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.
http://youtu.be/7w0ea_WXK2w
Republicans and a handful of Blue Dog Democrats ONLY represent those who have power and money. Affluence is the only thing that tickles their ears.
On top of needing a cut of costs for college so everyone can have a chance... we also need jobs so those with college degrees have a job after finishing school. For that matter we need jobs that utilize manual labor too, unskilled and skilled, from ditch diggers to machinists... Nothing wrong with being able to get a job out of high school and being able to provide for a family with that if one so chooses. Not everyone wants to be a manager, accountant, or whatever might make them a cubicle dweller. Some do, some don't... it just seems we are using the velvet covered iron fist job melting pot model here. Yes everyone should have access to a college education, but that is merely the tip of the iceberg when we talk about education and jobs.
N
I wonder if Thomas Jefferson was really that much prouder of having founded a university over being President. I figure he knew most Americans knew he was both President and Author of the Declaration of Independence... maybe he figured such things were taken for granted, so maybe he also wanted people to know that he also founded a university. Jefferson was nothing if not clever, maybe he understood if you had President, Author of the Declaration of Independence and Founder of State of Virgina University on his tombstone; only the first two would ever be noted by historians, and the third just ignored as it was probably was in his day. I kind of doubt that the every day citizen when meeting him would mention, "hey you're Thomas Jefferson, you founded a college! and uh you were President and wrote some sort of declaration or something like that but yeah University of Virgina WOOO!!!!" Maybe putting the on his ephitat that he was the founder was his way of say "You know I did more then just being President and writing the Declaration of Independence!"
N
I don't know if I should really be upset about the Republicans conspiring to take down a Democratic President... I don't like their tactics, I do find it repugnant though. No I think what I'm upset about is that its perfectly legal, and as far as I know the Democrats don't seem to be even considering fighting fire with fire. They sure didn't apply such tactics with Bush, and (god forbid) Romney gets in, they won't use such tactics with in order to do something like (oh I don't know) maybe make the Bush tax cuts deeper and permanent?
The Democrats are fighting like the European Armies during the time of Napoleon. They followed the traditional rules of war of maneuver and positioning, while Napoleon adapted to the situation and took advantages where he could. Yep, sure enough the opposing generals complained about his unorthodox style, but fact of the matter is, Napoleon run rough shod over his opponents till his ego got the majority of his army destroyed in an overreach into Russia. I can only hope the Democrats are not waiting for the Republicans to overreach so much that they decimate their base... along with the rest of us middle and working class citizenry.
N
I have previousely watched The Big Picture and wanted to have a Power Point presentation set for discussioin off line. I suggest you make your chart/black board presentations into Power Point available to subscribers.
I was listening to you yesterday when you told about Senator Sessions wanting to reduce the Food Stamp program to $1.78 per person per day allowance and you suggested that nutritional disease would result. Please give your reference to Sen. Sessions speech.
This is why the world is not working a few self interest groups call the shots on the interests of the many or the highest good of all.
You cannot legislate morality .we should have as few laws which are limits as possible our society reflects where the power is not where it wishes to be .The cannabis story has nothing to do with smoking weed its all about economics and vested interest .
This is a question of GREED replacing the common interests of humanity
Wake up world -do you have any idea what this miraculous plant can do ,nature know,s best work with nature do not destroy her ,do you have any idea how many trees it takes to supply the world with paper ,HEMP could supply the world with all the paper you could ever need without cutting down ONE TREE.,AND WHAT ABOUT ALL THE REST OF THE STUFF WE USE PAPER FOR?
Hemp has so many wonderful uses there is a huge lobby working against it ,this is just one example of greed over the common good.
namaste
A good blog always comes-up with new and exciting information and while reading I have feel that this blog is really have all those quality that qualify a blog to be a good onesummer health tips
A good blog always comes-up with new and exciting information and while reading I have feel that this blog is really have all those quality that qualify a blog to be a good onemagazines uk
YZBY020120620 Attend karen millen online to south to rise to start feeling overwhelmed with karen millen discount work, at present of the karen millen outlet intelligence cape was all heavy to copy, karen millen dresses sale he is muddled to sink of say, "do not go, I must sleep in a short while and have a headache. Karen Millen 2012 After contemplating again continue to synthesize. "Sleep? Ha ha "the Karen Millen Coats card a kind of insect peeped out the smiling face of devil sort, " is dear, you whether Karen Millen Dress what has the forgetting me already eaten for you? "(Affair concerning Karen Millen Outlet person's fish, reader said to put person's Karen Millen Long Sleeve Dress fish to Karen Millen One Shoulder Dress is a.
however i would suggest the before you ralph lauren polo get 150 pack, first try the ralph lauren polo lesser package. at first i felt trapped with 150 pods. the lavazza espresso pots and flavor is ed hardy clothing great and the ed hardy price is great, so what could be the problem?
