Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
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.
PLEASE riff on the Budget numbers. I have had right wing friends who say I'm "regurgitating" left wing numbers about the budget. Where I've heard that approx. 57% of our budget is defense spending. Most of the web sites I google about the budget which SAY they are non partisan say it is 19%. Please help educate us on this. first of all where to go to find real statistics. I remember you always say, liars can figure. Thanks.
I feel we need to create more ways to empower the American people, in the areas of self-expression, good people turn bad when they feel threatened and cornered, fear is a really big driver, and guns are really good security blankets. It is no wonder why people resort to using guns (sad as it may be) some people feel they have no choice, I have being creating self-expression tools for 30years please go to my website Trickle Down Campaigning http://trickledowncampaigning.com/ and please feel free to give me your opion and ideas -do not hold back I can take it...... peace AGG
The best thing that we as a species do before we self destruct is take the trillion dollars each year spent on weapons off offence and defence and use it for the benefit of humanity.
Provide education,basic health care, housing and food for all those living in horrible circumstances all around the world.
How can the so called most intelligent people design and build these weapons knowing full well the destruction to people's lives that they cause.
To continue down this road is insanity ,perhaps the people calling the shots are somewhat insane ,but the law of consequence will come home to roost one day soon .
Congress will no longer care about the masses (if they ever have, in this century) as long as there is a Democrat in the White House. After we elected President Obama, and tarnished the White House forever (by putting a dark-skinned family on sacred ground!!), I predict that until we vote all of the bigots and the cowards OUT, and put in Democrats to run both sides of the aisles for the next twenty years, we will NEVER have a working Congress or a viable Senate.
Had I scheduled my employees to work during a year as little as this do-nothing Speaker has done for the past 3 years WITH FULL PAY & BENEFITS, I'd have been fired on the spot! My pension would have been revoked. My healthcare would have been deleted. And all of my employees who did what I told them to do (go home) would have been summarily replaced. I'd have never worked again. So why are these gold-brickers still allowed to get their salaries, their pensions, and their healthcare?!
People are not afraid to be without guns; they just think it's COOL to be able to buy one regardless of how many others are doing the same, but for questionable purposes. We have become no better than the thugs on the street who buy their weapons out of the trunks of cars parked in alleys, and use them to kill innocent people who get between them and the other side's homies they want to take out...
The GOP has successfully created such a terrible rift between reasonable and insane, there is little hope for a mending. I think the only way is to get decent, caring Democrats elected, and vote out those with no spines to do the right things for ALL of the American people - not just the very rich who hold the strings on the money bags, because they're afraid of the NRA and the contributions they will lose for re-elections.
As long as the GOP wields any power, we are hopelessly lost.
We need to diversify the ways in which we protest and communicate, I create powerful, peaceful, nonviolent, ways to protest and communicate. Please visit my website Trickle Down Campaigning http://trickledowncampaigning.com/ I am sure it can be of assistance to our causes. We can not rely on others to comunicate and advertise our ideas for us, we must peacefully take our messages to the ones that need to hear it. OCCUPY EVERY CORNER
thank you, Thom -you are truly a great American Champion
Every time I see a Mercedes commercial I think of Michael Hastings and his explosive and firey demise. Are the cars really that unsafe? Or, would any car be.. slamming into a tree at 80mph...or would any car be.. that had explosives rigged that resulted in throwing an engine and transmission 160 feet. That is actually one point I have to take issue with Carl's statements. He kept saying the engine was thrown 200 feet...but it was actually more like 160 feet. I measured the distance myself using Google Earth. I identified the exact curb where the engine/transmission was sitting, the features at that site, and then identified, using Google Earth street view those exact same features which matched the photo of the engine/transmission. Another 40 feet would have put the engine/transmission on the other side of the intersection..or at least in it..and someone would have had to carry it 40 feet closer to the crash site to wind up where it was in the photo.
Palindromedary ~ "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" is on YouTube, when you have the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6FPbt8zB48
Great movie!
DAnneMarc: I was trying to think of his name last night when I saw him briefly on an old show...I didn't have time to watch it. I don't even know what the name of the show was...maybe it was the one you mentioned. Vincent Price! Yes, what a great actor! I'll certainly have to watch that movie "The Abominable Dr. Phibes?" when I can.
Here is the short segment of the show where Thom interviews Carl Gibson of occupy.com :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwcDWbpIink
Palindromedary ~ Of course that is always an option. Don't you remember the 1971 film, "The Abominable Dr. Phibes?" Now that is a great Halloween film. In it, Vincent Price plays an evil genius Doctor who is disfigured in an accident and looses his wife to a team of bumbling Doctors. He decides to address the situation himself and doesn't settle for "binding arbitration." His solution was infinitely worse than any malpractice law suit. He used the theme of the 10 plagues of Egypt in the Bible to hunt down and whack the guilty Doctors, one at a time. Great writing and great acting. He's the bad guy you root for all through the story. One of my favorite flicks.
