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

  1.  @mikeboothe  I the classic libertarian mantra. "I want what I want and everyone else can go to hell"
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  2.  @brucehitchcock3869  Do you know what Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia and Iraq all have in common? They all had democratically elected governments overthrown with the support of America. Yeah even Saddam Hussein operated a democracy and won elections. Sure they were corrupt but he was an elected head of state that America handed over for execution. Allende's mistake was that he told the CIA to go away and Chile would do what they wanted to do with their natural resources. And Chile has the best copper resources in the world. Several of the worlds leading engineering companies have major offices in Santiago to support that industry. I'm an engineer and after oil, gas and iron the next most important resource for building the world as you know it is COPPER. Think about how many devices you own with copper in them? Every electrical device you own has copper. Then there's the water and gas piping. Then there's all the other uses in alloys - brass, bronze, etc. If you control the worlds best copper resources you control the worlds economy. Allende's mistake was not realising how ruthless the world he lived in really is.
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  3.  @nedludd7622  Absolutely correct. If you want to see one of the more poignant memes of all time type into google "aboriginal meme boat people" I forget who originally drew it but when there were a staggering number of boats coming with middle eastern asylum seekers in the post 9/11 era the Howard government stated "We'll decide who comes here and under what conditions" there was a political cartoon that started that meme. So yeah mate MOST but not all Australians of European descent are well aware we are the descendants of boat people. I'm of Anglo descent - last name wilson is kinda obvious. As far as I know both my mothers and fathers families came here late 1800s BY BOAT. Also most of Australia's post WW2 immigration was by boat. We call them "10 pound Poms" not because they weighed 10 pounds but the ticket to Australia for Brits cost £10. In that Post WW2 era we also got a massive influx of Italians, Greeks and Turks with a scattering of other Europeans who just wanted out of the mess that Europe was and they all came by boat. I checked to see if America had an equivalent meme. Just google "native american meme immigration"
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  4. Just so we are a bit more clear. In that post WW2 era Australia needed to replace the men we'd lost fighting all over Europe and Asia as well as grow. We were a very small population and most of the people who came we needed. We did this massive power and irrigation scheme that was our equivalent of the Tennessee Valley project called the Snowy River Scheme. Most of it was built by European migrants. In my home state of Victoria we built out the Latrobe Valley power stations that enabled our manufacturing to grow. Most of that was done by European migrants. So its not like we haven't had massive influxes in the past. The problem Australia has right now is we already have a triple whammy of housing crisis, energy crisis and water crisis all at the same time. We've had mismanagement FROM BOTH SIDES of politics. Our elections for decades have been a choice of what kind of SHlT we'll eat for the next 3 years.
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  5. ​ @nedludd7622  Yeah the Brits made a mess of Palestine. By the time of the post WW2 "what do we do now" moment the Brits basically just wanted to get TF out of that mess. They TIRED to tell everyone it was going to end in tears, but then everyone wanted everything without any compromises. I actually went to college in America (U. of Illinois) and I had an really weird moment at a party where I encountered some hard core Zionists. I had no idea who they were or what their issue with me was. The next day I told one of my best friends who was Jewish about what happened. 30+ years later I still remember him putting his hand to his face and saying "Oh shit, you've met them." He then explained to me how the "ultra-Zionists" as he called them were the Jewish equivalent of the KKK. They are what we now tend to call "ultra-nationalists." The craziest thing about what my friend told me was that for however nasty they were to me they'd be much worse to him because he had friends who weren't Jewish. It was a really good point about ultra-nationalists we don't often hear about. They might be vicious to outsiders, but they are even more vicious to their own people because they need to keep them in line. We see this in a number of regimes that are incredibly harsh to their own people as they claim how they are "protecting the state" or "protecting their culture" from bad influences.
