Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Thom Hartmann Program" channel.

  1.  @ryanosterman2651  I'm not an economist. I'm an engineer whose been looking for a means to beat clowns with economics degrees with the same club they have been using on the rest of us. I've watched a lot of Mark Blyth because he uses similar techniques to the system analysis I was taught in aerospace. He's mentioned Michal Kelecki's 1944 paper "Political Aspects of Full Employment" a lot and its free to download. Right now I have a full reading list. My basic hatred of Freidman was his narcissistic and destructive "greed is good" but me real hatred was the way he disparaged so many of the great minds of history who's motivation was understanding, knowledge and making the world a better place. The only person I have seen more full of his own sense of puritanical importance than Friedman is Trump.
    5
  2. HEY THOM: There's a report by the Congressional Budget Office on Family Wealth 1989-2019 released September 2022. Kyle Kulinski spoke about it last week after the Jacobin's Luke Savage Published a short piece on it. What's amazing is that not only was it published in September 2022 (almost 1 year ago) NOBODY on the America Left is talking about this. FYI - I'm Australian but went to college in America and I can tell you for a fact that our data is no better. I regularly watch British economist Gary Stevenson here on YT and he's saying the same sorts of things about Britain. Here's the bit that I am furious that nobody is pointing out in that report. When you compare the 2010 data to 2007 you can see the effect of the GFC and when you compare 2019 to 2007 you can see how people have recovered. Since Australia, Britain and other places all run similar economic policies its safe to say its the same or similar everywhere. Here's the comparisons adjusted for population and in terms of the wealth per person in each group. The Top 10% LOST 11.1% of their wealth in the GFC but buy 2019 had recovered and were 21.7% UP The Middle 40% LOST 13.3% of their wealth in the GFC but buy 2019 had recovered and were 4.6% UP The Bottom 50% LOST 49.5% of their wealth in the GFC but buy 2019 were still DOWN 21.8% Yes 165 million Americans (and possibly more) had, by 2019, still NOT recovered from the 2008 GFC that they did not cause. Meanwhile the people who did cause the 2008 GFC and were bailed out with US$4 Trillion from Bush and another US$4 Trillion from Obama had not only recovered but had gained over $20 Trillion in collective wealth which has since grown another (estimated) US$8 Trillion during the pandemic years.
    5
  3. Yeah sure they are??? That's why he's facing over 30 charges because he kept his own documents. 🐂💩
    5
  4. That's all true and others have pointed it out. BUT WHAT ARE THEIR STANDING ORDERS - as in what are the Police told to do under these circumstances. This isn't the first time police have stayed back to secure the perimeter and wait for the tactical team. I'm not saying its right or wrong. I'm asking what they were told to do or what does their training tell them to do? There's clearly a problem, but it wont get fixed yelling and screaming.
    5
  5. Australian here: As an outside observer and someone who went to college in America there's an easy answer. All those clowns from Harvard's Medical School need to do is walk a few yards over to the Harvard Business School and they'll get the answers they seek.
    4
  6. Go watch Glenn Kirschner's channel. He's an ex federal prosecutor and before that a JAG lawyer. So he knows both civil and military law. He's been pointing out for several years that many of the Judges appointed by Trump are what's termed "not qualified" and he's stressed that does not mean unqualified. Its things like they did law as an undergraduate but didn't go to law school or did go to law school but haven't passed the bar. So these are people who have qualifications but are "not qualified" to be a judge. Its one of the things that freaks people from other countries out. The lawyers who argue cases must be qualified including passed the bar, but judges can be anyone.
    4
  7.  @davidlafleche1142  CLOWN.
    4
  8.  @davidlafleche1142  Yeah sure God wants you supporting an ADULTERER and LIAR in Trump. Go back and actually read your Bible instead of preaching to people. And while your at it check up on Jesus words at Matthew chapter 7 about frauds.
    4
  9. AUSTRALIAN here - we have the same problem with money in politics. Its just not as bad or as obvious or "in your face" we don't care but its an issue that's getting worse.
