9/26/2009

Capitalism: A Love Story


"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy."

Michael Moore
Conclusion of upcoming movie Capitalism: A Love Story


9/24/2009

In The Sperm Of The Moment



"In another stunning example of hypocrisy, congressional Democrats are wasting taxpayers' time and resources on a legislative measure to censure Congressman Joe Wilson so they don't have to talk about their exceedingly unpopular health care plan. If we are going to march members down to the well of the House to apologize, Joe Wilson is going to have to get in line behind Nancy Pelosi, who attacked the intelligence community who protects us, Charlie Rangel who cheated on his taxes, Jack Murtha – a walking scandal, and we all know how the Democratic leadership tried to protect William Jefferson. Democrats don't want an apology. They want a side show."

Michael Steele
GOP National Committee Chairman

9/22/2009

Free-market Credibility Gap Widens


"...The public trust deficit hangs over all companies and free-market capitalism, not just the financial sector, and the trust deficit is playing a major role in current debates over increased government regulation of the economy. It is a major mistake for leaders in business and the gatekeeping professions such as law not to undertake a serious self-assessment of responsibility for the current catastrophe with proposals and action to rebuild public trust.

Much is at stake. I am among those millions of Americans who, over the last 40 years, concluded that a strong presumption in favor of market solutions rather than government regulation offered the best hope for addressing many of society's challenges. Both Democratic and Republican administrations supported deregulation of banking and finance, programs to increase home ownership and an easy money policy -- so long as it did not lead to serious inflation.

We trusted in the prudential judgment of business leaders to make rational decisions that would avoid financial catastrophe. But we now are questioning whether we substantially overinvested in the ideology of free-market capitalism.

We realize that capitalism has an inherent struggle in which excessive short-term self-interest and hubris sometimes trump the "self-interest considered upon the whole" that generates long-term wealth creation..."


Neil Hamilton
Star Tribune

9/20/2009

Free Market Sole Searching


"Profit-seeking business is compelled to employ the most efficient methods of production. What checks a businessmans endeavors to improve the equipment of his firm is only lack of capital."

Ludwig von Mises
Human Action

9/17/2009

TEA Pee

9/16/2009

Don't Like Your TEA Party "Black"

"ABC and NBC on Tuesday night joined the effort to undermine the anti-Obama tea party participants by smearing them as racists as ABC framed a story around the proposition “some prominent Obama supporters are now saying” the opposition to Obama is “driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President,” while NBC anchor Brian Williams touted how “former President Carter spoke up and spoke out about” the supposed racism. Williams alleged “a certain number of signs and images at last weekend's big tea party march in Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes and President Carter today said he is extremely worried by it.”

News Busters


"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American. I live in the south and I've seen the south come a long way and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the south's attitude toward minority groups, at that time particularly African-Americans, that that racism [unintelligible word] still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people, not just in the south, but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply."

Former President Jimmy Carter


"They've waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil, raised questions about whether he was really born in this country, falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels, decried his speech to students as indoctrination and called him everything from a fascist to a socialist to a communist. And that was before Mr. Obama's speech was interrupted by a Representative who once fought to keep the Confederate flag waving over the South Carolina state house. Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President."

Charlie Gibson
ABC News Anchor


“People are not just mad at Obama. They're mad at Jesse Jackson, they're mad at Reverend Wright, they're made at Al Sharpton, they're mad at people who have nothing to do with Obama except they all happen to be black.”

Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune


WOLF BLITZER: They've come together under the tea party banner, but within the movement you're going to find individuals outraged over taxes, health reform, gun control and more. But, most disturbing, a very small but vocal minority, they're targeting President Obama's race. Let's go to CNN's Elaine Quijano. She's working this story for us. Elaine, what are we seeing?

ELAINE QUIJANO: Well, Wolf, we have to emphasize by far most tea party protesters are not casting their arguments in what could be seen as a racial light, but a small group of demonstrators is using a controversial image that's been circulating on the Web since July. Within the larger tea party movement that's gained steam across the country, a small but passionate minority is also voicing what some see as racist rhetoric, including this doctored image circulating on the Internet and even some protesters signs like this one in Brighton, Michigan, portraying President Obama as a witch doctor. We took to the streets of Washington to get reaction.

