Strappin' on the stupid won't help ANY Progressive cause . . . It will further dumb down MERican politics.

THOM: I remain unconvinced that Progressives can usurp control of the Tea-Bag bunch. They appear to be driven by mindless, knee-jerk jingoism rooted in the response to certain key trigger words. They play the role of the “angry unwashed masses”. They anger/rage they embody would eat high-minded liberals alive. The Blue Dogs are our Tea-Baggers and they own us.

There is a reason Harry Reid, presently the de facto DEM leader, is the single most ineffectual individual in the whole farging mess we call government.

From Gerald Socha,

Gerald Socha December 6th, 2009, 9:32 pm

I listen to Thom’s radio show everyday that fits into my schedule and the listening does not disrupt doctor’s appointments, shopping, visits to family, work around the home and yard, etc. Listening to Thom, a person can receive an education.

He is right that if we abandon the Democrat Party, we may elect someone who will cause more problems. Plus, the elected politician can appoint certain people to the Supreme Court, etc. Thom has also said that we are at the start of more progressive change. He is probably right but cycles can take time, like a century or two or maybe three centuries. I do not have that much time in my life and in fifty years or so it will not matter for our sons.

I must state here that I disagree with him. Maybe Thom has to put up a positive expression to keep motivating himself on his radio show.

Thom, nothing will ever change in our country and I truly mean we will never change. Here are the facts. Our country is completely controlled by the industrial-military complex, the Federal Reserve that cannot be audited, the banks, the radical religious fundamentalists from every religion, and Wall Street. Ten percent of the people in our country control ninety percent of the people. This fact will never change. Thom, do you remember the saying, THE PEOPLE WITH THE GOLD MAKE THE RULES? I am certain that you do.

The grand experiment of electing a minority president has failed. Obama is an elitist. He is part of The Establishment.

NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE IN OUR COUNTRY!!! OUR COUNTRY WILL NEVER CHANGE!!!

We are a divided country where hatred, corruption, and lies are the norms.

Quark December 7th, 2009, 7:54 am

Gerald,

I don’t feel very hopeful when I look at the increasing corporate control and the “too big to fail” model continuing to proliferate (Comcast takeover of NBC Universal, for example.) If I saw any significant push-back by congress or others with influence and power to effect change or, as Thom says, prices of the stock of such corporations declined, I might believe change is on the horizon. There was, however, a push-back in today’s NY Times editorial column:

“Concerns About Comcast – NBC”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07mon3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Since you indirectly quoted von Bismark (”He who has his thumb on the purse has the power.” Speech to North German Reichstag -21 May 1869), I have another one with which you might also agree:

“Man cannot create the current of events. He can only float with them and steer.” — Otto von Bismark, quoted in the London Independent

That encompasses perfectly how I feel. Until a movement reaches the proverbial “tipping point”, this is where one finds himself. I agree with you, we probably will not see real, positive change in our lifetimes (though, who knows, we now know that significant climactic changes can occur in a very short amount of time. Since mankind is a part of nature, maybe he has this ability, too.)

P.S.

Re: Jared Diamond a Sell-out?

I feel wishy-washy when I say this, but I DO believe that the world is not black & white, but shades of gray.

From Zero G:

Zero G. December 7th, 2009, 9:08 am

Hoping for Chevron, Wal-Mart & Coca-Cola to save us?

Isn’t Chevron still in bed with the Burmese junta?
Isn’t Mal-Wart still destroying local commerce?
And saved by high fructose corn syrup?

Thom IS talking about a tipping point. ‘Worth pursuing, I think.

