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ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
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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.
the problem is not the government, the problem is the government run by republicans and consevatives.
Thom - on the taxing of junk food, why not start with REMOVING the subsidy on corn syrup! That is really the root cause of much of this. If corn syrup were more expensive, manufacturers would select sugar over corn syrup as the main ingredient of sweets. It has been proven in a number of studies that corn syrup is a large root cause of much of the incidents of obesity in our society as well as a source of mercury and other toxins. I also read recently that, when heated, it converts one of its chemicals to one that is toxic to bees and that beekeepers replace the honey in hives with corn syrup so they can sell the honey while letting the bees survive on the inferior corn syrup.
Often, for me, reading the perceptive comments here is much more interesting than Thom's show. Sorry Thom. It would be fun to someday have the opportunity to get together and break bread and/or share a drink together. I'll buy the first few rounds and promise to try and resist starting a food fight.
@Quark: Farting at the dinner table . . . If timed properly . . . Can be fun and entertaining. I not saying that one should not apologize afterwards . . . BUT . . .
Richard,
I agree with you, too. In the chat room, a sentence is typed and gone in an instant --- 'too fast to really pursue and digest.
Richard,
Agreed.
The pace here is more suitable to intellectual discourse.
So long as I don't have to page down to read a single post.
=^>
DDay,
You're forgiven. Will you forgive me?
Karen Armstrong's emphasis on compassion with her "Compassion Project" goes to the heart of so much...
@ mstaggerlee: My issue with your chatroom vs blog-comment-thread observation is I believe that words which I do not agree with just like words I do agree with both deserve a place to gain a level of permanence. Sometimes dreck must hang on the wall to allow the full impact of its crappiness to to be fully grokked.
As an example: I hate Rasta's P.o.S. anti-Israel rants with the passion hotter than the heat of thousand white hot stars. My soul cries out almost every electron that Rasta turns towards what I consider his/her/its wicked and unhelpful spewings. Having typed that . . . I have also on more than one occasioned defended his/her/its right to SPAM my existence. If sometime almost wholly lacking merit can be allowed to remain extant . . . THEN my rational ramblings perhaps stand a chance (lol).
All of us here have dwelled in the trivial or the whimsy at one time or another. All of us here have expressed less than fully acceptable or less than fully formed concepts. Yes, I'm am for calling out haters and jingoistic sloganeering BUT this place is about redefining our understanding through interaction. I play here with that point of view.
The chatroom does not allow for lasting impact. Yes, somethings may not appear to anyone else to merit extended existence, but the expresser has a right to choose . . .
SIDE NOTE: When I become the one banging drum for rational discourse, the universe is truly in trouble. . .
B Roll,
I'm so grateful to you for your thoughts. Maybe I am finally realizing that I am sensitized to sarcasm and bullying. I grew up with them (along with the physical abuse) and felt so torn down that I refused honors and awards in school and later on because I didn't feel worthy. Something Karen Armstrong said was so poignant. To paraphrase, if you can't give yourself a break, it's hard to give it to others...
Yes, I did feel belittled by some of DDay's comments, whether that was the intent or not. Also, I would have appreciated it if he had addressed them TO me, not PAST me.
Thank you for reaching out. Lessons about oneself are hard to learn. I hope your off-the-blog friends cherish you, too.
Hugs,
Quark
Quark,
Re: Bullying
At the risk of being deemed paranoid or self-absorbed, I can't help but fear that your post may be directed at me..at least in part, given the chronology of posts.
If this is the case, I am saddened. I remember a tongue in cheek exchange between B Roll and myself regarding Bob Marley, Minnesota, and you last Friday which ended with B Roll saying that you embodied "charm" for him. I couldn't have found a more appropriate statement myself.
