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.
Help me understand. If unions are so good why do poeple have to be forced to join the?
Sorry Ken "free insurance" who do you think pays for it. If you think health care is expensive there now wait until its "free" it is so abused poeple going to the doctor for hang nails etc. Don't even get me started on our wait times. Oh and please don't lump me in with all Canadians most of them are liberal like you. I am one of the few with a frozen brain. Maybe when I am in Scottsdale AZ tomorrow it will warm up.
No Fraud- the more I hear of your perspective and how you got there, the deeper grows my appreciation and respect for you. I tip my hat, comrade... - Aliceinwonderland
They are like scared little children these days. They try to run and hide from their constituents, but their decisions are going to come back and bite them you know where if they don't shape up. The word about their agenda got out prior to the election this year and despite their best efforts to suppress votes, toss them out, etc., the President won re-election and congressional votes nationwide showed 1/2 million more for democratic party then republican. Had all the votes actually been counted, it's possible we could have gained more seats in the House and Senate.
The party of getting the 99% to pay for the greed of the top1% at all cost.
Under one of the more expensive entitlement programs which is administered by the IRS, 1%ers like Romney and Exxon Mobil.....a people too, pay anywhere from 0 to 13.9% in federal income tax . So let's do what the Teapublicans want regarding the cutting of entitlements, only let's make the cuts to the part of the population who won't feel a damn thing.
Thank you for your kind and meaningful words. Judging by your posts my family and friends would find your spirit to be a beacon of light, a soldier of love, a Guru of peace.
And even then the U.S. didn't get involved right away. Hitler and the Nazi's were already well established.
Even though the U.S. government sold that war to the American people as a war against fascism it had alterer motives.
...and what blows my hair back is that everything you have said here is information that is commonly known through out the world. I knew some of it when I joined the Army. Why are we so quick to jump on the war band waggon; we're like lemmings right over the cliff.
During my 8 years in the Army I saw things that made my heart ache. I was in places where people needed aid not martial law. I'll never forget the sight of 350 people walking along a dirt road; tired, sick, hungry, dehydrated, wounded; there I saw a barley clothed woman carring her dead child...it had been killed when gun fire accured 3 days before. At first I was angry and blammed her, but quickly my mind changed and my heart sank; I felt guilty...guilty that is was probable a bullet from one of us.
After that I begain to question my purpose...Why did I join the military? Who was I protecting? Who was the enemy? Over the next several years I begain to answer those questions. I had joined the military because I wanted to serve a greater purpose and protect my country from the enemy. I wanted to defend and help spred Democracy to those that are oppressed. But I found that the U.S. Government was more about establishing occupation to gain power and spread Corporate Capitalism. The U.S. government could care less about the rights and wellbeing of other people. I wanted to protect those who could not protect themselves, and needed support, and protection from tyranny. It was at this point I realized the U.S. Government was no longer a cheerleader encouraging other Nations to declare their own Independence, and to establish human and civil rights...The U.S. had become Imperialistic! The U.S. Government was the tyranny! This is when I became a Conscientious Objectour. My last year in the military was in 1999.
In 2004 I joined the Friends Commitee on National Legislation (FNCL.org), as an effort to help bring more awareness to the public and campaign against illegal occupation and unnecessary war. At times the effort feels like pushing a huge bolder up hill...I question why is true peace, and Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness so difficult on a open and grand scale. When it gets down to it ALL of us want the same things from life, even the so called "bad guy" wants to have someone to love and to be loved, to have something to look forward to, and to have something to do.
In my opinion the United States started off as a "good idea" but very quickly it falterd and became a belief...a cultural religion, and there inlies the problem.
Thoughtful and informative comments, except from the self-deluded Republicans or the Canadians whose political parties are misnamed relative to ours, and they don't realize it.
But we all tend to overlook -- that all our employees in government are regularly bribed by campaign contributions from persons other than those who empowered them; and, that we ignore the corrupting influence of post-government-employment being offered by owners of corporations. This needs to stop. It starts with the corrupters, narcissistic and irrational, who have wealth they didn't earn by personally contributing to the society that protects them and their property, at great cost to the rest of us.
But how? We have two flaws in our Constitution... (1) the absence of a requirement for honesty being prerequisite to government employment, and the capability to do the technical job of spending billions of the wealth earned by the citizens who create wealth by personally doing something for one another ... and not by just manipulating the wealth others create.
