Recent comments

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    I have sent more emails to the White House today than in the last month.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Israel imported 25,000 kids to harvest their ORGANS

    Ukraine academic: Israel imported 25,000 kids for their organs

    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132425.html

    (i know it's dangerous posting this on Thom's site since this sadist is virulently PRO ISRAEL, PRO DEATH, PRO ZIONIST and PRO ORGAN HARVESTING.....but maybe....just maybe there might be some human beings left here that are horrified by this new revelation)

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Richard,

    Obama has a history of sidelining his critics (look at the Repug. who is now the U.S. Ambassador to China.)

    You are exactly right. (And I am spitting mad!)

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Inquiry: Was installing Joe Biden as Vice President the way to silence him? Biden was a defining voice. Yes, foot in mouth occasionally . . . But loud and liberal in general.

    I know that Dean was yanked outta the leadership of the DNC and replaced with Kaine as leader of DLC . . . Ooops . . . DNC . . . just for that reason.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @Richard L Adlof, I can't disagree. It seems that since our country has two political parties dragging it in the same direction, all we really have is one party with two faces.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @NelsNelsen: Please see my post above recorded at 10:12 AM.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @mstaggerlee,
    thanks for the grace and humor.
    and i actually agree with your prescription.
    yes, the bill is disappointing in many ways but the mandate is the one provision the tilts the balance, making the bill awful, imho.
    i was surprised that no one was able to strip it via amendment.
    does anyone know if an amendment to do so was proposed and then failed?
    but i've also thought that republicans were simply laying back, waiting for dems to pass the law with the mandate, to give them a golden club to use against dems in 2010. they will bludgeon dems with that particular provision and the best thing to do, in order to make the bill palatable is to strip the mandate.
    unfortunately, it appears that keeping it in is part of the deal obama has made with the insurance industry.
    we shall see....

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Supposition: President Obama is enacting the third term of the Bush-Cheney Adminstration.

    Someone . . . anyone (please) disprove the supposition.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    If this is the Bill the White House wanted, I begin to wonder which side of the Chess Board they're playing for up there.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @ Ames: Ditto with Richard L Adlof.....I'm digging holes and piling the twigs and branches over them....I'm lobbing grenades and molatov cocktails into the enemy camp....I'm trying to mobilize the troops and build consensus amongst the
    righteous and true...I don't sulk...I get even....and then reflect and repent.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    The problem with the conference solution is the DEMs do not have the stomach to actually solve anything.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    I hear Dan Gainor speaking for the Cons (clothed as a Free Marketer) saying we shouldn't fiddle with health care reform because the industry is 16-percent of our national product.

    There wasn't that kind of concern when the Cons were pushing NAFTA at the expense of 30-percent of the economy known as manufacturing.

    We're down to manufacturing being 8-percent of the economy with the slack taken up by fees paid gangsters in banks, health care industries -- the backbone of the Cons.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Re Tim Fullerton
    Thom, why oh why can’t/won’t progressives get organized and flex our muscles like the ‘Tea Baggers’ etc.

    Great Idea!

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    "..At around noon ET, the Senate Clerk began reading the text of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) single-payer amendment. The reading of amendments is usually waived during debate, but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) requested the reading of the complete Sander's text. "

    Coburn has left the floor.

    Is this filibuster by proxy?

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    If this Health Care Bill is a victory, its a Pyrrhic Victory.

    Perhaps we can replace the term with "Democratic Victory"

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @Ames: I sulk not . . . I am waiting in the political tall grass . . .

  • Get Screwed! by Thom Hartmann   15 years 22 weeks ago

    I've said all along that the mandates should have been tied to the public option, and I've told both my senators that. At this point we should either kill the bill or strip out the mandates and just call it insurance reform. This is a lemon of a bill, nothing more than a big wet kiss on the backsides of the insurance industry fat cats. The Democrats would be crazy to pass something that hurts ordinary voters.

    Thanks for having Howard Dean on the show. I gave him my political heart in 2003 and he still has it. Go Howard!

    Calinda

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @TimFullerton: We do and mobilize hundreds of thousands only to get ZERO corporate media coverage BUT 40,000 people who are too stupid that the Boston Tea Party was for PRECISELY the opposite reason get wall to wall coverage.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Here's the only way I can see to save this "reform":

    Pass anything in the Senate. It doesn’t matter anymore what it contains, its worthless. just submit whatever pile of crap it takes to get 60 steenkin’ votes.

    It then goes to a conference committee to reconcile with the House bill. Reid makes sure to leave the Blue Dogs out when he picks the Senate conferees. Pelosi does the same. The conferees basically ignore the Senate bill, and fashion a decent bill mostly from the House version. Pass the conference report in the House – as a budget bill, then send it to the Senate where it cannot be amended or filibustered. 50 votes plus Joe Biden = universal health care.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @thebinxster -

    Well, I guess I explicitly asked for that.

    Here's an idea - All that we keep hearing about this bill, from the Centrist Rethugs and from Blue Dogs, is that if we take certain things OUT of the bill, then they'll be happier about passing it. Now that they've taken out enough to make it palatable for Holy Joe, I have ONE MORE subtraction to recommend.

    The current bill makes a gift to the insurance industry by requiring few concessions from them, but mandating that the uninsured MUST insure themselves, one way or another. So, howzabout as long the best parts of the bill have already been gutted, we also strip the mandate?

    Yes, I AM aware that doing so will make the bill utterly useless. But, if all we're after is the APPEARANCE of reform, wouldn't that be better than forcing 45,000,000 Americans to support the insurance gangsters?

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    We Democrats are a fickle bunch, aren't we? The republicans whine threaten, and we sulk and pout.
    I support Obama, I will vote for him in '12. I believe we have a president who will respond to public demand. If the republicans make demands in greater numbers than we do, then those demands will be met. We have to be willing to grit our teeth and be as robotic as the teabaggers when it comes to voting the polls, signing the petitions, and calling D.C. I keep reading and hearing about sooooo many callers saying they are Democrats and will vote against Obama in '12, or that they are "disappointed" in Obama. Well, MAYBE they are Democrats, but since there was a rather rapid uptick in the number of those calls and blog postings I suspect it's nothing more than an organized poisioning of our political water by the right wing nutjobs.

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    @DDay RE Three Card Monty: Exactly and precisely.

  • Get Screwed! by Thom Hartmann   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Here's copy of email sent to Sen's Bennet and Udall of Colorado.
    As a Colorado voter I strongly protest you voting for the health care without some kind of public option. If you do, you can kiss my vote goodbye in any further election. Why bother to vote when the people's vote only gets you elected but when you get in office you tow the republican line. We the people are constantly conned by you politicians. You really don't represent us the people. You are controlled by the insurance, pharmaceutical lobbyists and wall street and depend on their campaign contributions to get elected, so you are naturally beholden to them and block any bill to regulate them...and consequently the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

    Please only cast your vote for the health care bill if it contains some kind of
    public option...end of story

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    2010: "The Year of Severe Economic Contraction"

    By Mike Whitney

    URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16569

  • Daily Topics Blog - Wednesday December 16th 2009   15 years 22 weeks ago

    Thom, why oh why can't/won't progressives get organized and flex our muscles like the 'Tea Baggers' etc. What would happen if 200 people in wheelchairs etc. showed up at Lieberman's Senate Office? Do we feel that it is somehow too 'plebian' to do this kind of thing? Since the current democrats remind me a lot of the moderate Republican party of the 50's and 60's is it maybe time for a new party with real alternatives, not rehashed corprotist agendas?

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