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.
If the economy crashes, it is on the Republican watch. Went up steadily for 8 years under Obama despite Republican obstruction. But how can it crash when they are dangling carrots of repatriation of overseas income and 15% corporate tax? Only when they fail to do it. Look what Bush/Cheney did to the economy.
I'll bet the Republicans are in a hurry to crash the economy - as soon as possible - so they can blame it on Obama and get the attention off of Trump. It is imperative for them to finish destroying both the Democratic Party and the government services Americans want to keep, so they are desperate to retain their majorities in Congress. Since any wins the Democratic Party gets in the 2018 elections are a threat to their agenda, being able to vilify the Democrats as ruiners of the economy is another big propaganda hammer. Dems need to understand that they are NOT going to get back control of any branch of government very easily. (Remember how GWB actually made gains in Congress in the 2002 midterms?One of the very few times in history! That was no coincidence. Republicans have been playing a long game of making America a one-party state, and all their other moves - the judiciary, corporations, right-wing media, the economy - you name it - have been geared to that end.
Also don't forget the research Greg Palast and others have done into our voting apparatus being controlled largely by big businesses that favor Republicans. I don't think people understand just how much work the GOP puts into suppressing the Democratic vote in this country (see HAVA and voter suppression tactics). And the Dems say nothing about it because they think that with enough money, the people behind the machines will sway their way. It was the machinery, not James Comey, that took away Hillary's chances, and the machines just might want to give the Republicans more wins in the midterms. Remember the results in 2002 favoring GWB and being a dissappointment for the Dems? That was no coincidence. You're looking at people who want total control. And they're getting closer and closer to it.
"Do Republicans just not read their history or they so fanatically committed to helping out their oligarch backers that they just don't care that every attempt at deregulation in modern history has been followed by a crash?"
Now Thom, this has to be the most rhetorical question I've ever heard you pose. I think the answer is more than obvious.
But since you mention the "Choice Act", I'd like to bring up another legislative shell game congress passed a few years ago when veterans were litteraly dying on the steps of VA hospitals because they couldn't get in to see a doctor. This was called the Veteran's "Choice Program" by which, if a vet couldn't get in to see a doctor within 30 days, (s)he could opt to see a private doctor and the VA would cover the bill.
As a vet who uses VA health care, I've recently become reacquainted with the VA Choice program, because in order to see my VA primary care physician I now need to wait until August, 2018, not the 30 days mandated by the original legislation. That's right, 14 months! This is because I had my annual physical in May and wasn't due for another scheduled appointment for a year from then, plus a generous 90 days. This is a change that was slipped into the program by the sociopaths that make a big deal out of supporting the endless supply of hobbled veterans they've created by pushing for endless unfunded wars, funded by the dwindling Social Security Trust Fund.
My advice is to break out the vaseline anytime the Republican controlled congress advances anything with the word "choice" attached.
If you are in the 1% I understand why you vote Republican. If you are not, why do you vote Republican? Name one good thing that the Republican Party has done for the Middle Class.
Hey Thom; melting down in Congress, Az.
I started a Petition on change.org
https://www.change.org/p/the-set-congressional-pay-at-equal-to-the-avera...
I would like this to get some legs! Thanks dic
Nice! I want you to thank for your time of this wonderful read!!! Your blog posts are more interesting and informative. I very like and visit regularly.
hill climb racing 2
Diane: Really, I'm not trying to be the last post, but I have to say this. By far most of those harmed by bubble economic markets have zero connection with Wall Street. Look at pics from 1929.
As deepspace pointed out, the market is inflated beyond belief right now. We haven't seen this since 1929. In fact it may have surpassed that mark recently. Don't count on Fox Business clueing you in about this.
BTW: It's good for health insurance companies/CEO's to not insure those with pre-existing conditions, but not so good for those with the illness. It's good for big pharma to release high profit drugs despite the risk, but not so good for the users. It's profitable for the Kochs to be able to pollute, but not so good for the climate or those down wind or down stream. The billionaires are laughing at you, and pissed at me. Wake up Diane.
