Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
GAMBLING is an addiction to RISK!
Indeed, our American Society follows the model of addiction. And largely it is an addiction to risk-based behavior. It is celebrated, modelled to our children, and is not subjected to moral, ethical, or common sense evaluation.
The basis for the continuously dysfunctional behavior of George W. Bush, whether in alcoholic behavior, business behavior (insider trading), lying us into a war, torturing fellow humans, facilitating a U.S. Treasury give-away to the Banksters -- THESE ALL INVOLVE A HUNGER TO SEE JUST HOW FAR HE COULD GO, JUST HOW MUCH HE COULD GET AWAY WITH.
AND THAT IS GAMBLING. THAT IS ADDICTION TO RISK!
What about web sites that let you buy and sell stocks? Isn't that online gambling?
Concerning the topic on legalizing drugs, I was watching a History Channel production on the genesis of the "war on drugs" which noted that technically the use of drugs is protected by the privacy clause in the Bill of Rights, but Congress found various ways to get around it. It is interesting to note that the use of opium for medicinal use in the U.S. quickly became the recreational drug that it was in China. To "combat" the abuse of opium, heroin was used to "cure" people of their opium addictions, which of course led to an unintended result. In China, Mao's solution to the opium addiction problem was the execution of incorrigibles.
The young woman who advocates for online gambling to be legal without much regulation must have an financial interest in some kind of web site.
Her reasons for legalizing it has no basis in reality of the problems that it invites. Apparently, she thinks gamblers are self regulators. She is either grossly immature and ignorant of the problems that unregulated gambling creates or she has a financial interest in a company providing online gambling.
mathboy - Your problem with viewing the website can be remedied by upgrading to the newer version of Internet explorer. Yeah, that shouldn't be necessary, but the problem has been there since day one, and so is not likely to be fixed soon.
I have been hesitant to repeat this because I didn't want to criticise Obama right away. However, now I will.
Shortly after Obama took the presidency, he made a comment regarding the difference in promises made by a candidate on the campaign trail and the fact that such promises are often changed once the candidate is elected.
He was referring to himself and the innocuous subject of the puppy he promised his daughters. However, you have to think he is well aware of his ability to do this.
i just want to give jesse ventura a big thank you for his views on hannity's show. he stood up to the mannity viva jesse
I have to admit that I was disappointed to discover that Mussolini's oft-quoted comparison of fascism with corporatism has never been verified in any of his writings or speeches. We have to be satisfied with FDR's injunction. Of course, many right-wing pundits and talk show hosts like to call Obama a fascist, but they just can't seem to make-up their minds what he is (other than black). I was walking past a Quest Communications van park in Republican Kent, WA when I noticed the license plate cover on an employee's car. It said "Comrade Obama - The Enemy Within." Probably some disgruntled guy unhappy that he can't listen in on private telephone conversations anymore--or maybe still is?
I hope I didn't give the impression that the principle I described only applies to labor unions. Maybe I need to clarify and emphasize that I regard it a universal principle, applicable to all.
All people are endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In order to secure these rights, people institute government, delegating to it the authority to use force to protect us from those who would infringe on those rights. However, if the government uses the power with which it has been entrusted to help some to infringe on the rights of others, then it has both violated its charter and acted immorally.
This is true no matter whom the government is favoring. If the government uses its power for the benefit of a corporation or an employer to infringe the rights of a worker or anyone else, then the government is wrong here as well. It's a two way street, and the principle applies to everyone equally.
As I said earlier, I prefer clarity to agreement. While I understand we won't all agree, I have tried to state my case, and to explain the principles that support it. Obviously, Blue Neck disagrees with me. I would have preferred to get a better understanding of the principles upon which his opinion is based. Instead I got several variations of, "Corporations are bad, and you're a bad person for supporting them."
At this point, I've made my case for government neutrality as best I know how. I can only hope that I have at least given some readers some food for thought. Unless anyone has any specific questions I can answer to help clarify my position, I'll just go ahead and butt out now.
PS: I use quotes as a form of emphasis--not necessarily as enclosing a direct quote.
Nobody tells me what my frame is, and I don’t tell anybody what his or her frames are. Isn’t it just like a troll to have all the time in the world to sit on progressive sites and tell everybody else what he or she doesn’t understand and what is applicable and what isn’t? Only they set the parameters of discussion. It never dawns on them that others might respond to a couple of things said in a previous comment and then go in a different direction or interpretation. I wonder what it’s like to be a bossy budinski. I could probably be a well-paid corporate sycophant.
