• It is winter solstice tonight.
• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont.
• The shows Monday and Tuesday next week will be best of shows.
• On Sunday December 23 at noon and 10pm EST C-SPAN2's Book tv will be showing Thom.
• Winter Solstice and Christmas traditions and myths.
• Guest: Greg Palast. The Amazon and oil.

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Friday 21 December '07 National show

• It is winter solstice tonight at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern.
• Article: One-Man Gridlock: Meet Tom Coburn, Senate's 'Dr. No'.
• Article: Bush Is Upbeat About Economy's Prospects: But Some Experts Urge Steps to Avert Recession.
• Article: UBS faces rebellion over fund injection.
• Article: Blindly Into the Bubble, Paul Krugman.
• Article: Income-Inequality Gap Widens, October 12, 2007.
  "The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks. The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000."
• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Happy holidays. Tom Coburn's obstructionism. The Senate has strange rules; filibusters, holds. Power is used to forge a compromise. It works both ways. There was hold on a bill if amendments not taken out, and Bernie said he would hold unless they put them back in. Senate ended Tues night. Mixed bag. A year ago they had done nothing but Iraq, tax cuts. This one was better: minimum wage, higher education, VA funding increase, energy bill. The needs of the USA: Iraq war, wealth gap, desperation over heating costs, food banks, gas prices. Bush being upbeat about economy's prospects. UBS selling off 9% to Saudi Prince. Paul Krugman says it is because of deregulation. At Bali, the US representative was booed. The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005.

  The military budget above and beyond Iraq is exploding. CBS tonight. For example, the GAO found that $18b of spare parts not needed. Martin Luther King was of the great heroes, on his anniversary they play clips of his work breaking down segregation, but not that he was opposed to the Vietnam War, and was organizing a poor people's march for all. How can the FCC work against our interests? The EPA does not want states pollution standards. Johnson, Cheney, auto executives. Bush thinks the economy is doing fine.

  Campaign finance reform. He does not believe in term limits - it is a conservative approach. Why are senators not doing more like Chris Dodd? We need to be more aggressive. There may be more doing it. Iraq war spending. Pay as you go. Black Gold of the Amazon. Don Siegelman. There are some rumblings of hearings. Bernie introduced legislation in the house to make election day democracy day, a federal holiday. Very happy holiday season.

• Bumper Music: Twelve Days of Bushmas, The, Dave Lippman.
• The shows Monday and Tuesday next week will be best of shows, but the rest of the week will be live.
• Bumper Music: Santa Claus is Coming by Ground, The Capitol Steps.
• Article: Cheney Repeatedly Met With Auto Execs Before White House Killed California’s Emissions Law.
  "Before EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson “answered the pleas of industry executives” by announcing his “decision to deny California the right to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles,” auto executives directly appealed to Vice President Cheney. EPA staffers told the LA Times that Johnson “made his decision” only after Cheney met with the executives."
• Article: Denial of State Emissions Plan Was Foreshadowed.
• Bumper Music: The Christmas Song, The Ravonettes.
• Upcoming Event: On Sunday December 23 at noon and 10pm EST C-SPAN2's Book tv will be showing Thom riffing on "Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision" at the Strand bookstore in New York City recently.
• Article: Black Gold of the Amazon.
  "Fertile, charred soil created by pre-Columbian peoples sustained surprisingly large settlements in the rain forest. Secrets of that ancient “dark earth” could help solve the Amazon’s ecological problems today."
• Today is the last Friday before Christmas. Today is the winter solstice. The story of lighting the Christmas tree, and how Herr Mueller used to do it.
• Thom told of some Norwegian myths told to him by Stephen Larsen, biographer of Joseph Campbell, whose book "The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function" Thom wrote the foreword to:
  

  One of the old Norwegian myths, or one of the old Norwegian stories, Odin, the Norwegian god Odin, the story was that he would fly through the sky with an eight-legged horse

  , and this became 8 reindeers. And would land on the homes of places, you know, people's homes and the kids would put out food for the horse and in exchange for that, as a way of thanking the children for having good hearts and being good people, then Odin would leave gifts for them.

