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Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
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1. GET RID OF LOBBYISTS - WHY IS IT ' LEGAL ' FOR THEM TO ' BRIBE' OUR REPS ?
2. GET RID OF THE CITIZENS UNITED RULING ITS A POX ON OUR COUNTRY SHAME ON THE 5 SUPREME COURT CON JUDGES WHO MADE THAT POSSIBLE SPECIAL THANKS JUSTICE ROBERTS.
3. GET RID OF FILIBUSTERS / OR MAKE THEM STAND THERE FOR HOURS ON END TALKING
AS USED TO BE THE CASE
4. GET RID OF THE 2/3 VOTE RULE
5. ELIMINATE SOCIAL SECURITY TAX CAP NOW @ 106 K
6. GET RID OF BIG OIL, AGRI FARMS, & CORP SUBSIDES
6 b CUT BLOATED DEFENSE BUDGET BLACKWATER / HALLIBURTON OTHER
DEATH / WAR CLING ONS
7. CUT US REPS PAY CHECKS 15 % . CUT THEIR HEALTH BENEFITS TOO
SO THEY ' SACRIFICE' WITH US
Thomas Jefferson said > If a Nation Expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization , it expects what never was and never will be.....
I am a big fan and listen all the time. I esp like your recent segments with John Nichols of The Nation. Please keep this going.
This is the same political argument we have been having since the founding of the country; Hamilton's big government versus Jefferson's small government. That was the big argument at the constitutional ratification connventions, how much liberty would be lost with a big central government.
FACT Obama = 2 1/4 yrs vs 1981 Reaganomics Bush 1-2 Cheney 2008 crash TARP GOP congress's + Goldman Fed Res team led by Greenspan / 28 yrs under GOP 's wealth favoring policies- con courts- 3 huge unfunded tax cuts - 2 long wars based on lies and massive profits- Bushs hidden war debt- Bushs lies- greed...Mushroom cloud, Mission accomplished, Iraq was part of 9 / 11 15 of 19 hijackers were from ...Saudi Arabia NONE were Iraqi !
FYI Gal GOP always cut weakest among us ! Get real GOP Gov Scott of Fla just deeply cut funding for.the ....DISABLED -DOWN SYNDROME ETC ! Beware The GOP are just beginning See how low GOP can go NO limit to their greed LOOK what they cut and who -what they give big tax cuts to Heat for poor- education- seniors- disabled- mental health- ALL on GOP chopping block but NOT BILLIONAIRE TAX CUTS OH NO Pay attention YOur kids or grandma may be next
Maude Are you somewhat aware that Reaganomics 1981 deregulation of the Robber barons- Bush 1-2 -Cheney with lots of push from the Goldman Fed team led by Greenspan put us on the path to the 2008 Bush Paulson 2008 global crash 700 billion TARP - 2 long wars waged based on lies -fear tactics & profits- or that W gave huge cuts to Co that sent jobs overseas- that W kept his war debt off budget - then dumped all that toxic crap on a new Pres 2 1/ 4 yrs ago ? Amazing how ill informed - gullible & easily manipulated by GOP & Fox you guys still are, after all we have gone through SAD
thom your the shizzle, Ive been telling all my chat friends about you
Leave the tea in the cup too long and it gets to bitter, then you have to dilute it and sugar it up but the tea party doesn't get the message. They have a billboard near here that warns that (like Big Brother) they are watching Washington and Harrisburg through binoculars. The binocular metaphor is fitting. If they didn't watch "from a distance" they would have to get involved and find out how wrong they are!
FYI - Thom and the Caller from Georgia are incorrect. Johnny Isakson did not run the sleazy campaign against former Senator Max Clelland. That was one Saxby Chambliss. A sleaze by any other name.
I'd just like to clarify something about USAID. Let them cut the budget. They don't really help that many children - they are the arm of govn't that uses their resources for regime change. Read the book "The Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. He worked under the auspices of this department and it is a facade for the bad things our government does.