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  6. YEARS AGO BACK IN THE 1990s I remember and American psychologist explaining these sorts of mass shooters and he labelled it "Rambo Syndrome." These days some people call it "suicide by cop." I always thought the Rambo label was wrong because the movie character John Rambo never tried to commit suicide, while the people who do these sorts of shootings are trying to commit suicide. There's nothing new in this explanation as psychologists have been trying to explain it for several decades. However there are 2 other types of people who do this. 1) The mentally disturbed attention seeker. I'm Australian and Martin Bryant who murdered 35 people and injured 23 others in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which at the time was the worst mass shooting in the world, is an example. He has a very low IQ and is borderline mentally retarded. He's very rare in that he survived the incident and was interviewed by police and psychologists. Just recently the police interviews were released. They're chilling because they show his excitement at the attention he was getting. 2) The ex-military PTSD sufferer who has a disconnect with reality. Again we have an example of this in Australia with Julian Knight who shot 7 people dead and injured 19 more in 1987. He'd been dumped from the Army for psychological reasons after stabbing a superior. On a documentary about that massacre they showed excerpts of his walk around the scene of the killings. Its chilling just how disconnected from reality he was. On that documentary a childhood friend related how several weeks later when the fog had cleared from his brain and he realised what he'd done he curled up in a ball and cried for 3 days. Its a sad example of the military recruiting somebody they should not have recruited, then teaching him some lethal skills and then dumping him out the back door like a hand grenade with the pin pulled.
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  7. WHAT Trumps punishment SHOULD BE versus WHAT IT WILL BE are 2 very, very, very, very different things. Sadly the fact is Trump is an ex-US President and as such is entitled to Secret Service protection. So whatever happens must take that into consideration and that's just the first of many things. No matter what anyone thinks this is an extraordinary event for America. Despite all that various America presidents have done over 200+ years deserving of punishment Trump is the FIRST convicted in a criminal court. This puts America into unchartered territory and NOBODY knows where it will go.
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  8. You are 1/2 right. Bernie needs to stay out of 2024 and 2028 no matter who is running. 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. And for exactly the same reasons Biden needs to do similar. Kamala is not worth discussing. Not unless something seriously changes and she steps up her game orders of magnitude.
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  9. Thom I think you'll find they want to go all the way back to the original form of Democracy in Ancient Athens when only "citizens" got to vote. In that system the only people who were citizens were men and only those who had been vouched for of who had the money to join the club. The other 99% of the population were women, children and slaves.
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  10. HEY TOM and everyone else here's an idea. According to the Originalists like Neil Gorsuch unless its stipulated by congress then nothing is allowed that wasn't already in existence at the time they wrote the constitution. Under their logic abortions are not allowed because they came after the constitution was written. Under their logic the EPA cannot regulate CO2 Emissions because the EPA came after the constitution was written. If you use Neil Gorsuch's wonderful judgement on the EPA then basically unless its a muzzle loading flintlock then its not protected under the 2nd Amendment. Guns that self load or that use brass cartridges or plastic cartridges did not exist when the 2nd Amendment was written. According to Judge Gorsuch congress must specifically write directives to the ATF telling them which guns and ammunition are allowed to be owned by the general public. Sorry gun nuts but I think Gorsuch might have screwed you.
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  11.  @TheMobileHomestead  Your 100% right. I'm Australian but went to college in America. I did engineering but it was the late 80s so everyone around me had done civics in high school. Not only did they know how the system was meant to work but they could explain it. So from an outside perspective, but with some understanding I think Senate reform is the most important thing that happens in America. There's been all this talk in recent years about the Electoral College system for POTUS, but then POTUS was never meant to be the main political force. Newt Gingrich made a big issue about that when he became speaker. The Speaker & House were meant to run the nation, the Senate were meant to check things, SCOTUS was meant to make sure it was all legal and POTUS was meant to sign it and then shake hands with foreign dignitaries. What Mitch McConnell has done to the Senate is mind boggling. He's not only wrecked the Senate but also the American Judiciary. What he's done its so profound and has such a massive influence that he's more of a threat to Western Democracy than Communism ever was. Consider this: How is any foreign company meant to do business with any American company when the only means to resolve any dispute is via the American courts? Go check the Chevron case with Ecuador over what Texaco (now part of Chevron) did. After losing the case they dragged it back into the America courts and even sent the lawyer representing the Ecuadorians to jail.
