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

  1. Its a great idea making the funding source known, but your idea of holding them accountable is a dangerous folly for the simple reason that such laws would allow any government to dictate its version of reality. That's exactly what Orwell warned about. The problem with problem solving is to have solutions that don't make the next problem or make the original problem worse. I'm an engineer and I've spent my life problem solving and it gets damn hard when you only have complicated machinery. It occasionally gets even harder when someone interferes. Trying to solve the problem if humanity is off the chart hard. Not only because its so complex but there always someone interfering. Further, that person is usually interfering with the INTENT of not letting the problem be solved. Its done around the world, but its nowhere more obvious than the American GOP and Mitch McConnell's Senate obstructionism. Its not as obvious in other countries but it does happen.
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  2. I really like Prof Wolff, because he's at the very least giving an educated alternative opinion on economics, but there are times he lets brain take it too far. To call Capitalism unstable is to ignore what the terms stable and unstable actually mean. I'm an engineer and we have to learn and understand what stable and unstable actually mean because otherwise the modern world can't exist. Power stations and the power grid wont work, your car wont work and airplanes will tear themselves apart mid-air- that kind of stuff. Sorry this is a longish explanation. This is basic high school science level. Something that is naturally stable is something that will self correct from a disturbance. An example of stable system is a ball in a bowl. If you bump the bowl and the ball moves, it will eventually settle back down to the bottom of the bowl. An unstable system will not recover from a disturbance. If you balance a broom stick on its end. Any disturbance and it will just fall over. HOWEVER if we stand the broom stick upright on our hand and move our hand to correct for disturbances you then have something not entirely stable or unstable. We call that "artificially stable," as in there is something else keeping the system in a stable state. In engineering we have many systems that are artificially stable and quite often there's a combination of stabilisers. The suspension in your car has shock absorbers that allow you to hit bumps and not have the suspension bounce around. There's also the tires and suspension geometry. A main part of it is the drivers brain which makes corrections like steering inputs. One of the incredibly important concepts of artificially stable systems is that the stabilisers have limits and if you exceed those limits the system can break or fail. If 1 of the shock absorbers fails and reduces the cars stability. If the car hits a big enough bump and shock absorbers reach their limit. IF driver's brain cannot compensate then the car crashes. Modern capitalist systems are "artificially stable." There are shock absorbers and adjustments that governments use to keep there economies stable. Part of that system are interest rates, but there's also government spending (via policies and projects), the rate at which they print new money, bond rates and the regulations they place on private industry (like banking rules). The real problem is we are now bumping into the limits that our economic stabilisers can handle.
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  3. I'm Australian but went to college in America. I spent one of my Spring Breaks doing what us Australians call "walk about." In 9 days I did about 2,000 miles. I started in Illinois went down to Texas across to New Orleans, Alabama and Florida before heading back to Illinois. It was the late 80s and I never saw any of this stuff down there. All I met were decent friendly people who thought my accent was funny and wondered if I was Crocodile Dundee's cousin. There were hints that there were people who thought a little this way. The televangelists like Jim Baker were ranting and raging before they all got caught in sex scandals. BUT NONE OF IT WAS THIS BAD. Most of my experiences in America were really great. This stuff isn't the America I remember and I really do hope you guys can start finding some political leaders who actually care about America rather than playing these culture war issues. And so you know we also have some of this culture war nonsense but not this bad. Yeah I know Rupert Murdoch is partly to blame and we are sorry for his existence BUT THEN we did warn you like we had warned the Brits what he was like.
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  4.  @marvinmartin4692  It might sound like a great idea but the last thing anyone should wish for is a peasant revolution. They tend to get very destructive and out of control very quickly because they involve so much rage and anger. Go look at the French & Russian examples.
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  5. EVERYONE - search for "porky's tallywacker scene" For millennials and zoomers go ask your uncle or aunt about it. I just want to here MTG say the words "incriminating mole" and "I'd recognise it anywhere!"