WOMAN: I think it's disrespectful to the office of the President to portray him in this manner. It's racist.

SECOND WOMAN: This is appalling.

QUIJANO: How prevalent were the protesters carrying racially-charged messages? Difficult to quantify? CNN all platform journalist Jim Spellman spent weeks covering the tea party demonstrators as a whole.

JIM SPELLMAN: Only a handful of people seem to outwardly have racial issues with the President, but the more you talk to people, you could sense that it was part of a larger distrust.

QUIJANO: For their party tea party leaders disavow any racist views.

MARK WILLIAMS, TEA PARTY ORGANIZER: I saw very little overt racism or anger, and those were on the fringes and were marginalized.

QUIJANO: They want attention focused on the role and reach of government into people's lives but say that controversial protesters have the right to speak their mind.


Slogans gracing TEA Party signs:

“Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy”

“Change We Don't Believe In”

“Hitler Gave Good Speeches Too”

“Just Say No to Socialized Medicine”

“Throw All of the Bums Out”

---
In the pictures above, how many non-Whites can you find?

From the picture below, can you guess why the TEA Party participants hate ACORN so much?



"President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn't about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president's wildly unpopular government-run healthcare plan that the American people simply oppose."

Michael Steele
GOP Chairman

9/15/2009

The Big Republican TEA Party Lie

“[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Adolph Hitler
Mein Kampf (1925)


"What makes that passage so monstrously mind-bending is that Hitler was accusing the Jews of engaging in the big lie, when in fact the Nazis would be history’s greatest practitioners...The GOP’s avid willingness to wield the big lie makes the comparison valid."

Andrew Leonard
Salon.com

9/13/2009

Hostili-TEA



"Caused by a profound self-doubt, self condemnation and fear. Hostility is a type of projection that directs towards other people the hatred which the hostile person feels towards himself. Blaming the evil of others for his own shortcomings, he feels the chronic need to justify himself by demonstrating their evil by seeking it, by hunting for it, and by inventing it."

Ayn Rand

9/11/2009

Out Maneuvering The 2nd Amendment

Researchers find out-of-state markets to be leading source of crime guns in California, havens for racism


"From pocket-size assault weapons and sniper rifles that can kill a man a mile and a half away to incendiary armor-piercing bullets, you can find what you are looking for at gun shows across the United States -- even if you do not want your name to appear on any paperwork.

In hidden-camera photos and videos captured by UC Davis researchers, men roamed gun shows with assault rifles slung over their shoulders and pistols tucked in their belts, available for sale with no waiting period, background check or paper trail.


Even at licensed dealers, some with more than 1,000 pistols and rifles at a single booth, there were illegal "straw buys" in which real gun buyers concealed their identities by getting other people to put down their names

Pistols rest on a table at a recent gun show. The pistols, which can take sound suppressors and are larger than regular pistols, are copies of the M-10, an automatic sub-machine gun made famous by gunmaker Ingram. The pistols are not available for sale by licensed gun dealers in California because they are not on the Approved Handgun Roster, but they can and are sold in other states, such as Nevada. In some cases, the dealer obviously recognized the "straw buy" but sold the firearm anyway..."

Read more @The Daily Democrat.

Get a 2nd opinion @ News Busters.


9/10/2009

TEA Party Tap Dances Over School Speech



TEA Party Hero Apologies -- He's Off The Island

I guess the Congressman has been attending too many TEA Parties and just lost his mind...considering the TEA Party, that would be an oxymoron.

The whole country watched Wednesday night when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out "You lie!" during President Barack Obama's televised speech about his health care proposal.

To which Obama calmly replied, "That's not true."

"I was embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love," Vice President Joe Biden said on ABC News this morning. "It demeaned the institution."

Sen. John McCain also found it unconscionable. "Wilson's behavior was 'totally disrespectful,' he said on CNN. "There is no place for it in that setting, or any other, and he should apologize for it immediately."


Wilson's office did issue an apology for his accusation that the president was lying about illegal immigrants getting coverage under his healthcare plan.

"This evening I let my emotions get the best of me," the South Carolina Republican said in a statement. "While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

What do you think? Was his behavior unforgivable? Is his apology enough? Or should he make another apology to Obama in person?