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  12. I agree the entire Nobel prizes system is now so corrupt and bent and twisted that its meaningless. The fact they not only awarded the Peace Prize to a monster like Kissinger is just the start of a very long list of hypocritical winners. In that vein 3 of the most ridiculous I know of are: - Barrack Obama got the Peace Prize as he was increasing drone strikes that lead to more innocent lives being lost. - William Nordhaus won the economics prize for his modelling of climate change economics despite the fact he was instrumental in scuttling climate change policies during the Bush Whitehouse in the early 90s. - Milton Freidman who with Kissinger worked with Pinochet and re-wrote the economics of Chile and that's before anyone starts discussing what Freidman's garbage has done to the rest of Western Society.
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  13. SORRY THOM You are 100% right that Trump was involved in an insurrection, but you and others are 100% WRONG that he committed treason. This is because the LEGAL DEFINITION of treason in America is very narrowly limited to times of war. If America had the same basic definition of treason that almost every other country on the planet has then Trump's phone call to Ukraine should have had him charged with treason because he was organising with a foreign party to act against American interests. If America had the same basic definition of sedition then Trump would have been in handcuffs after January 6th and in many countries would have been executed. BUT the Founding Fathers decided rightly or wrongly to get rid of the standard definitions of both treason and sedition which the British had used with utter ruthlessness against the American Colonials and every other nation they took over. Its also what many other European nations used to maintain control of their homeland as well as foreign territories. That's why America has the Impeachment system, which as far as I know NO OTHER COUNTRY in history has ever had. Its (as far as I know) unique to America, because the Found Fathers realised that with such narrow definitions of Treason and Sedition they would not have been able to deal with people like Trump. What the Founding Father's didn't plan on was people using the Senate and Supreme Court as weapons to undermine it.
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  14. THIS CLOWN ON THE PHONE is exactly why the Americans get into SO MUCH TROUBLE on the international stage. They think a gun is the way to solve every problem. You cant just go an assassinate a foreign head of state because you don't like how they run their country. This is the STUPIDITY of American EXECEPTIONALISM - Americans think they have THE RIGHT to interfere in other countries and if those countries DO NOT do as they are told the CIA, NSA or one of the other 3 letter agencies will go in and ENFORCE COMPLIANCE. JUST STOP telling the rest of us how to run our countries and EVEN BETTER - STOP GIVING GUNS to CRAZY PEOPLE!
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  15. Thanks I did just that and found it. I hate to break it to 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 androgynos is complete nonsense. Its just as stupid as so many other clowns who try and fit some part of the bible to their narrative.
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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. To America: This behavior of this SCOTUS no longer just involves America. Absolutely this is way more important to you that anyone else, but for every country that trades with America and especially any country with security arrangements with America this SCOTUS is of serious importance. If any American company gets into an issue for activities outside America they drag the case back to America. Go and look up the case with Steven Donziger and Chevron. That case had nothing to do with America or American courts. Yet it was dragged back to the American Courts where Chevron had everything in their favor. As for security who knows how far this court will go in future. Today they are making SOCIO-POLITiCAL decisions for 328 million people who did NOT vote them into office. What decisions will they make in future that might have grave security implications. The 45th President has been found (in breach of American laws) in possession of classified materials. What if this court makes some ridiculous decision regarding that? What are other countries meant to do if future Presidents just do as they please with classified materials and there's no recourse? FYI - I'm Australian but went to college in America. A bunch of my friends were pre-law and we ended up discussing the constitution a lot. I can barely believe what's happening with SCOTUS. This is the sort of stuff they told me could never happen. The system of "Checks & Balances" was rock solid. I don't think anyone ever considered that a pack of billionaires along with a few insanely corrupt Senators could smash that system, but they have. SCOTUS is a massive issue but if you don't FIX THE SENATE and get rid of the cancer that's there it won't matter.