"China trying to stop patients from killing doctors"
"China plans to beef up security in its hospitals to prevent the deaths of doctors and nurses in attacks by patients' relatives who become violent in their anger over the cost and quality of care."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/24/china-hospital-attac...
Leave it to the Chinese to get innovative. Could that be an option in the US? I suspect there are more than a few people who would love to whack a doctor or nurse who were irresponsible and created an iatrogenic death of a loved one.
DAnneMarc: Wow! Thanks for that tip! No, as a matter of fact I have not yet seen today's show. I will certainly want to watch it. Yes, I know Carl Gibson of occupy.com has been quite active lately about that subject. Thanks again for the heads up.
Palindromedary ~ Speaking about preventable homicides, did you catch the interview on Thom's show today with Carl Gibson of occupy.com about the murder of Michael Hastings? It was quite interesting. Apparently there is a article on the website called "Who Killed Michael Hastings." Perhaps it is one of the ones you shared yesterday because the entire interview almost mirrored everything we discussed, including the Professor from LA who proved almost any car can be remotely hacked from as far as 1000 feet. I'm sure you might want to check it out. Thom had an interesting suggestion. He mentioned that if Mercedes was sued for an unsafe car design, that might open the door for a better investigation of the case. Not a bad idea.
Palindromedary ~ You are quite right. But what is worse is that mental health patients aren't even completely covered by many insurance plans anymore--let alone public funded programs. The system is completely kicking this group under the carpet. Why? Well lets face it, severe mental health issues require expensive treatment. They require a facilities and round the clock special treatment. The job isn't easy either--as you might know if you've ever cared for a person with a mental disorder. Imagine how difficult it is to care for an infant or child. Now multiply that by an unpredictable child mind in an adult body. You have to have the manpower to restrain as well as the professional presence to treat. Drugs can also be expensive and require round the clock monitoring. President Ronald Wilson (666) Reagan must have saved the a fortune by abandoning this public service. Consequently he opened a door to a realm of horrors through which we are only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg.
About the only thing I know about Australia, aside from the UKUSA/Echelon spy center, and that that is where Julian Assange is from (not from the spy center), is the Bloomin' Onion at Outback. Yummy! I've been just about every where else in the World except Australia.
Over 32,000 people have been killed in auto accidents, in the US, in 2011. No one is saying that we should ban automobiles. Although, there are some who would want this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
---------------
Oh, but you might say that transportation by automobiles is a necessary thing. But, isn't protection of one's family against criminals, who have always been able to get guns illegally, a necessary thing? You can never rely on the police to protect you in time. You have to be proactive if you want to save your life or those of your loved ones. The very fact that people may have their own guns to protect themselves is alone a deterrent. But if the government bans guns then the criminals will be the only ones to have them. Easy pickins for the criminally inclined.
-------------------
"between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/09/20/224507654/how-many-die-from-m...
-------------------
And how many of those people, in order to even get admitted to those hospitals in the first place, had to agree to sign a form that you agree to not seek a jury trial...you had to agree to a arbitration instead...and the arbitrator to be selected by the hospital?
DAnneMarc: I certainly agree with your last #5...at least, the last couple of paragraphs.
"Australia experiencing more violent crime despite gun ban"
"According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there was a slight drop in the percent of murders committed with a firearm between 2001 and 2007 (16.0% and 13.4%, respectively). However, the percentage was highest in 2006 (16.3%) and remains higher than the low of 8.9% in 2005. There is no difference in the use of a firearm in robbery: Guns were used in 6.4% of all robberies in both 2001 and 2007.
In 2002–five years after enacting its gun ban–the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime: “The percentage of homicides committed with a firearm continued its declining trend since 1969.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2225517/posts
-------------
"Despite strict regulations on the import, export, ownership, use, transfer and storage of licit firearms, there exists in Australia a potentially large pool of illicit firearms, some of which are acquired, stockpiled and used for serious and organised crime."
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rpp/100-120/rpp116.html
------------------
That last paper also goes on to show charts and tables that back up what it says about high tech "long-gun" weapons practically never being used to commit crimes. It is mostly the hand guns....the single shot .38s and others that are used almost always in perpetrating crimes and murders. Those who collect high tech weapons are hardly ever involved in committing crimes with them. But those are the ones that governments fear the most aren't they. A populace that has the means to depose corrupt governments is the greatest fear of the oligarchy...or the plutocracy.
Banning guns only raises their prices...and the gun manufacturers, or at least those gun smugglers, just love that part. Just like keeping Marijuana illegal, keeps the prices high and very profitable.
Aliceinwonderland ~ Very true! The least we can do is register and license gun ownership. Of course, I believe we should license people who want to have children as well. Nevertheless this alone will not solve the problem of mass shootings or gun violence for two important reasons.