    4
  10. I was told a very similar thing by a doctor many years ago. Its one of the issues with palliative care. They eventually get to a point where the treatment is doing more harm than good. I have watched 3 members of my family die from cancer so I am familiar with cancer.
    4
  11. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: News Flash. EVERY Telescope looks backwards in time. Even a telescope you can buy at the hobby store looks back in time. Even your naked eye looks back in time when ever you look up at the night sky. Every little twinkle from every star you can see is the result of photons travelling across space and time to your eye. If you look at Orion's belt there are 3 stars in a line. They are Alnitak (left), is about 800 light-years away, Alnilam (middle) is about 1,300 light-years away and Mintaka (right) is about 900 light-years away. When that twinkle from Alnitak started its way to you in the 13th Century Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire When that twinkle from Mintaka started its way to you in the 12th century the Crusades were in full swing. When that twinkle from Alnilam started its way to you in the 8th century the poem Beowulf was composed, Charlemagne was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III and iron horse shoes started to be used.
    4
  12. I'm Australian and went to college in America (late 80s). I did aerospace engineering but a bunch of my friends were pre-law and used to drag me into discussions on the constitution from time to time. I'd studied Orwell (Animal Farm and 1984) and used to argue that ANY nation could fall into a totalitarian nightmare if they weren't careful. They used to argue that it could never happen because of how the US Constitution was written. We never discussed what might happen if people like Trump, Charles Koch and Robert Mercer were allowed a free hand to do as they pleased without restraint and worst of all started dismantling the system they said could not fail. If you actually look through it then you get to a simple conclusion. These American billionaires are a bigger threat than China and Russia combined ever were. We all trade at the international level in US Dollars because that's the reserve currency for international trade and has been since we all greed at Breton Woods in 1944. If they get their way it will destabilise America and with it the US Greenback. That means chaos as in total utter maniac chaos for international trade and that hurts everyone.
    4
  13. Here's 2 things 1: Curing the insane ignorance in people who give million and millions of dollars to the snake oil salesmen like Ken Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Jim Baker and others who also get them to vote for people who do nothing but pander tot he billionaire class. 2: Getting the educated but ignorant suburbanites who keep voting for people who do nothing but make their lives precarious to wake TFU and realise these people they keep electing do NOTHING for them because they are also pandering to the billionaire class.
    4
  14. You forgot Cheney, Wolfowitz, Blair (Britain), Howard (Australia), John Yoo (the author of the torture memo) and about 20 others from Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately we missed out on charging Powell and Rumsfeld, but their names should be included so that history doesn't forget what they did.
    4
  15. Your first sentence was sensible and after that it was just rambling pile of frustration. Climate change as we now define it has NEVER happened before. There have been localized events like Easter Island and you'd be quite right that we need to consider what happened there as an example. What we are now seeing isn't an island in the Pacific its to a whole planet. There's no other island to go to this time. I can tell you as an aerospace engineer Elon and his band of delusional space trekkers and so far of the mark Most of it is being driven by a insane group of ageing narcissists who are addicted to their power and money. It has nothing to do with native Americans or native populations anywhere although how they are treated is a symptom of the problem. The real problem is the top 1% of the human population who are dominated by an ageing pack of insanely selfish disconnected narcissists. Look at the age of most of the power people around the world both in politics and business. How old are people like Biden, Pelosi, Murdoch, Koch, Trump,.... They wont retire and they wont let humanity make progress towards a functioning planet.
    4
  16.  @ryanosterman2651  Good points and to add to it - at its core is are the concepts of Milton Friedman's "Greed is good" hypothesis that was the foundation behind Reaganomics and Thatcherism. There's an amazing interview of Freidman by Phil Donahue that can be found on YT. There's 2 things I noted. 1) Was the complete self importance and arrogance of Freidman. Watch it without sound and pay attention to his body language. The arrogance and dismissiveness is beyond absurd. 2) He made this astounding claim that "Greed drives innovation." I'm an engineer and that's utterly ridiculous. 3 of the worlds most important inventors and without whom the modern world would NOT exist were not driven by greed but by a desire to make the world a better place:\ Nikola Tesla - famous for his work in electricity and who Edison and Marconi cheated and lied about. Jacques de Vaucanson - whose V-Bed Lathe made the Industrial Revolution possible. Carl Edvard Johansson - whose Gauge Blocks enabled modern manufacturing to exist. NONE of them did it out of greed and NONE were Oligarchs. Neoliberalism is based on a litany of lies, garbage and false premises. Its just taken us 40+ years to work out how damaging it really is. The real question isn't how bad it is. The real question is how do we get past it so we can start fixing the planet, while we can.