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  18. Garland isn't so much a wimp but a federalist society member and an institutionalist. As an Institutionalist his views are reasonably well known that he believes the OFFICE of the presidency to be sacrosanct and it much not be besmirched in any way including dragging any president or ex-president through any court case. This is the same stupidity that lead Gerald Ford to write a blanket pardon to Richard Nixon despite the fact Nixon was never charged with anything. The stupidity of that ideology is that it ignores the fact that the President can commit actual crimes that must be dealt with or the very institution they are trying to protect becomes corrupted to the point of being irrelevant.
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  19. So which MMT or MMT sympathetic college professor have you been listening too? Mark Blyth, Adam Tooze, Stephanie Kelton,..... Or do you listen to geopolitical people like Peter Zeihan?
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  20.  @thiosemicarbizidebenzoylal2921  Yeah I know that. Freidman was the guy behind both Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Thom's done a couple of great exposés on neoliberalism and at least 1 book. He's covered the history of how Freidman and others started their crap in the 1940s and had to wait until the 1970s to unleash it.
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  21. I went and checked and checked the transcript. at 0:43 " we all know their corporate taxes are just the government's way of taxing poor people" and his justification for that claim is "I mean that that's those taxes are passed down whether in the price of the product or in jobs because I see that myself. I've been in corporate world for over 20 years that's what happens when corporate taxes go up either they lay people off they raise the price of their goods. uh. it's it's usually one of those two things." There was time when the wealthy were not taxed it was called feudalism that was noted for slavery or being indentured to the "Lord of the land" as granted to him by the sword of the king. Is that what this clown wants us to revert to? Some form of corporatized feudalism. This is the true stupidity of libertarians they are advocating for a from of anarchy where the wealthy just get everything without any obligation to society at all and deliver nothing to anyone but forms of enslavement and indenture. They all claim to be thinkers, like this guy claiming this leads to that, but they never go further than what's convenient. If a company gets taxed more and that lowers the bottom line then its stupid to sack people or lower wages, because either way you lose productive people. They leave because you make them leave or they leave for better wages somewhere else. Either way the company loses MORE money because its less productive.
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  22. This is NOT an American problem, this is now across the entire Western Democratic system. Remember the Panama Papers that showed how the rich used a Panamanian financial services company to do tax evasion on an industrial scale. NOBODY has even been charged let alone convicted of anything. That was followed by the Paradise Papers detailing a similar industrial system based in the Bahama's. Again NOBODY has even been charged let alone convicted of anything. That has been followed by the Pandora Papers detailing a system bigger and more widespread than either the Panama Papers or Paradise Papers detailed. So far NOBODY's been charged let alone convicted of anything. Can you see what's going on? The hyper-wealthy now have control of not only our governments but also our justices systems. Every society, tribe or nation that did that ended up in the flames of a peasant revolution.