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  6. Australian here and although that stuff is all well before my time I have met older Australians WHO STILL RESENT the American GIs that came to Australia. There was a perception that they were lazy and instead of fighting the Japanese they were here shagging our women, which to some extent was certainly true. One thing that didn't help at all was Eddie Leonski an American GI who beat and strangled 3 women in Melbourne. Oddly he was tried, convicted and hanged under American law. We just provided the rope.
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  7. HEY THOM You really need to bring Professor Robert McChesney in on discussions of the media and how its been slowly eroded over decades. He was one of the people who helped make the 2004 documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" He's actually a professor from my Alma Mater, but joined the faculty after I graduated. Circa 2008/09 he was here in Australia on a book tour. I caught the 2nd half of one of his talks on TV. At the time I didn't realise who he was, but I do remember an incredible point that he brought out. After WW2 most American newspapers had people around the country and the majors had people around the world. Journalists actually went out of the office and met people. So if you heard on the radio or read in the newspaper and they quoted someone it was because a journalist had gone and met that person and asked questions and written down their replies. The stories that weren't done that way were about actors, sports stars and businessmen which involved PR people. I remember that after Robert McChesney explained how journalists used to work he then explained that there were around 4 or 5 journalists for every PR person AT THAT TIME. Then when news papers, radio and TV started to merge into larger and larger conglomerates that ratio of 5 to 1 started to change. Shareholders didn't care about facts. They wanted dividends. Into that environment came people like Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell and others. By the early 2000s that ratio of 5 to 1 had flipped to 1 to 5. Journalists didn't go and meet people. They stayed at their desks pumping out story after story chasing clicks. Information in stories STOPPED coming from research and started coming from PR people. Journalists shifted from doing research and investigating to "cutting & pasting & posting" from what the PR people handed them. Think about how many news stories in the media (all types) are just like an advertisement. I'm certain you already know some of this. But you should really try and get Robert McChesney on. he's done a couple of interviews for people like Paul Jay (the Analysisnews)
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  8. For everyone interested here's the full Henry Wallace quote from the New York Times, April 9, 1944 “The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
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  9. Well done I think you've made the important distinction. American G.I.s didn't believe Tokyo Rose but a fair number of the 74 million who voted for Trump think everything out of Tuckers mouth is gold. I wont be surprised if (and or when) he's named as Trumps VP running mate.
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  10. You do realise that if you compare someone who got a score of 2 out 10 on a test to someone who got 1 out of 10 on the same test you'd be able to claim that the first person did twice as well as the second person and FALSLEY ASSUME the first person was fantastic for doing twice as well. But 2 out of 10 as a test score is a FAIL. Biden might be twice the human being Trump is, but that doesn't make him a successful POTUS who deserves a second term.
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  11.  @ld3511  Somebody did a vid story on tax evasion and hidden money in America around the time they slapped sanctions on the Russian Oligarchs after Russia invaded Ukraine. It might have been Thom. They pointed out that Delaware is the world capital of shelf companies. Its the easiest place in the world to set-up a company and avoid tax. After Delaware, Idaho is the next easiest place to set up a company and its even better because its incredibly easy to hide who owns the company. They think there's several Trillion dollars in Russian monetary assets that were taken out and washed through the London Laundromat and then deposited into the Idaho blackhole of financial secrecy. So sorry to disappoint but as far as I know Texas is (at best) number 3.
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  12. Actually NO. Bernie needs to take on the role of the elder wiseman and guide the next generation to NOT make the mistakes he made and get better outcomes. Bernie's too old and he's had his go. What he should have done AFTER 2020 was grab the younger people like Ossoff, Warnock, Padilla and get them organised to do stuff in the Senate. Bernie should have dragged Andrew Yang away from the corporatist scum in the DNC and guided him. Yang was lead to the slaughter house by the DNC. That question that killed his New York run was a setup. Bernie should have jumped in and helped Warnock smash Herschel Walker. That race should never have gone to a run off. At the first go that should have ended in complete humiliation for the GOP. Bernie can't be president but he can be the Bill Belichick who coaches and guides a team.