Also, (2) the People need a way to immediately fire and punish an employee in our government who violates his oath to the Constitution ... which document is all that holds the federal government together. Without this document all rights revert to the soverign States. Think of the five justices who voted to decide that a rich person's business was a 'person'. This act is evidence of being unable to communicate rationally, and should result in automatic dismissal.
To communicate one must first define terms -- words -- and then when there is agreement, proceed with logic, the science of correct argument and discussion.
Example of current media and others' stupidity: "marriage" is the word we (should only) use to refer to a male and a female creating a 'family' for the genetic purpose of continuing the human race by mating to produce progeny and then devoting the effort for years needed to train and educate. The current misuse of this term/word can be avoided by making a new word for a same-sex loving relationship ... with the desired financial-if-deserved-and-needed benefits, if those are related to the sacrifices needed to continue our race.
A final suggestion is that discussions like this should first look around at major threats to the human race, such as those existing in Japan and its poor performance in correcting its criminal handling of the results of the Fuskushima nuclear power reactor failure, now disgorging vast quantities of radioactive water into our Pacific, and huge quantities of long-life radioactive corium particles into our atmosphere now being detected throughout the northern hemisphere ... and lying about it by omission (coverup) and by direct falsehoods. The long gestation of DNA damage-causing-cancer is being used to avoid responsibility for the horrific radiation-manslaughter of perhaps millions, as also occurred as a result of Chernobyl. Apparently the same bad management is being performed by our government employees, regarding similar nuclear power issues in the US ... and we unfortunately just reelected many of these employees.
IMHO.
Some creative options:
1. Add "payroll taxes" to the capital gains tax (at a reduced rate, ~4%) to fix Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security permanently.
2. Raise long term capital gains (~20%) to lower flattened corporate taxes, (~7%) not increasing the total tax rate burden,but avoiding charges of a doubled income tax.
3. Implement an Alternative Minimum Tax for corporations.
4. Allow foreign tax deductions instead of credits, and if prohibited by treaty, see #3.
5. Eliminate "carried interest" for hedge funds and cut other corporate tax loopholes.
6. Incentivize voluntary annual capital gains payments by reducing volunteers' capital gains rate. An individual's mutual fund profit is already taxed annually.
Why aren't the medical benefits granted politicians at our expense ever up for grabs? Nothing highlights this class war more vividly than our Uniquely American Medical Apartheid!!
By the way Ken Ware, I applaud your reply to "kend". I too have found his comments rather irritating. The guy's got his head stuck up his rear end.
I wouldn't mind the Republicans saying that they want to cut entitlements, if they meant ALL entitlements. But they don't. They conveniently don't classify corporate welfare as welfare. They don't classify huge tax breaks for the wealthy as entitlements. I could go on, but you get my drift...
All goes to show how "pro-life" these political hacks really are, cutting things like Social Security & Medicare to pay for WAR!
ASIA FOR THE ASIANS, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, WHITE COUNTRIES FOR EVERYBODY!
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
We should send all the Republicans AGAINST raising the taxes on the very rich who will never, ever miss the money, to Guantonimo. Let them relegate their preposterous proposals from there, through a hurricane season. I think this would change their minds on a whole lot of things...
The very rich won't MISS the little percentage; we, however, who have worked hard and paid into SS and Medicare all of our working lives, and are now unable to get jobs at our ages, or those of us who are also now over 66 and disabled to boot, cannot possibly be expected to survive if food prices keep go higher, our Medicare coverages are cut, our supplemental insurance deductions keep going up, and our Social Security is cut. Does anyone in Congress have any idea what little our Medicare coverage (plus paying out of it for suplemental coverage) actually does for us? Plus the cuts in monthly social security benefits?
My poor mom lived with chronic tooth infections for 15 years in AZ, where her only supplemental didn't cover nearly the necessary dentistry she needed. She couldn't get her infected teeth pulled and get dentures... So after 15 years of living with chronic tooth pain, and only being able to get 1 tooth pulled every 3 months (when at least 3 at a time were infected), she died from heart failure - directly related to chronic infections in her system which affected her heart.
I don't want to die in the kind of pain with which she suffered.
