Daily Topics - Monday October 11th, 2010
By shawnt56
Quote of the Day: When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours." ~Vine Deloria, Jr.
Hour One: Has the Republican Party turned into the old John Birch Society? Plus, how to make change and have fun at the same time! OR State Rep Jefferson Smith, founder of the Oregon Bus Project for hands on democracy, will be here www.jeffersonsmith.com
Hour Two: "The Roots of Obama's Rage" - Thom confronts conservative author Dinesh D'Souza about his controversial new book www.dineshdsouza.com
Hour Three: A Columbus Day Meditation - As Nobel Laureate Obama Decides Whether to 'Conquer' Afghanistan... Plus, What you need to know about Sharon Angle and why she's the "Wrong Angle" for America - Thom talks with members of the Nurse's Union about their new campaign www.thewrongangle.com
Comments
#2
ATTENTION: ALL RED BLOODED AMERICANS! Lately, much has been made about the epidemic of apathy that has gridlocked our great nation. I can think of no more dangerous nor frightening example of this plague of apathy than the deafening silence and utter lack of outrage exhibited by the American public and our "Lamestream" media regarding the totally unpatriotic act of the "Der Wienerschnitzel" restaurant chain which furtively dumped the word "Der" from their name. Now, I'm sorry to say, it's new name is just, "Wienerschnitzel".
I ask you! Where are the protesters? Where are the marchers? Where are the letters to the editors? - I ask you, where was the media during this crisis? I have not heard one word from Brian Williams about this, nor did I see Glenn Beck shed a single tear. And worst of all! Where was Thom Hartmann when we needed him most? (although, this could explain his move to Washington) All sat quietly by while this treason was perpetrated on our great nation. Shamefully, not one peep of dissension from anyone.
Is this really the kind of nation you want your children to grow up in? A nation where the word "Der" is censored from the trademark of the great American institution of "Der Wienerschnitzel". What next? Will "McDonalds" just become known as "Donalds"? (over my dead body!) Will "Chevrolet" become known simply as "Chevy"? I'm telling you; we must nip this in the bud right now! We must stop it before it infects other great national institutions. This threatens the very fiber of our great democracy like some malignant cancer. How will we get our country back? We must take back our country!!
My friends, it's not too late. Der God spoke to me last night and commanded that on the day of October 30, 2010, we march on Washington, D. C. in front of the Lincoln Memorial. We will prove that we are truly on a mission from Der God as we will be able to walk on top of the reflecting pool in our shoes without even getting our feet wet. Top that Glenn Beck! This will be known as "The Restoring Der to Der Wienerschnitzel March". After all. Why the hell do you think we amended the Pledge of Allegiance to include the words "Un Der God"?
Won't you please march with me? I know that my fellow progressives won't let me down. Amen
#3
I dont care
#4
does anybody here work in auto insurance? If so, i have a question
#5
War and prosperity?
#6
As for World War II’s ending the Great Depression: nonsense. The Depression was bad because living standards fell when, because of the previous inflationary boom, production didn’t match consumer preferences. Business projects were liquidated, creating high unemployment, and government interference and uncertainty impeded recovery. The war did not restore living standards — consumer goods were rationed — and unemployment ended only because of conscription. Improved statistical aggregates for national income or investment only concealed what was really going on. What ended the Depression was not government spending but the retrenchment of government after the war.
#7
I have a problem with Columbus Day. This problem has been with me for many years. This day is similar to conservatives honoring Reagan and his destruction of the American middle class. Clinton and W put the final nails in the coffin.
#8
Columbus Day is like Jim Jones Day or Jeffrey Dahmer Day.
#9
Re: The Tea Party
Clay Jenkinson has some interesting commentary concerning the Tea Party.
#10
RE: Columbus
Thank you Thom!! Thank you.... It is like what is requires to heal a deep wound, or a dysfunction in a family. To hide it, to avoid facing it makes us weaker. Nothing swept under the rug ever goes away. To truly fulfill the great promise of America we must have the courage to face the truth of our own history. We can do that. We are strong enough. And doing so will make us stronger.
#11
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
This Ronald Reagan quote is probably the most successful propaganda con ever uttered. Multitudes of people are still swallowing that poison Kool-Aid. The latest version of this theme is a new "documentary" called I WANT YOUR MONEY. http://iwantyourmoney.net
The filmmakers might be good debate fodder for Thom.
#12
Waiting for Superman?
Here is another documentary that is worrying because the Mainstream Press is giving it high marks. It's from the same filmmaker of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. I even heard Randi Rhodes sing it's praises. This is expert propaganda if it can fool her!
The film claims to know how to fix our schools and who is to blame for their failure.
