• Good for Dennis Kucinich introducing 35 articles of impeachment to the House.


• Guest: Carrie Lukas, Independent Women's Forum. Should we have cap & trade or loot & pollute?


• 'Cap and Trade or Loot and Pollute' rant.


• Guest (Higgins alert): Dr.Leslie Lyons. National Geographic Channel show, "Explorer: Science of Cats".


• The true price of gasoline.


• Guest: Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy. Will bombing Iran bring about Armageddon?


• Guest: Former U.S.Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton who says that it would not be a war crime if the United States were to bomb Iran. Transcript.


• Guest: David Sirota. The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington.


• Guest: Dr. Lewis Mehl Madrona. Why can't we all have "Kennedy Care?"

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

Tuesday 10 June '08 show

• Good for Dennis Kucinich introducing 35 articles of impeachment to the House, though he has little support.
  
• Article: Report: White House overstated Iraq threat.
  "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even non-existent," committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.""
  
  Kudos to Senators Snowe and Hegel, Republicans who said to release the report unredacted.
  
• Crude Impact will be showing tonight on the Sundance Channel and also at Sunday June 15 at 3:35PM.
  
• Guest: Carrie Lukas, Vice President for Policy and Economics, Independent Women's Forum. Author, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism". Should we have cap & trade or loot & pollute? A cap and trade program is where the government says, say, there's a hundred million tons of carbon being thrown into the atmosphere right now, we're going to cut that down to 90 million and give permits for that, and people can trade those permits. Obama wants to sell cap and trade permits, McCain wants to give the away. She's opposed to either. She doesn't think that the government should use this as a revenue raiser just to expand government. She's concerned about adopting a policy that would have extreme economic impact for very little environmental impact. Thom disagreed.
  
• Clip: "The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.
  
  What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important. Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation.
  
  The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day."
  Jimmy Carter televised "Crisis of Confidence" Speech on July 15, 1979.
  
• 'Cap and Trade or Loot and Pollute' rant.
  
• Bumper Music: Rebuild America First, Merle Haggard (free video online).
  
• The only reason why Thom could oppose impeachment - and he doesn't - is that it is too soft a remedy. Vincent Bugliosi is right in saying to prosecute.
  
• Jeff in Denver called. Non-petroleum industries are freeing people. Indigenous people are being enslaved, damaged by oil extraction. Greece and Israel have mostly solar hot water. Morocco is bringing solar to villages where less expensive than bringing in electricity. Kids' merry go rounds in Africa are pumping water. Darfur desertification is caused by cooking fires, and women are raped when they go out to gather wood, so solar stoves help them. In Bahrain wind towers used to air condition houses, but now they buy air conditioning. Decentralization. Large power blackouts. The vulnerability of the ANWR pipe line.
  
• We need to reinvent our country, the world, like Greensburg, Kansas which is rebuilding as green as it can. Leonardo DiCaprio and others helped them out. Thom may do a show from there, but it is not the easiest place to get to.
  
• Guest (Higgins alert): Dr.Leslie Lyons. National Geographic Channel show "Explorer: Science of Cats" airing tonight at 10p Eastern. How did human and cats bond? We began agriculture, created grain stores which attracted rats, and cats adapted. Genetic changes in behavior, size, colors. There are over 40 breeds of cats; some are very similar, others can be told apart genetically.
  
• Thom:
  

  We're already paying right now, we're paying over ten dollars a gallon for gasoline. That's what we're paying right now. You're paying four bucks at the pump. You're paying three to four dollars in taxes to for the military of the United States and the intelligence services of the United States to protect the oil infrastructure, to protect ships coming out of the Gulf of Hormuz, the straits of Hormuz and out of the Middle East and other parts of the world to bring that oil the United States. We're paying for that with our general tax dollars through a 500 billion dollar defense bill or annual defense tax. You're paying for that. That's another four bucks.
  
  And on top of that there's another three or four dollars a gallon that we're paying in terms of health care costs. The cost of all the cancers that are caused by using carbon fuels, by using gasoline or petroleum based fuels and coal fired power plants and things like that. We're paying for that in the cost of health care in the United States. We're paying for that in the cost of asthma that our children have. We're paying for that in terms of the mercury that's in our lakes and rivers, making our fish and uneatable and all these kind of things. So the fact of the matter is we're paying ten to twelve dollars a gallon right now for gasoline. It's just that most of it's hidden. And it's hidden in taxes that most, you know, average working people are paying. And that's why, you know, for example, Sweden's suggestion, Sweden's thing of saying, "okay, we're gonna have a carbon tax and by the way let's lower income taxes and make it up with a carbon tax'. Hey, it's there, it's already happening.

