Recent comments

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    HotCoffee, Paper ballots and any sort of photo ID is the only way to keep track of who has and who has not yet voted. Easy solution that will never be adopted by anyone in the democrat party.

    Don't waste your time with pony boy as he/she/alphabet is busy playing forum leapfrog in a attempt to seek much needed attention not given at home or on the job.

    The whole "explosive device" thing smells to high heaven. Best left to the authorities who I am sure will quickly come up with a perpetrator. That result should be interesting to say the least.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    DS,

    You can pretend if you want !

    Do you have any solutions or just left wing false accusations?

    Voter ID and suporting lawful entry into this country would solve much of this craziness.

    Just saw Chris Cummo on CNN thanking God devices didn't explode...hmmm while you post articles against Christians....no atheists in the foxhole...while the not very smart continue to incite?

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    cont'd...

    Stop GOP Voter Suppression—Or Else!
    Most American voters generally don’t like billionaires and corporations running politics, so the GOP is simply not letting them vote.

    by Thom Hartmann:

    And it was deliciously simple. If the majority of voters don’t like what you’re selling, then just don’t let them vote.

    Paul Weyrich had promoted this idea back in 1980 when he was campaigning for Reagan (after co-founding the Heritage Foundation), and, indeed, many Republican luminaries (like William Rehnquist, who went from poll-intimidator in the 1960s to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) rose up through the ranks by participating in Republican-run voter intimidation schemes.

    But it became the foundational go-to tactic for the GOP in 2000.

    While they used smear and innuendo to attack Al Gore (ridiculing him for helping write the legislation that created the modern internet, for example), the main thing that got George W. Bush into the White House was voter suppression crimes committed by his brother, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and Bush’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris. Throwing somewhere between 50,000 and 90,000 African American voters off the rolls, they were able to get the vote close enough that five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court functionally awarded Bush the presidency. (The BBC covered this in 2001 in two major investigative reports here and here that were literally seen all over the world except on any American media.)

    By 2016, the Republican Party had fine-tuned their voter suppression and intimidation systems to the point that they ran in nearly 30 states like well-oiled machines. Between the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, for example, Ohio had purged more than 2 million voters from its rolls, the vast majority (more than 2:1) in heavily African American and Hispanic counties. (And the Supreme Court ruled last year that they can keep it up; other states have since adopted their new tactic of caging voters.)

    The New York Times noted that in Wisconsin, around 300,000 registered voters were turned away at the polls because they didn't have the particular types of ID necessitated by Scott Walker’s ALEC-recommended new voter ID law (in Texas, the Times reported, the number was 900,000).

    It’s symbiotic: billionaires and corporations spend hundreds of millions to fund Republicans, who pass laws and tax breaks that give billions to the corporations and billionaires, who then recycle a fraction of that, mere millions, back to the legislators they own. To keep the cycle going, both must prevent people who object to this system from voting.

    ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), funded by the Koch network and other billionaires and big corporations, has been at the forefront of these efforts, with the majority of voter suppressive state laws passed having been introduced by ALEC-affiliated Republican legislators. ALEC itself facilitated the production of voter suppressive “model legislation.”

    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/22/stop-gop-voter-suppression-or-else

    cont'd...

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    DianeR,

    My preference is paper ballots with reciept, and a photo ID. Especially after the Ca. DMV BS.

    So just where did Maxine think her threats would take our country ??? Sad!

    Did anyone ever get caught in those Texas pkgs. sent to random people, a while back?

    Violence is so easy to start and so hard to stop.

    It"s going to be a long 2 weeks.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Coalage3, the problem is, in order to enforce Limbaughs rule, some sort of photo ID would need be involved. Now ,if you can find any chickenshit democrat that would stand up for the logic of requiring a ID before one can vote, list them here and I will do everything I can to spread the word in their favor. Republicans have proposed free photo ID and a paper ballot backup and the leftie/socialists wince and run for the hills.

    Which brings up the topic of becoming an election judge. A conservative friend took the course and asked questions he apparently shoulden't have regarding challenges. Needless to say he was not selected, but the good news, he called them all out for what they are.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    cont'd...

    Stop GOP Voter Suppression—Or Else!
    Most American voters generally don’t like billionaires and corporations running politics, so the GOP is simply not letting them vote.

    by Thom Hartmann:

    The problem for the GOP has deep roots. In the 1870s, when the Party abandoned its Lincolnesque position in favor of granting full citizenship rights to freed slaves, it rapidly slid into the role of being the party of the barons of rail, oil, coal, steel, and construction.