The culprits according to the filmmakers: Teachers and Teachers' Unions.
Their solution: Charter Schools.
http://www.WaitingForSuperman.com
I think Thom needs to look into this and discuss it on the air.
#13
Dinesh D'Souza has never met a fact that he can and would not misinterpret.
#14
Bee Mystery Unsolved? Lead Investigator Had Connections to Pesticide Maker
Yesterday's New York Times featured a heartwarming ending to the years-long murder mystery of what was causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) among honeybees. Experts suspected pesticides or genetically modified foods, but the article reported that the University of Montana's Bee Alert Team, working alongside the Army, found the cause: the combined effects of a virus and fungus. Data sharing! Chance discoveries! Honeybees live on to sting another day! But according to Fortune, there were a couple of details left out of the front-page story. The team's lead investigator, Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, may have previously dropped out of testifying in a class-action lawsuit after he received a significant research grant from the pharmaceutical giant Bayer. For years, beekeepers have tried to pursue legal action against Bayer Crop Science over their pesticides, in particular a type of neurotoxin that gets rids of insects by attacking their nervous systems. The beekeepers allege that the pesticides disoriented and killed their hives. One of the markers of CCD is a bee's tendency to fly off in a random direction before it dies.
#15
Well said.
Can someone ask Thom,what is the tragedy that we are going to avert if we go out & vote for Democrats ?
Let's see both parties are trying to cut social security,both parties favor Corporations over people
what is it that we are going to avoid voting for Democrats ?
Folks,the tragedy started years ago with the outsourcing of our jobs...and if you go & vote for Democrats
you are delaying the onset of meaningful change......many of us won't see any betterment in our life time
it's only if you stay away,that we can start the rebuilding so that our kids & grand kids will have a better life than us.
#16
The media has let the Republicans establish that Dems can no longer blame Bush. He's been out of office for 21 months and as we all know there is no such thing as legacy once a president leaves office.
#17
Re: Sharon Angle; Making lemonade out of lemons regarding children of Rape
Perhaps we can discuss that when it is mandatory that (repeat offender) rapist are castrated?
#18
@Pablito
The only way our kids & grand kids will have a better life than us is if we start paying now for the mistakes of the last 30 years.
#19
Vote Green Party. It's the only one that makes sense. They don't take PAC money from corporations or unions but are for workers organizing. They're for universal haalthcare, a decent living minimum wage standard, state chartered banks, and many other values the majority of Amercans want and know we need. Why is there so much hesitation and fear about voting for a 3rd party. The simple answer is infotainment's spin-doctoring and exclusion of Green Party candidates from the national and state debates, forums, etc.
#20
Thom, if you read the thread after the show, I ahve some personal experience on the fraudulent mortgage front. One home is in CA, a non-judicial state. The other in KS, a judicial state. We have attorneys fighting for us in both states and preliminary hearings happen for both this Friday Oct 15th. Neither bankster can prove they own the houses but it takes hours of seraching courthouse records to get at the actual truth, when they claim the original documents "are lost". It's convoluted, fraud of a repetative nature that meets the criteria for RICO.
Our CA attorney ahs been in foreclosure law fo over 3 decades and he's never seen the likes of what's happened with our documentation there!
#21
Re: Sharon Angle
It seems to me that it all come down to a religion based on a patriarchal society where men rule and woman are the corrupters of men. I am continually amazed when women buy into this world view.
#22
Chris Hedges is Right:
The tragedy is that liberals and secularists, like Obama, are not viewed as competitors by the corporate forces that hold power, but as contaminates that must be eliminated. They have sought to work with forces that will never be placated. They have abandoned the most basic values of the liberal class to play a game that in the end will mean their political and cultural extinction. There will be no swastikas this time but seas of red, white and blue flags and Christian crosses. There will be no stiff-armed salutes, but recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. There will be no brown shirts but nocturnal visits from Homeland Security. The fear, rage and hatred of our dispossessed and confused working class are being channeled into currents that are undermining the last vestiges of the democratic state. These dangerous emotions, directed against a liberal class that as in ancient Athens betrayed the population, have a strong appeal. And unless we adopt the radicalism held by Aristophanes, unless we begin to hinder the functioning of the corporate state through acts of civil disobedience, we are finished.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/how_democracy_dies_lessons_from_a_master_20101011/
What is it going to take? Or are we doomed like acient Greece?
#23
Huh?
The deterioration started 10 yrs ago ?
Please,stop.GWBush was bad but this did not start when he came into office.
It merely continued to where we are today.
Go look at GHWBush & Clinton......
