Daily Topics - Wednesday June 23rd, 2010
By shawnt56
Hour One: Is McChrystal only a symptom of what's really wrong with the war in Afghanistan?
Hour Two: A judge in BP's pocket overturned the President's moratorium on deep sea drilling...how do we get corrupt politicians, judges and corporations out of the energy equation?; Plus, Everything You Know is Wrong...about ants! Author/Adventurer Mark Moffett is here www.adventuresamongants.com
Hour Three: Why are America's unemployed being held hostage by Republicans while they argue about preserving tax breaks for the wealthy and benefits for rich fund managers? (Is it finally time for Wall Street to bail out Main Street?) Thom has a rumble with Dan Gainor of the Business and Media Institute www.businessandmedia.org
Comments
#2
I am sharing with you some factual information. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan there is a basketball team in a small school district with 200 or less students in the high school. A school district with this enrolment would participate in Class D for state tournaments. The high school never has competed well in basketball tournaments. The school district is on the east side of the U.P. I cannot recall the school district's name. About two years or so back the high school team was doing well. In fact the Detroit sport pages wrote an article on the high school with the unusual nickname of Numb Nuts. Yes, that is their nickname.
Numb Nuts reminds me of the American brain. I will say that 95 to 100 % of Americans have embedded on their brain the nickname – Numb Nuts and that is why we, as a people, cannot resolve our many complex and serious problems. We are not only an evil, vile, and wicked nation but we have also the nickname of NUMB NUTS.
#3
Um, I know this is off topic, but I went to look at the BP live feed this morning, and I noticed that there is nothing over the leak anymore, not even the capture device that was taking a protion of the oil to tankers. Did I miss something in the news, I haven't looked at the live feed in a few days and I'm wondering how long has it been without the capture device.
As far as Mayor McCheese is concerned, yeah fire him, he screwed up and let the press know too much.
N
#4
What should be our stategy in Afgahnistan?!!? Well first shouldn't we first determine our goal??!!
I haven't heard any credible reason why we remain their, well besides the oil pipeline they want to build, which isn't a credible reason anyway, just the underlying real reason.
N
#5
Ted Rall noted that Afghans appreciated the Soviets aid in building roads, schools, and other infrastructure, but the Soviets had to be driven out of the country because they were occupiers.
#6
The "mission statement" of the Constitution is the Preamble. The mission statement of the Bush administration was "dropping bombs on brown people and stealing their stuff."
When Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Iraq war would pay for itself, he was announcing that the USA was going to engage in plunder, and that's a war crime.
#7
Ted Rall is a very brave man. Was taken hostage in Afghanistan for a while.
#8
BREAKING- Containment dome has been completely taken off. ROV bumped into it- or something like that. At any rate- oil is flowly freely as we speak- AP Radio News-
#9
@Zero G #7 It was Rall's sense of humor and bonding with a captor who had gone to school in the US that kept him alive. It takes real courage to go into a war zone with a pencil and paper; tools that the military is not familiar with.
#10
Rall has a great sense of humor!
#11
And, don't forget that the real lesson of the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant is that the Ant is part of a Socialist community.
Take that, right wing ideologs!
#12
ANTS- lessons in decentralization- like we ought to model our energy policy after- distributed generation.
#13
Huffington post has a live feed to the Whitehouse- to begin shortly http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
#14
Damn- Portyreas- you mean Betray us? What about Wesley Clark?
#15
Containment dome completely removed on same day a General is replaced in Afghanistan... mmmm me thinks I smell a rat.
Anyone hear about the youtube video of Oil raining down in Louisiana.
Watch it if you dare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY-tIEqzcmU
N
#16
Yeah, lets premptively BOMB CANADA!!! right on Thom
;-)
N
#17
PResident is speaking
#18
GD Bless the Rolling Stone for exposing that Mc Crystal Bastard.
#19
You know Foodfascist, I don't know if that is a typo or done intentionally, but capitalizing the first to letters of PResident, really highlights that the word, like the position, starts with PR. I like it, I like it a lot.
N
#20
Maybe McChrystal was not following policy.
#21
lol PResident it is then
#22
The Republicans will vote for a "Clean" bill, however, they will never consider the bill "Clean". STFU Gainor, talking point stooge! You're a blind defender of the Republican't party whose mission it is to do nothing but prevent progressive legislation and to enrich the wealthy.
N
#23
Gainor, the "anti-incumbant" feeling in America is an "anti-conservative" feeling since the majority of incumbants are RIGHT OF CENTER! Americans are fed up with the rob from the poor and give to the rich attitude of the Corporate Congress, unfortunantly there is not enough clammering to take the money out of politics, in fact all the time more and more money is being pumped in (a la Citizens United). The "Damn the topedos full speed ahead" attitude isn't sitting well with the passengers, its just that the majority has no idea how to remove the morons running the Ship of State.
N
#24
GOP == Guardians Of Privilege
#25
Let the rich leave iftgey don't want to pay their fair share of taxes. It will create an opportunity in the " free market " for some one else to make money.
#26
I fear America is entering the Twilight of its own Dark Ages. The coming of Corporate rule will be as bad if not worse than what humanity went through during the middle ages if we find ourselves unable to regain control of the amoral business monstrosity and its mantra of profit first, profit first, profit first.
Democracy cannot exist in a feudal system.
N
#27
I heart iheartradio!!!!
#28
Expatriate criminals make sure they don't abandon their connections to the plumbing that lets them continue to drain the wealth from the working classes. They have lots of lobbyists in place to make sure of that.
#29
Is everybody getting an echo in the audio, or did my computer just go crazy?
#30
@Tim THumbs up!
#31
#29 Never mind - another undocumented feature of Windoze.
#33
#34
Thom I can't listen right now but if you missed this you have to see it.
It is Raining Oil in Louisanna. Video in link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/23/raining-oil-in-louisiana_n_6228...
#35
If this keeps up it will potentially mean FAMINE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/23/raining-oil-in-louisiana_n_6228...
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Images of Thom
With His Holiness The Dalai Lama, at His home in Dharamsala, India (Synthesis Dialogues - made into a movie narrated by Harrison Ford)
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"If we are going to live in a Democracy, we need to have a healthy middle class. Thom Hartmann shows us how the ‘cons’ have wronged this country, and tells us what needs to be done to reclaim what it is to be American."
Is McChrystal only a symptom of what's really wrong with the war in Afghanistan?
The short answer would be, "yes."
The longer answer would be not just the war in Aghanistan, but the larger meme that goes largely unquestioned, that the US reserves to itself the right to: change foreign regimes at will, base troops in 150+ foreign countries, commit extrajudicial murder, stockpile WMD, torture, sell weapons systems worldwide - often to competing powers involved in conflict, and all the other evidences of "American Exceptionalism." Unless and until we confront this larger issue, playing musical chairs with the military brass is much hot air about very little indeed.