Comments by "Halfdan Ingolfsson" (@Halli50) on "Thom Hartmann Program" channel.

  1.  @doktormcnasty , yep - most of them will be American, but seeing that the US is the dominant world military power, the rest of the world will suffer as well. I predict that 'Muricans will be mightily despised in decades to come if the right-wingers win. Truly a sad state of affairs. The only solution seems to be for ALL Americans to turn out to vote in EVERY election during the next decade or so. If Repugnican gerrymandering, voter suppression (or if the lunatics voting turn out to outnumber sane people voting), it will end badly. If, on the other hand, the sane people turn out on top, things will slowly get better and Americans might eventually end up with a work/life balance similar to North Europe.
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  2.  @annefischer1433 , the "Denmark's 2616 Covid deaths" is literal - perhaps i should have used 2,616 notation, or two-thousand-six-hundred-and-sixteen, the number of Covid deaths in Denmark as recorded this morning by Johns Hopkins University data. I find the very common "US is not like other nations" excuse to be absolutely ridiculous: The citizens of the United States of America have repeatedly shown that there is nothing you cannot do once you are motivated! The welfare systems in Northern Europe are to a great extent based on what we learned from Roosevelt's America during and after WW2. You, on the other hand, seem to have been derailed, beginning with Ronald bloody Reagan. I am convinced that the US could take e.g. the Nordic model to scale and leave Europe in the dust - if only you could rid yourself of the blatant bought-and-paid-for political corruption that has been crippling you for too long.
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  3. As a non-'Murican, I feel sorry for the residents of the US (aka "The Lunatic States of America"). Living in an asylum where the lunatics have take over must be awful.
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  4. Thom, FIX YOUR BLOODY MIKE! The last few clips have been plagued by hiss, snap & crackle for a faulty mike or wiring in your studio.
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  5. A nation that refuses to treat affordable health care for it's citizens as a RIGHT, not a privilege, has no business calling itself a democracy. The issue of female reproductive rights is an indisputable part of that, and religious or political zealots should have absolutely NO say in the matter. Frankly, a nation that is engaged in this kind of medieval thinking has no business counting themselves among civilized nations, LET ALONE being a dominant one! The rest of the world REALLY should wash their hands of these lunatics! The US, a role model for other nations in the 1940-1980 era, currently has 'checked out' of the democratic process. We can only wait and hope they will re-emerge as a civilized nation following their Nazi/Trumpzi/Fascist stint, but one thing is certain: They will no longer be a dominant nation AND, the US dollar will no longer be the dominant currency! That, in itself, should fill ordinary US citizens with dread - but they are too ignorant to realize what that means.
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  6. Repugnican Morality? Nonexistent! What goes for Morality in the Repugnican party is so warped and twisted that it, at best, represents pure evil.
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  7. I'm still waiting for the US Military-industrial complex to move the manufacturing of key US weapons systems to China, simply to increase their profits! The joke: US politicians will merrily go along on the condition that the 'donor money' (the bribes) keep rolling in. Talk about selling your soul, your family and your security, just for a little more short-term profit.
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  8. How one single individual is able to paralyze the entire legislative system is beyond comprehension. Moscow Mitch should be taken aside and put down like a rabid animal and THEN the Legislative Branch should immediately change the law to prevent this from happening ever again. Of course THAT will never happen, the Repugnicans and Democraps LIKE things the way they are!
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  9. To us outsiders (and other NATO allies) the question seem to be: Will 'Murica go full Hitler-style fascist within 2-6 years? If it does, it will be due to abject and unforgivable voter apathy in the US.
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  10. Only 'Muricans are able to define a concept like "Incels" (involuntary celibates?) - everywhere else in the world they are simply defined as creeps than no woman wants to be near, let alone have sexual relations with.
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  11. My disgust of conservative and non-voting 'Muricans is increasing exponentially! You are MONSTERS - and you call yourself Christians? Anyone forced to visit your godforsaken country should get triple combat pay, that is how risky visiting the FSA is nowadays. You should be ashamed of yourselves - but then, a common conservative trait is being shameless...
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  12. Do we NEED to reinvent capitalism? It is ingrained in our psyche, our primary driving force (well, monetary greed is second only to sexual horniness). It is what it is. It is what the United States are based on. Unbridled GREED! What we need to do is to REIN IN capitalism. Put a bridle on it, allow free enterprise to flourish without destroying everything in it's path, much like the Nordic countries have managed to do. But - you are the US of bloody A! Too big to fail! Any lesson learned by other nations, large or small, do not apply to you - what you are is an abject failure, you believe you are so big that you are doomed to fail at anything you try!
