Daily Topics - Thursday December 8th, 2011
By shawnt56
"It's Time to Talk" Day to raise awareness on domestic violence
Hour One: Yesterday K Street, today Boehner's office! Krista Rand, 99 in DC / Plus, Politicians that Charm vs real issues...
Hour Two: TSA Gropers strike again...violate seniors - Les Rayburn / Plus, Geeky Science Rocks - Why some people see God...in pizza?!
Hour Three: Why is Mitch McConnell afraid of the popular vote? Scott Keyes, Think Progress / Plus, GOP and OWS...Craig Shirley, Author "December 1941"
Comments
#2
Is anyone else having problems with the live streams? I can't seem to get any of them to work, on the web or my phone.
update: its working now!
thanks!
#3
I've reached a point in Democracy in America where deTocqueville predicts that, within several years of his book being written, the majority of the population of the US would live outside the original 13 states that had created the Union. This in fact happened during the 1850s, the decade before the Civil War.
I had thought about this already and I think that having a majority of the population living in states that were created by the Union (rather than the other way around) may have contributed to the change after the Civil War that Thom has mentioned where people stopped saying "the United States are" and started saying "the United States is".
#4
"Pareidolia" /pair-eye-DOLE-ee-ah/ is a good word to know. Human brains aren't just overactive in finding patterns (where perhaps there are none), they are especially prone to seeing faces. There was a woman that prayed before her bathroom door because the symmetrical knots in the wood looked like "Jesus's" eyes. I don't know why these people don't realize that no one actually knows what Jesus or Mary looked like. Every painting and sculpture is a guess.
Pareidolia is one big reason we need science. As physicist Richard Feynman said, "Science is a way for us not to fool ourselves."
#5
I hate to agree with Sen. Mitch McConnell, but I would also worry about having a strict popular vote for President. The states all run their elections differently, and they vary in what proportion of the population is eligible to vote. Laws about ex-cons not voting and accidental variations in age distribution (looking at you, Florida) affect this.
The electoral college determines beforehand how much sway each state has in the presidential election. A state can not cheat and inflate it's number of votes.
The electoral college should be altered to get rid of the 2 extra votes (I'd also like to see the population-based vote total increased to make rounding less unfair), stop appointing individuals to cast votes and just do it by a rule, and eliminate the unit rule, but I want the states to be unable to use election fraud to increase their influence.
#6
Giving FDR the benefit of the doubt that he and for that matter any American in the administration can say they had no idea that a country could do what the German government did during the Holocaust is to say that none of these people ever heard of the reports of the Armenian Genocide. I don't buy it. BTW the holocaust apparently was not the first genocide committed by the German government in the 20th century... look up the Herero and Namaqua Genocide. German officials involved in that fiasco, also were later to be involved in the Holocaust.
I'm sorry, as much as I respect FDR, I have little doubt that he had more information on what was going on in Germany then he ever let on, and there is no way I can be convinced that he couldn't have imagined it.
N
#7
I missed what the ugly word was, but "horny around the nose" has me laughing so hard.
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
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Through compelling personal stories, Hartmann presents a dramatic and deeply disturbing picture of humans as a profoundly troubled species. Hope lies in his inspiring vision of our enormous unrealized potential and his description of the path to its realization."
From Unequal Protection, 2nd Edition:
"Beneath the success and rise of American enterprise is an untold history that is antithetical to every value Americans hold dear. This is a seminal work, a godsend really, a clear message to every citizen about the need to reform our country, laws, and companies."
From Screwed:
"Thom Hartmann’s book explains in simple language and with concrete research the details of the Neo-con’s war against the American middle class. It proves what many have intuited and serves to remind us that without a healthy, employed, and vital middle class, America is no more than the richest Third World country on the planet."
Question;
Will President Obama be able to make some recess appointments over the Christmas breaks or will the house be in 'pro-forma' session to thwart that? Pity the Democrats didn't think of that vs Bush's abuse of things like that.
As a Canadian I'm not sure of your system. I assume they are called recess appointments because the members are acting like children and recess is the only time the adults have to get things done..
Oh yeah.. how many signing statements has the President used?
Good luck, count those votes..
Rick