Thom, maybe I oughta try calling you sometime while you're on the air. I would love to ask why you're still so Obama-friendly, knowing he's behind the TPP... even to the point of wanting to fast-track it! Between that and his hit lists with murder-by-drone, I've had my fill of President Obama. I am ashamed of myself for having squandered my vote on this smooth-talking fascist. "Change we can believe in" has turned out to be little more than a clever sales pitch.

I think Loren Bliss was onto something. According to Mr. Bliss, our last presidential election was just a total farce. Staging Romney as Obama's opponent guaranteed Obama's second term, which was the agenda all along. I feel duped, and I am very afraid for our future. We've been conned on a massive scale. - Aliceinwonderland

As I have been saying, ubiquitous media shapes water-cooler dialogue and with it, the dialogue on Capital Hill. Without control of it, no other issue in the interest of the people will ever be dealt with legislatively. We MUST be on guard. Every time a corporate media circus is created in the left hand, (not to be confused w/ left) the right hand (not to be confused w/ correct) is up to no good. The scariest thing is that the powers elite, (the unholy marriage of Wall Street [Dems] and Dirty Energy [Repubs]) have gotten very good at distracting us on the one hand while using the distraction to cement their bidding in the Public Mind with the other. In this case they’re using Bridge Gate to slither around our awareness of the TPP while at the same time cementing a SHillary presidency. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until all who call themselves ‘progressive’ realize that at the national level, we have no more hope of reforming the Dems from within than we would the Mafia. We need our progressive voices with influence to start educating the people re. Candidates like Kshama Sawant. With both Dems and Repubs in Congress receiving approval ratings lower than dog poo and cock roaches, and POTUS and SCOTUS ratings at all time lows, with a little help from progressive voices like Thom’s we could turn the tide and force Corp. media to either cover them or lose ratings so fast their vapid chatter would be sucked into the void.

treason |ˈtrēzən|
noun(also high treason )
the crime of betraying one's country, esp. by attempting to kill the sovereignty of or overthrow the government. (definition taken from macbook dictionary)

Put simply, I would submit that any one who votes for or “fast track”s the TPP, including Obama, is committing treason.

Has anyone ever seen the dems extolling the virtues of free trade? I know a lot of them are all for it, but I never here them defending it. I know when the use it the word protectionism they have a derogatory tone in their voice, but never say why. The right uses the Smoot-Hawley (sp?) act as phony an argument as it is, but the dems seem really quiet.

capitalist:

1. a person who has capital, especially extensive capital, invested in business enterprises.

2. an advocate of capitalism.

The latter is exactly what the caller said a capitalist is, but Thom repeatedly said that his definition was "wrong." It isn't wrong. Definition #1 is closer to Thom's emphasis on using capital to earn more capital, but it notably does not say exclusively using capital, and it certainly does not require "sitting on one's butt waiting for a check." The phrase "especially extensive use of capital" could allow or suggest that investment-only model, but nothing in that definition *requires* that capitalists do not do any work in addition to the investment of capital. The caller seems to have been correct and Thom, incorrect. In terms of the conventional usage.

Yes, definitions of words change as the conventional usage changes, and if I recall correctly from previous Thom Hartmann Programs he does have a thorough and fairly sensible argument for using "capitalism" and "capitalist" the way he does, but it is still his usage, not The Correct Definition which is how he portrayed it just now. So his insistence that the other, quite common usage is simply "wrong" comes off as obstinate and arrogant, whereas if he explained "I use the words capitalism and capitalist like so for the following reasons" those reasons might be very enlightening. It might even occasionally persuade "2. an advocate of capitalism" not to advocate it or identify with it so much, or in some way reassess their assumptions, an outcome that I doubt will result from just insisting that they're using words incorrectly. Especially since they're in fact not using those words incorrectly, and he is.

Every decade governments seem to think they know better than the people who elected them. Kinda scary.