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  13. I'm a non-'Murican, and it boggles my mind why Bush Jr. is not in jail, being directly responsible for innumerable crimes against humanity AND his own nation! One wonders how many 'Murican lives Bush Jr. is responsible for snuffing out by his actions regarding the already dismal health care, and that is NOT counting his war crimes!
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  14. Typical for autocrats: Scientists and engineers develop something groundbreaking that is then hyped out of all proportions by the autocrats. When the hype is exposed, the autocratic solution is to send the scientists to the Gulag for not living up to the autocratic hype.
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  15.  @Circlewisewoman01 , by ignoring the facts the ruling elite (the Trumpzis) is all but ensuring the rampant spread of the virus, and very soon it will have infected the White House and the ruling elite as well. Not testing aggressively for COVID-19 shows how dysfunctional your health care system has become. My own country (Iceland) has 34 confirmed cases already (mostly Icelanders returning from skiing trips in the Italian Alps), and by the same per capita ratio the US should by now have at least 3400 cases. We know about the problem and we aggressively test everyone with symptoms. In fact, our infections only began in mid-February while the virus has probably been quietly spreading in the US since January or even earlier. You are probably seeing even less than the tip of the iceberg yet...
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  16. This obsession with trying to control inflation is weird. Sometimes inflation is homemade - resources being intentionally "shifted" from one part of society to another, but usually inflation is caused by rapid fluctuations in the supply/demand balance. Covid rather drastically lowered demand for a while, while also hindering the supply side - a sort of a balance remained, but Putin's war caused a violent hiccup in especially the energy and food supply/demand balance (not to mention the vast amounts of resources being spent on deadly "fireworks"). This will be naturally adjusted by alternate sources on the supply side and rising prices on the demand side, all within a year or so. Instead of exercising a bit of patience, US politicians behave as if their water is breaking (a common condition for men when a birth is imminent, while the women about to give actual birth usually remain calm and collected).
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  17. Watching 'Murica falling apart is heart-breaking. The sensible people in 'Murica are stuck in a pile of shite, spinning their wheels to no avail. How the country that truly was the greatest and best 50 to 80 years ago managed to devolve into this pathetic mess is beyond comprehension! The irony: Post-WW2 ravaged Western Europe followed the example of the US in the decades after WW2 and are STILL sticking to it, to varying degrees - AND IT'S WORKING! While 'Murica's unchecked capitalism is currently about to lead it down the road Germany traveled a century ago, Europe is enjoying the results of the lessons they learned from the post-WW2 America that Roosevelt managed to establish: A healthy middle class, affordable health care and education and, most important, at least some control over unchained capitalism.
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  18. When (not if) WW3 happens, the US will have been the root of it (insatiable military-industrial corporations needing further "business" opportunities). The modern world likes doing mutually beneficial business, not wasting resources on killing each other - the outlier being the US, invading countries willy-nilly, overthrowing democratically elected governments because they were too "socialist" to allow US corporations to exploit their resources etc. When WW3 happens, the rest of the world will mostly refuse to participate. The US will be the instigators, China will be the target and the US will lose spectacularly because no other country wants to be involved, if only because of the environmental impact. Take that, you stupid 'Murican warhawks!
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  19. Interesting, and just goes to show how little we still know about so many things. Being an Agnostic, I am not bothered either way - but wouldn't it be nice if there IS something awaiting us beyond death? I am of the opinion that organized religions of any kind are just scams used to capitalize on the unknown, and if there IS something waiting for us beyond death, it will not bear any resemblance with any of the known religious theories.
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  20. How about privatizing the judicial system - the judges? That would be a REALLY fair system...
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  21. Bruce Westerman is on the same intellect level as the idiot Republican congressman that brought a snowball to the lectern as proof that global warming was a hoax! Where DOES the Repugnican party find all those idiots they manage to get elected to powerful positions! George Santos, the compulsive liar that can potentially out-fib Trump, is just the latest installment in this farce! One wonders if the last lines in the 'Murican National Anthem should be change to something like "...the land of the feeble-minded and the home of idiots". To an outsider like me, it seem appropriate. Mind you, when I was young (in the Kennedy era) I genuinely admired the US and anything "American", simply because they were worth admiring! That acquired a dirty patine during the Nixon years and went to hell in a handbasket when Ronald Bloody Reagan appeared on the scene.
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  22. 'Murica is doomed, because of the disgusting apathy of 'Murican voters.
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  23. I have always loved Thom's intro of Dr. Wolff - "with two effs". The world they are describing in this clip is weird, and the only certainty is that it will not last long. Deflation is self extinguishing - if prices and wages plummet while debt obligations are supposed to remain stable, there will be bloodshed! Even an idiot like Trump will see that by exterminating a mere 1% of the US population (bankers, speculators, billionaires etc., a mere 3 million), all debt will be automatically forgiven! This is where the proliferation of assault weapons among the general population will come in handy...