  
  
• Thom:

  The planet was thriving back when there was enormous amounts of carbon in the atmosphere but it was a different type of life that was thriving than the type that we have right now. And so, you know, the temperature of the planet was a whole lot warmer and the climate was different and the land masses were, everything was different. This is before humans came around. The question that Jim Hansen points out in his 2006 article in Science Magazine, and he's repeating in the one that he just submitted, is that now that we've crossed the 285 parts per million threshold of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we're back to an atmosphere that looks like the atmosphere did 600,000 years ago. There was no human life on the planet 600,000 years ago. The primates that preceded us were confined to a very small part of south central Africa 600,000 years ago and they lived in a very, very, you know, in a micro climate, basically. Is that what we're going to end up with? are we going to end up with a planet where only 10% of it is habitable for humans?

• Asked when money became more important than life on this planet, Thom replied:
  

  7000 years ago in Sumaria, that's, you know, the foundation of our civilization, our modern civilization is the idea that the rich can conquer the poor and that hierarchy and kingdom are better than cooperation and egalitarianism. And there have been a lot of times that we've pushed back on that, from the founding of this country. I mean, you know, we were a very progressive country the first thirty years or so of our existence and then we slid back into greed.
  
  And then we became, again we had a progressive revolution with Teddy Roosevelt in 1900 and then in 1908 we slid back into greed. That drove us right into the Great Depression; the economic policies the Republicans were pursuing from 1907 and 1929 were identical, virtually. I mean, huge tax cuts for the wealthy, stopped enforcing the Sherman antitrust law. All of these giant monopolies came out, the dynastic families rose up. You saw the rise of the, you know, of the Rockefellers and the Mellons and all this stuff. And then we went back to being a progressive nation from the time Franklin Roosevelt in the thirties until Ronald Reagan was elected in the 1980s and then we became a conservative nation again and we went nuts again and here we are, right at the edge of 1929 all over again.

  
  
• Article: Iran cool to suspending nuclear agenda: Diplomat says issue is one of national pride, Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, May 31, 2008.
  
• Guest: Robert Naiman.
  "Robert Naiman is Senior Policy Analyst and National Coordinator at Just Foreign Policy... Naiman edits the Just Foreign Policy daily news summary and writes a blog on Huffington Post."
  
  Last Thursday Thom did the show live from the United Nations and had the official spokesperson for the IAEA on, who said that Iran is now out of compliance, though there is no evidence that they are, or are not, enriching uranium beyond the 3% level needed for nuclear power. How should the world respond to this? And what happens if there is a response like Israel taking out Syria's reactor or Iraq's reactor in the 1980s, when there was very little blowback?
  
  Under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty Iran has the right to enrich uranium; the UN Security Council Requirements are over and above what the treaty requires; the Security Council is saying it does not trust Iran to enrich its own Uranium. Iran believes the US wants a permanent, not a temporary suspension of enrichment, and they are having none of it, mostly as a matter of national pride but also of economics. Several Security Council members supply enriched uranium. If the US were to attack Iran that would be a war crime, not justified by self defense against an armed attack or a UN Security Council resolution.
  
  There is an offer on the table which Mohammad Khazaee, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, told the Boston Globe Iran was agreeable, to an internationally owned consortium, including Iran, within Iran to produce nuclear fuel. It was suggested by independent experts including former US ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering, now co-chair of the International Crisis Group. We should be talking about that.
  
  What if the Bush administration bombs Iran anyway? Or Israel does, and we support them? The Iranian people will turn against the US, and the people we have in Iraq will be at risk from Iran's Shiite friends in Iraq. The Pentagon is concerned about this. Iran is currently a restraining force in Iraq.
  
• Bumper Music: Blaze Of Glory Bon Jovi (video).
  
• Is the effect of a possible strike against Iran's nuclear facilities by the USA or Israel or both being factored into the price of oil? How will Iran respond?
  
• Guest: Former U.S.Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton who says that it would not be a war crime if the United States were to bomb Iran. Transcript.
  
• Watch Thom during the show on ThomVision.
  
• Bumper Music: Send It, ELO.
  
• John Bolton says that if we bombed Iran that it would not be a war crime. Time is running out.
  
• Article: Iran warns of "painful" response if Israel attacks.
  
• Call Congress. Kudos to Dennis Kucinich for articles of impeachment. Impeachment does not rule out prosecution. Support Dennis Kucinich.
  
• Bumper Music: Pink Houses, John Mellencamp.
  
• Article: President Bush Participates in Joint Press Availability with Slovenian Prime Minister Jan