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  13. 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.
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  14. AUSTRALIAN HERE: Thom you are wrong on where the Australian Liberal party is on the political spectrum. They ARE NOT far Right but Centre right. However they have been steadily moving to the right for the last 25years or so. Economically speaking they are almost identical to America's Democrats. The National party of Australia which forms the junior partner of the Liberal-National Coalition is further to the right and is closer to the rural conservatives of the American Republican Party. In recent years we have had some smaller parties emerge that are VERY FAR Right like Clive Palmer's United Australia Party which is just one of its names. Clive is like Trump a billionaire of dubious means and with questionable business practices. Clive's ideology is almost identical to people like Charles Koch and his Party is similar to the American Tea Party. FYI - I went to college in America and even though I did engineering I am reasonably familiar with the differences between the American Liberals and American Libertarians. The way I would describe that difference is as an outsider looking in is: American Liberals believe that individual Liberty is best defended by a healthy set of regulations and laws upheld by a functioning court system and effective government so that no individual can be stripped of their basic rights by another person or a corporate entity and that they can get restitution through the courts from injury. American Libertarians believe that individual Liberty is best defended by removing any and all controls the government has except the protection of the state from foreigner nations, the protection of individual property through the police and that the main purpose of the courts is to uphold contracts. That was expressed by Milton Friedman many times.
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  15. Actually, there's some veracity in that. I'm Australian but in the aftermath we an English Historian explain WHY? It turns out that Bush Senior and Bin Laden Snr did oil business together and to help that they set up their sons to do some business together. So Dubya owned a business 50/50 with a Bin Laden. Its been many years so I might have some details less than perfect. Osama wasn't the Bin Laden Bush did business with that was another of the 17 (or so) Bin Laden boys. Osama was way down the Bin Laden list. His mother was Lebanese?? and became wife number 4 via a business deal. Osama's older brothers used to give him crap so he became the "better Muslim" and to prove that joined the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan to fight against the godless Russians. That 1 brother who was in business with Bush supposedly told Osama "I get what your doing and its commendable. If you get in trouble call me, my business partner's father is ex-CIA and now Vice POTUS." Osama goes to Afghanistan where they are getting hammered by the Russians with their helicopter gunships. Osama calls his brother who calls Bush Jnr who calls Bush Snr and Osama gets stinger missiles and lots of Russian helicopters get shot out of the sky. That brother who supported Osama gets whacked by a Saudi Prince who then takes a chunk of Bin Laden enterprises for himself. Osama calls George Bush Jnr and says something like "We have to get this Saudi Prince" to which Duba says "*NO WAY* we do business with him!" Osama does NOT take that well. In his brain that's a kind of super-hyper-betrayal and decides American has to be punished and we know how that went. Again I might have some details wrong but my understanding is that it was super personal with Dubya over the murder of his brother by a Saudi Prince.
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  16. "Word has it" journalistic lingo to let you know what's about to be said has NOT BEEN FACT CHECKED.
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  17. Will The Davos Billionaires Team Up Mean The End Of America? NO - they will NOT mean the end of America they will be the end of Western Civilisation.
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  18. One of the parents at Uvalde recognised what was left of their child by the green sneakers they wore. (edit) That was the most chilling story out of it I heard. Matthew McConaughey mentioned it in his address.