  And there's another one that the ancient shaman, that Norwegian and Scandinavian shaman had figured out, that there was a certain, you know, why the read and white stuff, right? That there was a certain type of mushroom, I believe it's in the amanita family that contains a powerful form of Dimethyltriptamine (DMT) which is a hallucinogen, sort of like LSD. The problem is that it will kill you. This mushroom, it's a deadly, deadly mushroom. But reindeer can eat it and their livers metabolize the toxin, break it down and render it harmless, without changing the hallucinogen. And so the shaman would cultivate areas where these particular mushrooms grew, ad these mushrooms have little red caps with white spots all over them, and encourage the reindeer to go eat them. And then they would follow the reindeer around, and wherever they found yellow snow they would gather up the snow and make that into a magic brew and drink that stuff and suddenly they're seeing little guys and flying reindeer. And Santa is red and white and all this and stuff, and so, some of our interesting stories. I just thought that was kind of cool.

  And by the way, it is a wonderful time of the year. I mean, most of the world's major religions find in the winter solstice period a time for reflection. It's kind of the, you know, yin and yang, we go out into the world during the summer, we go in within ourselves during the winter. And this is such a marvelous time for all of us. You know, atheists, secularists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus. It's such a great time to go within and, you know, connect with family, and come together and really just contemplate what's gone wrong and what can go right, and what we can do right, and make amends, and make things work and honor and thank the people that we love and the parts of our family and the family of all humanity, frankly, and the family of all life on Earth for that matter.

• Article: Fraud Seen as a Driver In Wave of Foreclosures.
• Article: Greenspan: Cash for Homeowners.
• Bumper Music: You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, Dr. Seuss, Thurl Ravenscroft.
• Bumper Music: Chipmunks Roasting On an Open Fire, the Bob Rivers Show.
• There are two ways to do politics. The easy way is my team your team; it is a waste of time, like a magician making you watch the wrong hand. Surface discourse, including "impeach them". What we need to do is investigate them. When have evidence, impeachment is obvious. Tell your representatives you encourage them to investigate. Do the work, join the Greens or Democrats. Talk about investigation, not impeachment.
• Bumper Music: Wizards in Winter, Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
• Guest: Greg Palast. Hugo DVD. Clips from his trip to the Amazon. Oil and cancer. Salem International has an Ecuador branch. Thom spoke to Manuel who was going to fight against an oil pipeline. Manuel was shot dead within 6 months. They have a new FDR-style president. His father was imprisoned in US because he risked being a mule, and smuggled a bit of cocaine.
• Bumper Music: Osama Got Run Over by A Reindeer, Bob Rivers.
• Bumper Music: Christmas, Blues Traveler.
• Clips of spoof oil pipeline ads from Aaron Selbig, affiliate, KUDO 1080 AM, Anchorage, Alaska.
• Book: "Conversations with God", Neale Donald Walsch. The third book mentioned "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight". Thom's publisher announced, "God endorses book for second time in history".
• They are going to close the Minnesota Science Museum in Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican National Convention. Thom will be there for the convention. It's September 1 until September 4.
• Bumper Music: What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. Thanks.
• Article: Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks: Democrats Had Vowed To Curtail Pet Projects.
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News. This morning judge Kennedy, DC, was asked by Guantanamo Yemeni prisoners to get an explanation for the destruction of the CIA tapes. The judge has taken it under advisement - do nothing. Bush left to spend a week at Camp David. Iraq/Afghanistan budget, Bush asking for more, it looks like. Condoleezza Rice press conference about Huckabee. Washington Post, 11,000 earmarks, ferry to nowhere. The Polish prime minister said that for the US to have a base missile defense, it would have to show how it would enhance Polish security; they are backing out. FAIR radio row, Iowa immigration. No Ellen next week.