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.
Furious Intensity
{… a limerick …}
It might win, might furious intensity
of the level of Rightists’ propensity
to engage in rage.
There’s no way to assuage
such moods of such low brain-density.
=============================
I must agree with Old_Curmudgeon, as I stopped watching the clip after the rightwinger trotted out that old and expired argument of health treatment tourism. Number 1, the topic is heatlh insurance and not heatlh care. Number 2, only weatlhy foreigners arrive in the US for experimental treatments, which Americans leave the US to get, or for treatments not performed very well in their home countries, such as transplant procedures from transplant adverse cultures.
If you want to focus on Clinton's flipflopping, how did she advance health insurance for the country's largest employer while she was on the board of directors of WalMart?
Thanks MUCH for this time's discussion against the TPP, and for your essay against Obama's too-bipartisan style.
Your Rumble's rightists irritate rather than inform, - f'rinstances this time regarding the points you raise about healthcare and about dark money. They {the panel's rightists} deflect rather than discuss. - - - I made the mistake of watching a few minutes of these non-discussions, ... stopping when my disgust turned toward YOU {toward Thom}, for your 'way-too-often wasting your otherwise-worthy show's time by deploying such sophomoric squawkers.
I've explained the caucus system before, so I'll give a shorter version this time for Mary in Ouray, CO.
Instead of just voting for a candidate, the caucus is also for choosing delegates to move up the ladder of the levels of government, ending with the party's national convention. When you show up at the caucus, you declare which candidate you favor, then your precinct chooses a certain number of delegates to the next stage, proportionately to the number of supporters (i.e. votes) for each candidate. So Mary may end up being a delegate to her county assembly, state house district meeting and state senate district meeting, where she'll vote on who should be on the primary-election ballot (in Colorado at least) for those districts. From the house district meeting, she can become a delegate to the state assembly, and from there to the Democratic National Convention.
Unlike a simple primary, the caucus lets ordinary people be a part of the mechanics of the party.
Aliceinwonderland: Obama's push for the TPP certainly qualifys him for the Fascist label...but I think he's simply looking ahead to being accepted by, and hanging out with those who stand to gain the most from this deal....the self puffed corp pigs who can't get enough of getting more....they'll be the ones Obama will be golfing with at an exclusive country club in a year or two.
Theodore Roosevelt was one of those great presidents that fought for what was right for the average American without compromise, although he was not an average American himself being from a wealthy family. He was a republican but a liberal republican. He deserves his spot on Mt. Rushmore. Another good republican president was Eisenhower. Desegregation and the interstate highway system began while he was president. He was our last good republican president. Roosevelt and Eisenhower would be appalled at what the modern republican party has become, a party that solicits votes from the working class, the racist, the poor, and the stupid and then side with the wealthy. Sad but true. President Obama hasn't been a bad president but he could have been a much better president, if he had not compromised and not signed any legislation with bad sections or "riders" in it like the budget that cuts disability benefits later this year for example. I'm for Bernie because he will not compromise and will do what is right. His record of senate voting proves it, for example, he voted against the budget with the part that cuts disability benefits, but Hillary's record proves otherwise. Some say he can't get elected because people don't know who he is but until Obama was nominated as a democratic presidential candidate, I didn't know who he was and he was elected president twice.
Reply to #9: Obama's willingness to compromise with the fascists makes him a sell-out at best; at worst, a fascist himself. Can't wait to replace him with Bernie Sanders!
Thank you for incorporating some criticisms of Bill Clinton into this. I appreciate that, much.
I'm not sure who thought this would be a good strategy for Hillary, but it's obviously not working. It makes her look desperate and panicky, in a way that almost makes me feel sorry for her, though not sorry enough to vote for her instead of Bernie. Bernie will be a great president, and America needs him desperately right now. Who knows, maybe after all this is over, Hillary will retire from politics and go explore the world on her own, or take a lover, or even just take some time for herself to rediscover who she was before Bill Clinton. I'd like to think so.
I'd like to expand upon what Thom regards as Obama's greatest flaw. Obama's embrace of bipartisanship is based on the belief that the citizens who voted Republican are consciously voting for the economic and social abuse their party will eventually bestow upon them. In other words, how could any intelligent individual consider compromise to be a democratic ideal when it is well know the citizens supporting the opposing party have been continuously lied to and brainwashed by 98% of the Fascist owned media.
I'm sure if you were to ask any Foxmerized citizen if they support Ryan's attack on the social safety net, they'd think you were making it all up. The cognitive dissonance caused by such powerful truth would simply cause them to tune you out. I know this to be fact, because I deal with it all the time with family and close friends
So in the end Obama is only being bipartisan with a group of Republicans owned and controlled by a relatively small number of very powerful and wealthy Fascists. His embrace of compromise only hurts the 99% of us by giving into the continuation of extreme concentration of wealth by a few out of control Caligula like maniacs.