#24
Unfortunately, voting for the Green Party may well be what got us in the terrible mess we are in today. Yes, I agree with and support the platform and the stands that the Green Party takes on the issues. Nonetheless, voting for the Green Party for the Senate and Congress at this time where they have zero chance of winning, can only throw the country further to the right as it did when Ralph Nader ran for president, insuring that Al Gore would lose in Florida and resulting in an election that was so close that it ended up in the Supreme Court where right wing judges effectively ended our democracy.
The Green Party, until that time, had made important inroads into the political landscape by winning local and statewide races, building a true grassroots movement. However, Nader's all or nothing presidential campaign, I believe, may have caused irreversible damage to the progressive direction of our nation. And normally I agree with everything Nader stands for.
Therefore, I believe in supporting the Green Party at the local and state level, however, the stakes are to high to chance insuring that the right wing put the final nail in the coffin of democracy.
#25
Columbus got rich in sex trade business trading in young girls. Committed genocide in the process. At least his crew, and
the men who took advantage of his sex trade business suffered some pay back for their evil deeds. The slave business
went on in other areas such as Mexico with the Aztecs, and you here of Montezuma's revenge which was diarherra, but the
real revenge was Syphillus. Columbus's men brought Syphillus to the old world from the new world. Probably many of the
men who bought into the sex trade became infected and suffered angonizing deaths. Sometimes, there is payback for
evil deeds, although why didn't Columbus die of Syphillus?---or maybe he did.
#26
URGENT FOR ON AIR CONSIDERATION NOW!!
THOM, I am an American Indian scholar. Vine Deloria, Jr. contributed to my U of Texas Press book, UNLEARNING the Language of Conquest just before he passed on. I LOVE your words on this program today about exposing Columbus Day for what it is. HOWEVER, your opening comment calling him the first illegal immigrant is NOT a good thing to say. I understand your intention, but remember there is no comparison and our enemies will use this against your important message. The mostly indigenous migrant farm workers who are our "illegal immigrants now" are not coming here to steal gold, rape, pillage, wipe out a society, etc. So ANY comparison with them and Columbus is not a healthy analogy. Please catch this right away.
PS I really think you should have me on your program as a guest Thom. See my 20 books (one less than you) at www.teachingvirtues.net. I miss our conversations with Dan Millman and am so sorry I let Dr. Fetzer be interviewed by you about our little book on Wellstone. But I have so much to share (and I will promise to not mention 9/11 if you want, in spite of our Elsevier text, The Hidden History of 9/11.) I understand this would be game over. I disagree vehemently with you! But there is SO much more to talk about relating to my specialization of scholarship, as relates to Indigenous perspectives and how they are vital for our survival.
#27
Tonight I watched PBS Newshour. Judy Woodruff was interviewing a man to talk about the money that's been spent on attack ads funded by the Chamber of Commerce. At the end of the interview, Judy Woodruff stated that the Democrats were waiting fo the last minute to talk about this and that they (the democrats) think that the media will carry it through and will talk about it to help them in the election. Judy went on to say, "But, the media is not going to do that, are they?"
And their guest laughed and said, "That's your decision."
I thought that PBS was not biased?
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
Mueller's favorite place to pray (written about in "Prophet's Way"), and the roof of the room where the Last Supper is reputed to have happened.
From Cracking the Code:
"In Cracking the Code, Thom Hartmann, America’s most popular, informed, and articulate progressive talk show host and political analyst, tells us what makes humans vulnerable to unscrupulous propagandists and what we can do about it. It is essential reading for all Americans who are fed up with right-wing extremists manipulating our minds and politics to promote agendas contrary to our core values and interests."
From Cracking the Code:
"Thom Hartmann ought to be bronzed. His new book sets off from the same high plane as the last and offers explicit tools and how-to advice that will allow you to see, hear, and feel propaganda when it's directed at you and use the same techniques to refute it. His book would make a deaf-mute a better communicator. I want him on my reading table every day, and if you try one of his books, so will you."
From Cracking the Code:
"No one communicates more thoughtfully or effectively on the radio airwaves than Thom Hartmann. He gets inside the arguments and helps people to think them through—to understand how to respond when they’re talking about public issues with coworkers, neighbors, and friends. This book explores some of the key perspectives behind his approach, teaching us not just how to find the facts, but to talk about what they mean in a way that people will hear."
Urgency
That sense of urgency that was very present in Washington when we wanted to save Wall Street is not at all present when it comes to saving the middle class. - Arianna Huffington
WHY IS THERE SUCH A LACK OF URGENCY IN SAVING THE MIDDLE CLASS?
Unless the middle class returns to prominence, the United States of Hell is doomed. - Gerald