    4
  17. @Armament Armed Arm Well what do you think they actually did study in civics. How old are you? What do yo u base any of that claim on? What does law is theater have to do with civics classes? If you want to contribute to a discussion contribute. But if you want to make stupid claims then just go over to the channels where that sort of garbage is popular.
    4
  18. I think you are saying 1 of several 100 things that need to be said out load. We have desperate pathetic politicians desperate to either hold or gain power by playing each other off against each other. I believe it was Jonathan Haidt who said a couple of years ago "There's this cacophony where the Radical Right and Radical Left just scream at each other while the rest of us trapped in the middle are exhausted." I know that comment was aimed at Western politics but it applies to all these situations where we allow 2 groups of fanatics fight while innocents are trapped in the middle and get slaughtered.
    4
  19. I'm Australian and almost totally agree with you. My answer to Thom's question Will The Davos Billionaires Team Up Mean The End Of America? Is NO - they will NOT mean the end of America they will be the end of Western Civilisation. Just as America calls it Reaganomics and the Brits called it Thatcherism we had our version of Neoliberal economics called Economic Rationalism. I had a boss try and explain it to me back in the 1990s and he said the bizarre joke was they called it rational and there was nothing rational about it. My old boss used to ask: "What's rational about making slabs of the population unemployed by sending their jobs to China?" It didn't mean much to me in the 1990s but it means a lot these days. The bit where you're not quite right is that Neoliberalism is already well entrenched in Canada like it is everywhere else. What you're talking about is the CPC going EVEN FURTHER and becoming more Trump like and pushing neoliberalism to a new height. We have exactly the same problem here. FYI - I was in Canada for work late 2017 early 2018. When I heard Canadians speak about politics it was quite hard to figure out if they were talking about Canada or Australia. You guys talk about Ottawa in exactly the same terms we talk about Canberra. Had it not been for the accents and freezing cold I wouldn't have known I wasn't in Australia. Canada and Australia are so alike in so many ways its kind of scary. Everything has its equivalent.
    4
  20. I've been trying to warn people of exactly a French or Russian Peasant style revolution for the last few years. There's a report by the Congressional Budget Office on Family Wealth 1989-2019 released September 2022. Kyle Kulinski spoke about it last week after the Jacobin's Luke Savage Published a short piece on it. What's amazing is that not only was it published in September 2022 (almost 1 year ago) NOBODY on the America Left is talking about this - including Thom. FYI - I'm Australian but went to college in America and I can tell you for a fact that our data is no better. I regularly watch British economist Gary Stevenson here on YT and he's saying the same sorts of things about Britain. Here's the bit that I am furious that nobody is pointing out in that report. When you compare the 2010 data to 2007 you can see the effect of the GFC and when you compare 2019 to 2007 you can see how people have recovered. Since Australia, Britain and other places all run similar economic policies its safe to say its the same or similar everywhere. Here's the comparisons adjusted for population and in terms of the wealth per person in each group. The Top 10% LOST 11.1% of their wealth in the GFC but buy 2019 had recovered and were 21.7% UP The Middle 40% LOST 13.3% of their wealth in the GFC but buy 2019 had recovered and were 4.6% UP The Bottom 50% LOST 49.5% of their wealth in the GFC but buy 2019 were still DOWN 21.8% Yes 165 million Americans (and possibly more) had, by 2019, still NOT recovered from the 2008 GFC that they did not cause. Meanwhile the people who did cause the 2008 GFC and were bailed out with US$4 Trillion from Bush and another US$4 Trillion from Obama had not only recovered but had gained over $20 Trillion in collective wealth which has since grown another (estimated) US$8 Trillion during the pandemic years.