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  24.  @ansfridaeyowulfsdottir8095 , nope - I'm as Icelandic as you can get, and if your last name really is Eyjólfsdóttir you have some Icelandic roots as well.
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  25. I'm just waiting for the US military-industrial complex move most of US weapons production to China to increase profits. THAT will be the final nail in the US coffin.
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  26. Being a woman of child-bearing age in the US these days must be terrifying! Before you know it, it will be a toss-up which country will be more oppressive to females, Afghanistan ruled by Talibans or the USA ruled by Repugnicans.
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  27. A new amendment to the US Constitution is sorely needed, one that severely limits the president's Pardoning Powers to prevent this kind of "get out of jail" shenanigans. The ability to pardon any or all partners-in-crime is the height of corruption.
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  28.  Stimulus Dragon , you really put your finger on it!
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  29. A SCOTUS judge pandering to his/her sponsors is a totally corrupt judge that only pretend to be following the spirit of the law. As lawyers they are highly trained to argue that up is down, up is down - right is wrong and wrong is right. Things cannot get any worse - this state of affairs will be one of the final nails in the coffin of the US American Experiment. The Fascist might always win temporarily, but they will ALWAYS come to a deservedly sticky and painful end.
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  30. The extreme right-wingers, purportedly the "small government" advocates really have sow weird and kinky ideas about what constitutes a "small government" - peeking at people's genitals! Really? That is not "small government", it is PERVERSE government!
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  31. Fact: Europe has been militarily weak and fractured because the US planned it that way since NATO was founded - Europe was kept on the US military teat for a purpose. Now Trump, a glaringly obvious Putin asset, is mucking that plan up but, fortunately, he is so unstable and incompetent that he is also mucking up Putin's plan! Now 'Murica is falling apart and Europe is scrambling to catch up. They will get there in a few years but even now, with Europe just waking up, Russia has spent itself on the invasion of Ukraine. To think that Russia can also take on NATO, even without unreliable 'Murica, is a fool's errand.
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  32. Watching discussions like this is depressing. The US has been the worst offender, pollution-wise, for at least a century, but that is beside the point. The current issue is: What do we do about it? The current, silent consensus has been: NOTHING! An unlikely side effect of Putin's atrocities in Ukraine has been that Europe has been rudely awakened to the fact that relying on dictatorial Russia for it's energy is a dead end. Another side effect just might be that developments in Europe might affect the wasteful 'Murican mindset. We can only hope... I am fortunately a citizen of a country that is awash with renewable energy, to the extent that even many of our sidewalks are kept ice-free using excess energy in winter. Weirdly, we are also among the top-CO2-polluting-per-capita countries in the world, despite having vast resources of renewable energy. Go figure! The reason is simple: Our capitalists ensured, 60 years ago, that most of our hydroelectric energy would be used by international Big Corporations to produce aluminum (political kickbacks ensured) - with the associated carbon emissions. The current mindset is to close the oldest Rio Tinto-owned plant and use the energy for Data Centers and electric vehicles. Of course our capitalists are madly fighting this, but they will NOT prevail.
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  33. Who is the individual that is most instrumental in bringing down the almost 250 year US experiment? His name is Mitch McConnell, a.k.a. Moscow Mitch! He has been tirelessly working to corrupt the US judicial system for decades, and it looks like he is about to succeed in ending democracy in the US. This will also bring down Western civilization as we have known it. As a non-'Murican (living well away from 'Murica) I feel safe in voicing my opinion: Moscow Mitch (and a sizeable chunk of the US elite along with him) should be taken aside, guillotined and left to rot! I do not have the opportunity, the means or the will to facilitate this world-saving action, but one can always dream...
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  34. Thom's idea has a lot of merit: Play the same nasty game in right-wing areas, mainly to highlight and expose this trick but also to decimate the right-wing voter turnout. What I found curious was Greg's lame reaction to this idea - methinks he is not telling the entire story here.
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  35. Watching you 'Muricans twist yourselves into pretzels trying to justify the absolutes nonsensical situation you find yourself in is tragic. Instead of wasting energy on trying to analyze to death out what the "Founders" were thinking 250 years ago, you should take a long, hard look at "where has this brought us?" - and then bloody well DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! 'Murica is busting all records regarding firearm-related problems, yet you seem incapable of doing anything sensible about it. A true showcase in incompetence, if you ask me. When faced with mass shootings, the Scots, Aussies and Kiwis did it without breaking a sweat, why are you unable to do it? Again, your competence as a nation, as a society, is becoming ever more questionable. Are you even capable of carrying on?
