Daily Topics - Tuesday September 6th, 2011

The Big Picture "On Air" Questions or Comments for Thom?
Hour One: Standing up for working Americans - James P. Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Hour Two: Winning the fight against Citizens United one community at a time - Tom Linzey, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)
Hour Three: "The GOP War on Voting" - Ari Berman, Rolling Stone Magazine
Comments
I am having that annoying u-stream thing happening too.. what gives???
oh you can't scare me i'm sticking to the union
i'm sticking to the union
i'm sticking to the union
till the day i die

Thom said today that people respond more to emotion than logic.
Society runs on charisma, not intelligence. Our political system, in which people are allowed (in fact, required) to nominate themselves for high office and must campaign publicly (shaking hand and kissing babies), requires great skill in socializing but not great skill in forming public policy. It leads to people voting for whoever they'd like to have a beer with, because that's all they have to go on. Our employment system is similar, with job interviews substituting for campaigning. The abilities to write (and pad) a résumé and talk your way through an interview don't relate to doing the job.

Mathboy, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the "Paralysis of Analysis" which I understand to mean some folks, who are smart as all getout, tend to analyaze and reanalyaze every situation. Until no stone is missed, every hair in place, but they can't make a decision or put their plan into action. It is my belief, that too much intelligence makes one pensive. Look at Obama, gifted with intelligence, but pretty much ineffective. Also look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, both of these fellows dropped out of college to follow their dream, and by most standards we use to measure success, blow the standards off the page. I'm a teacher, and I think it is much more important for students to get along with others. Intelligence is important, but a person who can draw all the collective intelligence from a group of people and than use what he or she collected will be succesful.



I am having troubles watching Thom live online. I have contacted the webmaster about this. I am in St. Louis and used to watch the radio show from Thom's website. For a while now the link for the tv show works, but not the link for the radio show - it is just a black box. I have tried on three different computers with three different internet providers and they are all the same. So I have been watching on Ustream. But today on Ustream, while Thom's show is on, a message keeps playing, "A Ustream producer" and with lettering over the picture. Very distracting. Are you sure no one is messing with the broadcast?