The Republicans need to adhere to the medical guidelines for seniors, along with giving all of us a decent rate of Social Security so we can survive in a little bit of comfort. They seem to be absolutely heartless.
And I'd add...Republicans are not the only ones "purposely misleading the American people"....it's "smoke and mirrors" time! Let's see how well the Democrats can hold up against the Republicans this time! It's show time! I'd sure love it if the Democrats really kicked Republican butt this time...but I'm no longer a believer that Obama and the Democrats are anything more than part of the "smoke and mirrors" illusion. Sure hope I'm wrong!!!
Oh, what?! Gee, you mean we've been tricked? Gosh, when I was really starting to enjoy all that Obama bravado...wink, wink! And starting to think maybe I had been wrong all along...wink, wink! Now the Democrats can say those Republicans pulled a fast one...tisn't fair...bad, bad Republicans! Tisn't our fault...it's the bad, bad Republicans...they are just too sly and deceitful..they just don't play fair. I'm gonna run home and tell my mommy!
P.S. Well I figured it out... the first part of my message vanished when the blog switched pages on me! Oh well, please forgive my redundancies. I'm still learning the various quirks with this thing....
If these were legitimate wars waged against real enemies who posed an eminent threat to our freedom & soverignty, I'd be inclined to agree that any act committed which lowered soldiers' morale or somehow hindered our ability to fight woud be a terrible thing. But the last war this country participated in that had any legitimacy whatsoever was World War Two.
That's all I wanted to say... Alice I.W.
This blog is weird. I know the first part of this message went through because I saw it displayed above with my picture; but now it is nowhere to be found! So I'll try this again...
We've strayed so far off the topic Thom initially selected for discussion, I can't even remember what it was! Anyway there are a number of comments Ken Ware made on this topic that begged a response. My opening comments were that Manning & Assange are true heroes on the world state, that they should be celebrated, not persecuted, for what they've done. These guys are more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than Kissinger or Obama ever were. If justice were actually being served, the folks who would be facing trial are the REAL war criminals - Bush, Cheney & Company - rather than the whistle blowers who exposed them.
The 2% and any other nation that holds the debt. I believe the US 2% holds approximately 20% of the national debt in treasury bonds and when the Republicans knocked the Bond rating from AAA+ down to AAA the interest paid to these bond holders increases and I think that is why it cost this country and all the tax payers18 billion dollars more in interest. So the Republican's just increase the money the 2% of so called American citizens by 18 Billion Dollars and more money to the Chinese, Brits and Japan. How much of that increase goes back to the Tea Party and Republicans? I bet they try to give some more this time by holding it hostage. Really simple when you think about it, screw the tax payers, give it to the rich and collect your unlimited political bribes. Now that is what I call Orgainized Crime.
Trillion dollar deficits were/are caused mostly by runaway Pentagon spending, ridiculous and very costly illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East, tax cuts for the wealthy. Programs like Social Security are not even part of the deficit creating process because they were funded by worker's contributions. When corporations and wealthy people can hide their money, that otherwise would be taxable, in offshore accounts or fake front companies and destroy our jobs here at home by sending them overseas then they are all committing treason against the well being of the majority of Americans. In effect, they are waging a war of aggression against the majority of people in the United States.
I may not be Jane Fonda's greatest fan... however I had absolutely NO problem with her activism against the Vietnam War. "Embracing" communism?! Gimmie a break. Like Ms. Fonda pointed out, it was a losing battle for our side... as well it should have been, since we had no right to be there in the first place! Yes we were slaughtering innocent people, including children, and doing it for no good reason. To this day I've yet to hear any viable explanation for our involvement in that war.
No Fraud, your input here blows me away; in particular, the story about your uncle. My god... that man is another hero, persecuted for actions taken that should have won him medals if anything. Your own military background adds much weight to your perspective; one that is well thought-out, that conveys a strong moral foundation no brainwashing tactics could diminish or erase. I appreciate your comments. - Aliceinwonderland
In my view, one of our greatest enemies is a military industrial complex gone way out of control, hell-bent on empire building and world domination at any cost. All the bullshit wars they've waged over the past sixty years, in Indochina, South America and the Middle East, have had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting our "freedom". To the contrary, they're all about manipulating and dominating the political landscape of the world so that it operates more favorably to the agenda of an Almighty American Empire. It is also about stealing natural resources of other countries too small & weak to fight back. To be brutally frank, my friends, I've no sympathy for any of it. But I hold enormous admiration and respect for people like Manning & Assange who put their butts on the line to counter it, and at great personal sacrifice, exposing these fascists and their evil, ugly mischief to the light of day. Makes me crazy to see heroes like this being punished while the real evildoers skate free, paying no consequences for crimes against humanity.
