader with a track record of success, who has earned every opportunity she has had. Many don’t realize that Sue is the daughter of a former coal miner. She and her husband both come from humble backgrounds but have succeeded in business through smart decisions and hard work, not through government handouts or their family name.

In 1992, Lowden won election to the Nevada state senate by defeating the incumbent senate majority leader. Her victory ended Democrats’ control of the chamber, and Sue’s colleagues immediately elected her senate majority whip.

Because of her strong fiscal-conservative principles, Lowden later served as chair of the taxation committee. When pro-tax legislators tried to push through higher taxes, she blocked their efforts. Her panel became known as the “no-taxation” committee. Lowden fought against higher taxes in the state senate, and she will fight against higher taxes in the U.S. Senate.

Today, labor bosses continue their efforts to kill a union member’s right to cast his vote privately without the bosses looking over his shoulder. Will we have a conservative U.S. senator with the fortitude to stand up to them? As a state senator, Lowden cast the deciding vote in the Nevada state senate to protect Nevada’s right-to-work status. She has had unions picket her home and businesses, but she has withstood their onslaught. Lowden will stand with conservatives against union bosses in the U.S. Senate.

On issue after issue, we know where Sue Lowden stands because she has been elected to office and championed conservative principles. She earned the endorsement of the NRA in her race for state senate. She is one of the original architects of Nevada’s charter-school law. As a pro-life advocate, she fought for parental-notification laws. Through her personal family experiences and decades of work with children with muscular dystrophy and Jerry’s Kids, I know Lowden values life. I know she will be a pro-life U.S. senator.

Lowden proudly signed the Americans for Tax Reform Pledge the week she announced her Senate campaign. She has pledged to join Senate conservatives to fight for earmark reform and tax and spending cuts. She is staunchly opposed to taxpayer funding of abortion. Lowden has stated that she would not have voted for President Bush’s TARP bill and is a strong opponent of the “stimulus” bill passed earlier this year. She was the first candidate running against Harry Reid to sign the Club for Growth’s pledge, and she has also signed the Americans for Prosperity anti–climate  tax pledge.

Some conservatives have chosen to support Danny Tarkanian for the Nevada GOP Senate nomination. I say to my friends that they are mistaken in their support for the son of the former UNLV basketball coach. Tarkanian has used his campaign to falsely attack Lowden and try to trick us into believing that she isn’t conservative enough. If Sue Lowden isn’t conservative enough to be a leader in the conservative movement, than neither was Ronald Reagan.

As I’ve listened to Tarkanian ignore the facts and twist Sue’s words, I’ve been reminded of Reagan, who once spoke of what he called “the 11th Commandment”: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican. Reagan’s words highlight the contrast between Tarkanian’s rhetoric and Lowden’s conservative principles. It’s clear which candidate is best equipped to represent Reagan’s conservative movement.

I know that Sue Lowden is the proven conservative we can and should rally behind. Others do too. In the last quarter of 2009, Lowden raised more than twice as muchmoney as Tarkanian. In fact, she raised more money in her first quarter in the race than he raised in the past two quarters combined. We all know that it will take significant resources to defeat Harry Reid — and defeating him with a legitimate, tested conservative is our ultimate goal.

Reid is hoping that Tarkanian wins the Republican primary. While Lowden knows what it takes to be successful, Tarkanian has been on the ballot in two of the last three election cycles and failed to win both times. In his last campaign, he earned the endorsement of Sarah Brady and the Brady Campaign because of his liberal positions on the Second Amendment. Instead of taking responsibility for his stance on gun rights, Tarkanian claims it wasn’t his fault.

This is a critical moment when we must have the good judgment to stand behind the right conservative candidates who can win in November. There is a great uprising coming from the American people. We are ready to work and ready to earn real change, not only in government but also in the direction our economy and our country are headed. There is no better leader to join us in this effort than Sue Lowden — the right candidate to defeat Harry Reid.

— Saul Anuzis has been a conservative activist for much of his adult life, including serving in leadership positions in the fight against card-check legislation at American Solutions. He is former chairman of the Michigan Republican party.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmZkYmMxYTA5Y2IxODk1OTc4YTZhYmJlMTcyMzdhYTg=

FEBRUARY 5, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Michigan’s Blueprint for America

Behold the cratering of an economy, courtesy of one governor’s Obamaesque policies,

Detroit — Most Americans are just getting warmed up to the idea of a self-centered chief executive who has divined America’s future as a green economy and is brashly installing the industrial-policy tools to get us there. But we here in Michigan have been living it since Gov. Jennifer Granholm took office in 2003.

On Wednesday night, the flashy second-term governor celebrated the “change” she’s brought to Michigan in her final State of the State address. Read it and weep.