So with this attack in Mazar-e-Sharif, we get to have this awkward conversation:
"Hey, don't treat all of us Americans as bad guys just because we have a few crazies. Especially since they're not even serving in the government."
"What do you mean? You've toppled two governments and killed millions of Muslims just because we had a few crazies, who weren't serving in those governments."
"..."
Great video. How can I share this with my friends? I do not see a link for sending it via an email.
Whose testimony said that H.R.1 will kill 75K kids? I missed the name . . .
Thom there is no need to worry about Obama being re-elected; the billionaires and big corporations who own him are more than pleased with his performance so far and since Democrats cannot bring themselves to admit the Emperor is wearing no clothes, this right-wing neo-con and fake Democrat will continue to harm workers, the environment and our Democracy for years to come.
Remember, everyone, you only USE a teabag once!
Teabagger are weak for the 2012 election. Getting weaker everyday.
One lumps or two for 2012? LOL
Bravo pour ce magnifique blog. Je ne m'en lasse jamais. casino en ligne
I don't have the energy to think about what will happen when the baggers fall. My head is way too busy spinning from the enormous damage they have done to our government and our society already. How many years will the purge take in the State houses and legislative bodies when we finally get rid of their ilk? Their demands are bringing down the middle class and treating the poor with massive indifference. Call me a pessimist but the damage is done.
I fear that people still need to experience more of what the perpetrators of the right are inflicting on them before they understand how they are voting against their own best interests. I wish it were enough already, but I fear it hasn't gotten bad enough yet. Amazing to me, that it isn't clear.
I was astonished at the re-election of Bush in 04. I shook my head in amazement at the Hummer sales as we reached peak oil.
I was excited and encourage by the election of Obama
I was disgusted by my fellow Wisconsinites voting as they did in 2010.
So the trajectory, other than the bright moment of 2008, has not been promising so far.
I believe they will figure it out eventually. But how can it not already be clear?
We need a trust buster like TR, only a democrat this time please. :)
Great post - Thank you
"Give a calf enough rope and he'll hang himself," is what Dr. Lawhon wrote in his diary.
I think the Tea Party was doomed the minute it was hijacked by the Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck types from Ron Paul and the Libertarian Constitutionalists who were as much opposed to the policies of George W. Bush as they are to the policies of "Bush-Lite" Barrack Obama.
On foreign policy the Tea Party seems to be ambiguous at best and taking the line of the neo-con hawks at the worst. I wonder how many Tea Partiers are opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our expansion of military operations into Pakistan, Yemen and now Libya? There's some in this group of the Paul/Buchanan school of thought who oppose the wars and interventions on traditional conservative and constitutional principles but then there are just as many people if not more so in the Tea Party who believe any war against Muslims is a "good war".
As for domestic policy. Where's the anti-free trade movement in the Tea Party? Does it even exist outside of the handful of Paul and Buchanan Tea Partiers? It seems to me that the Tea Party has taken the pro-multinational corporate line of cutting taxes across the board (especially for the rich who pay next to zero taxes all ready), anti-collective bargaining (being sold just as being for public sector workers but as the "right to work" bills are working their ways through Republican controlled state legislatures across the USA it is becoming clear that collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors are under attack"), and the privatization of everything especially Medicare, Social Security and Public Utilities (which doesn't mean more competition just that big corporate monopolies are taking over these government services making them for profit which they were never intended to be).
This is a domestic policy that will lead to the privatization of municipal, county, state and eventually the Federal Government as well. That will complete the corporate takeover of America and the Big Multinationals might even appear to be the "saviors" of the USA if we have a major economic collapse and hyper-inflation. I guess I got sidetracked but the point is that the Tea Party was hijacked from its roots (by the corporations and their neo-con cheerleaders) and now (hopefully) people are starting to see it for what it has become.
The real Tea Party was born in traditional conservative opposition to the policies of George W. Bush.