On a lighter note. I walked to my Safeway down the street in Scottsdale, AZ. In the middle of the Safeway is a new wine bar. Yes I can now stop for a glass of wine while I am buying my milk and eggs. Sitting at the wine bar was a civilian guy there with a gun on his hip. God Bless America. I love this place. At home we cant buy or sell any alcohol with food anywhere. It can only be bought in a liqiuor store.

Reed Young -- what makes a definition correct? Is it because it is a dictionary produced by a fascist?

Quote Aliceinwonderland:"Change we can believe in" has turned out to be little more than a clever sales pitch.

That sales pitch translates to "Change we should all be afraid of...very afraid of!"

Continuing my #14 comment. For example, when a multi-national corporation bought out Merriam-Webster in the 1980's the definition of fascism changed. It eliminated the part of the definition about the merging of state and private interests. It only changed in some versions. In two merriam-webster dictionaries I own, it is gone completely. That is, the word private (or anything similar) is not in any of the multiple definitions. My sister had some dictinaries that still included the concept of public and private merging interests.

The TPP is disgusting and shameful and must to be stopped. Any senator that votes in the affirmative, regardless of party affiliation, needs to be exposed and defeated at their next election. Corporations are taking over our planet and they have no souls. They only worship money and greed.

I think Obama made significant changes. They changes were not nearly as significant as I would like. I hate his love for free trade. He drank too much Clinton kool-aid. The changes I liked and would vote for am because of them:

1 Chrysler saved

2 GM Saved

3 AHCA passed (AKA Obamacare); (because of blue dogs like Max Baucus it was not a single player plan; to get Sen Baucus to sign it, Max's county got single payer.)

4 Middle class tax cut

5 Went from losing 750,000 per month to 30 straight months of job gains (in spite of Republican governors cutting 4.5 million jobs)

6 Education spending increased

7 Laws against hate crimes strengthened

8 CHIPS expanded (Children’s Health Insurance Program)

1 Chrysler Saved

9 Forced through Child Labor Laws

10 consumer protection agency formed

11 Credit card reform

12 Predatory lending to soldiers restricted

13 Troops paid for stop loss time

14 Torture stopped

15 VA spending increased

16 Women allowed to serve on subs

17 Equal pay for women

18 Nuclear arms reduction proposal

19 BP cleanup fund

20 EPA strengthened

21 FDA powers broadened

22 Healthcare for 9-11 responders funded (during Bush Term it was ignored)

23 DADT was repealed

24 Within 24 hours of his inauguration in 2009, he ordered that the financial statistics of the top 400 families should be treated like everyone else's; that is, they should not be a classified government document.

25 When the congress was adding Part D to Medicare (the prescription drug assist; I think it was in 2004) the democrats tried to pass an amendment to help fund it by a 1% income tax on incomes over 1 million.

26 In 2009-10 when Obama lost his filibuster proof senate, the senate had a record number of filibusters (380 or so); during LBJ's 6 year reign as senate majority leader there was one.

27 The bills that were filibustered would have helped our economy for both the long and short term. My favorites were the card check bill, the Disclose Act, stopping waivers for the Buy American Act of 1936 and the credits for bringing jobs back (no credits for tearing down factories to send jobs overseas.

28 Republicans supported the Reinhart-Rogoff Study used to push austerity throughout the world; The study was a total scam supported by Pete Peterson who wants all the social security money invested on wall street. It was easy to suck in democrats and the general public because too much debt being a bad thing makes intuitive sense.

Loren Bliss ~ "Obamanation of a treaty." You are truly one of the most gifted political critics I've ever had the pleasure to read. Thanks for that one. I think it might get repeated around here.

Quote dbengtson:The TPP is disgusting and shameful and must to be stopped. Any senator that votes in the affirmative, regardless of party affiliation, needs to be exposed and defeated at their next election.

dbengtson ~ Very well said! I might add that we might add that sentiment in the letters and emails we send to our congressmen on the TPP. Thanks again!