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  23. ​ @charlesciminera5881  Yeah the only the super wealthy eve go to jail is when they rip off other super wealthy people - Theranos chick???? On America needing an actual leader the problem is that both the Dems & GOP are so tired to their big donors and doing what those donors want its impossible for a real leader to come from either. Its not like America doesn't have good leaders, its got plenty across various fields it just NONE of them are in politics. I was in America when Walter Payton was playing so I got to see true greatness. The fact he still inspires people to think about others less fortunate in society is incredible. So here's my hypothetical and sorry if its long: Imagine if Andrew Whitworth and Captain Brett Crozier ran on a ticket of "We will give the White House back to the American people. It does not belong to the Democrats or Republicans." If you go back before the great depression the President had very little to do with running the country. That was the job of congress lead by the speaker of the House. Newt Gingrich made a huge fuss that he was going to restore the power of the speaker. He went to great lengths to explain what the Presidents job was supposed to be and it wasn't running the country. So in Andrew Whitworth you have the latest WP Award winner and you saw his acceptance speech you'd want him leading a country. There's no doubt he's a guy who cares about the American people. In Brett Crozier you have a career military man who gave a massive chunk of his life to serving America and when the moment came he put his career on the line for the safety of the men and women he was entrusted to lead. Remember him leaving the ship and the crew cheering? Here's an image: Imagine Vladimir Putin (at 5'6") meeting Andrew Whitworth (at 6'7" and 330lbs) and the scene of Whitworths and wrapping around Putin's hand squeezing just enough to let Putin know. It would be worth voting for him for just that moment. Better that could run on a "We don't need policies, but 1. We will make congress do their job." They could just point out the issues and call out the committees to solve the problem. He could just do the Belichick "Do you job!" line. Plus Brett Crozier could have a ball calling out the waste in the military. Just spend 4 years cleaning the idiots and clowns out of the Pentagon. Its just an idea I thought up for: How can America do a reset without having to have a second revolution or second civil war? Because a second American revolution or civil war is monumentally bad for the entire Western World. For a lot of countries, Australia included, America is our most important trading and security partner. If you are wondering why people are so frightened of a second Trump presidency THAT'S WHY. The problem isn't just if he wins its also what happens if he loses again?
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  24.  @charlesciminera5881  Obama was close to being an independent but they manged to drag him into line pretty quickly. He promised a lot but actually got very little done, even when he had a super majority. That's how much of a failure he was, for the first 2 years he should have been able to pass almost anything and the only major thing he got past was a health care plan that was basically written by Republicans. Your assessment that the Dems & GOP act like criminal gangs is pretty damn close. I've never heard anybody describe them that way but its right on how they act. That's why I think a president who runs in a very unusual way might be a fix. Otherwise its civil war and that is as big of a problem as a nuclear exchange. It would be catastrophic to world trade and security. I'd put way more of the blame on Republicans for the divide in America but the Dems have been utterly hopeless at fixing it. I saw a recent graphic of the 25 worst offenders for insider training. The top 4 were GOP but there were MORE Dems on the list. They are just as bad as the GOP. We have similar issues here in Australia. We don't have the insider trading but we have a huge issue with people making decisions and then going to work for companies that were favoured by those decisions. There are rules in place to prevent it but they are never enforced. Then we have some raging maniacs including our own Donald Trump, a real POS named Clive Palmer. Right now he's using the EXACT same strategy Trump used in 2016. Our system also makes it possible for a very small party to get incredible power under certain circumstances. Its the same problem they have in places like Israel.
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  25.  @charlesciminera5881  If we are well informed about America its because the situation scares us so much. As I keep telling people America is the most important trading and security partner many countries have. Do you realise that the 74 million who voted for Trump in 2020 is more people than every country in Europe except for Germany and Russia. The 3rd and 4th places are Britain and France both at 67 million. American's don't seem to realise just how big their nation actually is in terms of population. Have you ever heard of Bretton Woods? It was an economic conference in Vermont a year before the end of World War 2. All of the Allied nations were there and they decided how the worlds economy would work after the war. Everyone else was smashed and flattened and America had more than half the worlds gold reserves so the greenback became the worlds de-facto means of foreign trade. Everybody did well from the trade but America made billions on top of billions via the currency exchanges. Prof Richard Wolff talked about that aspect of Bretton recently, because there are now other means to trade - The Euro and Yuan. Its why Putin has demanded all oil & gas contracts are now paid in Rubbles. Putin might be crazy, his generals might be clowns but apparently he's had some good economic advice.
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  26.  @genossinwaabooz4373  I am still at a loss why that report is being screamed about from the roof tops. It shows that 10% of America has utterly screwed 50% of the country and then made another 40% pay for it. You'd think that every left leaning commentator would be going nuts and people like Marianne Williamson would be waving it like a Viking Shieldmaiden's axe while screaming at BOTH the Dems and GOP.