Yes, their demise is imminent. Had a wider shot of today's DC Tea Party rally been provided, (which ABC referred to as the group showing up en masse), one might see that there were perhaps one to two hundred people there. Their entire movement doesn't even deserve the 'Astro-Turf' moniker ascribed it, as evinced today at their 'huge' rally.
The ideology espoused by the billionaire backers of the Tea Party are parroted by these so-called party members, who appear to be no different than the Republican staffers chartered in to Florida in 2000 to stop the recount in the presidential election. The same tactics were employed then as now. Loud, boorish and abusive behavior, excessive anger and aggressive, intimidating tactics. All of these clandestine Republican operatives - and the well off, bigoted Americans following them who either already 'have theirs' or are blissfully ignorant, drown out any attempts at civility, lost in a cacophony of the rehearsed rhetoric of the right wing.
To consider the Tea Party's evident size, being an Astro-turfed organization almost appears implausible. A more appropriate description of these people would be the Teeny Party. This so called 'movement' is but an artifice of the propagandistic corporate media, who would have us believe their numbers are overwhelming. Left unnoticed in this charade is the fact that their practiced plutocratic opinions are amorphous, whereas facts are entirely tangible. Witness media coverage and the resultant punditry vs. reality in Wisconsin, where We the People took our greivances to our elected officials for redress. Contrast the nearly one hundred thousand protesting in Madison with today's DC Tea Party 'Focus group'. (What politician in the last administration used that term when hundreds of thousands marched across this country in protest of O.I.L.(Operation Iraqi Liberation), the original tongue in cheek name for the invasion of Iraq)?The Faustian fabrications of all Astro-Turfed organizations are revealed for what they are with careful scrutiny. This 'Tea Party' is quite obviously a much smaller segment of our country's population than we've been led to believe. Astro-Turf is found only on playing fields, and as such is limited in size and scope. True grass roots grow throughout all of America, and the facts are that the grass that springs forth from them may not be manicured much in the coming years.
I have said it many times - The American People were ripe for "Suckerhood"!
WE have been taken! By a well-financed and very rich Plutocracy who own our souls lock, stock and barrel! For 40 years now the neo-cons have had one message - WE WANT TO OWN it all and eventually we will. So the American people have been suckered into the neo-con net by wedge issues such as - Abortion, Taxes, Big Government - Liberals - welfare state - etc etc etc. Day in and day out, on the plutocratic media, this message has been pounded into their heads.
Well now we are all reaping the result. You see, 99% of Americans are WORKING people (which includes most if not all conservatives and tea-Party folk) They to have jobs, homes, and have to face retirement and health care. The Plutocrats are busy destroying it all!
And yet, we all seem to be oblivious to it all. We don't seem to realize that this destructive ideology of the neo-cons and the Plutocrats is all “Pie-In-The-Sky" moonshine! It IS DESTROYING AMERICA! Their ultimate goal is to make MONEY. And they have come up with this scheme that if they concentrate all the wealth and power into a hands, buy all the politicians and judges, repeal all the working class laws that guarantees a middleclass, eliminate all public schools so the coming generations can be dumbed down, eliminate all labor laws so they can have cheap labor (crazy you think – Maine loony-tunes gov le page wants to repeal child labor laws so they can pay 5.20 an hour instead of the 7.40 we have now! And this is being planned in all other republican states!)
Most Americans actually believe this crap! And they have convinced 50-75% of Americans of this nonsense. Millions of Americans in the last election have effectively voted to eliminate their own jobs!! Before the next election in 2012, America will lose another 1-2 Million jobs. Count on it. And it may be worst. And it is all planned by the neo-cons. Their logic – if the economy is so bad in 2012, the people will blame Obama and the Democrats, and so the American people will be so pissed off that they will re-elect the repugs in another landslide, thus assuring a plutocratic victory!
They are actually doing this. And they simple DO NOT CARE about the American people and all the misery this will cause. They simply do not. Bottom line – they do not have enough of the Billions they have now and they just want more.
