Daily Topics - Tuesday October 30th, 2012

Catch The Thom Hartmann Program LIVE 3-6pm Eastern!
Hour One: Privatize FEMA - heckuva job, Romney! David Selig, True Tax Help
Hour Two: Romney's Lax Regulation May Have Fueled Meningitis Outbreak - Craig Unger, Author-Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove's Secret Kingdom of Power
Hour Three: Electoral College...from slavery to corporate slaves? Tara Ross, "Enlightened Democracy"
Comments


Your comment to the career civil servant caller, 'Thank you for your service to our country,' really got to me. (End of first hour today)
As a aide/SW/psychologist for fifteen years in a large state mental hospital I was more often endangered than I was when serving in the military. The people who have been encouraged to hate government might do well to hear that 'thank you' to all civil servants on a regular basis.
One of my favorite quotes alluding to govermental function: 'You don't notice the road until the pothole.'
I have heard Thom say Obama had a Democratically controlled Senate for just over two months after he took office in Janurary 2009 but this is somewhat misleading. When Obama was sworn in Senator Burris had been already been sworn into the Senate as Obama's replacement. That made 58 Democratic Senators and 2 independents, Joe Leiberman and Bernie Sanders. Leiberman was acting more as a Republican than a Democrat at that time after having spoken at the Republican Convention. In order to overcome any Republican filibuster at that time the Democrats needed Ted Kennedy's vote and he was quite engaged in his battle against cancer after having been diagnosed in May of 2008 before passing in August of 2009. With Kennedy unavailable the best the Deocrats could have mustered was 59 votes which would have to include Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Joe Lieberman, none of whom were reliable party line voters in the Senate. If Obama had a reliable, filibuster proof Senate he could have passed Obamacare, with a public option, in his first couple of months in office. He never had that and needed Ted Kennedy's vote in a dramatic trip from Massachusetts to Washington just to pass a heavily compromised Obamacare through a simple majority budget reconciliation vote.
Thom:
The compounding pharmacy in Mass held a fundraiser for Scott Brown. Here's the link:
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/10/sen_scott_brown_to_do...