At times I've been accused of using a howitzer when a fly swatter would have done. I hope that this is not the case here, but if it is, I regret it. No malice was intended. The primary motivation in most of what I do is a deep devotion to country. Gerald hit a sore spot. If there is any specific thing I bring to the table, it is an ability and willingness to be muscular in my advocacy. I try to balance the warrior with the compassionate, but fall short sometimes. You and Loretta offer a good role model for tolerance and patience to be emulated.
Richard & mstaggerlee,
Your posts confirm my "hunches". I thank you both for your two cents worth. I am still new and learning about the rules of the road in this venue. I am also learning about the personalities encountered.
Richard, I share your delight in confounding convention. You seem to perceive my point exactly. There is a time and place for everything. Just because I might revel in the abandonment of the polite doesn't excuse being inconsiderate to decorum.
That being said, I will admit to having a yen for playing hardball and mixing it up a bit at times. I assume, (admittedly a dangerous thing) that everyone here is an adult and can defend their positions. Some of Gerald's posts are for me the literary equivalent of farting at the dinner table. You ignore it for a while, but after a time, continued silence becomes deadly to me; so I fling some food. I'm a barbarian at heart. I hope I can be ultimately deserving of forgiveness.
@mstaggerlee: Yes, taxes are not punishment; they are the fee to gain access to the benefits of the great American Experiment. It is good to understand ans highlight that.
Feuerbacher's point was pushing the idea that reaching the top of the economic strata does not mean that one should gain social benefit beyond one's fair share of social responsibility. Paying for one's legal transgressions in proportion to the transgression and not one's ability to amass wealth DOES bear similarity to adequately paying to one's portion and usage of the Commons . . . Both are measures of social responsibility.
Unfortunately, our tax system and our justice system DO have a inherit bias towards folk with a little jack in their back pockets. Feuerbacher was pointing out that taxes are even more unequal than justice. The attempt at irony was lost in the sadness of the situation AND due to the collapsed concepts of taxes and punishment.
We, all, must become less personal and less pointy about folk processing their thought processes.
Quark
I'd hate to see you go. You know you're one of my all-time faves here and I look for your posts every day (even on the weekends).
I'm not sure what upset you. I just looked at last Friday's blog and with the exception of the first two posts it looks like everything was from you, me and mstaggerlee. DDay too, but had to leave him out for the sake of rhythm and rhyme.
The only thing I see that I can see might have upset you is (in my opinion) a little good-natured teasing by DDay. I wouldn't call anything I saw "bullying". Sometimes we just don't get other people's sense of humor. Believe me, as a compulsive joker, I know what it's like to be misunderstood. :(
Here's the link to last Friday's blog.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/2009/10/11/friday-october-15th-2009/#comments
Please look at it again (if you can) and see if there's anything there that's really offensive or abusive. Maybe you took something the wrong way or maybe I'm missing something, in which case I'd appreciate you pointing it out.
I know you were traumatized by abuse in your past, and although I don't see anything that would bring back those feelings, I can't say that I understand what you may be going through.
I hope you'll decide to stay or that you'll be back soon.
To put it in blues language...
"Baby please don't go"
If you do decide not to participate, I hope you'll continue to read. I heard a great story I want to share as soon as I can listen to it again. And by the way, it's music related. It involves a hit song, a rising star in music (who's been a star on the progressive music scene for years) and a well known actor who has a reputation for being a bit of a wild man.
Love you too... coz dat's how I roll
Thom's site provides a more appropriate venue than this for simple venting - it's called the chat room.
That said, I do realize I'm probably as guilty as anyone of using this blog as if it were a chat room. But that's a more appropriate place for venting than this is.
@DDay: Personally, I'm a big fan of my 'therapy' both rude and self-absorbed . . . Although making that public would run afoul of decency laws. I believe your observations follow a similar track.
@Frank Feuerbacher -
So, what's your point? It would appear that you are equating taxes with punishment. That is not at all the case.
PRISON is for those who have violated the laws of the nation, state or community, and have either caused harm to others or placed themselves at an advantage over others by illegal means.