    The Democratic Party, meanwhile, largely threw its efforts—culminating in the New Deal in 1933 and the Great Society in 1967—in with working people, legislatively protecting unionization efforts, passing Social Security and Medicare, putting the minimum wage and unemployment insurance into law, and creating federal and state agencies to protect workers’ safety, children, and the environment.

    This has led to a major problem for the GOP, since the very wealthy and CEOs only constitute a small part of the American voting public. In order to pass tax cuts and cut protective regulations for their rich owners, they needed political power, and—particularly since the disastrous “roaring 20s” leading straight to the Republican Great Depression (yes, they called it that until after WWII)—Republicans needed voters to put them into office.

    And this was generally pretty tough for the GOP. In 1974, for example, the GOP only had outright control of seven states. The message of, “elect us and we’ll help the rich people out” just didn't generally resonate with American voters. It’s the reason why, outside of the fluke elections of 1946 and 1952, Democrats outright controlled the House of Representatives for three generations, from 1933 to 1996, and controlled the Senate for most of that time.

    Desperate to win the presidency in 1968, Richard Nixon even went so far as to commit treason by torpedoing a peace deal that LBJ had worked out with the Vietnamese. According to the then-president of Iran, Reagan did the same thing by cutting a deal with Iran to hold the U.S. embassy hostages until after the election, destroying Jimmy Carter’s chances of re-election.

    In 2000, though, the GOP changed tactics. After Reagan almost got busted for Iran/Contra (he testified that he “forgot” about details of the program over 80 times; he was saved by his growing Alzheimer’s from an indictment), they realized that getting busted for treason wasn't worth the risk. They needed a “Plan B.”

    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/22/stop-gop-voter-suppression-or-else

    cont'd...

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Now we have reports flying around that "bombs" were discovered trying to be sent to Obama, the Clintons, Soros, Eric Holder, CNN, and probably others. I bet Maxine Waters is livid her name hasn't been mentioned. Anyway...I just wonder what left wing facist lunatic is responsible for this? Now I know what you are thinking. This has to be a right wing nut trying to take out the democratic big guns. Well it could be that. But considering that Trump has been beating the dems at their own game since his election has to be a shock to these fringe loony tunes leftists. The Russia collusion story has gone nowhere. The economy keeps rolling along. He has two SC confirmations, and the effort to get rid of Kavanaugh backfired spectacularly. I guess one could say it bombed.

    Plus how come Bernie didn't get a bomb sent to him? Maybe another crazy Bernie supporter is trying to get back at the democratic establishment that basically stabbed Bernie in the back during the last election.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Coalage3, I disagree with the plan because once a door is opened it never closes and the 25 year voting thing will never work.

    I would rather Trump immediately (today) call all of congress back to DC and get each and every one of them to commit to their position on what to do about allowing this mob and all future mobs of illegals into this country. The usual gaggle of angry democrat politicians have been hiding over this issue. Get them on public record and run all their responses on television over and over.

    Besides it would make great campaign ads for both sides.

    The voters can then decide.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Published on Monday, October 22, 2018 by Common Dreams.

    Stop GOP Voter Suppression—Or Else!
    Most American voters generally don’t like billionaires and corporations running politics, so the GOP is simply not letting them vote.

    by Thom Hartmann:

    The Republican Party is currently hoping to win nationwide using two simple elements: explicit and overt racism, and voter suppression.

    No “ideas”; no pitch for tax cuts; no discussion of their “replacement” for the Affordable Care Act; no push for better schools, hospitals, airports, roads or bridges; no promise for more and better jobs—none of these staples of the 2016 presidential campaign can be found in pretty much any Republican advertising today.

    Instead, the public Republican message is all about race or the subset of race, religion (“Muslim” stands in for “brown Arab” in GOP-speak) and “immigration” (aka brown people from south of our border). Republicans across the country are even recruiting white supremacist and neo-Nazi gangs to threaten or assault Democrats and their supporters, while Trump praises the criminal assault of reporters in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder.

    Meanwhile, Republican secretaries of state across the nation are vigorously purging voters from the rolls (over 14 million, more than 10 percent of America’s active voters, in the past two years, according to investigative reporter Greg Palast).

    Immediately after the five Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, 14 GOP-controlled states moved, within a year (some within days), to restrict access to the vote, particularly for communities of color, students, and retired people.