Doo Doo Di #30: Aaahh... ya miss me already. How charming! Although, you forgot to reference your normal manure metaphors. Or did the Fux business channel hand you enough for one day? Sounds like it. LMAO, You are a gift that truly keeps giving.
And certainly nobody here, save trolls, needs a horse to 'splain how wrong you are when spouting programmed right-wingerisms. In the real world, beyond DianeyWorld and the Fux bubble, facts and falsehoods are self-evident.
So is logic. For instance, please explain how someone knows ahead of time that they'll end up as the "final responder" on a thread? Even in DianeyWorld that amazing feat must baffle your investment fortunetellers. Perhaps in such rarefied atmosphere, prescient trolls never have to queue up like mere mortals, so they would know that, of course, no one would dare fall in behind them.
FYI: I just post and/or respond at random when time permits and I feel like it. Who the ef cares? Does it bug you not to get the last word? Well good ...because liberals only exist to pester poor ol' Di, the lil' snowflake.
Speaking of predicting the future, did you or your financial wizards foresee the 2008 worldwide crash, pray tell? You do realize that the world is now pushing the outside of the envelope in like the third longest expansion bubble in a hundred years or so. Better spend that cash wisely, òinseach, or you may learn all about queueing up the hard way ...in a soup line! Hopefully, you won't end up at the, uh, tail end ...so to speak. :--))
DianeR -- Where did your 99.9% come from? For 80% of the population the stock market is irrelevant except as a spectacle. You must be a supporter of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover policies. I base that on what Harding had to say "We need more business in government and less government in business". A policy prescription that led us to the great republican depression of the 1930's. A similar policy promoted by Bush 2 led us to the great republican depression of 2008. I know the economic royalists love that policy. Why you believe in this voodoo economics would be interesting to know.
@32
We obviously serve different 99.9%. In my world what is good for business if good for me. That should also apply to most of the working tax paying population, leaving only the leftie/socialists and day dreamers to sit in the basement complaining on blogs over Al Gore's invention.
Although I appreciate your financial advice, I think will file it away with all the guru books with dates in their title telling me when to buy or sell.
My needed money is very well protected. Anything of mine currently invested in Wall Street is pure gravy. If the market continues to rise, good. If history is my guide, huge drops in the market is a great buying opportunity.
Turning to pessimists for investment advice? Never been proven a wise thing to do.
Diane: Well for starters there is a huge difference between vast majority friendly progressive legislation and billionaire only friendly right-wing agenda legislation. This realization alone should direct you in voting for your own best interests, which are identical to those of the 99.9% of us.
Self economic sacrifice in order to benefit a few billionaires seems to me like an admission of brainwashing, sort of cult like.
Without the legislative branch, Biden, like Hillary, and Obama would not have made much difference in the advancement of the progressive agenda. Their main role would be to thwart economic madness like further deregulation of Wall Street and climate change back-pedaling.
BTW: Get your money out of Wall Street asap...you'll thank me down the road a piece. Trump is going to do something very stupid with foreign policy very soon, a huge mistake that will have global implications on the scale of panic setting in. Don't ask me how I know this.
Proposed Legislation is exactly that. They put it out to get comment. You should be writing Your Congress person and Senators if you agree or disagree. At least that is how it is supposed to work.
I am sure that you watch whatever channel is on in the Assisted LIving Home.
@29
The difference between most here and myself is the fact I do not panic over "proposed" legislation. Things that are actually "proposed" and what is reported by the (both sides guilty) biased media, are two completely different things. "Proposed" legislation usually never happens and Thom Hartmann should be more aware of this than anybody but he makes his living off stirring the pot.