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  19. ​ @soulslip  I'll give you this explanation and sorry if its a longish. I'm Australian but went to college in America. I did engineering but a bunch of my friends were pre-law and they used to drag me into all sorts of discussions probably because I could throw in different perspectives. I uses to argue all the time that any country could fail and fall into a totalitarian dictatorship because that was the main lesson I got from studying Orwell (Animal Farm and 1984) in high school. I didn't mind Animal Farm but 1984 was a headache for teenager but these days I'm grateful. One thing people sometimes miss with Orwell is that he wasn't really anti-communist but anti-dictatorship and dictatorships can be Left (like Soviet Russia, Communist China,...) or Right (like Imperial Russia or Imperial China. Iran is an interesting case because before its current Right wing RELIGIOUS dictatorship it had a Right wing monarchy. The point Orwell made was that dictatorships can take almost any from from almost any political system. People forget the Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were elected. As was Mussolini and his Fascists. My friends used to argue that I was wrong. America could NEVER FAIL because America had this system of "checks and balances." It was hardwired into the American system with multiple layers - POTUS with executive control, The House who write laws, The Senate who make certain bigger states don't dominate an SCOTUS who check those institutions are doing things in a lawful way. What NONE of us every discussed was what might happen if that system of checks and balances was undermined by very determined people with enough money to get what they wanted. There's a great PBS Frontline on Citizens United. Its here on YT and EVERY person who lives in a democracy should watch it. Its title is "How the Citizens United Decision Changed U.S. Political Campaigns" About 20 minutes in they interview the lawyer who won Citizens United. His name is Jim Bopp and he started as a pro-lifer and wanted abortions banned. To get what he wanted he had to be able to make money work how he wanted it to work. It was also exactly what some of the Fossil Fuel billionaires needed to get what they wanted. I once had the term "High Machiavellian" explained to me. Machiavelli has been wrongly credited with approving of "the end justifies the means" when in fact he was describing how certain people operated. Its important to understand this isn't about how people "act" but how they "operate" because operation implies planning and goals rather than just responding. If you watch that documentary Jim Bopp is a "High Machiavellian" and that means he truly believes that he has to do whatever it takes to get the end result he wants and any collateral damage is irrelevant. So when he says Citizens United was necessary to democracy he really believes it because the consequences to other people is irrelevant because his task was to rid America of "Roe V Wade." Nothing else mattered to him and his people. At the same time its also allowed the billionaires who backed Jim Bopp to get the people they wanted elected to congress and put on SCOTUS so they could dismantle the IRS, FBI, EPA, FDA, FAA and any other 3 letter agency that restricted their profits. The craziest aspect of throwing out "Roe V Wade" is that its also thrown out the right to privacy over medical records that were (past tense) covered by the 4th Amendment. Go look up the Wikipedia page on Roe V Wade. One of the main arguments was the right to privacy between a medical practitioner and their patient. Remember how on all those TV crime shows like "Law and Order" where they'd go to a doctor and ask for something and the doctor would say "Go get your warrant" and the judge would say "give me a GOOD SOUND reason or go away." Yeah sorry mate but that's gone. Because when Jim Bopp finally got what he wanted he also threw out you basic right to privacy over your medical records. America is now a lesson to the rest of the Western democratic world that if you allow High Machiavellians to go unchecked they will eventually do staggering amounts of damage to your nation and society that CANNOT be easily fixed. Sorry for the length of this but I have a soft spot for America and wished I did have magic wand to fix it. I really had a great time going to college there. The vast bulk of Americans I met are good people and they deserve better than the situation they now have.
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  20. As an engineer I am READY TO SCREAM AT PEOPLE WHO BLAME THE WAR IN UKRAINE FOR ENERGY PRICES. Energy prices across the world have been rising for years all that the war in Ukraine has done is exacerbated the situation. The reason why every economist on the planet keeps claiming its the war is because they don't want to admit it was the widespread privatisation of energy assets that they championed during the 1990s that's caused this. I have spent a lot of time over the last few years informally studying economics so that I could make the argument for what they did. Prior to privatisation when governments built big massive energy projects like Tennessee Valley (America) or Snowy Hydro (Australia) or the nuclear programs in Canada, Britain, France, Japan they had 2 main metrics - GDP growth and Employment. It was a fairly simple concept they built the power stations ahead of the demand created by population growth. It created lots of extra energy so that factories and businesses could be started and they'd have cheap power making it easier to EMPLOY people and be profitable. When the flipped to privatised power ALL OF THAT WENT OUT THE DOOR. Private companies have no social responsibility to GDO growth or employment. Milton Freidman said "There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits..." Its just taken 25 years for the privatisation nightmare to get to this point where we are shutting down older power stations NOT because they have emissions or they are nuclear BUT BECAUSE they are just so old they can't keep running. Just this week in Australia we shut down the Liddell power station which just adds to our list of power stations we have shut down. We have built out a huge amount of solar and wind but NONE OF THAT is BASE LOAD POWER which is what industry needs.