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  27. I am going to go 1/2 against Thom on this, because as Mitch McConnell, Diane Feinstein and others have shown NOT having limits can be just as worse because you can get entrenched cronyism which is like cancer and just as lethal to a functioning society. Just to check I looked up term limits and there's a Wikipedia page on term limits in the US. Couple of surprises: 1) POTUS is limited to 2 terms but VPOTUS has no limits. 2) Almost all of the state limits are 8 years in all sorts of mixtures of 2 and 4 year terms with a few places having 12 year limits. That seems to be the sort of thing Thom is talking about. Its too short for people to actually make any sort of a long term difference to their state. How do you do anything that's long term when you can't see it through from initial concept to final outcome?
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  28. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE tell this clown and all the others like her to STOP framing everything in terms of white supremacy. As a person from the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan,....) she should know there are lots of racist narratives that have NOTHING to do with white people. I'm Australian and we have a staggering array of cultures here theses days AND EVERYONE of them has some "issue" with another group or several other groups. Whether you want to call those "issues" racism or cultural bias or tribalism IT DOES NOT MATTER these issues exist and they have nothing to do with white people. If you ever want to hear some really nasty comments get some of the Asians talking about each other or any of the subcontient people talking about each other. Plus has everyone forgotten about the Rwandan Genocide that rage between the Hutu's an Tutsi tribes? There was not a white person in sight of that mess. Racism is not just a white problem its human problem.
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  29. ​ @CyberiusT  A few years ago I worked with a guy born in India and one day he said some flippant comment and I remarked back that his comment was sort of racist. I knew he wasn't being serious or meant any harm but his next comment stunned me. He said Indian people are not racist. So I asked him about various peoples from countries around India and as I knew he would he said some fairly blunt things. I then asked him about a well known incident involving an Australia cricket player named Andrew Symonds who was of Afro-Caribbean descent in India and he said it wasn't racist when people in the crowd called him a monkey. Eventually I asked him what his definition of racism is and he said "Its what white people are!" He was actually surprised when I told him "No its when anyone degrades another person of a different race based on that persons race." This was a guy who was a well educated engineer. There are a lot of people who have been brought up to believe that only white people are racist and they are surprised to find out that's not true.
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  30. The better term to describe them is libertarian, but the way they are going about it is reactionary. The truly weird thing about comparing liberals to libertarians is they both found their ideology around the word liberty. My explanation of them is. Libertarians want the government to have as little power as possible so they have the liberty so they CAN FORCE their beliefs on others. Liberals want the government to have the power to regulate what limits people have so that they CANNOT FORCE their beliefs on others. What do you think?
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  31. ENGINEER HERE: This is the sort of thing people need to become way more educated about. Most people have NO IDEA how software is written or how it works AND ESPECIALLY how it can be manipulated AND EVEN WORSE how it can give the wrong answer. I write software for part of my living. I do industrial control systems and automation. Once the computer has the data and starts crunching it all comes down to the algorithm, BUT EVEN before that the data might be wrong. Look at what happened with the Boeing Max-8. Twice the sensor broke and twice the software acting on bad information flew the plane into the ground. There have been accidents where the AI in Tesla cars have been found to have caused fatal accidents. How many times have we heard how a computer system did something awful with records. Here in Australia we had this brilliant thing called "Robodebt" which was a system that was supposed to stop people getting more than they should from social services. It ended up taking millions of dollars off people it should not have. We still haven't got to the bottom of the that mess. Most countries have similar stories. The IT industry has acted, because of the money it can push on politicians through lobbying, gotten away with so much and the AI Revolution is just making that WORSE.
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  32. They aren't but then I think you are misunderstanding the power of symbolism especially to national and cultural identity.
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  33.  @juliehenderson1672  NO they should be allowed to fail the same way any small business does. Send in the receivers and chop it up into bits to sell off. The whole "Too big to fail!" should have been taken as a guilty plea for an anti-trust case. We are now living with the consequences of the cowardice of Eric Holder and his DOJ team at the time.