As for my relationship with Fox News or the Tea Party? It is literally non existent. If Fox is on the screen, it is the Fox business channel. In my total "newz" viewing, mostly CNN because it is hysterical watching their bias, or Chris Matthews on MSNBC making a total fool out of himself on a nightly basis. O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity are as full of bullshit as over animated Rachel Maddow or dull as Lawrence O'Donnell. Go give Fox business a quick look unless you completely subscribe to the gloom and doom of investing for your own future. If you followed the wrong advice over the last eight years you threw away at least a 50% increase in your 401k's.
A quick aside, thank god for Netflix.
Tom Hartmann's over emphasis on the viewership at Fox News is only his own envy and not the reality he thinks it is. Common sense beat Hillary not Fox News. You should have run Biden. He would have been sitting in the oval office right now and you would have nothing to complain about.
So, would you rather have something to tighten the knots in your stomach every day for the next 7-1/2 years or crazy uncle Joe wandering the halls? Radio bobbleheads would prefer the former as it gives partial life to their boring daily babble.
Too bad there are 8 years between do-overs.
I expect a horse to come galloping along to tell you all how wrong I am but I actually think it is just because he can't stand not being the final responder on every thread. Shades of Drc2.
Diane: I just have to ask, have you ever bothered to read any actual Teapublican legislation? Things like the American Care Act, Ryan's budget plans? I'm guessing you're simply watching Fox News and other corp media right-wing propaganda. It's pretty easy to do this seeing how 98% of the corp media is right-wing slant.
Take time to enlighten yourself on the truth by reading some proposed legislation and think about how it will impact you, your family, friends, and neighbors.
Deepspace: Regarding your comment on acknowledgement of cyber warfare. My contention is that without Reality Winner and others like her, our intelligence agencies will continue to sweep the story that we are under attack under the carpet.
The CIA isn't willing to fight back for obvious reasons. First their "commander- in- chief" is an important component of the attack. Also unrestrained funding of the military industrial spy complex plays a large role in passive acceptance of the attack...in their minds, the party that Putin has installed is the party that will endlessly increase their budget.
What our intelligence agencies are all underestimating is the degree to how quickly "really bad govermnent" will collapse an empire. We're on course for civil unrest never seen before, massive police state arrests, violence, crashed economy, poverty, climate change chaos, you name it. Without sane leadership we're all screwed. The billionaire/fascists have no idea what's coming! They're all dizzy with the pursuit of arbitrary money and power.
Putin is destroying our country from within using Trump as is his primary weapon.
Diane: Right on cue, you enter stage right with wildly partisan opinions, childish insults, and unsubstantiated innuendo with zero sourcing (accusing others of the same) -- responding to posts you barely skim over, studiously misread, and deliberately misconstrue to fit a slanted worldview. Sorry, Fux News debate tactics won't work here.
Pardon the armchair psychoanalysis, but you seem to have a chronic, subconscious need to verbalize your blind hatred of liberals, and evidently to assuage deep-seated feelings of anger and frustration, creating artificial divisions that only exist in your mind.
It is not a matter of "one of [our] own" or "comrades" or "argument" or "blind faith" or "beliefs" or the specter of bogeyman Pence (how convenient), or the possibility of actually impeaching Trump in such a polarized political climate (won't happen). It is about getting at the truth. What's wrong with that? Why are certain Republicans so afraid of objective reality?
Take a deep breath, calm down, and actually study the ample source material provided in this thread, before shooting from the hip with your indiscriminate blunderbuss. It seems that you are more than willing to believe as gospel truth the evasive lies that constitute nearly every utterance from the Liar in Chief, while flippantly dismissing as a "charade" the combined assessments of America's 17 intelligence agencies tasked with discovering observable facts. Why not let them, Congress, and Mueller finish their investigations unimpeded? Why are certain Republicans so selective with their own, in-house ... ah ... "intelligence" gathering?
Who is the one "tilting at windmills?" Trump's problems are caused by the words and actions of one person and no one else. Take your partisan blinders off for a wider view and a change of scenery. The truth is out there, Scully.
chuckle8: Thanks for the clarification and the link. Mine was a rhetorical statement and was an unfair blanket condemnation, for which I apologize. As you point out, there are some good progressive Democrats willing to stand up and do the right thing. Hopefully they can move the old establishment types, who are too comfortable with business as usual.