Granholm entered office on the tired heels of a three-term Republican with a wave of good tidings as the state’s first female governor. Beautiful, silver-tongued, and Harvard Law–educated, Granholm was a young pol with little executive seasoning. Supremely self-confident despite her inexperience, Granholm raised income taxes (as the state’s economy literally and figuratively headed south), “invested” billions of stimulus dollars in infrastructure that she predicted would create tens of thousands of jobs, mandated renewable-power standards, and backed them up with millions in government subsidies to transform Michigan from “the Rust Belt to the Green Belt.” In her 2006 State of the State address, she promised that “in five years, you’ll be blown away.”

Four years in and it’s blowing hard, all right. Michigan’s unemployment rate has more than doubled, to over 14 percent. Yes, the state’s per capita income drop from 20th in the nation to 40th has tracked a historic restructuring of the state’s auto industry, but Granholm’s Obamaesque policy prescriptions have been anti-growth while fueling budget deficits to record highs.

In her speech Wednesday, the governor declared herself a visionary. “The contours of the new Michigan economy are . . . taking shape in communities across our state,” she said before a legislature that her partisan tactics have hopelessly divided. The government shut down in 2007 and came to the brink again in 2009.

Granholm dismisses the thought that Michigan might be responsible for its own plight through onerous taxation or stubborn unions. She sees Michigan as a victim — of trade policies and greedy corporations taking jobs to Mexico — and her government as its savior. Government, she emphasized, is the mother of job creation. Not once (as has been her seven-year pattern) did she propose a fundamental fix to Michigan’s antiquated tax laws, union culture, or government programs. Instead, she focused on all the jobs she — me, me, me — had brought to the state:

A new electronics plant (that “my nine overseas jobs missions have brought” because “I was able to close the deal”) in Battle Creek, bought with government incentives.

A solar manufacturing facility in Saginaw, the result of a federal Department of Energy loan.

Homeland Security jobs and defense-contractor pork, funded by Uncle Sugar.

Wind-turbine production by Dowding Machining in Easton Rapids, bought with $7 million in federal stimulus funding.

And so on.

Granholm has presided over the cratering of a state economy. Michigan has led the nation in unemployment for 46 straight months.

She claims that she has “laid the foundation for Michigan’s new economy, steadily building each of six new sectors.” But God help you if you are not on the governor’s select list of favorites; the rest of the job-creating community has had to shoulder a new surcharge on top of the already onerous Michigan Business Tax. Her 2007 tax surcharge, according to the West Michigan Chamber Coalition, hiked taxes for 60 percent of Michigan businesses (most of them small companies), with tax bills doubling for 10 percent of them.

“Our legislators are busy voting on tax credits to a myriad of targeted industries, hoping that one of these ‘new-economy’ firms will save our state from collapse,” protests Bill Jackson of the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce. “Isn’t it time government puts an end to picking winners and losers and gives every Michigan job provider a ‘tax credit’?”

Her 2007 budget also increased the income-tax burden by 17 percent. Yet she has resisted reforming the public-employee pensions and health benefits that are bankrupting that state government and that are among the most generous in the country.

To massage her party pals, Granholm will punish even her favored sectors. Biotech is on her list, yet her budget seeks to repeal the state’s immunity from civil lawsuits for drug companies whose products are approved by the FDA. The law, passed in 1996, was specifically intended to give Michigan a comparative advantage and attract high-tech pharmaceutical jobs. This is precisely the kind of economic diversification Granholm claims she supports — yet she throws it overboard as a direct sop to Democrat-friendly trial lawyers.

In the new Michigan, perpetual public stimulus in the form of government-directed industrial policy means non-stop headlines for the chief executive as she picks winners and losers for “new jobs.” Redirecting commerce through the capital, the governor’s power profile grows even as the broader business climate chokes.

Welcome to Obama’s vision, America. Welcome to Governor Granholm’s Michigan.

— Henry Payne is an editorial writer and cartoonist with the Detroit News.

http://article.nationalreview.com/424065/michigans-blueprint-for-america/henry-payne

American Exceptionalism vs Obama’s New World Order
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 JFK’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in  France in the early 60’s when deGaulle decided to pull out of NATO.  deGaulle said he wanted all  US military out of  France  as soon as possible.
 
Rusk responded “does that include those who are buried here?
 
deGaulle did not respond.

 You could have heard a pin drop

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When in  England , at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of  Canterbury if our plans for  Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying, ‘Over the years, the  United States  has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders..  The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.’

You could have heard a pin drop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
There was a conference in  France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American.  During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying ‘Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an  aircraft  carrier  to  Indonesia to help the tsunami victims.  What does he intended to do, bomb them?’

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: ‘Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.  We have eleven such ships; how many does  France  have?’
 
You could have heard a pin drop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A  U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the  U.S. , English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, ‘Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?’
 
Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, ‘Maybe it’s because the Brit’s, Canadians, Aussie’s and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.’

 You could have heard a pin drop.

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AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE…

 
Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in  Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.
 
“You have been to  France before, monsieur?” the customs officer asked sarcastically.
 
Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to  France previously.
 
“Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.”
 
The American said, ‘The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.”
 
“Impossible. Americans always have to show passports on arrival in  France !”

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard  look. Then he quietly explained, ”Well, when I came ashore at  Omaha Beach  on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

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