The only good republican... oops.

I aim to please, Sandlewould. If we weren't laughing we'd probably be crying, and laughing's more fun.

By the way EveningStar, I love your avatar name & image. Clicks with the artist in me... - AIW

I was reminded of a quote by Jim Hightower today after hearing Thom compare moving independent progressives to herding cats.

Anybody who says you can't herd cats never tried a can opener. --Jim Hightower

Some food for thought.

Hi Evening star...

We ARE standing up to corporate wolves(Republicans) and wolves in sheep's clothing(Dems), but you don't know it, 'cause you don't SEE it or HEAR it 'cause the ubiquitous, in-your-face corp media doesn't cover it! Thom treads a fine line to keep his show. True, I disagree with the 'We gotta vote Dem or we'll get Repub." meme. I am to the point where, no matter what, since I see the Dem as corrupt as the Repugs, just quietly so, I will never vote for any candidate unless I can truly get behind them again. With the Media in lockstep with this horrifying org; http://www.debates.org/ . 3rd partiers get drowned out by a tidal wave of $$$$$$$$. Someone I knew years ago was a friend of one of SHillary's drivers when she came to NYC as a congresswoman. It's only hearsay, but the evil stories I have heard, and based on her reaction to a vet that silently stood in protest of her foreign policy re. drones in the very back of an auditoreum where she spoke (he was assaulted by her security detail while she looked on unflinchingly w/out skipping a beat) I knew then and there- she will take us down a path to a corporate crackdown and genocide...and she WILL get elected, no matter what in 2016...mark my words. You want to see the the illegalization of the Constitution and Bill of Rights on steroids? Elect SHillary...Hey, I changed my registration from Ind. to Dem so I could vote 4 her in the primary in '08, but now...as W would say 'fool me once, shame on you...fool , me twice...you can't get fooled again'...well, I won't get fooled again.

It is hugely encouraging that so many people showed up but disappointing that, as usual, they were against, not for. It is physically impossible to react to every single issue your opponent throws at you. To succeed, you must set the agenda and let your opponents expend their energy and resources on trying to defeat you rather than push toward their own goals. If 80,000 people came out for a Citizen’s Dividend, I bet they’d win. Why? Because they’d move the debate from the old frame of people having no value outside of jobs and “might makes right” to a totally different and more humane frame of abundance and decency toward one another. People want to do the right thing. They just have to know it’s right. And geoism is right. Share society’s surplus. Don’t tax our efforts, don’t subsidize our insiders. Just share Earth’s worth. More at progress.org.

I have listened to Thom a lot, ES. I'm familiar with what you've cited as an example to support your premise. Fair enough. But it seems to me that the fascists have created a no-win situation for voters. Choose your favorite third-party candidate instead of the "lesser evil" on the Democratic ticket and you get the "lesser evil" anyway, if you're "lucky". I'll admit, I was rather shocked to hear Thom say he'd vote "enthusiastically" for Hillary Clinton, who've I've described as a warmonger with lipstick. (I'd sooner withhold my vote than vote for her.) However I also heard him say that if given a choice between Hillary and Elizabeth Warren, he'd choose Ms. Warren. I think Thom is only trying to be realistic about the options available to us at this point in time and what is realistically achievable.

Far as Barak Obama is concerned, our president is no "liberal". I've written him off as just another corporatist who got himself elected under false pretense. His appearance on FOX, which I didn't watch but only heard about, had me shaking my head with disgust.

But to generalize that liberals "strongly support" the media establishment is quite a stretch, in my view. I don't support it at all; don't watch it, read it or listen to it. Haven't had TV for years and don't miss it! I've more than a hunch lots of people with similar views have been inclined to dismiss that fascist drivel from their realm of reality, as I have. - Aliceinwonderland

Aliceinwonderland, you asked for a specific example. I'm surprised. Anyone who has listened to Thom Hartmann knows that, in the last campaign, he eagerly endorsed the establishment Democratic ticket, who STRONGLY support the media industry in government, and he was less than accomodating to progressives who did not want to vote to continue our government's slide to the right. (Yes, yes, I know, "a vote for the Greens is a vote for Republicans" and all that crap... I've heard it all before. But the results speak for themselves. It was, after all, Barack Obama who resurrected the Republican Party from the dead in 2009 when he eschewed progressives and supported Republican efforts to kill the public option.)

Oh, and by the way, with Fox News' ratings slipping, what did Barack Obama do? He went on their network. He gave them an interview. He brought their viewers back. But if you don't think that liberals strongly support the media establishment, there's not much point in continuing this conversation.

We've got to discredit the for profit, consolidated media and promote independent media.