The greatest part of this whole charade is watching you leftie/socialists run around with your hair on fire over "the Russians" and meanwhile Trump and the republicans are chewing away everything Obama signed or promoted as a cause.
Keep up your tilting at windmills and God bless you fools that refuse to accept any argument that refutes your blind faith in unicorns that somehow your continual screeching will get President Trump impeached. Even when one of your own more rational comrades suggests you are incorrect in your beliefs you retaliate like a schoolyard bully.
Even the thickest of you seems not to understand of Trump is out then you have Pence in the oval office.
Intellectual cattle you all are. Time to return to the barn for your nightly milking.
Here are some samples in response to deepspace asking
Charles, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing earlier this week I asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to assure the American people that special counsel Bob Mueller has the independence and ability to investigate Donald Trump and his campaign’s ties to the Russian government.
Rosenstein dodged my question again and again—and as I pressed him to assure the American people, the Republicans tried to shut me down, saying I needed to be more “courteous”.
I’m asking you to stand with me today, Charles. Add your name to my petition today and let me know you have my back in this fight. Sign here.
ADD YOUR NAME
This is hardly the first time the GOP has done this—let us not forget when they silenced my friend and colleague Elizabeth Warren for trying to read a letter from Coretta Scott King about Jeff Sessions.
Well here is the truth: I will not be silenced. We will not be silenced. The American people, who deserve the truth, will not be silenced. Not when the faith and integrity of our democracy is at stake.
I’m asking you to stand with me today, Charles. Add your name to my petition today and let me know you have my back in this fight. Sign here.
ADD YOUR NAME
Like Senator Warren—and so many others—we will continue to persist and never give an inch when it comes to truth and accountability in our government.
Thanks for all you do.
Kamala Harris
U.S. Senator, California
Paid for by Senator Kamala Harris
Daily Kos, PO Box 70036, Oakland, CA, 94612.
Nice to give credit when it is so rare.
Pandas4Peace: You are grossly mischaracterizing the Russian problem. Democrats are not "pushing [a] narrative." This is outside reality beyond the control of either party. All 17 of our intelligence agencies are in absolute agreement that multiple, key members of Trump's campaign are likely to have colluded with agents of Putin, and that Russia hacked into campaign servers and voting machines. The investigation is ongoing, and while Trump is not yet a target, he very possibly could be in the future, if that is where the facts lead. It will play out as it will.
By the way, firing an FBI Director because he was conducting an investigation is not "hearsay" -- it happened, and it is the very definition of obstruction of justice. Unfortunately, you are a victim who is "walking into a trap" of right-wing spin. Why would any concerned citizen in a so-called free country with a so-called free press not want to know the simple, objective truth, beyond any political considerations??? Lies and obfuscation are what undermine a democracy!
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/06/03/its-time-make-case-impeaching-trump
2950-10K: Agreed. This is warfare by a different name but warfare nonetheless. We are literally under attack by a powerful enemy on all cyber fronts, which now includes our election system, the beating heart of democracy. Hacking into the parties' servers, deploying an army of bots throughout social media, testing the vulnerability of voting machines, a massive propaganda campaign in favor of one candidate over the other, etc. are all battlefield tactics.
Putin is neither a Democrat nor a Republican; he's a ruthless opportunist whose overall strategy is to sow confusion and distrust to undermine our democracy and destroy people's faith in our government and its institutions. This time, Trump happens to be the favored one -- no doubt because Putin perceives him (correctly) as weak and easily manipulatable. Russia won a major victory in this war, yet most of our corporate politicians and naive citizens are either in denial, too numb to care, or profiting politically (and perhaps financially) on the mayhem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/us/politics/trump-comey-russia-fbi.html?partner=msft_msn&_r=0
Panda, This is just a starter for links. Took maybe 3 minutes. Do you remember Mitt Romney saying that the greatest threat to America is Russia. What changed? It is also worrisome that it took a leaker to release NSA intelligence showing a Russian Connection. Why was this not released to the public. We have a right to know. Does it not bother you at all that he fired the head of the FBI (a Republican) to try and stop the investigation and bragged about it?