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  36. As a non-'Murican, I find it increasingly depressing to watch this: Thom (and a lot of the of the non-MAGA crowd) seems already resigned to losing in November, and are now stuck in a "waily-waily" rut. If Trump wins, it will be entirely due to voter apathy. Period.
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  37. 'Murica is divorcing itself from the rest of the civilized world. The corruption of the SCOTUS is only a minor symptom - the total divorce from reality is what is surprising. 'Murican billionaires licking Putin's uncleaned arse is no surprise, how 'Muricans are taking the total corruption of their judicial system as "operation normal" is what takes the cake! When the US falls apart, what are you going to do? Where can you go? No sane nation will accept your crazed citizens! Perhaps you might become Russians, in one of the Mongolian states?
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  38. "The more often you repeat a lie, the more likely it is to be believed" was proved in practice by Göbbels in the 1930's. Current 'Murican fascists have put a new twist on this - they have for decades been "preparing the soil" by dumbing down a sufficiently large sector of the 'Murican public, in addition of having thoroughly corrupted the judicial system. 'Murica is the largest developed nation to have legalized overt bribery of politicians, and that will probably be the downfall of the 'Murican Empire. 'Muricans fully deserve what they vote for and I find it impossible to be optimistic.
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  39. Thom, have you ever watched your videos on YouTube after they are released? Your videos are the only ones I have seen that have frequent audio (gaps in the narrative) and video glitches! There are not many explanations. Some incompetent technical staff of yours that sometimes mucks up connecting your mike? Someone on your staff that deliberately sabotages the audio before it is released on YouTube? YouTube staff doctoring the audio to reduce the impact of what you are saying?
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  40. Today's Republican Party seems to firmly believe that what worked for Hitler and Mussolini almost a century ago will certainly work for them today - and in today's madhouse 'Murica it just might!
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  41. I've been wondering about this for a while - to be a conservative (or Repugnican) you have to be at least a sociopath (a person with some but limited conscience). To be a TRUE conservative you have to be like Trump, a psychopath with absolutely NO conscience. The funny thing: In that state, you have absolutely no idea what is missing from your mind! All the same, listening to this I cannot help wondering if I am being conned by Tom Steyer, a superb salesman.
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  42. A good and credible rant, if you ask me.
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  43. Does the 14th amendment apply to political party primaries? After all, becoming the NOMINEE for office is not actually HOLDING such office , where the 14th amendment clearly applies.
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  44. Thom, is it now your philosophy to shoot the messenger, not the criminal? The 'Murican military committed the war crimes that Wikileaks leaked! The RUSSIANS stole whatever incriminating Hilary Clinton emails that Wikileaks leaked - and so on. As is to be expected, the 'Murican way is to imprison or execute the whistleblower and comfort the criminals! Ain't you proud to be 'Murican?
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  45. And you 'Muricans are wondering WHY your country is going to Hell in free-fall? Simple: Make the majority ignorant and poor (that took only 40 years) and then they can be herded like cattle.
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  46. Are you an 'Murican that wants to be free from rampant gun problem? The answer is clear: Emigrate from the US! Going south, into Mexico or Central or South America is a tricky solution, many of these countries are just as messed us as the US is (and who is to blame?), but going north (Canada) or either east or west. Asia, New Zealand or Asia in general to the west or Europe to the east will rid you of the gun problem in one fell swoop. Gaining access to affordable health care and education, as well as good work-life balance, is only a bonus. However, being allowed to immigrate to these countries can be tricky!
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  47. Apparently, the top brass of the major drug companies should be dragged out of their fancy offices, taken outside and summarily executed. Then, a word to the aspiring top brass: Be humane, agree on reasonable, not exorbitant profits unless you want to suffer the same fate! Of course that scenario is just wishful thinking, anger venting, but the big surprise is finding that "Mutter Merkel" is actually "Murder Merkel"!
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  48. You 'Muricans can twist yourselves into pretzels trying to explain away the sheer incompetence and outright political corruption behind the fact that 'Murica wastes over 17% of GDP on health care while every other developed nation (and many less developed nations!) spend around 10% of GDP (plus/minus 1% or so) and get FAR better outcomes for ALL their citizens - while the 'Murican outcome is dismal at best and nonexistent at worst. The concept "medical bankruptcy" exists only in one country: 'Murica! Worst of all: 'Murica, as a nation, seems unable to do anything about this terrible problem. Talk about incompetence!
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  49. Soon the former United States of America will become the Medieval States of 'Murica.
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  50. For a few bad people to succeed, all the "good" people have to stay silent and, in effect, complicit (just look at the state of 'Murican police forces). Will the supposedly "good" people of 'Murica allow all the GOP Jim Jordans get away with what they are trying to do?
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