    4
  21. ​ @chriswilkinson7636  I forget who it was and it might have been Thom but they had an author on who'd done a similar book but more on the psychology of WHY people follow conspiracies. Just watch the arrogance they talk with and you'll see it. There's a channel called Scimandan. He's a Brit who debunks flat earthers and other nonsense people. Its staggering how much nonsense is being promoted. I think a lot of them KNOW its BS but they make money from the advertising on social media or sell merchandise.
    4
  22. HEY THOM. if you go and look at the Wikipedia page for Roe V Wade one of the major points that won the case when it was argued was the 4th Amendment right to privacy. The basis was that what happens between a doctor and their patient is PRIVATE. This is why in TV show after TV show you hear medical practitioners tell investigators to go and get a warrant. With the wiping away of Roe V Wade what Americans actually lost was the RIGHT to MEDICAL PRIVACY. Anyone who understands this was expecting this sort of stuff to happen.
    4
  23. Yeah go have a look at the Wikipedia page on her. She has a damn long history of of "questionable" actions and associations.
    3
  24. FINALLY SOMEBODY SAYS THE MOST OBVIOUS THING IN POLITICS "progressives are people who want the country to progress to move forward" How come none of the other clowns making all sorts of grand speeches can get that simple fact right?
    3
  25. That's actually a very good point, but then who would have thought the Supreme Court could have been stacked with radical maniacs. Who would have thought the Senate that exists to make sure other parts of the state function as intended could have become so corrupted that its made the entire US Government malfunction to the extent where a President can commit crime after crime and not face any justice. Look at the Judge in Florida and how biased she is. If you rate absurdity on a 1-10 point scale she's well over 1,000. The real question for Americans right now is: _"How did it get this far?"_. FYI - I'm Australian but went to college in America (late 80s). I did engineering but a bunch of friends were pre-law and we used to discuss things like the US Constitution regularly. Because I had studied Orwell (Animal Farm & 1984) in high school I used to argue that any country could fall into a totalitarian state because that was what Orwell warned. My friends, who had all done civics in high school, would argue that it was IMPOSSIBLE in America because of how the Constitution was written and how the system operates. I love to ask them right now how this has all happened? Because as an outside observer I am seeing things they told me were impossible.
    3
  26.  @DarylBark  Great comment and considering some of the idiotic stupidity I have seen in the last 24 hours MUCH NEEDED. Thanks.
    3
  27. Not really the definition of fascism but certainly the definition of corruption. More interesting are the originalists on SCOTUS because they voted for citizens united which certainly wasn't what the original writers of the constitution thought which is who they claim to channel.
    3
  28. Yeah in legal terms its called a SHlT defense but then that's all he's got right now.
    3
  29. Great idea and it wont ever happen anywhere where political parties have control. Do you really think they will cancel their money stream?
    3
  30. HEY THOM (and anyone else paying attention) the line you really want to quote to people like Rachel Campos-Duffy is by Jesus himself, because this line confuses the daylights out of them. Right at the start of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave what are called the The Beatitudes where Jesus said who would be blessed. The 3rd of those recorded in Matthew 5:5 is "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Just ask them how are the meek going to be blessed if they inherit a toxic garbage dump that wont support life? If you really want to confuse them, then ask them this. Considering one of Jesus tasks (as described in the bible Matthew 25:31-33) is to separate the sheep from the goats (as in likeable people from stubborn people). How is Jesus going to take it, when the planet that he wants these "meek" people to inherit IS TASHED BY YOU? There's a big hint at Matthew 25:40 and the verses that follow.
    3
  31. I have the same question - where is the charge of perjury???
    3
  32.  @falconquest2068  I'm Australian but went to college at Illinois in the late 80s. I can remember see the televangelist of those days and thinking this stuff is going to come back to haunt one day. What I try and explain to Americans is that this stuff has gone global. These sorts of institutions that get hijacked by right wing publicity and propaganda machines is common across the entire Western World. Australia has an array of right wing think tanks all calling themselves "something something INSTITUTE" all pretending to be neutral academic places where very smart people to outstanding work for the benefit of everyone. Does that sound familiar? Without doubt this stuff is a lot more visible in America, but its happening everywhere.