    In North Carolina, for example, 158 polling places were permanently closed in the 40 counties with the most African American voters just before the 2016 election, leading to a 16 percent decline in African American early voting in that state. An MIT study found that, nationwide, Hispanic voters wait 150 percent longer in line than white voters, and Black voters can expect to wait 200 percent longer in line to vote.

    In Indiana, then-Governor Pence’s new rigorous voter ID law caused an 11.5 percent drop in African American voting. Students are suing for their right to vote, and retired people who no longer drive but care passionately about their Social Security and Medicare are being turned away at the polls by the tens of thousands.

    How did it come to this?

    cont'd...

    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/22/stop-gop-voter-suppression-or-else

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago
  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    It would/could work if the election officials wanted it to work.

  • The Corporate Conquest of America   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Now this conversation et a lot more interesting as I see those who comment here leave their thoughts about this new found rights of corporations. It is our advocate with our team in

    towing Jacksonville NC for men and women to have equal rights.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    I believe it was Rush Limbaugh who proposed the following "solution" on illegals, DACA, etc.

    Democrats want unlimited and illegal immigration because they think that it gives them more potential votes and voters. And, since they now have become the party of the 1% elite, it makes their elitist, facist leaders a lot of money. And no, I do not believe that either party wants illegal immigration based on humanitarian concerns. Republicans are against illegal immigration for the same reasons, primarily the voting thing.

    So the solution is relatively easy. Go ahead and grant all the illegals in the country now amnesty status. Let them become citizens immediately with one big exception. They are not allowed to vote for 25 years in any election. Basically a generation. And if they are caught trying to vote, they are immediately deported with no questions asked. That is the price they pay for being here illegally. The borders must be secured and the citizenship process must be followed by any other non-citizens who wish to enter this country after the amnesty is granted. No open borders.

    Problem solved...right?

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Hi HotCoffee,

    Birds are fed, one large cup of coffee, and out for an hour walk in the woods. Yea, Ruger LCP II in my pocket in case of a stray coyote.

    Another day brightener. Clinton and obama on immigration. In Clintons speech you could make a drinking game based on the number of times he uses the words "illegal alien".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER43fQSUi5k

    Good day to you.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Coalage3, I was thinking if the democrat party does not pull off major midterm election victories;

    Will their be enough hate fomenting within their party to have their leaders organize a angry mob of malcontent leftie/socialists on a march southward through Mexico on their way to Venezuela?

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    HotCoffee: The worlds air is again safe. My EZ Pour spouts came in today and life is good again. o funnels and no more gasoline spilled all over everything.

    If you didn't catch the Trump rally in Houston last night I will post a link. The guy is a master ar ginning up a crowd. SNL should be so lucky to have a comedian as funny.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/10/22/watch_live_president_trump_hosts_rally_with_ted_cruz_in_houston.html

    When you start hearing the leftie/socialist media start squawking about voter suppression and disenfranchisement they must know something they aren't telling the public. Sort of a pre-excuse for the "big blue wave" maybe not being so big or so blue.

    I am almost starting to feel bad for the Democrat party as they have not had a good run over the last few election cycles. I think the radical progressive mobs have taken that party right down the toilet. AKA Harris, Waters, Booker, and that idiot senator from Hawaii. The Kavanaugh hearings did the democrat party no favors. Thank you Diane Feinstein. (notice how many of these fools live in CA?) Do you sane ones have no chance short of leaving the state?

    Almost time for my favorite leftie, Chris tingle up my leg Matthews. I love watching that thin lipped angry man stammer.

    Try to catch Tucker Carlson on FOX following the Matthew rant. He is a master at making democrats make fools of themselves.

    See ya!

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    As to the mob caravan approaching from the south, the silence of the democrats is truly overwhelming and perplexing.

    From never Trumper David Frum: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/caravan-challenges-integrity-us-borders/573691/

    For Trump’s opponents, the caravan represents a trap. Has Trump’s radical nativism so counter-radicalized them that they have internalized the caravan message against any border enforcement at all? If yes, they will not help immigrants. They will only marginalize themselves—and American politics will follow the European path in which anti-immigration parties of the extreme right cannibalize the political center.

    If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do. I’ve been pounding the drum for this warning since the European migration crisis accelerated in 2013. The warning holds as true as ever—and now it’s coming home.

