Highlights on the Show...March 8 - 12, 2010

Hour Two: Privatize the USPS?! Thom has a rumble with Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute www.cato.org
Hour Three: Payday lenders, necessary evil or loan sharks in sheep's clothing? Thom confronts Libertarian Wayne Root www.root4america.com
Tuesday
Hour Two: "The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr" Ken Gormley talks to Thom about the political battle that divided America www.randomhouse.com
Hour Three: Hunting the blood sucking "vulture funds" Thom talks with investigative journalist Greg Palast www.gregpalast.com
Wednesday
Hour Two: Has the right wing become "Crazy for God?" Frank Schaeffer guests on the rise of right wing hate groups in America www.frankschaeffer.com
Hour Three: Should Progressives give up on Obama? Columnist/author Chris Hedges stops by www.truthdig.org
Thursday
Three: Is our government broken? Thom challenges conservative columnist Tony Blankley www.townhall.com
Friday
Hour One: "Brunch With Bernie" Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spends the hour with Thom discussing the issues and answering listener questions www.sanders.senate.gov
Friday, March 19th, 6-8pm Demos and the New York Law School Chapter of the American Constitution Society present an evening with Thom Hartmann - "When Corporations Became People." Thom will also talk about his updated book "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights"...event is at New York Law School Auditorium, 185 W Broadway, New York, NY...free tickets at www.demos.org (and click on events)
Comments
We are watching a subculture/CriminalClass (of about five percent of the population that is sociopathic and psychopathic) proceed to pursue a mini-imperialism WITHIN THE USA using Corporatist Profiteering, Corporatist Consolidation and Corporatist Privatization.
Seems we don't have a blog page for 3/10, so I'm putting this here -
On the way into work this morning, I found myself behind a tanker truck bearing the company name "Big Green Oil". Let's step right on past the hypocrisy inherent in that name (another rant for another day, as TH would say), and talk about the pure unadulterated laziness in the selection of that name. "Huh - everybody's talking about this "Green Energy" stuff. We're an Oil company. Oil is Energy." And that, apparently is as far as the "thinking" applied to the decision went.
This same kind of laziness is apparent in some of the advertising for some pretty big players in the corporate world, too. Consider the case of Toyota, whose flagship products are currently plagued by problems with (1) uncontrolled acceleration, and (2) unreliable braking - yet ALL of their current advertiaments STILL contain the slogan "Moving Forward". Irony, anyone?
On the Sunday AM talking-point-fests this past weekend, I noted a new ad for the investment product known as Spiders (SPDRs - Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts). They actually use the first linr childhood ditty "The Eensy-Weensy Spider" in the ad. Does anyone recall the SECOND line of that song? Yup ... that's what we want - to see our investments "washed out" in the next rainstorm.
The classic example of the above, of course, was Microsoft's campaign for the Windows95 launch. Win95, you may recall, introduced the now-ubiquitous "Start" button, and MS threw their budget to the wind, obtaining the rights to use the Rolling Stones tune "Start Me Up". That song, of course, has the recurring lyric "You make a grown man cry". Surprisingly accurate, when you think about it - how many of us were driven close to tears by our early Win95 experiences?
Here's what I wonder about ... Has this become accepted practice because THEY don't take the trouble to think just a little bit ahead, or because they know that they can count on US not to?