    3
  33. SORRY BUT - I went and checked this and maybe Thom could have done some checking too. There definitely is a direct link from Cannons husband (Josh Lorence) to John Rosatti, but there's not much of a link between John Rosatti and the Colombo crime family and nothing to suggest he's actually a mobster. According to FBI informant and former Colombo captain Salvatore "Big Sal" Miciotta "in late 1993, Victor Orena asked multi-millionaire businessman John Rosatti to provide cars from his dealership to be used to carry out murders, Rosatti declined and instead handed over $50,000 to Orena." (source Wikipedia on the page about the Colombo Crime Family). So there's no actual claim anywhere that Rosatti was actually a mobster just a claim that a mobster approached him at one time and the implication he paid money to NOT be involved.
    3
  34. To all of Thom's watchers. Trump endorsed Kari Lake whos running for governor of Arizona had a train wreck interview with Australian 60 Minutes that was broadcast free to air only hours ago. Before she stormed out she abused the reporter and gravely insulted Australia. FYI - I am Australian, I went to college in America and this might blow up. This wasn't some silly rant by some clown on YouTube this was a Trump endorsed candidate going off the rails. Don't forget Australia, Britain Canada and others just spent most of the last 20 years supporting America in Afghanistan and Iraq. It wasn't popular anywhere, but we stood by America. I was in Canada for work when Trump tore up NAFTA and hit them with tariffs. How do you all think this makes us feel about America? We are all now asking if there is anyway we can believe that America will be a reliable trading or security partner going forward.
    3
  35. Why not they now have almost absolute control of SCOTUS? With that level of control what can't they get done?
    3
  36. But what is your definition of "true democracy." I did a few classes in classical civilizations in college as part of a humanities sequence. Ancient Greece (particularly Athens - the birth place of democracy) was not even close to being fair but they elected their leaders. Of note Russia, even during the Soviet era, still had elections. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had elections. Democracy is fundamentally where leaders are chosen by a vote. There's nothing in it fundamentally that says it has to be fair or equal or just.
    3
  37.  @ishaq24722  Good comment 👍👍👍
    3
  38. Yeah I would agree but then what would you say about America? Because America since the end of WW2 repeatedly overthrown democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictatorships when those governments wouldn't do EXACTLY what America wanted. Here's 4 examples - Iran, Guatemala, Chile and Indonesia. FYI - I'm Australian. I love America. I went to college there on a sports scholarship, but American's are very badly informed on what some of America's 3 Letter agencies have done. Usually at the request of American business interests. Its something a lot more Americans need to ACCEPT and start dealing with. Most people around the world have no problems with the American people or their culture. Hey my team the 49ers is in the Superbowl this Sunday. BUT when it comes to what America does to other countries the American people are badly informed. You know how many Americans have this innate (almost insane) mis-trust of the US Government? Simple question -> How do you think the rest of us feel? Because we often wonder - who controls the CIA? Is it the US Government or the American billionaires? Don't forget George H. Bush was not only an oil tycoon but also head of the CIA at one point.
    3
  39.  @thomasskokan2001  I wouldn't doubt any of that because I have seen that sort of stuff everywhere I have been. We have parts of Australia just like it. We have country towns where I woudln't dare take a person from another country even if they were white. We also have parts of every major city I wouldn't go IN BROAD DAYLIGHT and at night our police are in full body protection. We don't like to put that on tourist brochures but everywhere has "Those places!" I was in central Saskatchewan a couple of years ago for a project. Loved it. Beautiful country and beautiful people. Then one day one of the guys from Regina warned me about a couple of nearby towns to where we were working. Clan towns he called them. When I asked WTF he meant he said there's a section of Sask that even the rest of Sask avoids. Its the sort of place a guy like Greg Abbott would be right at home. Every country has "Those places!"