I guess much would depend on just who is considered "the enemy". Were millions of Iraqi and Afghanistani and Pakistani civilians that were murdered by our forces..."our enemy"? Or was it the greedy U.S. corporations bribing politicians to set in motion the Pentagon killing machine for power and profit? Was it the Pentagon Generals and politicians who hoped to get a revolving door quid pro quo sinecure position in the corporate world when they retired from the military or government...were they our real enemies? What about all of the U.S. citizens who went along and cheered the mass murders (largely Fox news viewers) while calling trained killers, who murdered civilians, heroes? Are they not also our enemy? I say "our" means the majority of Americans who realized from the beginning and those who eventually came to realize that it was all a big murderous fraud based on intentional lies of weapons of mass destruction. A huge false flag! And do we consider those government organizations that are now massively spying on us, trying to grind us into the ground by screwing us out of our social programs, our jobs, and affordable and decent healthcare..our enemies? Our real enemies are right here in this country not over in the Middle East. And it is they who have been waging war against the rest of us for over 30 years.
So Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are the real heroes!
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, etal, lied us into a criminal war of unjustified aggression. And Obama isn't much better because he has been carrying on where the neocons left off. Just as the Nazi's told lies and the Japanese told lies to justify their aggressions...our top officials have told lies to manipulate us into accepting their committing war crimes...illegally invading and murdering people in another, initially, non-aggressive sovereign country.
It is a war crime to invade another sovereign country without being attacked first..or at least unless there is indisputable evidence that the other country is about to attack us. And the real war criminals lied to us. So, the real enemy is our very own corrupt government and military that would lie to us on such a grand and vile scale. They have made themselves our enemies. If you are sufficiently gullible and obsequious enough to let them get away with their war crimes and side with them, you are no better than them.
I believe that many Americans fall for it because they, themselves have a tendency of being xenophobic and ultra-nationalistic leading to jingoist ideas. All it took was to create the boogy men and create another false flag attack to sufficiently frighten Americans to go along with our war criminals.
Pearl Harbor was a false flag of sorts (it certainly was not a total surprise..except to the American people...because it was planned to happen that way by the FDR administration..the McCollum Memo*..eight point plan..read the book by Robert Stinnett..."Day of Deceit"). And the so-called attacks on 911 were not a surprise either.... Condoleeza Rice's statements "who could have suspected that anyone would attack us?" is now known to be a diversion...a lie.
The sinking of the Maine in Cuban waters leading to the Spanish American war, sinking of the Lusitania, and many other examples of false flag operations in our history were used to justify aggression.
Hitler used a false flag operation when he claimed Poles attacked a German radio station. Japanese used it to invade Manchuria. All false flag operations are used to rile up indignation, fear and support from the people to justify aggression.
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."-- Hermann Goering--the second top man in the Nazi Third Reich.
I know some people don't accept that Pearl Harbor or 911 were false flags...I can agree to disagree with them on that issue. I won't let it go because I believe it is extremely important to realize just who our real enemies are and to what extent they are willing to go to scare us into total submission. Unless you know your enemies you will be conquered by them. We need to hang together on the basic issue of survival because it really will come down to that.
*The McCollum 8point plan was a plan that was accepted and carried out..every single point was followed...to get Japan to attack us. FDR knew that Americans did not want to get involved with another war after WW1 and he needed the Japanese to attack us as a way of breaking American resolve to stay out of any more wars. Our intelligence was spying on a Japanese spy in Pearl Harbor, reporting on the US ships in harbor, just weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack. In fact, they knew the Japanese fleet was on their way toward Pearl Harbor well ahead of time because US intelligence had already broken all their codes and picked up on transmissions when they Japanese broke radio silence during a storm. Intelligence triangulated their position across the Pacific. The Naval Commander in charge of Pearl Harbor and the Marine Commander who had alerted FDR of various vulnerabilities in Pearl Harbor, as the most important vessels were pulled out and sent elsewhere, were relieved of their posts and replaced.