TAXES are the price of living in a democracy. Taxes are used to finance the commons. the idea behind the progressive tax structure is NOT to punish the successful, but to have those who have those who have profited more from the use of the commons pay a greater share for their use.
i have one question for dick cheney. what is his opinion on the bill that will protect women from rape by government contractors. i wish someone would ask him. also need to ask glenn beck and sean hannity and bill oreilly the same question.
Goodbye (at least for now) B Roll and Loretta. Since Friday's exchange, I just don't have the heart for this anymore. Bullying (not yours) goes hand-in-hand with physical abuse.
Love,
Quark
B Roll,
I remember the exchange you mention. There are a few reasons I was willing to "stir up the bees" again.
1) I resent being lumped in.
2) I am concerned about being EFFECTIVE in fighting the forces that Gerald abhors. His exhortations could be used against Progressive's credibility.
3) I don't believe that this "therapy" is so much therapeutic, as it is rude and self-absorbed.
DDay
I raised this with Gerald about a week or so ago. You also had raised it that day. His reply to me was that he posts for two reasons.
1) to share information
2) as a form of therapy
I didn't reply to his reply because I felt that the therapy aspect of just venting has priority to him even if it diminishes his credibility when trying to share information.
Fascist-Nazi America is a failed state. Here is an article from one of my favorite writers.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/US-Joins-Ranks-of-Failed-S-by-Paul-Crai...
Note: Gerald's comments can be found at the end of yesterdays blog.
Gerald Socha,
Re: "We are truly an evil nation."
We are all entitled to our own opinions. I have no doubt that your feelings are heartfelt. Along with the right to voice our opinions comes the responsibility to not only add constructively to understanding but guard against incitement of irrational emotions. I admire the depth of your convictions and share much of the alarm you obviously feel, but, wonder about the effectiveness and wisdom of such shrill cries. The kind of hyperbole you employ seems to be better suited for Teabaggers than the intelligent and thoughtful contributors who predominate here. It is always easier to tear down than to build up. You are preaching to the choir in a way that is frankly insulting. I love my country. I am not evil. I labor to hate the sin and not the sinner. Lumping people together in the way you do serves to dehumanize and alienate people who should by all rights be your brothers and sisters.
I understand your frustration and the urgency you express but urge that you have more respect for the persuasive powers of goodwill. I came across a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche that seems to apply: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
I wish you well Gerald.
DSL and cable capacity planners plan for the worst-case peak hours and need to throttle bandwidth hogs back only if network performance is compromised so that average users remain unaffected. Any pay scheme that attempts to collect from, for example, people doing music downloads, in proportion to number of bytes will do nothing to improve network performance and is just an attempt to maximize profit. It would be like punishing truck drivers who intentionally drive their short hauls at night when there is less traffic or perhaps better, charging airline passengers based upon their weight rather than the number of seats they need...the plane is going to fly for any overall passenger makeup and it would just be a way of gouging people by charging for individual capacity when network capacity is not threatened.
The other side of the anti-net-neutrality scam is that they want to slice and dice the Internet, creating artifical barriers that you would then be charged to cross. For example, AT&T would strike agreements with site and content providers on their networks and you would be able to access them for free. Anyone outside of their programming suite and you would be charged extra to "go outside" their artificially created barrier.
This defies the intent and purpose of the inherent universality of the Internet which was created initially for military then public use with government funds, our tax money. Access providers know that a perversion that more closely resembles limited broadcast television and cable is more lucrative. When you trap the audience and give them fewer choices then the advertising dollar increases. However it gets better than that once they do away with net-neutrality because not only do they increase profit from content providers they can also charge "viewers" for content. They win two ways and it has nothing to do with their network performance which is handled just fine in other ways.
There is nothing but greed and deceptive arguments behind the opposition to net neutrality and they are getting slicker all the time. I found it entertaining when they propped Alaska's old Ted Stevens up who then sounded like my 95 year old grandmother talking about the net...he didn't even have a clue of what the words he'd been told to say really meant.