Tell us!

Seems to me the Bush administration did more than its share of lying, WMD, terrorists in Iraq and on and on.

How come no one yelled 'You lie!' at George W, Bush or Dick Cheney?

From LA Times

9/09/2009

And You Thought the TEA Party Birthers Were Nuts


"...retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson says the government has prepared 1,000 camps for its own citizens. He also says the government has stored 30,000 guillotines to murder its critics, and has stashed 500,000 caskets in Georgia and Montana for the remains.

Why guillotines? "Because," he wrote in a report obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, "beheading is the most efficient means of harvesting body parts."

In a second warning, the Web site Worldnetdaily.com says that the government is considering Nazi-like concentration camps for dissidents.

Jerome Corsi, the author of "The Obama Nation," an anti-Obama book, says that a proposal in Congress "appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany."

Another Web site, Americanfreepress.net, says the proposal "would create a Guantanamo-style setting after martial law is declared."

There's no evidence of such a plan..."



Read more @ Miami Herald

9/07/2009

Why Johnny Birch Can't Think For Himself


Tomorrow Obama will deliver a national address directly to students, which will be the first day of classes for many children across the country. The address, to be broadcast live on the White House's Web site, was announced in a letter to school principals last week by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Obama intends to "challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning," Duncan wrote. Obama will also call for a "shared responsibility" among students, parents and educators to maximize learning potential.


"The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard in school, to not drop out and to meet short-term goals like behaving in class, doing their homework and goals that parents and teachers alike can agree are noble. This isn't a policy speech. This is a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school."

Tommy Vietor
White House Spokesperson

Numerous conservatives have claimed that President Obama's upcoming September 8 speech about "persisting and succeeding in school," along with classroom activities about the "importance of education," will "indoctrinate" and "brainwash" schoolchildren. Conservatives have compared Obama's address to Chinese communism and the Hitler Youth, while also calling for parents to "keep your kids home" from the "fascist in chief."

"In general, I don't think there's a problem if the president uses the bully pulpit to tell kids to work hard, study hard and things like that. But there are some troubling hints in this, both educationally and politically...It essentially tries to force kids to say the president and the presidency is inspiring, and that's very problematic. It's very concerning that you would do that."

Neal McCluskey
Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom.

"I don't think it's appropriate for teachers to ask students to help promote the president's preferred school reforms and policies. It very much starts to set up the president as a superintendent in chief."

Frederick Hess
American Enterprise Institute

"...it seems very close to indoctrination..."

Sean Hannity
FOX New Host

"...just when you think this administration can't get any more surreal and Orwellian, here they come to indoctrinate our kids..."

Monica Crawley
FOX News Commentator

"...the left has always used kids in public schools as guinea pigs and as junior lobbyists for their social liberal agenda..."

Michelle Malkin
Frequent FOX News
pundit

9/05/2009

RIP Reaganomics

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We know now that it is bad economics."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1937)


"...Let's talk for a moment about why the age of Reagan should be over.

First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the "magic of the marketplace" were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn't happen.

To be sure, the wealthy benefited enormously: the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third of its growth over the previous 27 years.

Moreover, most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during the Clinton years. President George W. Bush, who had the distinction of being the first Reaganite president to also have a fully Republican Congress, also had the distinction of presiding over the first administration since Herbert Hoover in which the typical family failed to see any significant income gains.
And then there's the small matter of the worst recession since the 1930s.

There's a lot to be said about the financial disaster of the last two years, but the short version is simple: Politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came..."

Paul Krugman
Read more...


"Ronald Reagan cut everything in the budget, and yet they say he made the biggest deficit (until George W. Bush) in the country. I don't know how they come up with that. It's Washington math."

Rush Limbaugh
on the Radio

Reagan didn't cut the military budget. It reached historic highs. Under Reagan, the national debt more than doubled.

9/04/2009

Town Hall Update

9/03/2009

Budgets & Debt: Where The Truth Lies

"We are, quite bluntly, broke. We don't have the money to sustain the dreams and experiments of liberalism any longer. We have a $400 billion a year budget deficit and a $4 trillion debt."