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  21. I'm an Australian who went to college in America (late 80s) and have been warning that this is a huge issue to Australia, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Britain, Europe, the Philippines and many others. For so many America is our most important trading partner and MORE IMPORTANTLY our most important security partner. Like others we've staked our security future on things like the F35.
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  22. 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.
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  23. TO ALL: I am an Australian engineer and there is some very concerning stuff here and some stuff that really doesn't mean anything. The cruise ship stuff doesn't really mean anything. It might be something that's easily explainable. In any form of engineering there are parts that can be used almost anywhere. The fact that somebody used the same generators and pumps off a cruise ship might not look good to the average person but it means nothing compared to the FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS and REQUIREMENTS. The "what does it have to do" stuff. For any engineered system the first question that should be asked is "What does it have to do?" followed by a string of questions regarding how well it has to do it. So for emergency generators and pumps it starts with things like: How fast does it have to respond? What's the minimum amount of time it has to be able to run at full power? If its a generator what's the power does it has to deliver? If its a pump how much water (flow rate & pressure) must it be capable of pumping? HOW RELIABLE DOES IT HAVE TO BE? Those answers become the Functional Specifications and Requirements. It may or may not include the specific industry. What can happen is that devices made for one industry are well enough designed to meet the requirements and or standards of other industries. An emergency generator for a cruise ship would have to have very high reliability because part of its specification would be the ship is at sea, in a storm and help is days away. Forget nuclear power station and cruise ship and think - its an emergency system so when its actually needed ITS AN EMERGENCY. I work in control system and part of that are the control circuits behind those big red buttons with EMERGENCY STOP written on them. You'd be amazed how many people, including other engineers, who just forget that the reason someone actually presses and E/STOP is because something bad is already happening. The REQUIREMENTS for any EMERGENCY device isn't what it has to do when everything is normal. It has to do its job when the shit has already hit the fan and being thrown everywhere. So the cruise ship stuff is meaningless BUT the failure to perform as SPECIFIED and REQUIRED is absolutely scream as loud as you can stuff.
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  24. Sorry to break it to you Thom but this Rabbi is just doing what so many other people have done. Rabbi Kulka, like others, is trying to fit text written 1000s of years ago in an ancient language to suit their narrative. Anybody who has ever taken a simple honest examination of the first chapter of Genesis knows that what he is claiming about Adam being androgynous is complete nonsense. Its just as stupid as so many other clowns who try and fit some part of the bible or any other religious text to their narrative.
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  25. If you have ever had a person who's a narcissistic sociopath in your life you'd recognise what's happening. Unfortunately I had a friend back in the 90s who went this way. For the first year or so he was fine, fun, helpful on a few things, but eventually just became overbearing to me and others in our circle. He started to interfere in our affairs and become divisive. Once we realised what was going on we flicked him off and that's when things went this way. The single biggest stressor to narcissists is REJECTION and losing the 2020 election was something a person like Trump could never handle. In these circumstances they become destructive. Its only a matter of how destructive and in what ways they become destructive. PLUS Trump has never been held accountable before or at least not like this. Having experience this (even in a far smaller way) I can see the same things - Trump blames everyone else for his own actions and lashes out at anyone who questions him and throws them under the bus. Hilary Clinton who's also a narcissist (just not as bad) couldn't handle losing to Trump and was still blaming others years after the fact. She lashed out at Bernie Sanders claiming he cost her the election despite the fact he'd campaigned for her after she got the nomination.