Kend, I've got an answer to your post of yesterday on yesterday's blog. I'm afraid you won't like it. Had to cuff you one again. You're just a bad boy. Behave Kend!

I'd like to encourage everybody to read my post #55 on yesterday's blog. I'd hate for this site to be a forum for anti immigrant sentiment. Our economy, whether we like it or not, is global (as the Central American farmer/laborer was so rudely made aware of by NAFTA) and if capital is global and can move freely across borders labor is going to have to be able to as well. It's the crimminalization of this that causes many of the problems creating a class of under-the-radar workers unreachable by labor law that can be used against local workers driving down everybody's wages and working conditions. The labor movement is going to have to get global, as well, so we shouldn't throw our immigrant fellow workers under the bus.

Any law that criminalizes people's basic survival and their attempts to live a life of basic decency is illegitimate. I'd like to assert - and tell me if I'm wrong - if there were no jobs here in the U.S. - and no social safety net, nothing - but grinding poverty up to and including the real possibility of destitution and starvation - but there were jobs waiting for us in Canada, you and I would go to Canada - and we wouldn't care if that was legal or not.

I don't understand. Why wouldn't the corporate media ignore you? You keep endorsing and voting for their biggest supporters -- and, like too many progressives, you don't stand up to liberals who are, after all, not very different from conservatives. Neither the corporate media nor the liberals who support them have anything to fear from you. You'll always vote for them.

When good people do nothing, bad thinks will happen....Ben Franklin

otherwise, the voters are not paying attention, there is not enough Americans voting, are they are blindly voting for the same corrupt politicians over and over again.

Tar sands oil extraction produces up to 22% more geenhouse gases than conventional oil extraction. It uses and thus wastes, i.e., renders unusable tremendous amounts of water. It causes deformities and tumors in wildlife and cancer in humans.

Wikipedia says:

A 2012 study by Swart and Weaver estimated that if only the economically viable reserve of 170-billion-barrels (27×109 m3) oil sands was burnt, the global mean temperature would increase by 0.02 to 0.05 °C. If the entire oil-in-place of 1.8 trillion barrels were to be burnt, the predicted global mean temperature increase is 0.24 to 0.50 °C.[92

and:

In January 2013, scientists from Queen's University published a report analyzing lake sediments in the Athabasca region over the past fifty years.[79] They found that levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) had increased as much as 23-fold since bitumen extraction began in the 1960s. Levels of carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic PAHs were substantially higher than guidelines for lake sedimentation set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in 1999. The team discovered that the contamination spread farther than previously thought.[80]

The Pembina Institute suggested that the huge investments by many companies in Canadian oil sands leading to increased production results in excess bitumen with no place to store it. It added that by 2022 a month’s output of waste-water could result in a 11-feet deep toxic reservoir the size of New York City’s Central Park [840.01 acres (339.94 ha) (3.399 km²)].[81]

and:

The bulk of the research that defends the oil sands development is done by the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP). RAMP studies show that deformity rates are normal compared to historical data and the deformity rates in rivers upstream of the oil sands.[100] These results are dubious, however, as RAMP is funded largely by those energy companies with direct interests in the relevant environments. Further, unlike academia, where peer review happens on a per study basis, RAMP does a peer review of the entire organization only once every five years.[101] Hence, RAMP cannot be said to meet widely accepted scientific standards.

My problem with Keystone XL is the same problem I have with all pipelines other than their safety (which may or may not be an issue) and that is its effect on wildlife. There is very little unmolested wildlife left in the United States and I don't think we should do anything to harm it further and ultimately, of course, with mass extinction looming, we have to stop the use of fossil fuels. That you have a lot invested in them personally, Kend, is irrelevant.

I do wish you'd stop spreading misinformation to protect your investments. That's the kind of shit that pisses me off so. It's just unconscionable.

Aliceinwonderland, Today's Fascist controlled media will broadcast images only when a movement looks like it's getting too big and too populist in nature and needs defamation to thwart it.....you know, like the dirty unemployed hippy spin put on the Occupy success. During Occupy the media picked and planted folks to interview who they knew would give the slant they wanted on interviews. Remember...none of us supossedly knew why we were protesting and crap like that.

But Thom is correct, if the protests continue to grow it will force the media to give attention one way or the other. In my opinion, political and media scoundrels will try to quell the movement with negative spin again. At that point it would be up to we the people to expose the truth with our actions, communication, and widespread civil disobedience this time around. Hell, announce you're the Tea Party just to get the coverage...mess with them...... It can be done. We have no choice, the big money Fascists have overthrown our Democratic State. As John Locke warned us, good government is a human creation and the rulers authority comes from the people....if that agreement is violated we have a right to resist.