Wow! Like that's what we need, another "NAFTA." Sheesh! When will they ever stop screwing over the American people? When will they stop turning America into another third world country of surfs, where there is no quality of work of product? I've put up with this crap for thirty three years now, and I'm just so sick and tired of it. Unbelievable! President Obama should know better.

Does anyone know the names of the Democratic Senators involved in this bipartisan group in favor of fast-tracking more wealth to those who don't need it? I only know of Baucus. You may ask why does it matter?

I'm quite sure if voters in my district knew the content of the Ryan Budget Plans and the fact that our Tea Party House Rep. Thom Reed has voted yes on them, it would be the end of his government gravy train ride. With that logic in mind, the TPP is every bit as heinous as Ryan's fantasies. So let's expose the names and deeds of these deadbeats and replace them with third party candidates such as Kshama Sawats....as sandlewould suggests. But as sandlewould also pointed out, we need progressive voices like Thom's to overcome the corpse media and another equally hideous road block on repeal of free trade known as the Chamber of Fascist Commerce.

The funny thing about Obama's involvement in all of this, not only will the Teapublican Party still despise him, even after signing such an anti-labor law, which they love, most of his base will too.....what the hell?

As a side note, back in 2010, Democrats lead by House member Gene Taylor pushed legislation to repeal NAFTA.....the Chamber of Republican Fascists beat it down.

So I say, expose the enemy of the working people by name and replace them with Democratic Socialists.

Like Loren Bliss says, "we still gotta try."

There has been opposition, but I think we've reached the point where the poor and middle class are so deeply divided, pitted against each other, that we lose track of the policies and the politics chosen on our behalf. Consider how Democrats and much of the media marketed to libs have been promoting H. Clinton to run for president, and contrinue to adore Bill Clinton -- powerful anti-New Deal/Great Society supporters of NAFTA. Put "bold progressive" stickers on the lapels of any "free trade" pols, and they'll be heros to much of the middle class -- a middle class that has consistently voted for the agenda that is phasing out the middle class. In the 1980s, the Reagan Republicans set out to "dumb-down America," and it looks like they succeeded. The important thing is to keep (what's left of) the middle class from paying any attention to the consequences of these policies (primarily, poverty).

DAM -- Thanks for the editing. I ran into all kinds of problems going from Excel to Word, then table to text.

Quote Kend:Interesting that Dem presidents always seem to go a little right in there second term. in Canada we have no term limits so our politications don't change as much. I wonder if would be different if you didn't have term limits.

Kend ~ I have no problem with no term limits... As long as we have vigorous Campaign Finance Reform and Move to Amend on the books first... Sounds like a great idea!

The measure in question is so new it has yet to be assigned a bill number. Here is the official summary (http://www.finance.senate.gov/newsroom/chairman/release/?id=7cd1c188-87f...) and here is the full text (http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/TPA%20bill%20text.pdf). Until it is numbered, the proposal is known as "TPA-2014."

Membership of the Senate Finance Committee is here: http://www.finance.senate.gov/about/membership/, 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans. The fact the measure is passing out of committee means a majority on the committee supports it, but I was unable to find a record of the committee vote.

An opponent -- or at least an opponent last year -- was Sen. Sherrod Brown, but unless memory fails me he was the lone voice of reason on the entire committee.

I know one of the anti-Working Class Democrat senators is Washington state's Maria Cantwell, whose rationale is the state benefits enormously from free trade. (This is a partial truth -- but only to the extent the related jobs, mostly in shipping, are unionized. By contrast, non-union workers at Seattle-Tacoma [Sea-Tac] International Airport are amongst the worst paid people in the state.) Like her senatorial partner Patty Murray, Cantwell is a Barack-the-Betrayer-type Democrat who orates like a progressive or a semi-progressive when in Washington state, then votes like a fascist in Washington D.C., TPA-2014 being a case in point.

Meanwhile free trade has abolished hundreds of thousands of living-wage jobs in the state -- the real numbers are virtually impossible to obtain -- which in turn has forced all these displaced workers into low-income, often minimum-wage jobs. (Yes Washington state has the highest U.S. minimum wage, but its $9.32 an hour is not a living wage, especially in Seattle, which has one of the nation's highest living costs. Hence the success of Kshama Sawant and the Socialist Alternative Party with its demand for a $15 minimum wage.)

