An executive order requiring that all uniforms worn by our military personnel be made in America using fabric made in America would create a lot of jobs, and not requiring getting past a GOP filibuster or armies of lobbyists.

If anyone sued over this, the lawsuit could be dragged out for years.

So why not try it?

Obama should resign right now!!! His resignation would be great for America in the short term. As far as the long term America is in the process of her demise.

Nels, a segment or two on labor would give his show more balance. Thom has said that labor and jobs are the economy and not the Wall Street numbers.

Greg Palast does a great job as an investigative reporter.

http://www.truthout.org/the-supreme-court-just-handed-anyone-including-b...

I am listening to Thom's show and his guest has just said that the quality of politicians are poor. No one seems to want to govern.

Here is my two cents!!! Obama is a FAILED PRESIDENT. He is toast!!!

You give someone enough slack and more often than not they hang themselves. :-<

A budget "freeze" is foolish while there is 10 percent unemployment (actual rate of 17% including discouraged and part timers who can't find full time work), pure 1937 logic. But I could support it IF it is really just a return to the PAYGO rules that gave us the Clinton surpluses and that Bush abandoned - Once unemployment is reduced.

Of course the best way to reduce the deficit now and for the foreseeable future is to switch to single payer health care.

I have not been receiving Thom's newsletter for the past several days. I am wondering if he has stopped writing a newsletter? His newsletters can be time consuming. Maybe one newsletter per week would be sufficient?

Before I share some information, I want to offer a suggestion. We do not have in our newspapers a labor page. Thom, each of your hours has four segments for a total of sixty segments for the week. Would it be possible to have one or two segments a week devoted to labor news and labor guests?

I wish now to share some information. At times Thom has some humor on his show to lighten our day. Aside from these humorous pieces, please listen carefully to what he says. For example on January 25, 2010 Thom mentioned two pieces of information, such as retirement plans and Ronald Reagan.

Retirement plans came on the scene to eventually eliminate social security programs. Right now our COLAs are frozen for two or three years. This freeze is a prelude to the eventual elimination of social security programs and the elimination of Medicare programs will follow. But, money will not be frozen for wars and mass murders of God’s children.

Thom mentioned that Reagan showed signs of dementia in his first term. Dementia does not come overnight. It is a process that takes ten, fifteen, and in some cases twenty years to actually surface. With dementia Reagan was not running the presidency or the American government. I believe that Nancy was upset with the people in the White House because they were poor advisors to him. We must remember that is the way for our shadow government.

My counsel to the people who listen to Thom on the radio is to pay close attention to what he is saying.

Damn those speculators, I knew it was all there fault... I guess the greedy banksters were just victims after all. There self-centered greed and parasitic behavior is really just fine.

What a load of ......

Mark K,

We have noted that one of Obama's biggest financial supporters was Goldman Sachs.

I don't believe in Santa Claus, however, two drunken sailors I understand. Couldn't hurt the Democrats to call the Republicans what they are, drunk with power corporate shills.

Guess Obama has decided to knock a hole in the back of the boat to let the water out from the front :-(

It seems apparent that in the past year Obama did what he thought was the “common sense” move and went to the Democratic Congressional leadership and asked them what could be passed and what could not. Since the Democrats in Congress by-and-large had no plan prepared to create jobs or formulate health care reform themselves, this was the recipe for a long, protracted grind that only highlighted the U.S. Senate’s inability to make the Real Big Move. They’ve got too many people pulling them in too many directions, and the people with the most money have the most pull, and those people are generally the people who want the least to change the status quo. That idiotic cover of The Economist, showing “big government” eating a human, plays right into the hands of people who want the fear of change to prevail, because only government is capable of doing to what is needed.

I was listening to Mike Malloy’s show last night (who gave Thom a “kind-of” compliment by saying he “sort-of” supported democratic socialism), and he riffed on the insinuation by the lieutenant governor of South Carolina that children on free or reduced school lunch programs were “animals” who should be drug-tested before they received their lunch. Malloy noted that southern states rank in the “top” of virtually every category that measures poverty, hunger, functional illiteracy, lack of health care, and church attendance. Yet these are all solid Republican states. How can this be? It’s easy enough to understand; in 2004, Harold Ford, the Obama of Tennessee, seemed to be on his way to a historic election as the first black voted to the Senate from a southern state since Reconstruction. But his opponent, Bob Corker, trotted-out a last minute ad featuring Ford in the same room with an attractive blond, and this was sufficient to strike the mindless fear of “miscegenation” and of the lustful black Sambo violating the sanctity of white womanhood into racist white voters. Meanwhile, Dennis Kucinich either has attended a “teabagger” convention where people rationalize their own abhorrence for minorities and liberals (which he chose not to see, or like Thom sees what he wants to see. Again, it has to be pointed out again and again that these people had no problem with banksters and corporatists when the Republicans were running the show, or when everyone had jobs. They didn’t even seem to mind that they were not making any money, or had poor or no benefits.

And has Thom taken the time to wonder why the teabagger movement, which is in fact as small as it is loud, gets so much attention from the corporate-owned and right-wing media, while the left gets almost no attention? Is it because teabaggers actually serve the interests of the corporations? It’s not such a stretch; after all, teabaggers ARE anti-Obama and anti-liberal, representing those most likely (not that they necessarily will) not oppose the agenda of corporations, if only because they too have greedy, selfish little agendas. And does the fact that far fewer younger voters came out in 2010 necessarily equate to a “protest” vote? I think not. It was clear that many younger voters were excited to vote for Obama, because he represented something new, exciting—and young, like them, as opposed to Hillary and McCain. Coakley? She looked old and ossified, she didn’t excite them. Younger, healthier voters don’t care that much about health care reform. Obama should have gotten out there fast and early with a positive message, but again as I mentioned yesterday, the Democrats assumed too much and didn’t have anyone on the ground measuring the extent of disaffection, and taking steps to counter it.

I just purchased the book “Game Change,” and among other things I learned is that Obama was receiving contributions from “big-time” contributions from “Wall Street players” from the jump. The result, we may conjecture, is that he “owes” them. What exactly they felt he owed them is plain enough to see. The question we have to ask ourselves does Obama feel he has no choice but to deal with the (Wall Street) devil in order to have the “freedom” to pursue his other objectives?

Obama has announced that he is supporting “freezes” in discretionary programs that most effect people, but none for Homeland Security and the Defense budget. Robert Reich pointed out the fallacy of such a policy during a recession, that government had to be consumer and employer of last resort. Maybe what Obama really needs to do is support crackdowns on tax cheats and loopholes. I hear these commercials with tough-talking tax attorneys telling you that they will get between you and the IRS from taking “your” money; it sounds a lot better than the IRS going after their money that you didn’t pay like every other law-abiding citizen. One happy customer of one these firms, who sounded like Jethro, claimed that he had saved $150,000 in taxes. He probably hadn’t paid his taxes in 30 years.