Rush Limbaugh
The Way Things Ought To Be (1992)
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was told "deficits don't matter" when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.

O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

The vice president's office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O'Neill, insisted that deficits "do matter" to the administration.

Read more...


"...The truth is more complicated and less frightening. Right now deficits are actually helping the economy. In fact, deficits here and in other major economies saved the world from a much deeper slump. The longer-term outlook is worrying, but it's not catastrophic.

The only real reason for concern is political. The United States can deal with its debts if politicians of both parties are, in the end, willing to show at least a bit of maturity. Need I say more?

Let's start with the effects of this year's deficit.

There are two main reasons for the surge in red ink. First, the recession has led both to a sharp drop in tax receipts and to increased spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs. Second, there have been large outlays on financial rescues. These are counted as part of the deficit, although the government is acquiring assets in the process and will eventually get at least part of its money back.

What this tells us is that right now it's good to run a deficit. Consider what would have happened if the U.S. government and its counterparts around the world had tried to balance their budgets as they did in the early 1930s. It's a scary thought. If governments had raised taxes or slashed spending in the face of the slump, if they had refused to rescue distressed financial institutions, we could all too easily have seen a full replay of the Great Depression.
As I said, deficits saved the world..."

Paul Krugman

Read more...

"That means our debt - yearly debt - is only 2.9 percent of our total budget. If you at home could say that the total amount of your debt was only 2.9 percent of all that you earn and produce, you'd be happy/ This deficit is a straw dog. It's always been a phone monster. This is manageable debt as long as our economy stays strong."

Rush Limbuagh
July 7, 1994

"...my friends, we know what Obama's economics are built on. We know what his new foundation is. His new foundation is built on money we don't have. His foundation is built on money created out of thin air and debt. Debt that is an anchor around all of our collective necks, so heavy is the anchor, we, the people can't move. We're weighed down by a plan that's designed to pull off a seismic switcheroo. We're going for an economy driven by the private sector to one driven by Obama, except we aren't told that. We're told the exact opposite. Barack Obama is building a new economy on a foundation of so much debt that he has reached into our children's and grandchildren's pockets. They will be born broke. It's called generational theft. He calls it his new foundation. The foundation is debt, printed money. We know that but we don't hear that, and that's because Obama can't get what he wants by telling the truth. No liberal can..."

Rush Limbaugh
Radio show transcript April 15, 2009

9/01/2009

TEA Party Needs A Few More Nut Jobs



"...the Nazis were the ones who shoved sand down a boy's throat until he died, who tossed candies to Jewish children as they sank to their deaths in a sand pit, who threw babies from a hospital window to compete to see how many "little Jews" could be caught on a bayonet, who injected a cement-like fluid into women's uteruses to see what would happen, stomped a pregnant woman to death, who snatched a woman's baby from her arms and, in the words of a witness, "tore him as one would tear a rag."

That's who the Nazis were, ladies and gentlemen - those obscenities plus 6 million more. They were the triumph of ideology over reason and even over humanity, the demonization of racial, religious and political difference, the objectification of the vulnerable other. And the authors of a mass murder that staggers imagination, still.

You would think that where they are invoked to make a point, it would be done with a respect for the incalculable evil the Nazis represent. You would think people would tread carefully, not because of the potential insult to a given politician (they are big boys and girls) but because to do otherwise profanes the profound and renders trivial that which ought to be held sacred by anyone who regards himself as a truly human being.

But in modern America, unfortunately, rhetoric often starts over the top and goes up from there. So fine, George W. Bush is "a smirking chimp." Fine, Barack Obama is "a Chicago thug." We have a Constitution, after all, and it says we can say whatever we want. It doesn't say that it has to be intelligent.

And yes, you are even protected if you liken Obama or Bush to Hitler."

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Read more...

8/30/2009

Freedom Of Screech

"...I never thought I'd see the day when America didn't have enough crazies to go around. We've got oodles of them. So many that members of Congress, home on recess to press the flesh, are afraid to appear at public forums for fear they will be asked their position on Bigfoot sightings and alien abductions. One of Minnesota's most levelheaded congressmen, Democrat Collin Peterson, had to apologize for saying that 25 percent of his constituents believe in conspiracy theories. He didn't back down completely, though, explaining he was tired of public meetings being "hijacked" by people "outside the mainstream..."