    From David Leonhart: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/opinion/democrats-caravan-immigration-midterms-trump.html

    The smarter approach for Democrats would be a few simple statements of the obvious, meant to display both realism and decency, along the lines of: This is a country of laws. We are not going to admit thousands of undocumented immigrants traveling in a caravan. We do not have open borders. But we are and have always been a country of compassion as well, and we are working with Mexican authorities to protect the safety of these men, women and children.

    The problem with ignoring the issue is that it plays into the Republicans’ midterm strategy. It makes Democrats sound squishy and insecure on immigration. It makes it sound as if Democrats aren’t really sure whether they believe that this country should have immigration laws.

    From Rod Dreher: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/democrats-caravan-of-political-cowardice/

    Similarly, it took the Senate Democrats and their media allies savaging Brett Kavanaugh to wake up Republicans and independent conservatives to the reality that the Democratic Party is so sold out to identity politics that it would eagerly trash due process if the accused is a white male. The Republicans did not make the Democrats do that, any more than they’re making the Democrats whiff on the caravan. That’s who the Democrats are in 2018. They cannot or will not take a strong stand on what ought to be a fairly easy issue: that America has the right to control its borders.

  • Please Support Free Speech TV   5 years 49 weeks ago

    Now watch live TV all over the world with the help of streaming apps like Media Box HD. You can install this app on all smartphones. Get MediaBox HD on PC too.

  • The Thom Hartmann Program - Aug 30th 2018   5 years 49 weeks ago

    ...continued:

    "9 Ways Trump's Authoritarianism Taking Hold" by Thom Hartmann:

    Defeating Neofascism, Neo-Authoritarianism, and Corporate/Billionaire Corruption

    The good news is found in recent research on the ways that societies come back from, or restore democracy to, authoritarian and/or highly corrupt governments. While surprising, it’s not counterintuitive.

    Maria J. Stephan, director of educational initiatives at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and Erica Chenoweth, assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, published a mind-boggling paper almost a decade ago titled “Why Civil Resistance Works.”

    In the first (!) comprehensive look in 200 years at how people take back their governments, they found that nonviolent resistance was nearly twice as successful (53 percent to 26 percent) as violent opposition at restoring democracy to, or exacting consequential political concessions from governments that had flipped authoritarian. (Chenoweth lays it out in a fascinating TEDx talk, as well.)

    In just six years, for example, they showed non-violent-led civil reform movements having major successes around the world: “Serbia (2000), Madagascar (2002), Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004-05), Lebanon (2005), and Nepal (2006).”

    Looking all the way back to 1900, they demonstrated that that two-to-one ratio of the success of nonviolent versus violent movements held.

    Even revolutionary violence and terrorism as methods to produce political and social change (the methods we used to liberate the U.S. from Britain in 1776, and the Confederacy tried without success in 1861) are only effective 7 percent of the time, they found—a fraction of the 53 percent success rate demonstrated by historic nonviolent movements like those led by King and Gandhi.

    Of course, these things can rub both ways. When our nation elected our first Black president, the Koch billionaire network and friends funded the Tea Party to "create a movement" out in the streets and in front of the cameras. That nonviolent movement, once activated, was sufficient to change control of an entire political party, the GOP.

    Similarly, it seems that the progressive movement to return the Democratic Party to its FDR roots, which kicked off in a big way with the 2015 Bernie Sanders candidacy, has already succeeded in producing a deep and lasting refutation of the “Third Way” corporatist political alignments that had controlled the Democratic Party since 1992. The job isn't yet finished, but it’s moving at a lightning pace.

    And, most encouraging, it was done without being funded and directed by a small group of cranky billionaires. It represents a true people’s movement, which means its power to produce deep and lasting change is massively greater than a few rich people buying politicians and owning media.

    If Chenoweth and Stephan et al’s research is correct, this relatively small tail can wag the proverbial dog of national politics in hugely consequential ways.
    At a time when several American billionaires are funding openly racist media vehicles and explicitly using them to foment white rage, resentment, and fear, this small cabal is moving the hate-based Right closer to widespread acceptance and political power.

    Meanwhile, less-well-funded but equally passionate progressive movements are pushing hard for health care for all, free college education, and rights and decent pay for working people, all while respecting the entire range of minority rights.

    Whoever wins the hearts of Americans and gets them into the streets first will transform America for generations, and if the turnouts for things like the Women’s March or kids walking out of school across the country protesting gun violence (versus the tiny white nationalist rallies that get so much coverage) are any indication, progressive America is winning.

    But there’s still a long way to go: Tag, you’re it.

    https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/9-ways-trumps-authoritarianism-taking-hold

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