On today's The Big Picture, Thom compared the Republican Party with the Democrat Party..saying there was a lot of difference between them. If the Democrats were as true to all those points that Thom said then we wouldn't have all the problems we have today.
If they fought as hard and as earnestly in support of all those points favoring the 99% as the Republicans do for their 1%, we would have at least some of those ideals, that Thom said, turned into reality. The problem is that the Democrats say they are for those things but act against them...they are sneaky..and just as "owned" as are the Republicans...although the Republicans don't have to hide it like the Democrats do.
The ruling elite puppet masters control both parties and use them to feed false hope to the masses so that they don't rise up against them. This is the smoke and mirrors ploy to defuse all-out warfare back at those who have been waging war on us for decades. We are kept from effectively fighting back and defending ourselves because we falsely believe that all we have to do is vote the Democrats in and everything will be all right.
There is a difference between the hoity toity upper echelon Democrats who wield the real power inside the Democrat Party and the masses of Democrats who are beguiled by lofty-sounding (but hollow) ideals and slogans.
Obama sounded really great in his campaign messages before he was elected the first time, which is why I voted for him in the first place. Thought he was going to make a difference. But his "audacity" turned into a "whimper" once elected. FDR, he was not! Not even close! And FDR had a lot of really formidable opposition at the time as well. Even as a "cripple" (please excuse my "politically incorrect" term) he stood up to the right wing powers that wanted to crush him. And every time I see Obama, now, walking (or should I say skipping) to the podium to tell us more lies I think of how full of crap this guy is.
"Don't worry, they are just sending us to the work camps...and after the war we will survive and recover." "Oh, really? Is that Zyklon B coming out of those shower heads? Maybe we should have fought back when we had the chance?"
And Thom mentioned Nancy Palosi...yeah, right, Nancy Palosi...the one who looked like she was caught eating the canary, feathers and all, when 60 minutes asked her about her getting rich(er) by using her inside information and voting power when placing her money on the stock market.
Nope, the Demonocrats have not acted like Democrats are supposed to act...the way they pretend that they will act. I know I sound like a Republican but I am not. I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. But some of us Democrats have finally come to realize when we've been played for suckers.
Romney and his Republican buddies already get it. They get that austerity gives them power and control by keeping wages low, jobs scarce, unions weakened and broken, and worst of all, austerity makes for a frightened population easily manipulated by their god-damn corp. media.
I'm convinced guys like Romney could never have pulled themselves up with a real job, the kind that demands honest hard work for a fair days pay. Until "We The People," truly decide to revolt, parasites like Romney will continue to suck the life out of all of us honest hard working citizens.
Hope sooner than later Billions are wasted on putting folks in jail who possess small amounts of weed. The War on drugs is a monumental failure ! I have never smoked weed Inhaled or not
BLOOMBERG.COM: Deficit-cutting policies have fueled Occupy protest movements, contributed to the election defeats of governments in Greece and France and eroded support for German Chancellor Merkel. Newly elected French Pres. Hollande in May pressed E/U leaders to abandon austerity and fuel growth.
----
The austerity policies prized by the [debt] rating companies have the global economy on the brink of renewed recession, according to Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economics professor at Princeton University As government funding shortfalls from the U.S. to France to Spain widened during the recession, S&P and Moody’s stepped up warnings and downgrades of sovereign debt. “Their austerity is leading to depressed economies, which is worsening fiscal prospects,” Krugman said. “You’re kind of in an endless downward loop here, where you cut and the fiscal prospect looks worse, so to keep the rating agencies happy, you cut more.”
-----
S&P’s AAA rating on British gilts is a reminder that Britain is weathering the international debt storms because of the policies we have adopted and stuck to in tough times.
