Thom Hartmann: Okay, there’s some history here, you know. When it comes to like smuggling stuff which is really at the bottom line, when you get right down to the whole thing. What this whole TSA 'may I grope your genitals, please' stuff is about is trying to stop people from smuggling explosives onto airplanes. Or weapons. And that seems like a perfectly reasonable thing. So have we been successful at stopping people from smuggling things on airplanes in the past? You know, white powder things. Or pasty things. Or even relatively solid things.

Thom Hartmann: Last night we were talking on our TV show with, excuse me with Jane Hamsher about this. It’s, well, we’ve been talking about it every day for the last couple of days I guess. This is in the news, I experienced this myself going through the Chicago airport just a few weeks ago. I opted to get groped but the line, there was this long line to wait to get groped so they said you know you’ve got to wait 15 minutes because we’ve only got a certain number of gropers and so I went through the x-ray machine.

Thom Hartmann: 20 minutes past the hour. Okay, as I said, we’ve got two choices. Now maybe there’s others that I’m missing. But I think that at the most, at the biggest most macro level, in order to pay off our debt, or in order to reduce our debt, which is brought to us courtesy of three republican presidents over nine trillion dollars of the US federal debt. Over nine trillion dollars of that debt was incurred during the Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. administrations.

Thom Hartmann: So what’s going on here. We’ve got this mess with the banks, this meltdown, the overall disaster that’s going on. The report that came out yesterday, yesterday afternoon. For every one job out there, and there are a couple, there’s a couple million jobs, there’s a couple, you know, if you look at the listings, there are people looking for work. For every job out there there’s five people looking for a job.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah the banksters, “Oh, it’s just an act of God. It’s the way things work!” No, it’s a scam. 1999, Phil Gramm, Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Deregulate the banks. In the UK, Maggie Thatcher, Tony Blair, ‘Oh yeah let’s deregulate the, let’s become the world, the capital, the money center of the world.’ And what are we seeing now? Banksters based in the UK and the US, based in New York and London, rolling all over the world, wiping out governments. Banksters. And making billions.

Thom Hartmann: Greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Maybe the European way, I don’t know.

Thom Hartmann: Welcome back, six minutes past the hour, Thom Hartmann here with you. And I am honored and pleased to have with me in the studio Chris Hedges. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the author of a new book, “Death of the Liberal Class.” And, “liberal is conceded too much to the power elite,” he writes on the back.

Thom Hartmann: Greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Thom Hartmann here with you. And I am so pleased to have in the studio with me today, Bill Press. Old friend and colleague in talk radio and many other things. God, you’ve done so much in your life. And your most recent book, “Toxic Talk.”

Thom Hartmann: Greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Thom Hartmann here with you. And boy a lot going on.

I’ve got a, well, President Obama is in India, I want to tell you about that. There’s an amazing piece in today’s Financial Times about how corporate America is not just happy that the Republicans won, they’re dancing in the streets. They are popping champagne corks, now this is my language, not theirs, I’ll tell you about that.

Thom Hartmann: Greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Well big news last night in the elections. In fact our cheesy news alert, we’re going to kick off the show with it, courtesy of Andy Borowitz, BorowitzReport.com.

Thom Hartmann: Okay so who killed the economy? I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question, but as a genuine question. The main Republican storyline, the one that is pitched by conservatives and people who don’t want banks deregulated, is that back either during the Carter or the Clinton administration, pick your story, I’ve heard both, that there was legislature passed that encouraged banks, the Community Reinvestment Act, they encouraged banks to give loans to people who couldn’t afford to get actually loans.

In news, you need to know this. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell fought tooth and nail against the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler last year. The Republican leader saying, “I cannot ask the American tax payer to subsidize failure!” Right, so he’s totally anti-bailout GM. Is GM upset about that? Not so much. Political Action Committee that GM formed, this is back before the bailout, and is now largely owned by taxpayers, donated $5000 bucks to Republican McConnell’s campaign last month.

Thom Hartmann: We’re going to step out a little bit in this hour and kind of replicate our Brunch with Bernie at a certain level. Congressman Peter DeFazio is a good friend of the show and one of the finest members of the United States House of Representatives and in fact Bernie gave him a shout out this morning on the show talking about what a good, an excellent legislator he is. And he is. And he’s a, the congressman from, congressman is it the 4th district of Oregon?

Thom Hartmann: So what are the biggest lies, is lies the right word? What are the biggest lies about the economy? Joshua Holland, the editor and senior writer for Alternet, author of a new book, ‘The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy and Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You To Know About Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America” is with us on the line. Hey Joshua, welcome to the program.

Thom Hartmann: So the evisceration of the American middle class rolls on. We’ve lost 14 million manufacturing jobs just in the last decade and too many to count. Actually we had, it’s too late to pull it up. I had this ad from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. And you can find this on YouTube, you can Google this thing. 1981 ad where they came, “look for the union label.” There is no more International Ladies Garment Workers Union.