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Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
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Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
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Studying history has been a lifetime passion for me, particularly biography. For some time now, I have often said in discussions that "You tell me your favorite hero and I'll tell you about their foibles or skeletons in their closets." A particularly potent charge recently is marital infidelity. Ever since Gary Hart's trip on "Monkey Business", the rules have eroded to the point where few lines exist to restrain tabloid journalism.
Knowing which politician is screwing around is of great interest to near everyone including me. That being said , knowing which politician is sleeping around does little to help me make judicious decisions about the job a politician will do for me as a citizen. Some of our greatest leaders had tumultuous private lives while some our worst leaders had tranquil homes. Vice-versa is also true. Little is to be learned when people's private lives are exposed other than that they are human, subject to human frailties and quirks.
Like Thom, I had the opportunity to meet both John and Elizabeth Edwards. I had the exact same reaction as Thom. I was struck by Elizabeth Edwards qualities and simple, sincere humanity. I was disgusted to learn what was included in "Game Change" about the Edwards. It was an unnecessary cruelty to include these private revelations about their lives in this book. No class.
The second or third story on the NBC nightly news last night was coverage on the kerfuffle about moving Jay Leno's show back to the Tonight Show time slot and Conan O'Brien with the Tonight Show after. I know it's NBC but how in the world is this news? Reminds me why I don't watch it any more.
Hello?
The Pope needs a course in Environmental Sciences
I wish to redeem my draft of the Movie Review of the AVATAR the other week with the actual published version in which I believe I have corrected every wrong punctuation but if you find some more- PLEASE let me know!
The online magazine for which anyone here might be interested in submitting to trains you how to write for the online media- which is a bit different but as they claim a readership of 24 million, and are 10 years old, they must be doing something right.
PS You may have heard the Pope would totally disagree with what most environmentalists thought of the film What a boob -
http://environmental-activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/avatar_movie_mess...
Kudos to Google for taking a stand against authoritarian rule. Who knows, in the end the good publicity might actually end up providing a big boost to its bottomline!
If the U.S. is becoming a “third world” country, as Thom and his guest suggested the other day, it isn’t merely because whites can’t come to grips with changing demographics and don’t like to share, but because of the calamitous condition of the country’s infrastructure. Labor costs are only one element that is “persuading” businesses to relocate to “right to work” states or other countries, but increasingly degraded transportation, water and power support networks. With money scarce, the “solution” to rotting bridges, poor drainage, crumbling roads, porous levees and bursting pipes is the “patch and pray” method, with repairs amounting to little more than patching holes and praying that nothing disastrous happens just yet. In many states, a lack of field inspectors means that no one really knows the complete extent of the impending disaster (or don’t want to know), although what we do know is already disturbing enough.
Last year, the American Society of Civil Engineers stated that it would cost $2.2 trillion to repair or replace the country’s crumbling infrastructure. The stimulus package passed last year only supplies about $100 billion to that effort, and critics point out that this money is being wasted on “shovel ready” projects, like repairing potholes and resurfacing roads that don’t require drawn-out plans. The only “job creation,” apparently, is keeping government DOT workers off the lay-off rolls.
Should it come as any surprise that Mark McGwire’s “coming clean” on his use of performance enhancing drugs should sound like it had ring around the collar? After all, his launderer was former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who knew how to use the spin cycle to get the most out of substandard detergent. McGwire continues to lie to himself and to us that PEDs (and human growth hormone, which he didn’t mention but what others claim he used extensively) had nothing to do with his homerun hitting prowess. His self-deception was such that he couldn’t admit that his rationale for using PEDs—because injuries had left him practically wheelchair bound—would rather strongly suggest that he never would have “miraculously” risen from his wheelchair to become a homerun-hitting superman without them. Statistics don’t lie: In McGwire’s first nine years, which should have been his prime years, he hit 238 homeruns in 3342 at-bats—one HR per fourteen ABs. Following a two-and-a-half year period in which he missed 300 games due to injury, he became an indestructible machine, hitting 345 HRs in just 2845 ABs—one HR per eight ABs.
