And I was responding specifically to the blurb, which mischaracterizes the libertarian position on this issue. Hartmann, or his staff, are being intellectually dishonest.

Children are very susceptible to advertising (way more than adults, I would guess), and so do need protection from predatory for-profit corporations who want to exploit this. Libertarians don't seem to ever have a problem with anything corporations do. if you don't like it, then go somewhere else or buy another product. Even if the corporation kills you. Still they should not be regulated in any way, shape or form, right?

By being on the side of the corporation, you seem to be against the rights of parents and children.

Or perhaps you mean Intellectual Dishonesty as in pretending all parents are well enough informed and have the means to make the healthier choice.

Cheese and crackers, there's adults out there that believe the healthy choice is going to KFC!

N

It was good to have Stephen Moore on and Tom handled him well but he's hard for me to take seriously even though he does write for the once-great WSJ.

He's been on Realtime where he tends to talk over others, have a jolly time playing what appears to be a competitive game (rather than a rational one) and evading serious questions and contradictions in his own arguments.

Teachers overpaid? Teacher or any other public sector benefits a personal effront to those making less? Give me a break. The illogic is enough to drive one to the brink of insanity. By the same logic CEOs should be being paid what teachers are because their salaries are insults to teachers. Clever Stevie, turning the progressive CEO argument back on lower-middle class teachers... He has no sense of proportion or scale and his arguments are ridiculously fruity.

I suppose we should all be at the mercy of those who would like an anti-competitive captive job market because even living wages are an insult to those who don't have one ande the first one helped will hurt the feelings of the ones not helped. Nothing could be more wrong, seeing even one of the middle class get a fair shake gives the rest of us hope. That hackneyed tactic of turning people against one another in order to weaken what would otherwise be stenght in numbers is paper thin.

I find him as irritating as fingernails on a chalkboard but what the heck, if that's all they've got...

Dear Thom,

I sense that you are starting to lose some of your optimism on our country’s future. You will deny my words but prolific writing of articles and books can at times be considered an escape from reality.

Since you have a radio show for three hours per day, for five days in a week, you must maintain some optimism for America’s future. Unless you reveal optimism, I feel that you will require counseling for your mental status. After this counseling the psychologist will determine whether or not you can adjust in our world. Optimism keeps you alive. If you would lose optimism in our nation’s future, I fear that the defeat may cause some serious imbalance in your life. Optimism will keep you in balance with what you believe and you can remain a fully functioning person.

Please be on guard against some shattering of your optimism on America’s future. If you sense a loss in optimism, please wean yourself slowly, very slowly, away from your optimism and America’s future. Your slow weaning away from your long time beliefs will ease the shock that will follow and you will be able to survive a shattered belief system.

Personally, I believe that the United States of Hell does not have any future other than to fulfill her manifest destiny of killing off God’s children through either economic and/or military means.

Sincerely, Gerald