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  26. I'm an Australian who went to college in America (late 80s) and have been warning that this is a huge issue to Australia, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Britain, Europe, the Philippines and many others. 1) Don't be ashamed to be an American. Be ashamed of SOME Americans. I have gotten into some arguments that America doesn't lack for good leaders. It lacks for them in positions of power. America's real problem is the combination of the stagnant, decrepit duopoly that is the Dems & GOP. Its not one or the other ITS THE COMBINATION. 2) Also realise that for so many countries, America is our most important trading partner and MORE IMPORTANTLY our most important security partner. Like others we've staked our security future on things like the F35. I was actually in Canada (for work) when Trump tore up NAFTA and hit them with tariffs. How TF do you treat your neighbor like that, that's without even considering its Canada the one of the politest countries in the world.
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  27.  @terrymyre8815  I spent 4 months in Sask a few years ago and loved the place. I even got used to the cold. Go Roughriders.
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  28. Then how can we see it??????
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  29.  @A_kiwis_view  The problem is the higher the pressure on society before it snaps the more brutal the response. Look at the French and Russian Revolutions for examples. Prior tot he French Revolution the French were the technically dominant society on the planet. They lead the world in math, chemistry, astronomy and engineering. its actually staggering where they were and most of it ended up in the hands of the English. I don't think that America is going to simply lose I think they are going to lose huge if they don't stop going down this path.
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  30. ​ @justadbeer  Your right to some extent. What your forgetting is that America made the rest of the world dependant on it and in particular security but it wasn't the only thing. You should go and listen to Peter Zeihan who's a geopolitical strategist. I don't agree with all that he says particularly when he talks technology, but then I'm an engineer. People like yourself are quite right. The rest of us all run to America when there's a problem. But then a lot of those problems were in part caused by various American entities in the first place. Lost in the disaster of Ukraine are a string of broken promises that America made to Russia after the fall of the Soviet System. Then there's all the economic interference that Americans advised Russia on that lead to the rise of the Russian Oligarchs. I recently heard Jeffrey Sachs, whining about how the Russians didn't listen to their advice. BS - the Russians are in the mess they are in because they DID LISTEN to American advisors who told them to sell of all their state assets. What your also forgetting is that BEFORE WW2 was even over there was the Breton Woods conference. Where America with its staggering gold reserve basically forced the rest of us to accept the US Dollar as the future worlds reserve currency. Along with that (as Peter Zeihan points out) American basically promised the rest of us it would keep international trade safe. With that we all agreed to be the cannon fodder between American capitalism and Soviet Communism. Peter even points out that China would never have had the chance for its economic growth without America keeping the world's trade routes safe and open. So there's been a lot of benefits and costs to all of us. The bug in that whole system is that certain American's learned how to take advantage of the system and these people are now a problem for ALL OF US. I'm Australian but went to college in America. I'm a very rare person in that I'm a huge fan of the US Constitution. I often say that I believe its one of the greatest achievements in human history AND I REALLY DO BELIEVE THAT. However the US Constitution is not perfect and the institutions it birthed are now failing. Without doubt SCOTUS is one of the most important institutions in the world and its been so badly corrupted that its almost non-functional and that has some incredibly serious consequences. No matter what the rest of us feel about any particular American or the nation, American is still 1/4 of the world's economy and almost all international trade is reliant on the US Dollar. Either that trade is done in $US or the transactions are done via banks that operate in $US. That's what it is to be the World's reserve currency AND NONE OF US ASKED FOR IT - we inherited it and a dysfunctional America is a nightmare. So you might think that Russia is the topic but in fact America is ALWAYS the topic. America wanted to be number 1. Well you got there and with that comes responsibility and if America has an Achilles heel its responsibility. None us are really good at it, but we aren't the World's reserve currency. Our Economists don't trapse around re-organising other countries. Our agencies don't sneak in and overthrow governments so our companies can come in and strip those nations. Most of all we don't have an arsenal of nuclear weapons to wave at people like its a giant middle finger. Apologies for the long rant.