----
Staffing at the National Health Service hospital ward works was reduced by about half in the U.K.’s deepest drive since World War II to shrink its deficit. The goal was to avoid losing the top credit score, which might risk higher interest expenses, according to the government of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
-----
The U.K. scaled back public spending over the next four years by 81 billion pounds ($127 billion) while raising taxes, including what critics called a “granny tax” on the elderly. The austerity moves eliminating thousands of government jobs helped push the British economy back into recession in the fourth quarter, according to David Blanchflower, a former Bank of England policy maker. France and Spain took similar steps to shrink deficits even as the global economy stagnated.
The U.K. economy may grow 0.8 percent this year, according to the IMF, while euro-area output contracts 0.3 percent and the U.S. expands at a 2.1 percent rate. The IMF has lowered its forecast for every EU country since last year.
------
France’s Sarkozy in June 2010 made protecting the country’s top credit rating a priority. His government raised the national retirement age to 62 from 60. That September, he announced the deepest budget cuts in two decades, citing the need to defend the credit ranking.
----
Now, after governments widened their deficits to stem the crisis, their credit grades are under pressure from the same rating companies whose actions helped cause the financial turmoil.
-----
The U.S., even with little likelihood of a default, fought the prospect of a downgrade. Treasury officials exchanged at least 158 e-mails with S&P from April 2011 until the rating change last August, according to materials obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act.
-----
Way to go Texas. Democratic Parties across the nation might need to enact similar positions to get pot legalization measures on ballots across the nation. Such actions might just get a massive amount of pot smoking dead heads out to vote. I would think that most of them would vote for progressive agendas. Just imagine if there were proposition on each of the state's ballots to tighten controls and raise taxes on beer and criminalize beer drinkers? Right Wing Rednecks would turn out in mass to vote the measures down and cast a lot of votes for Tea Party Candidates at the same time.
I think it depends on large part how aggressive the people's movements are in pushing for more jobs and growth and less austerity. As far as the US is concerned, it will really depend on how quickly the American people wake up to the reality of what the new Republican party's agenda is and vote accordingly. Our future is all about the choices we make today, and right now all we have is in the now.
Mitt Romney is Poster Boy for the Fleet Enema on State Street. It is impossible to distinguish between the entities Bank America Indiana and BA IN (or BA IN and BA BA WA WA for that matter). A Fleet of Ghost Banks haunts us now, mateys, and back to the ocean bottom they must go.
Just imagine the headlines if President Obama told the "Rose Garden Rogue" that he could leave his question in writing at the door as he was leaving - immediately.
Yes, the Republicans will do it more brazenly and out in the open...in our faces...but the Democrats are more sneaky about it and achieve, nearly, the same thing. The ruling elite owns both parties and it is really not a democracy. The ruling elite uses the Democrats to act as a kind of smoke and mirrors diversion pandering hope that always collapses under the reality of time. They use it in an attempt to divert the possibility of mass rebellion...revolution. There is strength in numbers only when the numbers stop being cowed by the psychology manufactured by the few. They (the few) know that they have to keep us stupid, confused, fearful, and divided and they do it quite effectively. When people begin to question authority and tear down the corrupt institutions, en masse, we may have a chance at winning back some of our losses.
Yes, the prospect of a Republican ruled government, ie: even more so than it is now, is very frightful. But, see, that is part of the "keep them fearful" ploy. Keep them fearful so that they don't vote for someone outside of the "good old boy" network of Republicans and Democrats. They have a "monopoly" on our government and that monopoly is "too big and powerful to fail" because of the fear they pander. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber. Which one are you going to vote for this time around. Or are you going to do something to break-up that monopoly and shock these fascists out of their iron fist of control.
There is an economic "iron curtain" run by a small cabal of ruling elites that keep the rest of the world imprisoned and enslaved. We need to knock down the wall!!! Stop believing in their propaganda...question everything...question major news media..especially the ones that claim to be "fair and balanced".
Romney private sector experience.
Romney keeps touting his private sector experience as qualifying him to be president. We need to frame that the position of president is a public servant; and a rigid PRIVATE sector mindset like what Romney has, isn’t conducive with being a good PUBLIC servant.
And Romney should be asked how does his business experience qualify him on foreign policy/diplomacy, health care, law enforcement, military, national security, economics (business is related to but it is not economics,) constitutional issues, etc.
Re. Romney & touch-screen
About Mitt Romney marveling about the touch-screen for ordering at a restaurant; someone should have told him that there are machines that dispense money, and if we set up more of those we could put money in consumers' pockets and stimulate the economy. Mitt probably would have fallen for it.