Hope this helps everybody: best I can do on short notice, especially with it Friday night and all my former D.C. sources either dead or retired.

Loren -- Does anyone confront Sen Cantwell with the question of how many more jobs there would be if all those products they are importing were made in the state of Washington? It sounds like the dockworkers, like Walmart workers, are accelerating the race to the bottom.

You're less likely to get caught lying in so short a time, Kend.

Do you have publicly financed election campaigns? That's what we need here. That would reduce a lot of corruption in the government.

Kend, you want drunks with guns on their hips?

Just giving you the raspberries.

Since Clinton's presidency, "global" and "trade" have become two of the dirtiest words in my vocabulary.

I wish, with all my heart, that more Americans could adopt the mind set that we vote with our money. I dream of a day when most (if not all) businesses in this country are worker-owned cooperatives; when privately-owned businesses with absentee owners are but a relic of the past; when a majority of us elect to spend our money at these cooperatives, buying American-made products as much as possible. People do themselves and their fellow citizens no favors buying all this imported crap without knowing or caring who made it, or where it comes from.

Before NAFTA, I took American-made products so for granted. I would have thought it jingoistic and silly to insist on stuff made here. Oh, how my perspective has changed! Enormously. - Aliceinwonderland

Mark we do have publicly funded election campaigns but they are talking about getting rid of it. It works on how many votes you have in the last elections but Our system is very complicated. We also have tax breaks for private donations. We also have more than two parties. Believe it or not we have a separation party as some in French speaking Quebecers want to separate from Canada. The Canadian government has to give them election money as they are an official party. It is insane. Most Canadians are nothing like me they don't pay much attention to politics here. Corporations can't donate like they do there it really doesn't come into play Here. Some have been caught donating X amount per employee in there name which is not allowed.

I don't want anyone carrying guns at home. It thinks it's nuts. I have to say the guy with the gun wasn't drinking he was just at the bar. I don't know if it's allowed. What I like though is that each state has different rules. At least if you don't like it you can more to a place that is governed the way you like it.

It is Congress that determines legislation, not the president. I think that what the president is doing at the moment is something that he successfully did before -- He'll indicate that a certain policy is going to be passed, even though he does not say he supports it, and waits for the public backlash. There's a very good reason for this. Remember, back when he first ran for office, he repeatedly stated that there would be little he could achieve unless We the People got to our feet and demanded it. We have an unusually oppositional Congress (to the degree of shooting down their own bills merely because the president said, "Sounds OK to me.") Congress only blocks President Obama's proposals. The only thing that will make Congress reconsider is public pressure (by whatever means necessary) to reconsider. Through all the years that middle classers have been whining, they have actually had the power and means to organize, march on DC if necessary, to force their representatives to actually represent them. The middle class has the power to shut down the country by Monday, if they felt like it. If they do nothing, then nothing is all they'll get.

Number 10 needs a little work. Yes, Obama put in the consumer protection bureau only to have Richard Cordray come out a few months ago and tell the public that they hadn't better expect much should they bother to take the time to contact his office. In other words, that bureau has had its teeth ripped out. And I can't help but wonder who did that? Our illustrious president?Typical Right-wing baloney: Agencies in name only giving the illusion that everything is functional when, if you bother to look behind the curtain, you will find that NOTHING is functional these days except that there is a massive robbery going on right under our comatose noses.

I didn't vote for him for a second term; I went Green. I'm refusing to support ANY Corporate Demo-rats. And my conscience doesn't bother me a bit.

I can't help but wonder when this country is going to stop the self-delusion and get out and fight these slime balls off. I read a really good Chris Hedges article last week and he warns if we don't get out in the streets, we are going down the tubes for sure. I agree with him. I don't know what is wrong with Americans that they are just standing by and letting all of this happen. What in heaven's name are they thinking???