Fleischer obviously “coached” him well on the art of disingenuousness, made worse by the fact that it was in the service of an activity that has disgraced baseball. During the infamous congressional hearings where McGwire took the fifth, he found another ethically-challenged ally in (former) Republican Rep. Tom Davis, who couldn’t persuade Alberto Gonzalez (who, Davis sneeringly told ESPN, couldn’t put two sentences together) to give McGwire special immunity to shield him from potential prosecution.
Yes - it's time to call the industry out. It is a falsity that the game they play ever was or is played in an opent free market so their claimed right to independence now - after this crisis - is ridiculous. They didn't make their money in a fair fight - the game has ever been rigged in their favor. They manipulated the administration and congress over a number of years and got any law or regulation passed that worked for their profit seeking, regardless of the danger or dishonesty or dowright stupidity of it. "Oh just trust the professionals to do what they do best," was the Bush adminstration line. Subprive loan backed mortgage securities qualifying for AAA treatment? my rear end! And the OCC who? Oh - yes- those guys no one ever heard of for a hundred years - until the investment banks called on (probably) Cheney and Rove to complain that the states' attorney generals were all getting predatory lending laws passed. Why the nerve of those states! The Bush administration had to figure out how to stop the staes' action - and presto: Why look, the OCC we had all forgotten about! "Gosh you 50 states worth of legislators - what were you ever thinking passing such laws when - ahem - you all should have known only the august OCC has power to regulate. Silly you." Then - of course - after trashing all state predatory lending laws the OCC did exactly.....why nothing! How surprising. Just what the bankers wanted. De-regulate, de-oversight, spin the markets up, take profits as personal income crashing the market, and then take them again riding it up. And manipulate the American public to pay for the bailout/turn-around besides. An opinion published int he WSJ says the bailout was the Americn public acting in their own self interest. I think not. Or if so, only because the bankers were pulling the strings and after ripping everyone off, held a knife to America's throat. It was like they dangled us over a cliff and then said "Hey - fill my bags up with coin or we're both going over." I think in polite company that's called extortion. Buyt then oops - I forgot - there's no polite company here anywhere. Just big money manipulating government - a story as old as the free market itself. Not that there's anything wrong with the free market a little ethical government oversight can't fix. Now, the real question is whether the Financial Crisis Inquiry commission is going to do any hard investigating at all. Will they recommend any significant protective action? Or is it going to be just another "slap the wrist make a great show for the public" display, and then back to business as usual. Human lives and suffering hang by an economic thread in much of the US and moreso the world over. All the terrorist attacks ever all combined won't ammount to even a fraction of the toll inhuman suffering, starvatiohn, violence, sex slavery, etc. ad nauseum, that this banker caused, greed caused, Wall Street caused financial crisis has exacted even already. I'm sure everyone on Wall Street involved sleeps jusf fine at night though, by virtue of their obscene thoughtlessness and gilded Faustian obsessions. "Poor people? What poor people? What has that got to do with anything?"
So what we need to do is ALL of us who are members of organizations (church, labor unions, community activist, political, etc.), all those that have been hurt by the takeover by the corporations and the rich top 1%, start spreading the word.
We need to get people at the heads of these organizations interested in uniting against the top 1%. Maybe we need a convention to decide on who to lead and what our demands will be. Maybe just the THREAT of general strike will be enough.
People, we need to go to the next level. We have to start organizing the existing groups to unite. We already have the infrastructure, the contacts and all together the money.
The tea baggers have it right, although they blame the government and we blame thebig corporations. Who cares if some of them are crazy or racist? Many of them are not and are just ignorant. But we can use them as part of the coalition.
We are ALL worried about what this government/big corporation partnership will do to us next. If we focus on the 99%, it won't matter. We need to get started on this.
The Grand Experiment was our last hope.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Death-of-Liberalism-in-by-shamus-co...
Are we seeing the real Obama at work?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Real-Obama-Sticking-i-by-Dave-Lindo...
Dave - Well Said.
sue - We're not srewed. We just have to keep on truckin. Most of the100's of thousands who worked for Obama were Progressive and Populist. We have to be in touch with them.
I listen to the show and almost every issue comes down to the same thing: the big corporations own and run the media, the military and the government for their own profit.
The only solution left is for the 99% of us to unite against the top 1%. Otherwise we are literally done. We the people can't take another hit like the last one the government/corporate partnership leveled on us.
@Adlof: bummer. I thought he'd argued against them. We're screwed.