On a related note; employees at restaurants have used those touch-screens for probably at least 20 years; the difference now is customers are using the touch-screens; i.e. customers are performing labor that used to be done by employees. You'd think that restaurants would charge less since they save on labor.
According to the two financial experts Alyona had on her show this morning (tuesday--although she kept calling it monday--rebroadcast?) they said that it is inevitable that Greece will default and that the recent election is merely a temporary slow down of that process. So, as the markets responded positively toward the outcome of that election, they will eventually see the reality...maybe in just a few months. They said that Greece should just dump the Euro right now and revert back to the Drachma because it will happen very soon anyway.
She also had on her show MSNBC's Christopher Hayes who has authored a book called "Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy". One thing he said that I find most disturbing...he said that despite the current distrust of government, politicians, and other positions of authority and power, the military is ranking high on the list of trust. He also talked about the trouble he got in when he made a statement recently refuting the idea that all the military..the soldiers...are heroes.
It is a sad day in America when intelligent and insightful people...some reporters or other media people can't tell things like they are instead of coddling to the idiocy of dummies. Bill Maher, Bill Moyers, and many others have paid the price for speaking their minds that didn't fit in with the idiot, right-wing, propagandized masses. In this case, the masses have been propagandized to see their military, especially their soldiers, as being "heroes" even though some of those "heroes" only operate joysticks and push buttons from the cushy cubicles from Arlington (or where ever) resulting in murdering innocent civilians in the Middle East. Some soldiers actually do risk their lives if they are at the location of conflict...others may risk their lives choking on office donuts between pushing buttons.
Christopher was right that not all the military (soldiers) are heroes...although I think he is trying to digress from that initial statement due to pressure from the sponsors? Some soldiers are naturally born killers who love the "sport". Others have been propagandized and brain-washed to do evil things while believing they are doing good.
Eventually, many come to see through the bullsh!t and come to realize what they have done...and for whom they have really done it. Many commit suicide because they cannot hack it anymore.
So we have a military made up of...not heroes...but some psychopath rapists and murderers..and some who unknowingly stepped into the pile of sh!t but cannot find a way out except through suicide.
And the institutional psychopaths (the generals, politicians, MIC, and the people who believe that all soldiers are heroes) are responsible for the war crimes that have been committed in their names. You are lying to everyone and to yourselves when you continue to live the lies, enshrouded in misnomers, rhetoric, and propaganda that the war machine creates.
And now back to the faux news...like a man who rides his motorcycle w/sidecar with his dog...and the man who phones in to 911 because he didn't like a sandwich that was made for him at a deli.
Re. Sessions & food stamps
A better question to pose to Jeff Sessions ---who wants to eliminate food stamps because of fraud--- would be to point out that there is unethical, unscrupulous, illegal, etc. behavior done by members of Congress. Should we abolish Congress?
Published as a letter to the editor, from me, on 15 JUN 12 in the DeKalb Daily Chronicle, DeKalb, Illinois
Let's get this out of the way right now: You may label me a communist, fascist, socialist, Nazi, pastafarian, philatelist, botanist, lepidopterist, and so on. It doesn't change the truth.
It is obvious that unlimited cash in our political process is pure poison, and it is time to change to public financing of elections. Now, before the smoke pouring from your ears sets off the alarms and sprinklers, absorb this: our elections are already publicly financed. We just don't have any control over the distribution of that money. Before you start screaming about the evil "redistribution of wealth," note that it's already being taken and redistributed, and we don't have any control over that process; it is undemocratic; we are attempting to run a democracy (OK, democratic republic for the nit-pickers) through a clearly anti-democratic process that allows a tiny population of wealthy sociopaths and their institutions to choose and install their minions at the levers of power in our government. If you need a local example, In the 16th Congressional District primary held in March, Republican Adam Kinzinger was the beneficiary of $224,529 in campaign support against Republican Don Manzullo from Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Super PAC based in Texas. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor also pitched in $25,000 to support Kinzinger against a fellow Republican. Negative campaign advertising and tactics pushed by a flood of unregulated cash proved successful - Manzullo could not afford to combat the tidal wave of distortions and lies and he lost the election.
Elected officials are our employees, but they spend as much as half their time trying to raise money for election. They are not working for us when they're dialing for dollars. Our employees are not spending their time working for us; they're begging for money, rewarding their patrons, and ignoring the needs of the overwhelming majority of the American people. True public financing is a medicine we need to treat this disease - the distorted, undemocratic system that is drowning us with money and lies.
And my sister is a thespian.