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  31.  @ronschafer4533  Short, blunt and also sadly true.
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  32.  @justadbeer  If you look through the comments you'll find there are a lot of Australians and others watching people like Thom. I don't think Americans really get how scared we are of an American collapse and I don't just mean financial. Trump has tapped into a staggering amount of anger and frustration that IS LEGITIMATE. Richard Wolff who's a Marxist economist had this great comment about West Virginia in one of the Michael Brooks tributes (panel 3 just before 35mins). He points out how much the Dems & GOP have screwed those people. Trump gave them an alternative to being screwed yet again. I keep pointing out to Americans there's Congressional Budget Office report Bernie Sanders had updated on Family Wealth 1989-2019. If you just look at the first graph it shows how screwed 50% of America really is. Even when the economy has been better they haven't been better. The Top 10% have got it better the middle 40% have had it reasonable but the bottom 50% have been screwed and screwed and screwed. I've checked what I can of Australian data and its the same basic story. It should be because many of our top economists went to Harvard, Yale,.... etc. Trump and people like him aren't the problem. They're symptoms of a much larger economic issue. Thom is one of the very few with even 1/2 a grasp of it. He understands what the Neoliberals have done. What he might not realise is that they have done it across the entire Western World. But here's the issue. If Australia collapses, then so what? We won't take the world down with us. Neither will many other countries. BUT if America collapses we all go down. Global trade relies on the US dollar because back in 1944 at Breton Woods we all agree it would be the World's reserve currency. So if the US dollar breaks the worlds economy breaks. We can't afford 4 more years of either Biden or Trump, but especially Trump. I can give legitimate security and financial security reasons to at least 100 countries to give him a Chitown love tap. FYI - I went to college at U. of Illinois so I know what a Chitown love tap is. And I do mean that we really can't have Trump 2.0.
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  33. "Word has it" journalistic lingo to let you know what's about to be said has NOT BEEN FACT CHECKED.
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  34. HEY THOM. Can you please interview Prof. Mark Blyth from Brown. Several times he ahs brought up a study that says if America triple glazed its office towers which use massive amounts of energy it would no t only reduce America's energy needs which would then reduce prices because energy demand would reduce (as per Econ 101). Also it would save so much energy that it would put America well on the way to meeting any of the 2050 emissions targets. Its easy to find studies and articles on this via google. In particular all those monstrous class towers that clown brained architects have been designing since the 1970s EITHER get incredibly hot and need cooling OR they get cold and need heating. I am an engineer and this is a no brainer. Its not common knowledge outside the engineering space but people have discussed these sorts of things for years now. Its almost like a standing joke about how INEFFICIENT those pretty class towers are.
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  35. Henry A. Wallace, Vice President of the United States in the New York Times, April 9, 1944 “The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
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  36. We'll know which days he got rid off stuff. We'll just have to check for the days they called a plumber to unblock the toilet.
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  37. As soon as one of these pro-business libertarians clowns explains why the rest of the human race had to bail out the billionaires in 2008 I might listen to what they have to say. Libertarian economics can be simply summed up: "I want what I want and you can go f--k yourself"
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  38. What a great quote.👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
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  39. We not only chose to ignore the science our governments and the people who voted for them chose to listen to the same people who LIED and LIED and LIED and LIED about tobacco. The world never held any of the liars who campaigned for tobacco accountable and we are now paying for that mistake.
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  40. This could just as easily BACKFIRE on the GOP because a massive chunk of their base are poor anti-government types who might just as easily not pay their fines.
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  41.  @matthewingerson  Calling Thom Hartmann a right winger is about as stupid as it gets. He's certainly not as Left as prof Wollf, but he's no right winger. Can people just stop trying to paint everything black and white. Humanity is 7.8billion shades of grey.
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  42.  @matthewingerson  Long comment and I agree on most of especially the fact that America does not have left and right parties America has right and far right parties. The Democrats have none of the basic history of parties like the communist and socialist parties they have in Europe or the union derived Labor parties found in the British commonwealth countries. Plus America allows certain things in its politics like insider trading and unlimited political funding that no other country has or wants to have.