First, unlike Australia that has Universal Health care, we do not offer public funding for mental health treatment. I just went over my new insurance policy for next year. It doesn't even cover mental health care. Can you imagine that? Cadillac Health Care Insurance that doesn't cover mental health care. All of these mass shooters have had noticeable and severe mental health problems. All of their family, friends, and acquaintances new about it yet they went untreated. Until we address the underlying problem of heath care in this country no gun control legislation alone will prevent gun violence in our country.
Secondly, we have a serious economic disparity in our inner cities that fuels crime and the black market. The black market in our cities has its own gun supply network that is not affected by gun legislation. All of the most seriously dangerous guns made are available quite readily on this network; and, who buys them? Criminals. All the statistics quoted by Thom are irrelevant unless all the gun victims mentioned above were injured with legally purchased guns only. They almost certainly weren't. Until we as a nation address the underlying problems of economic disparity and inner city crime we will never be able to prevent the vast majority of gun violence in our country.
Given the fact that Mercedes spokesmen have claimed that their cars don't explode, nor their engines hurled 160 feet down the road, upon impact, and that there were multiple explosions, it looks pretty obvious to some of us that it was a bomb and not crashing into a tree that caused that explosion and horrendous fire. Crashing into a tree at high speeds just gives those who are easily swayed by authority the excuse to write it all off as just an accident. I understand that that Mercedes was a leased car ... but whether that has any importance ... probably not. It was a current year model ... so he must not of had it very long. Maybe it came already equipped with special optional features ... like a bomb?
Obama Law:
when a Predator does it, it's legal
kill zone:
for a drone slinging POTUS, it's the entire world
drones:
how liberals wage war: their killing accomplished remotely, safely far away from any combat zone, so no blood spatters upon the chic clothing of the killers
testing program for corporatism's just-in-time scheduled solution for the climate crisis: mass manufacturing murderous machines to rapidly robotically reduce humanity's carbon footprint, by exterminating an exponentially growing list of terrorists
Zero Option (Afghanistan):
plan for removing all of America's unsuccessful combatants from the ground, before filling Afghan skies with the far more efficient killing machines: deadly lifeless drones
Obama preparing a free-fire zone for remote control robotic weaponry to kill anything that moves anywhere in Afghanistan — with no "non-friendly" identification required
how (D) voters desire their "good" and "necessary" wars waged: cleanly, casually, cold-bloodedly, with indiscriminate extermination of distant defenseless disposable others... and zero casualties
Assad:
another secular ruler of a Muslim people that liberals say "has to go"... to produce more terrorists for American drones to kill
heinous and cowardly:
what America's predator president considers those who personally hand deliver their bombing of civilians, instead of heroically and courageously impersonally launching robotic bombs like he does
Hillary 2016:
a horrific historic continuum continuing its color coded "progressive" progress, from 1st half-black Predator POTUS, to 1st pink Predator POTUS... Hillary for Predatoress
______________________________
The APT: American Political Terms
www.chenangogreens.org
Aliceinwonderland: I remember watching a movie called "Rabbit-proof Fence" a number of years ago. Good movie! It showed a good bit of racism in Australian in the 1930s. "Beloved" is another movie I have watched a few times...and I rarely watch any movie more than once.
Mark Saulys ~ You are probably right. I wouldn't put it past him.
Aliceinwonderland ~ Yes, that did answer my question. Thank you. A friend of mine who never visited Australia mentioned such a situation in response to my commendation of Australia for it's health care system. I didn't want to believe him. I guess no country is perfect.
DAnne Marc, since you wanted to know whether racism is a problem in Australia, I think I can give a pretty informed response. I would say yes. I stayed there over a month, between October and November of '99, with my mom. We spent the first three of those weeks on a tour, then the last two weeks with a friend of hers named Jean who lives (or lived?) in a suburb near Sydney. On one occasion while we were riding with Jean in her car, my mother was thanking her for some sort of favor; Jean's response was to say "I'd do it for a black man." Being the confrontative sort that I am, I recall bluntly asking "What's that supposed to mean?!" No reply was forthcoming. As the saying goes, her silence was "deafening". (tsk tsk)
I suppose it was rude of me to respond this way to our hostess. But her remark really rankled me.
On another occasion we had dinner with Jean at the chef's school of the local community college, where they serve gourmet meals to the public every so often. The woman sitting to my right made a hostile remark about all those "slant-eyed" immigrants flooding into big cities around Australia. This time my response was a little more tactful. I remember telling her how I came from the San Francisco Bay Area where there is a large Asian population, and where people settle from all over the world; I said I felt blessed to have grown up in an environment where I could become so accustomed to being around different cultures, even going so far as to say I felt it made me a better human being than I might have become otherwise. And so ended that conversation as well.
Aside from my personal encounters with Aussie-brand bigotry, throughout that entire trip I couldn't help noticing how isolated Australia's aboriginal people are from the mainstream. You never see them working in banks, stores, post offices et cetera. And there are certain areas, even in cities, where white folks are not allowed to set foot. From what I heard of the history there, aboriginal people have been treated very poorly, much like here only even more excluded.
Anyway Marc, I hope this helps answer your question. - Aliceinwonderland