• Thom's home from Denmark.


• Welcome to Rational Radio 1360am in Dallas and Green 1640 AM, Atlanta.
Guest: Dinesh D'Souza. Michelle Obama's Inferiority Complex.

• What is patriotism?


• Guest: Ron Paul.


• Declaration of Independence rant.

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

Tuesday 01 July '08 show

• It's great to be back home. Denmark has free college, free health care, etc. Investment.
  
• Welcome to new listeners on Rational Radio 1360am in Dallas and Green 1640 AM, Atlanta.
  
• Article: Michelle Obama's Inferiority Complex.
  "Now that Barack Obama has pretty much wrapped up the nomination, it's time to raise a question that lots of people have been talking about privately but not publicly. Is it possible that Michelle Obama is the force behind Barack Obama's refusal to embrace traditional patriotic symbols? Could Obama's wife be largely responsible for the candidate's damaging associations with crackpot race-baiters like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Reverend Michael Pfleger? In sum, could Obama's wife be a large part of his political problem?
  
  Obama himself seems, at least on the surface, relatively free of the kind of corrosive racial resentment that is so common among African American activists of our day. This resentment is especially puzzling as it often comes from people who, far from being victims, have actually enjoyed benefits and privileges that they would probably never get if they happened to be white.
  
  Consider the case of Michelle Obama. She was raised in a two-parent, middle-class family. She applied to one of America's top universities, Princeton, and was admitted. Of this experience, Michelle says on the stump, "All my life I have confronted people who had a certain expectation of me. Every step of the way, there has been people telling me what I couldn't do. When I applied to Princeton, they said: you can't go there, your test scores aren't high enough."
  
  Which is all very moving, except that her test scores weren't high enough. Michelle Obama is part of the affirmative action generation of above-average but far-from-stellar performers who were granted preferential admission to America's most elite institutions.
  
  Michelle notes that she graduated with honors in her major. Again, the problem is that her undergraduate thesis is on the web. You might expect that she wrote about Shakespeare's sonnets or the political evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois. Well, no. Essentially Michelle Obama wrote about the problems of being a black woman at an Ivy League university.
  
  Here is a typical passage: "By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight."
  
  Alas, the grammar is all wrong here. More than once, the tenses are garbled..."
  
• Guest: Dinesh D'Souza. Thom said that D'Souza's Town Hall article criticizing Michelle Obama stepped over the line, and that whenever (but not at any other time) the Republicans attack Michelle Obama, the response should be to mention Cindy McCain's stealing drugs from her own organization, for which she paid no penalty. He sympathized with Cindy McCain for having had a prescription drug addiction.
  
• Bumper Music: Mr. Blue Sky, ELO.
  
• Thom:
  

  I think the larger issue about patriotism is, do you believe in this country? If you believe in this country, if you really love this country then why, Accenture, have you relocated to Bermuda to save over, to save huge amounts of taxes with a over a billion dollars in total federal contracts. Why has Carnival Corporation

  made the statement in their 10-K forms, "We believe that substantially all of our income, with the exception of our U.S. source income from the transportation, hotel and tour businesses of Tours, is exempt from U.S. federal income taxes." Why? Re-incorporated in Panama. Cooper Industries of Houston re-incorporated in Bermuda. They're saving 55 million dollars a year. They've got 63 contracts with the Navy, with the Department of Interior and the Department of Defense.

  
  
  Ingersoll Rand, you think this is a good company, right? American company based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey? Actually, for corporate purposes they do business out of a mail, post box in Bermuda. They're saving forty million dollars a year in taxes. They have 271 contracts in the Navy, the Army and the Defense Department. How about Tyco international? They saved 400 million dollars just in 2001 alone. They have over a billion dollars in US federal contracts with the Bush Administration. But they incorporated in Bermuda, so they're not paying much in US taxes.
  
  Or the Halliburton subsidiaries

  who are now on offshore tax havens, not paying US taxes on all the money that we are giving them. AOC Services based in in Jersey, the British island. Avalon Financial Services in the Cayman Islands. These are all divisions of Halliburton. Baroid Caribbean in Jersey. Brown & Root in the Caymans. Brown & Root International in Panama. Caspian Transco in the Caymans. Dresser Industries in Liechtenstein. Dresser Investments in the Netherlands. C.I. Limited in the Cayman Islands. The list goes on for two pages. These are just the divisions of Halliburton that have incorporated offshore so they don't have to pay taxes in the United States.
  
  And Dick Cheney and this administration and the Republicans who are supporting this and John McCain and all his lobbyist buddies, who are lobbied up to their eyeballs, dare to call themselves patriots? Dare to call themselves patriots? How can you be patriotic and not support. your nation's essential infrastructure? How can you say that you're a patriot and then say. "oh no, we've got to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires so if a bridge falls down in Minneapolis, well, big deal".
  
  You know, yeah, our infrastructure is so crumbling because thirty years of Reaganism, thirty years of... "I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'". Thirty years of that insane mentality has led to a dramatic drop from 71% down to now 15% is the maximum income tax millionaires and billionaires pay if they make their living sitting on their butt around the pool waiting for the dividend checks to arrive. A dramatic cut in taxes for millionaires and billionaires. A doubling of the taxes on average working people since Reagan came in, more than a doubling on the taxes of average working people since Reagan came into office. And who's not paying taxes now? Corporations. Corporations are not paying taxes. In 1952 they paid 32% of the tax load, today, 7%.

  
  
• McCain is in Columbia where they murder trade unionists.
  
• Thom remembers the energy in the '60s, is proud that it is back.
  
• Bumper Music: Talk, Coldplay.
  
• Thom is looking at doing the show from Germany around Thanksgiving.
  
• Guest: Ron Paul. FreedomSlate08 "is a multi-candidate fund raising day event organized by BreakTheMatrix on behalf of a slate of outstanding candidates who all share the values and philosophies of freedom". He suspended his run for the presidency. He won't vote for McCain unless he changes his mind on just about everything. He would do away with the federal Department of Education.
  
• Bumper Music: The Way Life's Meant to Be, ELO.
  
• Book: The Jungle, Upton Sinclair.
  
• What is patriotism? Libertarian Utopia, disaster. "The Jungle", led to the FDA.
  
• Article: Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican.
  
• Bumper Music: Talk to me, Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac.
  
• Clip:
  "Iraq sits on top of 10 percent of the world