#4 So... I guess the wasp cats loved the idea of a black president enough to support everything he attempted
Does it look that way to you?
One of my pet peeves with Obama over the past seven years has been his fetish for bipartisanship. When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. But that’s what CORPORATISTS do.
#2... what and where is Europe?
How many sovereign states are you refering to?
Or are you refering to Europe as an entity composed of independent sovereign states?
Europe as an entity has no democracy
Please Google!
#2... Sorry! I don't understand how you get the idiea that Europe has some kind of superior voting system that produces improved or magical effects for the people
Kindly explain!
Thom, Cut Barak some slack! When the Republican congress votes 62 times to repeal your signature legislation... it's just their way of saying…Lets Compromise!!!
It appears to be a rare beast in politics!
One who believes that he is a representative of "we the people"
Then the recogition that most of us do not recognise that politicains are there to represent "we the people"
People that know take advantage of those who don't
'Twas ever true
3 cheers to Tom Hartmann for shouting out that the US political parties are too
different in their views for "compromise"!
The checks and balances that were intended to stop tyrants now lead to total gridlock.
We need to examine ways to get closer to the parlimentary democracy of Europe.
Their model accomodate many divergent views yet lets the dominant party
have its way in solving national problems.
If this works poorly, the dominant party gets the boot at the next election.
We in the US, if lucky, get a schizoid national policy made up of pieces of each
party policy.
ct
I totally agree with Thom Hartman's assessment here. Instead of even dealing with these right wing morons, he should have gotton on his white horse and kicked their clown car riding butts for seven years. That is why I want Bernie Sanders for president, because he will do just that. Compromising with criminal traitors usually gets one nowhere.
Hillary has done the exact same thing by nationalizing the educational system!
We can thank Hillary for kickstarting Common Core (dumbing down educational system) in the 80's:
Marc Tucker and she had plans to have national standards, national tests, national curriculum, and a national database way back in the 1980's. The "Dear Hillary" letter, written on Nov. 11, 1992 by Marc Tucker, lays out a plan "to remold the entire American system." This is now the blueprint for the Common Core plan.
Tucker's ambitious plan was implemented in 1994 in the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, and the School-to-Work Act. These laws establish [using] "national standards" and "national testing" to cement national control.
Now that NCLB and Common Core are increasingly being seen as an educational disaster, Obama recently ended NCLB. Hillary flip-flopped on NCLB, praising Obama, even though she voted for it in the Senate. However, Bill Gates partnered with UNESCO to expand CC worldwide.
“How many parents … send their children to school so central planners can mold them into functionally illiterate cogs in a centrally planned machine, having just enough knowledge to do their preassigned task? How will such cogs be able to think critically, much less sustain liberty and the American experiment? The short answer is that they will not – and that is the point.”
– The Authors of CRIMES OF THE EDUCATORS: HOW UTOPIANS ARE USING GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS TO DESTROY AMERICA'S CHILDREN
Hillary's Common Core initiative prepares students for school-to-work only. The math architect of CC, Jason Zimba, readily admits that they will not be properly prepared and college-ready for STEM (Science,Technology, Engineering and Math).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJZY4mh2rt8
Richard Greene is a clueless space cadet who knows nothing about science or scientists. Why does Thom keep having such useless guests? Who is next, John Travolta?
Roland
I know this is not what Thom wants. Thom Hartmann...who I genuinelly consider to be one my real heroes. But I will not vote for Hillary if the is the nominee. I will write Bernie in. I know the consequences. With a republican we become a full fascist oligarchy. I know. I KNOW. But if that horror is what it will take to wake the still-asleep up it is what must happen. My decision is final.
I didn't get the impression that Gov. Nikki Haley talked as if her jaw were wired shut. But then again, I saw The Force Awakens recently. Carrie Fisher was much worse. But this reminds me that Leia Organa is basically Hillary Clinton. Leia started as a princess while Hillary started as a first lady (both governmental but powerless positions), then they were both senators (and in fact both held both positions simultaneously for a time), then Leia became a general while Hillary became secretary of state (military and diplomatic counterparts of foreign policy).
The CEO needs to be put in jail. CEO's need to take reponibility for poor safety and environmental damage. It this had been done in the past you can bet that there would have been a safety valve on that pipeline.
Just pay the fine and move on. Business as usual...." If you're a big corporation, that's what you do!"
Great Thom if this is the great truth and it is as you know ! We can finally begin to heal humanity and send us on a new path one of peace ,prosperity for all and a thriving planet living in awe and wonder at the universe !