Since the bad ol’ government doesn’t have any authority (in the minds of pro-corporate libertarians) to give We the People the right to form unions that “coerce” collective bargaining, then why stop there? Let’s stop so-called free trade agreements that are written of, by, and for the corporations that roam the planet to exploit natural resources and human beings. How about stopping corporations from owning the human genome? How about when corporations issue SLAPPs? How about when corporations stop small towns from passing no-big-box-stores ordinances? Oh no, we got to make only individual workers be all moral according to libertarianism which as a governmental system doesn’t exist. Actually, the natural outcome of libertarianism is feudalism.
What would be nice is if individual workers with limited means and limited lifetimes were dealing with entities that had limited means and limited lifetimes as well. Corporations have seemingly limitless means, not because of risk-taking and competitive cunning and wit by management (the mythology of some), but mostly because they buy politicians and write (for the pols) the laws to be passed. Thus, the price of access has a ten and hundred fold return in the form of corporate welfare and special tax breaks. Corporations are sociopathic entities whose sole objective is shareholder return—and the lax climate perpetuated since Uncle Ronny, I don’t believe they even do that. Also, corporations, whether they are good or bad, never die. They are, according to the mythology, supposed to “go away” if they aren’t “competitive.” But they don’t. Hence, unions are a necessity.
And I do understand that truly small businesses are legal corporations too. They truly have to bust their humps to stay alive. If they aren’t mistreating their workers, then they should not be worried that their workforce will unionize. What is amazing is that even smaller corporations will hire expensive union-busters rather than investing that money in better wages and working conditions. It gets back to worldviews, motivations (like fear), and personality traits.
If readers like Thom Hartmann, they’ll like Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog. I just found it recently.
As a protest against bossy trolls, I’ll just repeat what “doesn’t apply” according to the previous commenter:
“To all the anti-union workers who belong to unions, if you don’t like collective bargaining and don’t want to find a job elsewhere, find a charity to donate your extra income garnered from that evil collective bargaining. Then absolutely donate your vacation pay to charity as well. Also find a job during off-hours because it was that “awful, immoral” union that pushed for overtime and a 40-hour work week. Then if you empathize with the employer so much, help pay for any safety equipment/measures it must buy or institute for which that evil union most likely bargained. Start a charity for employers–voluntarily. As long as you STRUGGLE to eat, put clothes on your back, and a roof over your head, you are living the corporate nirvana–dystopia is utopia.”
My solution to the problem of the death penalty is that if someone innocent is put to death (discovered after the fact of course) then the original DA, and prosecutor(s), the appeals DA and prosecutor(s), anyone in charge, loses all rights to hold a government job, with the loss of benefits. So if the original prosecutor is now state senator when it is discovered that the death penalty case they were in charge of person was innocent, well they are out of office. This would reduce the death penalty cases to ones were you have 100% proof, and if they are not sure, no death penalty.
With regard to today's discussion of the death penalty, I've always thought that the arguments in favor or against, skirt the core issue. I am opposed to the death penalty but acknowledge that if someone committed the worst crimes against someone I love that I would want to kill that person myself. This is our natural human instinct. This aggressive nature is a part of our evolution; pro and con. I would submit that it's more con than pro at this stage and that it is the heart of the problem. We need to acknowledge this and find a way forward that values peace over aggression. We cannot do this if we are constantly waging war and committing government sponsored executions. The goal is to have our children grow up in a world where they are taught early that killing is wrong and that you are ostracized from society as a result. This does not mean I believe we should let the worst criminals in our societies get a second chance; I do not. It's about the future, not the present.
In the last call at the end of Hour 1 Thom said that Gandhi was not assasinated.
He was, after 5 attempts, they were successful on the 6th:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahatma_Gandhi#Assassination
More on CIA and Pelosi from the Daily Kos:
Let's count up all the evidence for Pelosi's claims
by toughliberal
Tue May 19, 2009 at 11:22:35 AM PDT
Nancy Pelosi says the CIA lied to her. The CIA said they didn't. Classic she said/they said, right? Well, let's tally up all the evidence from both sides, and find out.
The CIA's notes and Pelosi's recollection are each one piece of evidence. So far it's even - Pelosi 1, CIA 1.