Somewhere in the access provider's upper echelons men in suits are talking right now about how they might benefit from an artificially induced shortage or calamity on the heels of which they might be able to usher in the perversion of the Internet that they envision.
I’m constantly amazed how often Thom says things that are wrong and no one seems know, notice or care. Thom’s discussion of hate crimes is just one many recent examples. According to Thom, the intent to intimidate a group or community is an essential element of a hate crime, which means that if a group of white men came across a black man and decided to beat him up for the hell of it, it wouldn’t be a hate crime if they weren’t doing it to intimidate black people in general.
The Department of Justice/FBI has a website that says nothing about intimidation in its general definition of hate crimes.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/hate_crime/index.html
“A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.”
There’s nothing in that definition about the intent to intimidate, but the site does list intimidation as a type of hate crime. It also states: “Approximately one-half of all bias-motivated offenses against persons involved the crime of intimidation (50.1 percent).” That indicates that, contrary to Thom’s conception of hate crimes, the justice department says that around 50% of hate crimes didn’t involve intimidation.
However intimidation, when motivated by bias, can be a hate crime. It’s not against the law to drive by someone’s house, but if someone keeps driving past the house of the only Latino family in a town to frighten them into leaving town, that could be a hate crime.
If Thom’s misstating the definition of hate crimes it wouldn’t be a big deal. But I hear Thom make frequent inaccurate and questionable claims based on inaccurate information, preconceived notions and flawed reasoning. It’s important that he is accurate because people listen to the show to be educated, to gain understanding and to make sense of this confusing world. People should be aware that although Thom is amazingly well informed about some issues, he’s just kind of winging it on others.
Thom is truly respected and looked up to by the great majority of his listeners. In my opinion he’s held in too high esteem. People believe that what he says is true and accurate and they repeat it. Even though listeners have to be responsible for their own views, Thom is an opinion shaper. Look at this excerpt from a post by a regular on this blog who bought into Thom’s definition of hate crimes. It was posted on Tuesday, but on the Monday blog page:
A Hate Crime is an INTIMIDATING POLITICAL ACT–an attempt to control others to one’s will and goal through FEAR and THREAT. Using the word “hate” is probably the problem here. The word “hate” insinuates that emotion is the drive here, but that diregards that political/religious ideology and the specifics of their goals — as these are driving the “INTENT” of crime as pointed out by a couple of Thom’s callers today.”
She believes it so much that she finished her comment by saying:
I think they should be called “Political Crimes”.
You’ll also notice that she mentioned a couple of callers who also believed hate crimes are about intention and intimidation rather than hate. So we see that Thom has convinced people to believe that a hate crime is something different than what the law that defines it says it is. And while that’s plausible that the law got it wrong, it’s easy to think of scenarios that would fit the legal definition without fitting Thom’s expanded definition. I don’t think that Thom isn’t trying to change the definition of hate crimes, although he could be; I just think he doesn’t really know what the definition is.
There are a few reasons that I think this is important. First of all, if Thom is wrong on an issue he should hear about it so he can correct his position if he’s willing (he’s not always willing to admit he’s wrong). Second, people have to realize that Thom isn’t infallible. He may be a very intelligent and well intentioned person but he’s also a human being, subject to have limitations and gaps in his knowledge and biases, vanity, etc.
Like any source of information, what Thom says should be received critically.
My take on who coined the term "Medicare Part E" is a big yawn. I don't think it will change the debate this late into the game and it's easy to imagine that a number of people have independently come up with that term.
There's already Medicare part A,B,C and D. What would the next logical expansion be called? Help me people... I'm really stumped by this one. Let's see, Part A stands for "Alright", Part B stands for "Bigger", Part C stands for "Cool" and Part D stands for "Donut Hole".
I'm trying to work my way through this but I'm still stumped. Help me people!