Dan Cody – “Left on the Lake”

Baby update: We’re still in a holding pattern. Baby is still breech and we’re scheduled for a cesarean section on Thursday.

Run for the Parks: In case you missed it, there’s a great family focused fun/walk run being put on by the Park People tonight in Humboldt Park. The proceeds are going to pay for repairs on the bathrooms at the Humboldt Park band shell. You can still sign up tonight at the event, but the number of tshirts we have are limited so get there early!

Carter & his racing sausages

How about them Brewers! Not to jinx the whole thing, but the Brewers are playing good baseball since the All Star break as I predicted they would. Taking this series against the Reds would also be a huge boost to our post-season chances and give the team the confidence they need to know they can play (and win) against the best teams in baseball. To all the Rickie Weeks haters out there, how’s your crow tasting? On a positive note, here’s a fun picture of Carter at last Saturdays game:

Seriously, who are these people?

Audience Member: Today I am very, very worried about this country, where it is going. As I study history and look at the historical thing I see right now a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a dishonest person who lied his way into the White House; and we are sitting with a Marxist anti-American, American-hater sitting in the White House, who seems bound and determined to destroy this nation.

Different Audience Member: Rich is that your question?

Audience Member: Yes. Do you agree? Let me finish. My point, I guess what I’m saying it is so important for people like Mr. Johnson who understands this [inaudible] to be elected. It’s important for the people who are out there who don’t understand what this whole thing was about, that they begin to understand so that a Reagocrat[?] like Feingold, ah…Dumocrats like Kagen and others out there are removed from office so that this country gets back on a…gets back on its path. Do you kind of agree with that? (Laughter)

Ron Johnson:: I’m not…I’m not going to argue with…arm wrestle you about it.

And laughs all around! This kind of ridiculous rhetoric may play well with the anti-everything-since-january-2009 tea party crowd, but Ron Johnson is running to be a SENATOR of Wisconsin for crying out loud and all he can do to someone who calling the President a “criminal determined to destroy this nation” is laugh and shrug it off? Seriously, read it again:

“a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a dishonest person who lied his way into the White House; and we are sitting with a Marxist anti-American, American-hater sitting in the White House, who seems bound and determined to destroy this nation.”

Not to go into Obama vs. Bush mode again here, but I’m so old I remember when talk like that about the President had conservative’s calling it treason. Now it’s just accepted. It’s one thing for some fringe extremist to believe this kind of crap, but it’s quite another for a candidate for the United States Senate to go along with it.

There’s lots of talk out there lately about the huge concern we should all have about the national deficit, rightly so. But many of those who have found a new found concern for the state of our national debt might be interested to see what is actually causing it. If you listened to right wing radio and Fox News, they’re telling people it’s a recent occurrence that rests solely on the shoulders of President Obama. Not so as data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows:

So what’s a bigger threat to the “freedom” of America and saddling of future generations with debt that so many conservative candidates can’t talk enough about lately? Again, if you only listened to them, Fox News, and the local talk radio shows, you’d be under the impression that it’s “ALL OBAMA’S FAULT!”. The reality?

The Bush tax cuts for America’s richest residents and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars have a much bigger impact on the deficit than the stimulus. Period.

If you’re one of those TEA Party folks who is concerned about the “freedom” of America via our deficit, do you see that things like tax cuts for the richest of the rich are the problem, and not the stimulus? Why haven’t you been waving the red flag about the things that are actually impacting our nation’s credit instead of those, like the stimulus, which aren’t in the long term? You’re outraged at $800 million in one time stimulus money (a large portion of which went to.. wait for it… TAX CUTS!) but not at the $1 trillion a year we’re soaking up to provide tax cuts to the richest of the rich?

People ask me all the time why I think a lot of the “outrage” being generated by conservatives and the tea party crowd is bogus. Data like that represented above are my answer.

You want America to stop spending money on the credit of future generations? Then take away the charge card for the richest of the rich and the wars in the Middle East. It’s that simple.