Porter Goss, who was there at the crucial September 2002 briefing, said, "I can't believe anyone would have heard the briefing and not realized the practices were actually being used." In other words, it wasn't explicit - exactly what Pelosi is claiming. Pelosi 2, CIA 1.
toughliberal's diary :: ::
The CIA spreadsheet of briefings shows Democrats were briefed later (months later) than Republicans (they are listed on the same day, then there's an asterisk that explains it wasn't actually the same day - a blatant attempt at misleading all by itself). So the CIA was treating Dems differently than Repubs, by their own admission. Pelosi 3, CIA 1.
Cheney, Addington, Rove, etc. were well-known as being secretive and refusing to submit to any oversight. Even Bob Novak in his memoir complains about this. Bush's head of Faith-Based Initatives John DeIulio quit in 2001, complaining that "everything is run through the political office." So it flies in the face of reason to think they'd have let the CIA tell Nancy Pelosi about waterboarding 2 months before the midterms. They probably got the CIA briefer to mumble at the crucial point. (If you think that's crazy, consider this: Reagan's CIA Director William Casey would pull the same thing. According to Bob Woodward's book Veil, when Casey told Secretary of State George Shultz that they'd laid some mines in Nicaragua, Shultz thought he'd said "paid some fines on some joggers." You can't make this stuff up). Pelosi 4, CIA 1.
Leon Panetta backs up the CIA, but all he did was regurgitate the original report. He is an old-school congressional baron who has long-documented problems with women in power, as documented in Jeffrey Birnbaum's book Madhouse (when Panetta runs Dee Dee Myers out of the White House). Panetta's pick to replace her, Mike McCurry, was criticized for not including female reporters. Plus Panetta is much closer to Pelosi rival Rahm Emanuel. His motivation here is obvious: he's trying to be buddy-buddy with his new agency, and doesn't care what some female says. No new evidence for the CIA's story here.
Final score: Pelosi 4, CIA 1. Pelosi wins easily.
Below is what TPMuckraker is reporting about the CIA-Pelosi controversy at http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/source_eit_term_wasnt_....
Thom Hartmann's discussion of the EIT incident was much better and appears to have been a scoop on everyone else.
But it is regrettable that his show is not available in archives and there apparently is no transcript, so the invaluable discussion may be lost. What Thom and Lamar Waldron discussed about the history of CIA lying and connecting it to the EIT should be made available for wide distribution to inform the public, which the media are unlikely to do.
If nothing else, Thom and/or Waldron should publish something covering their research and analysis into this incident, which could help to expose the deceit of the CIA.
UPDATED: Source: "EIT" Term Wasn't In Use When Pelosi Was Briefed
By Zachary Roth - May 19, 2009, 12:27PM
Here's yet another reason (as if more were needed) to doubt that that CIA briefings document perfectly reflects what lawmakers were told about torture back in the early days of the war on terror.
Almost every briefing described in the document -- including the September 2002 Pelosi briefing that's directly at issue -- refers to "EITs," or enhanced interrogation techniques, as a subject that was discussed. But according to a former intelligence professional who has participated in such briefings, that term wasn't used until at least 2006* (see correction below).
That's not just an issue of semantics. The former intel professional said that by using the term in the recently compiled document, the CIA was being "disingenuous," trying to make it appear that the use of such techniques was part of a "formal and mechanical program." In fact, said the former intel pro, it wasn't until 2006* (see correction below) that -- amid growing concerns about the program among some in the Bush administration -- the EIT program was formalized, and the "enhanced interrogation techniques" were properly defined and given a name.
The former intel professional, no partisan defender of Democrats, faulted Nancy Pelosi for not pressing harder in the briefing to determine exactly which techniques had and hadn't been used. "The extent to which members ask questions should drive what's going on," said the former intel pro. "It's your job to ask."
Still, the impression created by the CIA, and by Republicans looking to use the document to damage Pelosi, is that as early as 2002 there was a universally agreed upon definition of enhanced interrogation techniques (the document, remember, doesn't say that waterboarding was mentioned during the Pelosi briefing). In reality, it appears, the term, and the techniques it encompassed, occupied a far murkier realm.
*Correction: A Nexis search which we should have done earlier shows that the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" was used by CIA from June 2004 onwards. That month, the Associated Press reported:
The CIA has suspended use of some White House-approved aggressive interrogation tactics employed to extract information from reluctant al-Qaida prisoners, The Washington Post said.
Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the newspaper reported in Sunday's editions that what the CIA calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" were put on hold pending a review by Justice Department and other lawyers.