    3
  40. I'm Australian and totally agree with you. My answer to Thom's question Will The Davos Billionaires Team Up Mean The End Of America? Is NO - they will NOT mean the end of America they will be the end of Western Civilisation. Just as America calls it Reaganomics and the Brits called it Thatcherism we had our version of Neoliberal economics called Economic Rationalism. I had a boss try and explain it to me back in the 1990s and he said the bizarre joke was they called it rational and there was nothing rational about it. My old boss used to ask: "What's rational about making slabs of the population unemployed by sending their jobs to China?" It didn't mean much to me in the 1990s but it means a lot these days.
    3
  41. Extend that to never trust ANYONE who ignores common sense and rules via an ideology. You can take any of the worlds "isms" and they all seem based on some basic sensible proposition. But if you let ideologues run rampant with it without any restraint then you get Stalinism, Reaganism, Thatcherism, Maoism, Feudalism. As a thought go and look at the worlds major environmental catastrophes and you get things like the Aral Sea, the destruction of the lower Colorado River, the mass destruction of Chinese Water ways, the depletion of the Southern California aquifer, destroyed rivers and other waterways across former Soviet Eastern Europe. And that's just looking at water. That's not even going near forest destruction, land degradation, toxic waste dumping or climate change let alone any of the social issues.
    3
  42.  @freyathewanderer6359  Australian here and YES we HAD some serious issues with Police and high intensity confrontations where they shot and killed too many people. We chose to NOT go down the American path and ended rethinking and then retraining every officer in the country on how to deal with high intensity situations. Even after all the effort we've made things still go wrong every so often, but at least we have nowhere near the issues America has. We don't have cops choking people to death in the street as people film it on their smartphones and our children can go to school and not get shot in a rampage.
    3
  43.  @geezzerboy  OH HELL YES THEY DO. The ramifications are massive and nobody knows what any of it might mean. You'd be right if you said they didn't WAN'T to care or if you said a large chunk of humanity doesn't care, but anyone who's awake is scared because of the effects and consequences.
    3
  44. Yeah Peter Zeihan has EXPLAINED that several times. Its got to do with certain historical strategic locations that the Russians like to control for security reasons. Ukraine isn't one of those locations but its on the way to 2 of them in Poland and Romania.
    3
  45. You've all quoted properly (for a change) valid biblical points and its impressive. Summarizing: Here are the top 5 reasons Jesus could not be a modern Republican. 1) He believed in universal health care, irrespective of a persons wealth or social status. 2) He believed in helping people who had no food by giving them food. 3) He defended people from unjust treatment, even those in questionable professions like tax collectors & prostitutes. 4) He believed in free public education. Shown when he gave FREE sermons like the famous one on the mount. 5) He didn't believe in profiting from religion. Shown when he threw the money exchangers out of the Temple. But there's also 2 practical reasons why Jesus could NOT be a modern Republican. Where among them would God find 3 wise men let alone a virgin?
    3
  46. Of course Jesus was too woke for them. He believed in free public health care. He believed in free education. He believed in paying your taxes to the government. He believed in feeding people who had no food. Most of all he actually cared about people and especially poor people.
    3
  47.  @davidlafleche1142  Yeah don't mention that to a Trumpster they might have a brain seizure.
    3
  48. Yeah its a great idea. In fact its a brilliant idea. Now explain what you are going to do about Pelosi and the other Dems who trade stocks with inside information? Because when they listed the top 25 in congress for insider trading the top 4 were GOP *BUT there were more Dems on the list than GOP. Pelosi was the top Dem at #5.
    3
  49. JUST LIKE Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan under the Taliban, except there'd be crosses.
    3
  50. Yeah you are right his famous quote on American fascists is a classic. I have been pointing this out to everyone Last week Richard Wolff pointed the December Congressional Budget Office report on Family Wealth. You can find it easily buy googling "congressional budget office family wealth" Look for the link referring to Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989 to 2019 The main graph on the web page is interactive and you can see the data for any year. The report is downloadable as a pdf. This is not any professor playing word games or some media hype. This is as official as it gets. That main graph shows. The top 10% of America has a combined wealth of $82.4 Trillion The 51st to 90th percentile has a combined wealth of $30.2 Trillion The bottom 50% of America has a combined wealth of $2.3 Trillion (about 1/36th what the top 10% have)
    3