Thom Hartmann, American Hero

I was unemployed from October 2009 to May 2010 and listened to Big Ed and Thom every day.  Now that I'm back at work I can't listen to Thom or Ed, but I hope I can stay connected through this blog.  I listened today (Labor Day) at a Recycled program.  Great journalism.

On the community center at Ground Zero, the conversation should revolve around Muslim Americans versus Radical Islam, which is the ideology that brought down the World Trade Centers.  They shouldn't be confused or used in the same sentence.  Tim McVeigh may have been a White Supremicist, but he certainly isn't mainstream America.  He was a radical who excused using radical means to "create peripheral damage."  What a sick, twisted mind.  If Osama bin Laden was in fact the mastermind behind 9/11 then we need to find him and punish him.  We need not occupy two nations and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people on account of a few radicals.  We just don't have this conversation in the right context.  Let's begin the proper conversation.

People like Scott Wheeler need to be ignored (1) or shamed (2) as Thom does such a good job doing.  They are not offering instructive information into the conversation.

Last for today, our party isn't following its moral compass.  If you've read Drew Weston and George Lakoff this week on the Huffington Post you know to what I refer.  People don't want to listen to wonkish policy.  They want to connect with their morals and values and ethics.  And they want their elected officials to do the same.  Alan Grayson is a genius Congressman winning in one of the most Rightie districts in the country, and he wins because he tells people the truth and speaks from a moral compass.  Obama the candidate also spoke from a moral compass but forgot to govern from the same moral compass.  He can get his mojo back if he works hard.  Some media pundit today said that Obama's job creation speech (to create infrastructure jobs now) lacked an economic focus.  Well for gods' sakes it's about time!  If people have jobs, they have income, they spend money in the community and guess what! they can afford to pay the mortgage payment! This isn't rocket science and it doesn't need to be rocket science.  It needs to be and continue to be making America work for working folk like it's done for over 200 years.  Jon Alter is a good writer but he's spot on wrong on the policy side.  We don't need to have a policy difference between Righties and Democrats.  We need to have a moral difference between Righties and Democrats.  When that happens, we'll win.  Every.  Time.  Until next time...