So the use of the term does indeed appear to have coincided with the emergence of widespread concern about the use of such techniques, and it doesn't seem to have been in use when Pelosi was briefed in September 2002. But clearly the term was in use two years earlier than we originally said.
#
This whole Nancy Pelosi thing is the Republicans' version of the old playground game "I know you are, but what am I". It is so stupid I can't believe the country isn't screaming to get these mentally deficient, developmentally impaired, rich, socially backward, dorks placed in a home somewhere. None of this infantile logic would be accepted in the real world, only in this Alice IN Wonderland Reality our leaders are forcing the American public to accept.
How long has the entire American public been aware of torture? How long have pictures of hooded prisoners been circulating? Long before the Bush Administration went away. Our entire Congress and Senate has played possum the whole damn time while the country screamed "Impeach, Impeach Impeach". Nothing happened. Nancy P sashayed up to the podium and smiled gratuitously and said, "IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE" Then she basically treated the country like a child and sent us to bed on the subject.
How long has Dennis Kucinich been trying to wake up the American public that we are being led by an elite government in which a good chunk of Democrats are working for. Again, How long has the whole nation known about Torture
Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio
In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008 (Almost a year ago this was written)
A Resolution
Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other
Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
Article XX
http://kucinich.us/impeachment/articles.pdf
How long has Vincent Bugliosi's book been published? And how long before that did it take to write it. Everybody's known for a long long time, the entire world has known. So who ordered and who made the country stand down and live with it??? Any other conversation is a big slow bully forcing us to play his game.
Hi Thom,
I know you're talking about the death penalty, which i am totally against, I thought you and your listeners might be interested in an e mail i recieved from my congresswoman. Rep. Chellie Pingree wrote me to let me know about a bill that she is co-sponsoring, which is for expanding Medicare to all Americans. Its HR 676, so maybe if all of your listeners, and web viewers write their members of congress and urge them to vote for this bill.
KMH,
Re: KMH, funny how we use the Commandments and the Bible verses that fit our needs.
It always amazes me how many people who call themselves "Christians" do NOT live their lives guided by Christ's words to forgive and love, especially as detailed in the Sermon on the Mount. Instead, they harken back to the Old Testament and channel an angry, vindictive, punishing God. They should call themselves "PreChristians." This love of the death penalty is vindictive and PreChristian.
Your use of quotes ("awful, immoral") seems to imply that I'm saying that unions are awful or immoral. I'm not. I'm not judging the union. I'm not pro-union or anti-union. Nor am I pro-employer or anti-employer. Employers and workers are people, and they all are equal and have equal rights.
What I AM judging is the government, and I claim that it is acting immorally. Government is created by the people, who delegate to government the powers necessary to protect the citizens' rights. However, the people cannot delegate to the government authority that they themselves don't have. And no person, or group of people, have the right to coerce two people to bargain with each other in a particular way. Therefore, I have to conclude that neither does the government have this right. As Thomas Jefferson said, "It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."
I want all workers to have the best possible employment opportunities. And I want employers to pay good money to good workers. But I also realize that I, personally, have no authority to force either of these parties to make agreements that they themselves don't consider to be in their mutual best interest. So therefore neither does the government have that authority.
All of Blue Neck's suggestions as to what a so-called "anti-union worker" ought to do don't really make much difference to the above analysis. The government has used the force with which we have entrusted it to benefit one group at the expense of another group's rights. Some might claim that the ends justify the means, but we all know where that slippery slope leads.
Re: Carrie Lucas; rights of companies vs individuals.
What if we viewed government entities as corporations. Then the contract between individuals and the country/corporation that they live in is voluntary and therefore the individual is bound by contract to follow the rules of the country/corporation. The individual is free to leave (provided they are not breaking a contract obligation) and belong to another country. Sure, they have to move, possibly learn a new language, perhaps forfeit their house, their retirement, etc. but they are free to leave once they fulfill their obligations.
Oh, but you say that since you are born belonging to a country and this is not voluntary. True. But don't parents already bind their children to follow the terms of contracts?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/19/cafferty.bush.administration/inde...
Jack Cafferty gets it.
The money system is like a heating and cooling system! If described as CHI - in Feng Shui we know that energy stagnates. Time for Feng Shui Master Society!
Please, please repeal Prop 13 for commercial enterprises and corporations. (There are very few small homeowners still eligible for Prop 13 relief.)
Back to a progressive tax system!!!!
I thought you all would like to know that Dick Cheney has announced his support for Jeb Bush for President in 2012:
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/05/13/cheney-supports-bush-f...