The financial woes of the United States Postal Service can be traced all the way back to 2006. In tonight's Daily Take - I'll tell you what happened that year - and why the Republican Party is hell bent on destroying one of the legacies of Ben Franklin.

Kenneth Levin, Manhattan Community College at CUNY joins Thom Hartmann. It looks like civil unrest and economic destruction are about to be exported from Greece to Italy. The new bankster-run government formed in the wake of Silvio Berlusconi's resignation has approved a new austerity package that will raise the retirement age of all Italians - and let inflation destroy their pensions. The austerity measures also target government spending and dissolve several government programs. These spending cuts are so painful that the Minister of Labour and Welfare, Elsa Fornero, broke down in tears while she was announcing them during a press conference. Is this the beginning of the newest European empire - and a backdoor way of saying that Germany is now in the process of winning World War II?

In this week's Conversations with Great Minds Harriet A.Washington joins Thom. Her book Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself is an exposé of the medical industrial complex's rush to own and exploit the raw materials of human life - including your body tissue and DNA! Her book "Medical Apartheid" documents how people of color - particularly African Americans - have been subjected to everything from medical experimentation and vivisection to the denial of medical services from the days of slavery to today.

Now - the new weapon of choice for police - as we're seeing so often used against peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters is pepper spray. GOP TV aka Fox so-called News has been quick to defend pepper spray as...not being all that bad. The point of this is...pepper spray is a chemical weapon. It's more painful than getting tasered - and has far more long lasting effects than waterboarding, at least physically. Which might be why GOP TV talking heads are willing to praise its use from afar - but not willing to put their face in front of one of Lieutenant Pike's pepper spray cannisters. And until they do - until Hannity - or Megyn Kelly - or O'Reilly walk the walk - and take in a faceful of pepper spray - then they should hold off on making comments about how it's a legitimate use of force against the Occupy Wall Street movement.