"...The summer of 2009 is making the Summer of Sam (1977) and the summer of Helter Skelter (1969) look sane by comparison. In the old days, a handful of psychopaths could ruin our sense of security. This summer, the lunacy has gone viral and is making us look like a country of snake handlers and sleight-of-hand "healers" who make us feel better by "removing" chicken parts from our innards.

Our civic religion preaches the virtue of conversation and compromise, the belief that we can, as the Lord advised, "come and reason together." But reasoning together has gone out the window this summer of our discontent, along with the baby, the bath water and grandma's Do Not Resuscitate order..."

Nick Coleman
Read more at the Star Tribune

8/28/2009

Stuck In The Middle

"I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society."

Ted Kennedy



"These days, people on "one side" of the political spectrum are not supposed to cooperate, much less have a personal relationship with anyone on the "other side." Siding with "the enemy" can get you branded a compromiser, a sellout — or worse, a fool.

While it is true that on too many occasions, conservatives have had their ideological pockets picked by liberals whose favor they curried, that is no excuse for hating people."

Cal Thomas

8/17/2009

She Says Ann Coulter Is "Main Stream Media"


Hear Orly Taitz,the Republican TEA Party main voice of conspiracy, say that Ann Clouter is "main stream media." Boy are the wing nuts coming loose on the Republican band wagon or what?

Could it be the conservative Republicans have tied their straight jacket with a Gordian knot?

8/16/2009

Forget Eliminating The FED! Dump The CIA & FBI

The "birther" wing of the Republican Party is doing its job to prove that President Obama is not a US citizen and is illegally running our country. Orly Taitz, a lawyer, evidently have all the facts. She's from Russia (Are we supposed to believe a Commie?) I haven't seem a copy of Taitz' birth certificate yet.

Anyway, this is a hot topic for those who have overdosed on fruitcake.

I say, if the FBI and CIA can't uncover the origin of President Obama's birth, I say we eliminate those federal agencies before we fulfill the Republican TEA Party's demand to eliminate the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education and return to the gold standard.

If you attended the July 19 TEA Party in New Richmond, you would have had a number encounters with these "birthers." Evidently reality is too hard to swallow...




8/15/2009

TEA Party...fair and balanced?

...always fair...



and balanced here...

8/14/2009

You Don't Have To Go To New Hampshire To See Guns At A TEA Party Rally

The clip below hi-lights a guy wearing a gun on private property in the area where President Obama was planning to speak. The man is on private property and the loaded weapon is exposed. I saw the same thing at the July 19 TEA Party rally in New Richmond.

This is legal in Wisconsin. The NR rally was held on private property and the loaded weapon was not concealed. The guy wearing the gun in NR was the organizer of the April 15 TEA Party in North Hudson.

It's interesting that someone would find the need to wear a weapon to a "non-partisan" politcal rally. Of course, it wasn't a non-partisan rally. It was a Democrat bashing session.


8/13/2009

Rightie Turncoat Exposes TEA Party Fruit Cake Receipt

If you can stomach intelligent talk radio and can deal with adult discussions, the clip below will help you better understand what is brewing with the TEA Party and the angry white men left to pump the Viagra of hate into the increasingly flacid Republican Party.

8/12/2009

The Voices Of The TEA Party...

so much for intelligent discussion on a complicate issue...

FYI: The bill isn't complete and therefore isn't ready to be ready.


Definitions:
Patriot:
one who loves and defends his or her country

Politics: social relations involving intrigue to gain authority or power; "office politics is often counterproductive"; the study of government of states and other political units; the profession devoted to governing and to political affairs; the opinion you hold with respect to political questions; the activities and affairs involved in managing a state or a government; "unemployment dominated the politics of the inter-war years"; "government agencies multiplied beyond the control of representative politics"






8/11/2009

The Republican Brownshirts Shout Down The Townhalls

Who is fertilizing these "grassroots" organizations that are disrupting the health care townhall meetings? Apparently it's some of the billionaires who spent millions for their lackies to shoot down the Clinton's black helicopters.



8/10/2009

The Republican TEA Party Exposed

If you weren't able to attend the "non partsian" New Richmond TEA Party, here's an interesting video that exposes to Republican connection to the TEA Party.