@Sue: Obama was a B-I-G FISA and PATRIOT Acts supporter. He quibbled on various points but was all about the centralization of Executive power.
@portland elmo: Not sure what getting rid of humongous factory farms has to do with poverty and food problems in the third world. It's not like we ship our pork and beef to Africa. Also, we can feed ourselves just fine with family farm models that are more healthy to people and the environment. Even better, if a majority became vegetarians, we could even more easily feed the world.
But even more important - you're in Portland - go see the "end of poverty" this Friday night with Thom at the Bagdad and you can see how we could have solved poverty years ago - but it doesn't serve the interests of those who control our current world economy. Ending starvation does not depend on factory farms. Oh and by the way, there's not enough fish left for the fishermen either - thanks to "factory fish-farming" and other overfishing.
portland elmo - being originally from a third world country (india) trust me, the third world country will do MUCH BETTER without the big factory farms trying to help them out! I remember that during the famine in 1990's, USA had offered to send 'aid' to india thru the UN, in form of rice and other grains.
After taking the initial batch, india refused that since the grains that they received, were good only for consumption, but no good for re-planting them for the next season.
In most third world farmer, keep a small part of their harvest to re-plant the crop next year. Another small part goes to feed their family and the rest is sold in the market. But once they got these grains (which was good only for feeding themselves for till whenever it lasted) and the famine had destroyed the original grain they were left with nothing to re-plant.
They had to borrow money from unscruplous money lenders and banks to buys new grain to plant crops and this increased their suffering for many years to come. Noticing this India actually had banned 'food' aid from USA for many year!
Again, not to keep banging on the point, but the Tea Party movement is not something that progressives can get together with. The other day in the town where I live (which is near the bay area) I saw a homemade tea party billboard and next to it, smaller in size, was a sign that said support Fox News with the network logo on it.
These people are not going to be reasoned with strictly with facts, they get their facts from Fox News, and so I wonder how you are going to get these "low information" people to wake up to what is going on?
They are being told over and over and over again that Liberals/Democrats are the reason the economy is bad (again, facts don't matter) not corporations, not trade policy, not economic policy are the reasons.
These are the kind of people who absolutely KNOW that tax cuts to the rich and corporations will fix the economy. They know it like they know the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. They know it in their bones down to their DNA.
They are Authoritarians who have been so propagandized that up is down and black is white.
If Thom really believes what he is saying on the radio I would hope he would go to a local Tea Party meeting where he lives and try and persuade them to not talk about social issues and stick with economics and come to some agreement on what needs to be done. Or he can invite some of them on to his program and have a discussion.
My point is, don't waste your time or energy on the roughly 20-25% who can't be reasoned with and get together with the 75-80% that you can.
@Adlof - I agree Obama is behaving as a corporatist as befits his DLC past, and I agree I was hoping against hope for him to do the right thing. However, what I can't reconcile is the weird arguments in the courts that Obama's justice dept is using such as the one that there are no rights to protect you from being framed by prosecutors. And that was just the last in a line of them. I can't figure out where that is coming from. It seems outside of the corporatist explanation.
rewinn - very true.
Bush needed a war against Saddam Hussein to avenge his daddy. Cheney and Rumsfeld needed the oil and moeny to the war industrial complex. And afghanistan the best way to get there.
On other hand, I can thing of a thousand reasons I think that Harry Reid resign as Majority Leader that have ZERO to do with the topic at hand.
My Mother is 84 and she still refers to African Americans as "Colored". That was acceptable in her circles at one time too. I try to tell her the new PC way to refer to people but I give her a pass. It was how she was raised.
Factory farms-
So all you "Greengos" and "Animists" and "Anarchists" out there think we should do away with factory farms huh? What about all the Third World countries that depend on our factory farms for survival? Or to hell with them!
If you want to do away with factory farming in America then put your money where your mouth is all you "Narcisus" types and support family farming in the Third World. A good place to start, would be to buy a goat or some chickens for someone in the Third World. In our self righteous attempt to outlaw factory farming lets not forget about the beautiful children in the Third world who are depending on us for life. Teach a man to fish and he'll have fish for a lifetime!
@mir: Saudi Arabia woulda whacked their favorite son . . . As Osama’s uncle, the King, hated the jack_hole.