• Guest: Bob Barr, Libertarian nominee for president.


• Guest: Carrie Lukas, Vice President for Policy and Economics, Independent Women's Forum.


• Guest: Al Franken. His Senate campaign against Republican Norm Coleman in Minnesota.

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

Monday 20 October '08 show

• At the weekend Thom had dinner in LA with his friends Joe and Barbara Ruskin, and Barbara's voter registration had been flipped to Republican.
  
• Article: Republican Voter Registration Chief Arrested for Fraud in California. Mark Anthony Jacoby, the owner of the "Young Political Majors" signature-gathering company. California.
  
• Clip:
  "It was proposed that there, regulation or at least disclosure be required and the industry fought it and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan vehemently opposed. And they made the argument which you hear all the time, and I can remember Alan saying, "look, these are sophisticated contracts between knowledgeable buyers and knowledgeable sellers; no regulators can do as well as they'll do, so what do you need a regulator for? The market will regulate these." And he won the day. And so among the list of our friends along with me and others, Alan was clearly, I'd say, the key person responsible for the fact that we didn't even know how many of those contracts there were, And they were up in the trillions.
  
  So, when AIG got in trouble, it turned out that they had one division with 400 people in it, they had 80,000 employees, they had 400 people in one division, they wrote all these contracts. They didn't report any of them. So they were, you'd say, gambling by writing these contracts. and when things started to go bad and they had to pay on these contracts, the whole monster, the largest insurance company in the world went under."
  L. William Seidman at Grand Valley State University in Michigan 9 October 2008 (there are 7 videos on YouTube).
  
• Article: Freddie Mac Secretly Paid Republican Firm to Kill Regulation.
  "Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse."
  
• "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
  The First Amendment
  
• Amendment IV
  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Espionage Act.
  Constitution of the United States.
  
• Bumper Music: Go to the Mirror Boy, The Who.
  
• Quote:
  "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States..."
  Article 1, section 8, paragraph 11 of the Constitution of the United States.
  
• Quote: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
  Preamble of the Constitution of the United States.
  
• Guest: Bob Barr, Libertarian nominee for president. Isn't the derivatives market failure the ultimate repudiation of Libertarian economic policies? He said that Greenspan was clearly wrong. He's not convinced that the instruments and their use are not reachable by FCC regulations. Using them to disguise the level of assets by the institutions could be a fraud. Aren't Libertarians against any regulation or oversight of the market, nowadays? He is not against regulation. Investors should not have to bear the risk of being defrauded by the institution they have asked to invest their money on top of the risks they do take.
  
  Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation. Where do we draw the line? Libertarians are perceived to be anti-regulatory. Democrats, liberals are perceived are perceived to be for regulation. Enough regulation for honest, transparent, fraud-free trade. Political contributions are OK but should be transparent. They agree on privacy and surveillance, first and fourth amendments. How do we undo the damage done to them by the Bush Administration? Electing Obama or McCain won't do it, they both supported the FISA amendments. The Libertarian Party understands the 4th amendment. Thom said a third party is not going to win the presidency. What would he be doing after the election? If they get a significant percentage of the vote it will help the issues being considered.
  
  Thom asked why not join the Green Party and work for Instant Runoff Voting? If the majority of Americans want the government to be the insurer, why not have old age and disability insurance - social security - and single payer health care - like Medicaid? He said there was no basis for it in the constitution, and it's part of a trend of having the government do whatever people want it to do. General Welfare is in Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution, and the preamble. Unenumerated powers reserved to states and people.
  
• Article: Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes: Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say.
  "At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.
  
  Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.
  
  "When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna."
  
• Article: More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes. In six cases, Democratic votes flipped to GOP.
  "Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
  
  This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain"."
  
• Bumper Music: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, Bob Dylan.
  
• Article: Iran busts 'spy pigeons' near nuclear site.
  
• Thom's appearance on Fox debating Mike Gallagher on Sunday was cut short by Bush. 15 years ago his segment was cut by Lorena Bobbit.
  
• Article: Newly registered voters to face early voting delay .
  "A paperwork backlog could cause delays or hassles for recently registered Texas voters who try to cast ballots during the early voting period that begins Monday, state officials said.
  
  Thousands of Texans who registered just before the Oct. 6 deadline will likely find their names missing from official voter lists, officials said. They will be allowed to cast ballots but may have to fill out special forms at polling stations or wait a few days before voting.
  
  Officials blamed a late rush of registration applications to beat the deadline and maintenance to a computer database of Social Security numbers for the potential problems.
  
  "We were keeping up very well with the increased load, but we started to run a little behind when the Social Security Administration closed their (computer program) down for maintenance last weekend," Ashley Burton, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Hope Andrade, said in a story in Saturday editions of the Houston Chronicle. "Since the start of October there has been a huge increase in the number of new voter records that the counties have submitted for verification." "
  
• Guest: Carrie Lukas, Vice President for Policy and Economics, Independent Women's Forum. Author, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism". Thom wants to encourage people to hire workers, so roll back the tax cuts, entrepreneurs will leave the money in their businesses and hire. Robin Hood. Jefferson saying that an aggregation of great wealth is toxic to democracy. Punitive taxes. Why tax breaks for owning homes and not for saving money?
  
• Bumper Music: Pocket Full Of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield (video).
  
• Article: Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican, John Gray.
  
• Thom read "Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican", replacing Joe Middle-Class Republican with Joe the plumber.
  
• Other than their first 20 years fighting for slaves, what have Republicans done? Republican Abe Lincoln was for unionization, and first mentioned strikes. Iraq, Katrina, Galveston are typical Republican disasters.
  
• Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
  
• Article: Man Arrested for "Receiving Sexual Favors From a Vacuum".
  
• Clip:
  [Reporter 2]: "At a rally in North Carolina this week, you said that you like to visit the "pro-America parts of the country". Are there parts of the country that you consider un-American?"
  
  [Tina Fey]: "You know, that was just my lame attempt at a joke. But, um, yes -- New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware and California. [ she gives a thumbs-down ] But, then, also, too, you have states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida, which could be real real anti-American or real real pro-American. It's up to them. [ she winks ] And now, I'd like to entertain everybody with some fancy pageant walkin'."
  Sarah Palin on 'Saturday Night Live' (transcript).
  
• Article: Colin Powell on NBC