7/24/2009

Taking Health For Granted


"Remember, we never miss the water till the well runs dry. Is it not too often true that we do not value health till we lose it? When we are full of vigor and vim and strength we rarely give a thought to safeguarding our vitality. We are so busy with so many things that we leave our health to take care of itself. How many men ruin themselves physically, striving too strenuously to enrich themselves financially? The country is strewn with men, once powerful giants mentally and bodily, who have become physical, nervous wrecks, victims of overwork and worry."

Forbes magazine
March 29, 1924


7/19/2009

Notes From The 7/18/09 New Richmond Tea Party


Big day in New Richmond yesterday, the second Tea Party of the year hit town. With a crowd around 175, it was a pretty good turn out. Obviously, there were no gun shows over at the Minnesota State Fair grounds, otherwise there would have been around 20 people.

Billed as a "non-partisan" event, it was obvious 20 seconds into the first speaker's rant that it would be two hours of bashing all things Democrat as the Tea Partiers waited for Ronald Reagan to come down from Heaven an right the ship. In two hours, George W. Bush's name was not mentioned once. Reagan was mentioned frequently. Any Democrat at the state or national level was trashed repeatedly. Evidently, there wasn't enough time to blame any Republicans.

Stan the Hudson Tea Party organizin' man was there with a $10 cigar protruding from his lips like a turd that wouldn't drop into the toilet bowl. Belted to his side was his trusty, loaded pistol. Evidently he doesn't get out of Hudson enough to know that New Richmond is a pretty safe town. Of course, there are many brown-skinned people living and working in the area at the canning factory and dairy farms. You never know when you might spot an illegal alien and have to drive him back over the Mexican border. Just don't shoot them till they get over the border. Otherwise, they will go to the emergency room and get free medical treatment on the American taxpayers' dime.

Jim the union guy from Somerset stood by me telling me how everything is Obama's fault. In just six months, Obama has run this country into the ground. He asked me if I knew where to get a Palin-Jindahl bumper sticker. He saw one a car...

Most of the speakers were union bashing and I kept pointing this out to Jim the union guy from Somerset. He kept pointing out to me that it's the union leadership that's the problem not the rank and file. He said most of the union guys he knows listen to Rush Limbaugh and wouldn't be caught dead listening to public radio. He did mention that he wished the speakers would toned the anti-union talk down.


Both Jim the union guy and Stan the gun-totting, Hudson Tea Party organizin' man tried to give me postcards (shown below). Stan said you're suppose to mail these to Obama on his birthday, because he has a fake birth certificate and was really born in Africa and not Hawaii. Union Jim basically told me the same thing. Jim look puzzled when I asked if he had any fruitcake receipts...

Joey the Pheisty blogger from up Amery way told the crowd her story about being a single mother and choosing to live in poverty rather than take government handouts. Being the naive-innocent-until-proven-guilty guy that I am, I'll take her word on it. However, my experience with these Tony-Robbins-wannabe motivational speakers like Joey is that their stories contain a lot of self-inflated folklore that doesn't pass the smell test.

Joey did a little gay bashing and made a point of asking the crowd if any one was getting uncomfortable with her honesty. She urged the crowd to lite the grassroots fires for the Tea Party by striking up conversations with the clerks at the convenience stores -- after all, cigarettes, beer and gas are the three most highly regulated substances on Earth. She mentioned totalitarianism and the pending Wisconsin smoking ban in the same sentence and the crowd applauded wildly. Union Jim said "that smoking ban is going to cause a revolution."

District 29 Assembly Representative John Murtha, R-Baldwin, got up and told us how the Democrats were going to tax us into bankruptcy. He said his number one priority in the Assembly is to defend the taxpayers.

Murtha didn't mention that he paid no Wisconsin income taxes in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Below is a picture of Murtha at his desk at the state capitol. Seeing how clean his desk is, he is either all caught up with his work or he doesn't have anything to do. Maybe you should e-mail him and ask what his secret for getting out of paying state taxes.

Murtha actually looks like he might have to take a pee or he's really hungover or both...


Wrapping up the blame-it-on-the-Democrats, non-partisan Tea Party was Pastor David King of Milwaukee. This guy is good! He doesn't just watch FOX News, he has appeared on it. King tried to whip up the crowd of Christian soldiers in the crowd by telling them the President Obama said "we are a Muslin nation." Boos echoed back. King told the crowd that Christians need to stand up and fight to get their Christian country back. GET THIS - he said we have to "be more like the Christians in the Old Testament." I think the Jews were in the Old Testament. Actually, there weren't any Christians in the New Testament either...they too were Jews.

In defense of King, he may have heard the "Muslin nation" quote listening to FOX News. In case he reads this, the actual quote by President Obama was:

"One of the great strengths of the United States, is we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

But then again, I couldn't expect the TEA Party crowd to be religious scholars. The ones I talked with were well steeped in economic theory, climatology, political science, history, Constitutional law, etc.



I hope Pastor King didn't accidentally stop at wide-spot country bar on the way back to Milwaukee. You know the ones with the pickup trucks with bump stickers like these seen at the Tea Party:

If he did, he might start hearing those Constitutional scholars, climatologist, economists and political scientists stopping for a few beers on the way home from the Tea Party starting to slur the words "fucking" and "nigger" as they philosophize on the state of union on July 18, 2009, discuss the first Black President in the history of our nation and getting ready for the next Tea Party.