Trump and Comey
Trump Campaign Contacts
Trump sold home to Russian Oligarch
Trump and Russian Loans
Trump and Russian Oligarch meetings
NSA leaker
Thom, I'm very concerned the Democrats are walking into a trap by pushing this Russian hacking/collusion narrative. We learned, AGAIN, from Comey and others that there is no Trump investigation because there is no solid evidence. Michael Flynn might be a problem, but he was fired - so case closed. The obstruction charge is based on hearsay. It's not enough to overthrow a president.
As for the Russian meddling claim, that is solely based on a third party report. There was never an actual FBI investigation of the DNC hard drives. CrowdStrike has nefarious political connections, has misled the FBI in the past, and refuses to testify under oath. We learned from Wikileaks Vault 7 that countries false flag their hacking tools. Furthermore, a country as sophisticated as Russia, would not leave an obvious trace.
What worries me is this soft COUP of an ELECTED US President (let that sink in) would be incredibly damaging to our country. We are not a third world country. We have a constitution and laws. Our markets, our national security, our standing in the world depend upon it. (And, please no more nonsense about how Trump is a Nazi. It's not true and it's not thoughtful).
What do I expect from you and the mature and clear thinking Democrats? We need to use our energy and time to rally around the legislation introduced by Bernie and Tulsi. Let's shut up about what we cannot change (the election) and work towards winning the next few. We all know Steve Bannon is sitting back and watching the Democrat implosion. We need to turn this around. Thom, we need your leadership.
You could argue that Fox News is better than Russia at this type of hybrid warfare, but Putin's motives are much more different than Murdochs. Putin is simply trying to weaken us by installing complete idiots to run the country.
Putin did in fact impact how citizens voted via the cyber/propaganda attack....our fascist controlled media was a partner to this. This is hybrid warfare and Putin successfully denigrated Clinton with it.
The absence of bombs and death is no longer equivalent to absence of warfare.
DHBranski. With all do respect, you're missing the main point of this particular blog entirely and are wandering off into other side issues, albeit important ones in their own right. The odds of Republicans, who are in total control of Congress, impeaching their own president are near zero, of course -- despite any clear evidence of a crime. Regardless of the chances, however, it is not the likely Russian collusion that is impeachable, at this time anyway (although with harder evidence, it certainly would be); it is the obstruction of justice charge that is impeachable.
And, sorry, this is not merely rhetoric. He fired Comey, and admitted numerous times that he did so to stymie the investigation into his Russian connections! No matter what the he-said-he-said, intimidating conversation was at the White House dinner, Trump followed through with an outward, indisputable act of commission to obstruct.
Nixon wasn't facing imminent impeachment because of the underlying crime of the Watergate break-in; it was because of his overt obstruction of justice of the investigation into the matter, which was much worse than the break-in itself. Let us not confuse two separate crimes.
Furthermore, to address one of your seeming non sequiturs, the Russian hacking of voting machines was not the "leading claim" of Trump's original Russian problems (BTW, intelligence sources say it did happen, though without much statistical affect). The most significant allegations were possible collusion and money laundering.
Besides, it's not Russians hacking the vote and possibly delegitimizing some of our elections that should worry us the most; it's the Republican Party deligitimizing a wide swath of elections. One would be prudent to research Interstate Crosscheck, voter ID laws, extreme partisan gerrymandering, and the many other ways Democratic voters are being disenfranchised by the millions in many state and national elections every single cycle, which has been occurring over the course of decades. Greg Palast and Brad Friedman are good sources with whom to begin.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/06/03/its-time-make-case-impeaching-trump