Town Hall Update

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

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...

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

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

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?

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...

TEA Party...fair and balanced?

...always fair...



and balanced here...

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.

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.

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"

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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