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  34. AUSTRALIAN HERE - This is exactly why the next US POTUS is such a big deal to the rest of the world. Either America will elect someone who can reign in this out of control SCOTUS or THE REST of the world will end up REBELLING AGAINST America and that includes all those nations that usually side with or are allied to America. No matter what any America thinks there is the simple fact that the US$ is the World's Reserve Currency. Almost all international trade depends on the STABILITY and RELIABILITY of the US$ and for that to happen 2 things have to exist. 1) The US Government is RELIABLE, RESPONSIBLE & PREDICTABLE; and 2) We can rely on the US Courts to be RELIABLE, RESPONSIBLE & PREDICTABLE. And with the current status of SCOTUS neither the US Government or Courts are RELIABLE when SCOTUS can simply overrule anything the US Government wants or overrule anything other courts adjudicate on including courts in other nations. Go look up the Steven Donziger case regarding what Texaco (now part of Chevron) did in Ecuador. How is anyone meant to do business with America when the US Courts behave like that?
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  35. Australian here looking at this from the outside. The craziest aspect of the American-Israeli thing is the GOP's near fanatical pro-Israeli stance, because one of the core fundamentals of GOP ideology is the complete dismantling of social welfare including public education and publicly funded health care. This is all summed up in Ronald Reagan's infamous "Welfare Queen" remark. Heres' the thing. Israel is now politically dominated by the ultra-orthodox Jewish population and they don't work at all. Their men sit in Yeshiva's all day long and study the Torah. Their women mostly stay at home and raise their large families. They get their food, rent, power and medical all paid for by the rest of society and its all underwritten by the American tax payer. Up until recently they rarely served in the military. So how does the GOP support the State of Israel with tax payer money that has a welfare system that they would NOT TOLERATE in America?
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  36. 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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  37. Yeas and with that he also claims to be a Harvard educated man. If true then why can't he simply accept reality. These people just keep pumping this garbage narrative and when pressed he starts on an election from 1/2 a century ago. And again near the end he said regarding the claims of election fraud "we haven't had that debate" So what were all those court cases where they never produced any evidence about? These people are truly demented because any fact they don't like they treat as if it doesn't exist.
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  38. ​ @robertsharp3238  That is a very very very risky attitude because there is no doubt the Iranians HAD a nuclear weapons program in full swing before the treaty Obama got them to agree to. Since Trump went and did his typically childish thing of tearing up anything Clinton or Obama did that fat clown gave the Iranians the opening they wanted. PLUS (and this is only a guestimate) they traded something to the Russians for those drones. The Iranians have all the oil they need but they might be short of currency and the Ruskies have stacks of that. So maybe they Ruskies paid in gold - reasonable guess. Maybe the Iranians got something else, like N-triggers or other hard to come by parts or maybe the Ruskies traded a couple of tactical units. Not enough to do anything really bad but just enough to tell everyone else to FK-OFF.
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  39.  @robertsharp3238  The other thing is if the Iranians have any brains those facilities will be so far underground nothing will touch them. And before you can say Tom Cruise can do his Luke Skywalker drop the bomb down the hole trick - this is the real world. But then then again DUMBER things have been happening a lot lately.
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  40. Remember Trump did something no incumbent had done in over 130 years. He had people executed during the lame duck period after the election. I am not interested in the if they should or should not have been executed. What I am interested in his the double standard. For over a century presidents had left those decisions to the incoming administration. Trump said "No to that" and these 3 are bad people who have been judged and I am sending them to the grave. In the weeks following he pardoned the Nisour Square 4 who had killed innocent civilians 17 people in a massacre in Iraq including a child. So if you work for the brother of Trumps education secretary you can kill 17 people including a child and then get a pardon and if you don't you get a needle.
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  41.  @davidlafleche1142  Yeah you are right Trump never said or declared that "conservatives breaking the law is not illegal." But why don't you explain all those pardons for criminal convictions that his friends did?