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  43. What makes you think its just Americans?? I'm Australian and at times it feels like 2/3rds of the country has lost its mind. We may not have gone as far off the deep end as America but it feels like we're trying to catch up.
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  44.  @mtn1793  Adam Tooze the Economics Historian in a discussion with Mark Blyth called them the GOP a "ruthlessly cynical political actor." They'll scream and yell about the Dems doing something and when they do exactly that things telling everyone its something else entirely. its seems to be a very right wing thing EVERYWHERE. Here in Australia, we just voted them out of power and no sooner had they been booted out they started screaming about holding the incoming Labor Party government accountable. Just this week we found out the previous Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) secretly breached our constitution. Plus their spokesman on the military blasted off about solving our navy's submarine problem when he'd had 8 years to fix it AND FAILED. There seems to be this incredulous hypocrisy with right wing parties these days. How often do we hear; "We are the party of Law and order" and we see them break laws. "We are the party of a strong military" and we they make stupid military mistakes and solve them with more spending. "We are the financially responsible party" and we see them pander to the banks and spend like drunken frat boys. I'm not saying the Left in any country are innocent of political shitfuckery (as we now call it) but the Right everywhere seem to have taken it to new levels in recent years.
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  45. 1st question I'd have is: What's it like to win the "FAKE" Nobel prize? 2nd would be: Were your born this arrogant or did you take classes? 3rd would be: What makes you think sending 50% of the population backwards, keeping 40% of the population stagnant, letting 9% be reasonably well off and letting 1% run off with everything while paying no tax and collapsing the American manufacturing is sound economics? The only favor Milton Friedman ever did the human race was stop breathing on November 16, 2006, which was 94 years overdue.
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  46.  @candorsspot2775  Yeah its real funny how you narcissists always have the same answer. FK-OFF and take your sociopathic narcissism and get the FK out of our lives.
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  47. Australian here and since you're from California I have a question. What would you say to a Newsom-Harris ticket where Kamal stays as VP? Because as an outsider looking in I can't see Kamala winning. She's terrible on the Campaign trail as was shown 4 years ago when she could not even win California (her home state). HOWEVER her coming on as Newsom's VP it gets past the funding issues that I keep hearing about and Newsom is a lot better of a campaigner. Is age also would get past many of the issues the Democrats now have. FYI - I went to college in America on a sports scholarship (U. Illinois) and spent 2 of my 3 summers in California. I did engineering but a bunch of my friends were pre-law and they used to drag me into their discussions. So I got an unusual education into how the American system is supposed to work but that's a longer discussion. But for this question just assume I have a reasonable understanding of American politics and how it works and I am genuinely interested in what you think of the possibility of Newsom-Harris ticket.
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  48.  @rjung_ch  You are right nobody really needs an Aston Martin. But the people who make them and the people who make all the bits that go into them do need somebody to buy them. You'd be right saying they could be doing something else, but if you don't have those few companies pushing the technology limits then development can simply stop. We wouldn't have things like safety cells, airbags, and ABS brakes if there weren't companies like Aston Martin. The problem isn't there are Aston Martins. It isn't even the person who can afford one. Its the people who can afford 1 for each day of the year. The Sultan of Brunei is rumoured to have a bunch of Ferrari F40s. Not a bunch of Ferrari's this is a bunch of just 1 type and most have barely been driven at all. That's simply absurd. The real problem are the super rich who collectively hoard TRILLIONS of Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Yen and other currencies in tax havens.
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  49. Its America NOT France. The French had a rule that if the guillotine blade stuck then you got to go free. It was sort of God's choice. Unfortunately it was a very rare thing.
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  50. Yeah I kind of agree. As the saying goes if you lay with dogs expect to wake up with fleas. He chose to work for Trump, he wasn't forced and I don't hear him accepting a lot of responsibility.
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