I found the conversation Thom had with a guy named “Bob” a bit interesting, especially since the middle class is in fact shrinking, and workers who still have jobs are more likely to shrink before the commands of the “ruling class” in order to keep their jobs. I heard some “Con” on the radio recently equate success with hard work. That question may be debated, particularly if being “clever” in the financial markets is “hard work.” A more pertinent question is whether hard work equates with success. A queen ant does nothing but lay eggs, all its needs provided by the labor of other ants. A queen that lazes about doing nothing but laying a great many eggs is regarded as a “success,” but does it “work hard?” A CEO may receive a compensation package worth $20 million; is this because he is a success—or has the illusion of “success?” Does what he performs to “earn” that compensation qualify as “hard work?” The right seems to believe that “success” means making lots of money, and making lots of money means that you must have worked hard—like buying and selling real estate, or companies, or gambling with someone else’s money.

On the other hand, there is worker ant which can carry a morsel of food many times its own weight into a colony, and continues to carry on so for a few weeks, and then dies of exhaustion. This ant can be said to work hard, exceedingly so in support of the queen and colony. But is it personally a “success?” Laborers whose toil for the success that the CEO “earns” may not benefit themselves materially in the success; they may even be forced to work their entire lives until they die of hard work. Vincent Van Gogh painted hundreds of paintings (most of them in the last four years of his life), many of them masterpieces; his hard work would eventually completely exhaust his mind and body. Was he a success? Certainly not in his lifetime, which was spent in poverty, artistically ignored or panned, and the last wretched years spent in a sanitarium.

Hard work thus does not necessarily lead to “success,” at least not in the terms that the right understands. In these hard economic times, “success” may merely mean keeping your job instead of losing it. Nor is “hard work” necessary for “success,” if all you do is be clever with other people’s money. Where I work, you can tell the difference between “success” and hard work; those blessed with the former are provided with free coffee, and have time to mount and admire holiday decorations in their AO; those mired in the latter don’t have time for any of that.

This country’s economy would quickly evaporate if that was all the “work” people did was the kind the right admires. Someone else has to do the real hard work, and generally it is someone else who decides how “successful” they will be. “Success” is also parceled out by social or “good old boy (or girl)” networks that generally exclude minorities, and by access to higher education, limited by “standards” designed to keep people out, not to provide opportunity.

Thank You! =)

oops...s.b. Jode

He was describing tribalism, where, in making your own living within a group, you give support to the tribe and the tribe gives support to you. It is the purest essense of democracy.

Thanks Quark for copying my comment over.

Sarah "Nailin" Palin is a modern day Father Charles Coughlin.

As much as Sarah "Nailin" Palin is the fool, she inject truly damaging jingoistic fodder into the debate. Medicare-for-All and the Pubic Option are still being sacrificed on the pyre of Death-Panels.

Jason you've got quite the nerve. =I o_0

How much of your business is built on the resources of the commons and with the people's money?

You should pay that back . . .

chuckle8,

Re: "I wish Thom would give Ravi a homework assignment to determine the cause and effect relation of Larry Beinhart’s empiracal correlation between higher taxes (greater than 50% after loopholes) on those making more than 2 million and the positive effects on the GDP, the DOW, number of jobs and the average wage (for wages I think the median and the average are close to the same) of those jobs. Larry’s work empirically shows a correlation. I would like Ravi, an economist, to show the causation.

Everytime I mention this study by Larry Beinhart, a novelist, they say it must be some cause other than tax increases."

I agree that this would be important information to have. Not a day goes by that I hear some corporate blow-hard (usually Republican) state that lower taxes would HELP the economy. I wish I had a study to point to.

I do remember hearing that Florida under Jeb Bush raised taxes and its economy improved. I don't know if anyone did a cause-effect study on that.

Minnesota, where I live, has historically had high taxes along with a good/progressive economy. It took Jesse Ventura and most especially Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty to reverse the trend.

i just sent an email to Thom, but only After I read the print saying any thing to do with politics is put through the spam filter. Mine was sort of about that, but it was about asking for a list of movement meetings in my area. Basically, I was asking how I personally and in a more complex manner can get involved in any various movement/s.

Thomas Jode,

There seems to be lots of info. on the Tea Bag Parties on the Huffington Post website. Maybe we could follow up and try to contact them to see where/when future protests, etc. will be held:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/tea-party

Quark, I was quoting my brother-in-law, The people with the gold make the rules.