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  42.  @davidlafleche1142  1ST I regularly point out the failures of not just the Dems and GOp but all of the establishment parties around the world. 2ND Don't ram or pound God down anyone's throat if you wan to be taken seriously. Its the quickest way to be told to FK-OFF. The dirtiest fact of BOTH historical and modern politics is how people have used "God" (or Gods) to hurt people. If you want to bring up as so many do that God will destroy the evil doers in politics and society then you better also believe he will do the same with the evildoers in religion.
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  43.  @TNuss  WTF is your problem? All those classified files he's been caught with ARE EVIDENCE. 🤷‍♂🤦‍♂ Were you born this dumb or did you take classes?
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  44. To both of you (and any others) this is why the rest of the world is getting more and more scared of America. I'm Australian but went to college in America (late 80s). I remember arguing with frat brothers that if America wasn't careful it could lose all that was great about it. They used to argue that the US constitution guaranteed that America could not go the way other nations had. Their 3 favorite reasons why America could never fall into the disaster that Soviet Russia was were: The 1st Amendment, The 4th Amendment and SCOTUS. If the government did something then the entire nation would find out via the free press. If the government wanted touch you then they couldn't because the 4th Amendment protected them from the "police state". Yes they used to explain the other Amendments (mostly the ones about trials). BUT MOST OF ALL they contended that SCOTUS would protect all their basic rights. My favorite argument with Trump trolls is "How do you explain that Trump signed away your 4th Amendment rights tot he NSA?" I then like to remind them the NSA is scanning all social media including their comments. I would love to catch up with all the guys again, maybe this year it finally will. Because I would love to ask them all "How come you guys said all this stuff couldn't happen and yet it has." Even the 1st Amendment is being trampled on. As an Australia we've all watched the Assange fiasco. I know that in the past that would have been laughed out of court of 1st Amendment issues. Not just for the press freedom either. The grievance issue would/could/should make it a slam dunk.
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  45. 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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  46. I'm Australian and been trying to warn about this garbage with Trump for months now. This nonsense of NOT putting Trump and his pack of Jan 6th organisers in jail right after that was always going to end up a problem for other nations. Its a shame Thom hasn't also mentioned the tensions in Fiji after their recent election or the ongoing issues in other pacific nations. WAKE UP AMERICA and DEL WITH TRUMP
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  47. HEY THOM: I'm Australian and someone deleted my comment referencing the Murdoch's almost instantly. WHAT IS GOING ON
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  48. In case you're wondering I referenced 2 episodes of ABC Australia's Media Watch program regarding our terrible 2019-2020 bushfires. On is from 4 Feb 2020 and the other from 9 Sept 2020. The first includes a public statement by James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn's debunking of the claims being made by Murdoch employees regarding how the fires were started by arsons and had nothing to do with climate change. The second program highlights the police report into those allegations and how the lies spoken earlier had been repeated by other Murdoch employees around the world.
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  49. AUSTRALIAN HERE: I have the simple answer DUH As in DUH - you are supplying the Ukrainians (as are we and others) with a giant pile of kick ass toys that they are putting a lot of Russian sons in the grave and causing Putin the biggest headache in Russian history. What part of retaliation don't you get? Do you really think the Russians ARE NOT going to try everything they can to cause as much chaos and harm to America and everyone else that they can? Under the circumstances they can't do anything direct so they have to go through indirect channels and that means spreading as much misinformation on social media that they can. Which has been made even easier by the idiotic greed of America's billionaire class. I bet those GOP clowns have their email inboxes full of bot generated nonsense. We are about to see a shitstorm of misinformation over the coming months and in so many ways the entire Western hemisphere will only have itself to blame because when we should have dragged social media back to something sensible WHICH NOBODY DID after the disaster of the Brexit campaign, which was stage managed by American Billionaire Robert Mercer via Cambridge Analytica. Brexit proved you could MANIPULATE public opinion with the right misinformation campaign.
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  50. It hasn't since Reagan gave explicit instructions to stop pursuing anti-trust cases. That's since spread into other areas the top 1% want the DOJ to stay away from.
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