These people are not Americans. They are not Patriotic. And they simple do not care about their country. Why should they – they can buy countries where their billion are welcome. They are Traitors in my mind.
What to do. First BOYCOTT Fox Lies! Then Boycott all media outlets that spread lies and distortions. Hold a Country wide Boycott! National Strike! Anything to make the AMERICAN people wake up here! We are all being led to the Slaughter house by these Plutocrats. We fought this war before – it was called the Revolutionary War against an Imperial Dictatorship. We Won then. We can do it again. We have to or we all better plan on becoming stomped-on subjects of the new dictatorial plutocratic regime that is coming!
I have converted a few Tea Party-type people from fanatical views to common sense. In each case it has taken years of repetition of very simple, self-evident truths.
One republican told me he was looking forward to the time when they will issue hunting permits for white people to hunt black people and he said, "When that day comes, I'm gonna get out there with my gun and do my part to save America."
When I recovered from the shock of hearing him say that, I said, "Well, let's look at a few facts. Your health insurance premiums and copays were raised by the white republicans who run the corporation that controls your health care. Then you got laid off by your white republican boss, who outsourced your job to China. And when you tried to get unemployment, the white republicans in Congress fought tooth and nail to try to prevent you from getting the unemployment that you paid for. And the social security taxes that you have paid for all of your working life? The white republicans in congress are trying to steal that money and give it to the white republicans who run Wall Street. And then there's the white republican bankers who are going to foreclose on your house and kick you out onto the street if you don't find another job and start making house payments real fast. And that's kind of interesting, because those white bankers loaned you $97,000 to buy your house, and you have made over $200,000 in payments and yet they can still legally take your hard-earned house from you at gunpoint and kick you out onto the street. And once you're living on the street, the white republicans in congress will keep taking bribes from all the white republican bosses including the guy who laid you off and outsourced your job, and if those republicans get their way the white republicans in congress will vote to defund homeless shelters, which means you'll be living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere, until the white republican mayor tells the white republican police to solve the homeless problem by kicking all of the homeless people out of town."
I let that settle in for a few very uncomfortable minutes, then I said, "Do you disagree with anything that I have said?"
He slowly said, "No, I guess it's all true."
I said, "So how exactly are you figuring that black people are responsible for your problems?"
He said, "Well, Glen Beck, Michael Savage, and Saun Hannity say it's all the fault of the blacks and the Mexicans..."
I said, "But you just admitted that all of the problems we have talked about were caused by very rich white people who are selling you down the river. I would like you to tell me how Beck, Savage, and Hannity helped keep your health insurance rates from being raised. Did they help you keep the job that you worked so hard at for all those years? Did they help you get the unemployment that you paid for? Are they helping protect your decades of social security payments? Are they doing anything for you, other than saying you should hate people who had nothing to do with any of your problems?"
Another long pause, then he said, "Well, I guess they haven't done anything for me."
I said, "Other than telling you who they want you to hate and fear. So, if you go out there and start shooting black people, do you think you'll get your health insurance back? Will you get your job back if you murder black people? Will you get unemployment and social security? Explain to me how shooting black people will make your life any better."
It took awhile, but I finally got him to admit the truth: black people are not his enemies and in fact no black person has ever harmed him in any way. I explained to him that he has a lot in common with black people in the poor and middle classes because they are also being sold out by rich white republicans. He didn't really like hearing that, but he had to admit that it was true. I encouraged him to cool off, forget about doing things that would get him into a lot of trouble, and get in touch with the democrat and progressive parties on the White House, congress, state, county, and city levels, and see how he can help us reclaim our country from the wealthy sociopaths who have hijacked it.
So here's my prediction: eventually, most of the Tea Party and middle class and poor republicans will realize they are being lied to and taken advantage of. Either someone will explain it to them or they will figure it out on their own. I guess the challenge facing the republican party is that they need to make an accurate assessment of just how far they can push things before their plans backfire on them and they get removed from power. I think the republican party leaders' mental condition is preventing them from acting in their own best interests.