8/06/2009

Do They Have "Liberty" In Iran and North Korea?

"Everyone should be prepared to fight for liberty. Our laws give us our freedom and I think that's worth fighting for."

Charles Donald Albury
Co-pilot of the plane that dropped the A-bomb on Nagasaki, Japan


"When Tibbets dropped the bomb, we dropped our instruments and made our left turn. Then this bright light hit us and the top of that mushroom cloud was the most terrifying, but also the most beautiful, thing you've ever seen in your life. Every color in the rainbow seemed to be coming out of it."

Charles Donald Albury (1920-2009)


The 10,200-pound explosive instantly killed an estimated 40,000 people. Another 35,000 died from injuries and radiation sickness. Japan surrendered on Aug. 14.

7/27/2009

The Rising Cost Of Health Care

"With health care last year taking nearly 11 percent of GNP -- and costs still rising -- what does the future hold? To get some idea, Dr. Virginia Weldon of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis took an informal poll of 30 colleagues around the country. The majority said medical resources, particularly for the aged, will have to be rationed. If they were making Medicare policy, 70 percent would set up means test and raise the eligibility age. Most would restructure Medicare to pay less for minor illnesses and more for catastrophic ones."

Forbes magazine
September 24, 1984

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.

7/16/2009

New Richmond Tea Party: Saturday, July 18

What's that smell...

“Many people think the country is going in the wrong direction and there is a lot of dissatisfaction. People are saying enough is enough, and we’re helping them figure out ways to get their voices heard.”

Laura Henrichsen
New Richmond Tea Party Organizer
Six months after President Obama took office

“Many people think the country is going in the wrong direction and there is a lot of dissatisfaction. People are saying enough is enough, and we’re helping them figure out ways to get their voices heard.”

People Who Voted For Al Gore in 2000
Six months after President Bush took office



New Richmond Tea Party/Rally
New Richmond, Wisconsin
Saturday, July 18, 2009
4:00-6:00 pm
New Richmond Heritage Center
1100 Heritage Drive
Laura Henrichsen (organizer)
715-294-4534 (organizer phone)

Guest speakers will include:

• Mark Block, state director of Wisconsin Americans for Prosperity

• Jim Zeiler, grassroots organizer with Americans for Prosperity

• Sean Duffy, Ashland County district attorney

• Dave Ross, mayor of Superior, Wis.

• David King, pastor from Milwaukee

Attendees are also asked to dress in patriotic colors and bring along tax protest signs.



According to organizer Laura Henrichsen, Osceola, the rally is designed to provide budding political activists with the encouragement and know-how to continue their fight against rising taxes, increased government spending and changing federal policies.


Could that smell be the odor that from the bullshit that these Tea Parties are non-partisan?

7/15/2009

Yellow KKK Redfaced Over Black Roots

I read recently that former KKK leader David Duke was arrested and kicked out of the Czech Republic after Czech police arrested him in Prague on suspicion of denying the Holocaust. Czech authorities reportedly had focused on Duke's book "My Awakening," which has passages challenging or justifying the Holocaust, according to the Czech news agency CTK. Denying the Holocaust carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison in the Czech Republic. A local neo-Nazi group had invited Duke, whose lecture at Charles University was canceled by the Prague school. Duke has been living in Austria.

Concerning the recent research finding on DNA and the origin of modern humans, I wonder if Duke will become a DNA denier?


“I don't call myself a white supremacist. I'm a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights.”

David Duke


"Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the somewhat inhospitable borderland where Angola and Namibia meet.

A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests, however, that the region in southwest Africa seems, on the present evidence, to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations.

The new data goes far toward equalizing the genetic picture of the world, given that most genetic information has come from European and Asian populations. But because it comes from Africa, the continent on which the human lineage evolved, it also sheds light on the origins of human life..."

Nicholas Wade
NY Times


“Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race and separation of the white and black races. This goal must include freeing of the American media and government from subservient Jewish interests.”

David Duke

7/13/2009

Connected To Whatever...


“It’s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cell phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course, they are fine to do that, as if that’s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.”

Bob Dylan
Rollingstone 5/14/2009