We did it before, and the result was the creation of the world’s first and largest middle class and a level of peace and prosperity that held its own until Ronald Reagan took a meat-axe to it…
It's amazing how so much of the battle today connects back decades to Reagan and Bush 1. We have Neil on the court instead of his mom Anne at epa, mentioned here. We have biden and Clarence in the most critical seats, who squared off over confirmation over 30 years ago.
The society seems to be frozen in a kind of neoliberal hold that disallows new people or new ideas to surface.
This seems to be much bigger than tax policy, although of course it's tax policy that drives much of the inequality and other neoliberal characteristics engrained after decades of the market-based policies.
I think it's been expressed pretty well by Thom - neoliberalism has indeed failed us, and that a lot of the rancor and upheaval in the society has to do with economic uncertainties, constant disruptions of institutions, the lack of control over peoples own lives and their ability to provide for their futures in a way that they can understand or have some degree of control over.
In forums like this, unlike most media, people are looking accurately and fairly at fascism and trends that are so alarming and we look at historical precedent, see that it was not just economics that drove fascist trends but (esp with Nazis) an intense propaganda focus, constant manipulation of public sentiments.
While tax policy and economic inequality is an the important thing it's not disconnected from all the rest of the neo liberal infrastructure, which includes this vast propaganda system developed by these so-called technology companies, which are in fact behavioralism companies.
We see cnn becoming fascist conspirators, we see Elon musk's impact on Twitter (noted by thom this week) as ramping up fascist posts and sentiments - and we see a society unwilling to acknowledge or address the extreme and rampant manipulation of the public, moving people further away all the time from any grounded, historical, scientific or fair-minded assessment of the world today. I continue to be stunned by how ignorant our society has become, how professionals with graduate degrees often know absolutely nothing about history or science etc (prof tim Snyder commenting for years that the internet makes us dumber, an alarming trend for democracy)! Jon Taplin has showed how the system of technology / media has crushed "creatives" and consolidated income in concentrated business interests, and various writers have shown that people vote against their own economic interests (with tax policy etc) because the propaganda systems focus on identity politics which tend to override economics when certain base or emotional (tribal) aspects of people's sentiments are preyed upon.
Thom's work and media has been a clear example of really worthwhile and valuable information, so sorely needed, against an overwhelming tide of manipulation and ignorance.
A big amen to this: " various writers have shown that people vote against their own economic interests (with tax policy etc) because the propaganda systems focus on identity politics which tend to override economics when certain base or emotional (tribal) aspects of people's sentiments are preyed upon.
Thom's work and media has been a clear example of really worthwhile and valuable information, so sorely needed, against an overwhelming tide of manipulation and ignorance."
This is the battle between the amygdala and pre frontal corrtex, it is starting to be recognized.
I find it illustrative, that these"macho" men are in reality frightened mice. That these big, bad, Oath Keepers and "patriots" are so easily terrified of "woke" , it is now a substitute for liberal, and these big bad mo fo's wet their pants at the thoutht of them.
I am trying to find the details of a podcast I heard just last week with a writer making your exact point - what a ridiculously limited concept of "masculinity" is being extolled by these right wingers, when masculinity has always included more of an ability to be considerate, restrained, thoughtful, etc.
Excellent, when I was growing up Men were looked up to that were considerate, restrained, thoughtful, etc, but it was also the damning era of Father Knows Best (Augustus Caesar's Law of Pater Familia...ugh,. Mixed feelings there.
Amygdala - yes that's it. I barely knew how to spell it but that's definitely part of how we need to understand the propaganda system and how people are being manipulated. We all need better info / learning on this !
There is a recent study by neuroscientists. They came to the same results as this non scientist, except that they introduced a region of the brain (and I can't remember it) where the processing of info takes place. Also it seems that when we sleep, the brain processes info to be retained, we call them dreams, a sorting board so to speak. Anyway it is fear, irrational fear, that is the tool of demagogues, extremists and authoritarians.The fear is indeed a phobia and it is long lasting, and hard to deprogram.
Our Oligarch owned and OPERATED MassMedia has played the Most Influential Role in Keeping the Public Focused on Ridiculous people,and Subjects. CNN latest parlayer of total crap TV..sold to the masses.We now underEducate everyone.Of course we will have Massive Die offs.
Thank you for making the facts clear for us to understand; for repeating them so we'll remember. Thank you for tying the components together with one another and with history. Thanks too, for showing up the goppers/repubs "arguments" for what they really are -- twisted lies. Please keep going. Not so long ago, I hadn't heard of you or your writings and books. I am thankful for what you have taught me. I saw through T-rump years ago, so I'm not easily conned. But what you write helps me see a clearer picture. The gop/repubs have recently really shown who they truly are and actually have been for many years. The extremism has crawled from the woodwork, bare and stark. Ruthie B
Im taking the liberty of borrowing from Mary Olivers’ Redbird’ book of poems
Of the Empire
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury
Of many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people ( other people), for dogs , for rivers. All the world,in our eyes, they will say was a commodity. And they say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, , and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart in those days, was small and hard, and full of meanness.
"YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT", Obama's great quote is still in the minds of the Trump supporters. Striking up an innocent conversation at a local grocery store In rural Arizona last night, with a woman my age. I happen to mention that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was our greatest president, and that he built the middle class. She angrily looked at me, like her eyes were deadly laser beams, she abruptly raised her voice and said "hard work built America". I pointed out that the third world Nations citizens, even work harder and have even less money. To which she abruptly walked off. The right wingers are going to have to lose their guns, minimum wage, freedom of speech and of thought, kidneys, be sold as slaves, starved, tortured, drink and eat toxic food and drugs and water.... before they come around. By then, what little is left of their brain will resemble a pickled drug addict's brain, and it will be too late.
The classic rejoinder to the “hard work built this” cliche is, “Yes. But WHOSE work?”
The Baby Birchers have been plotting a hostile corporate takeover of the US since the Goldwater debacle of ‘64. That election was the first generational referendum on the legacy of the Roosevelts and Truman. Goldwater championed the Birchers’ avaricious aspirations, and he took a pasting. So they quietly dug in for multigenerational siege warfare of deep tunneling and sophisticated propaganda. They’ve invested billions to corrupt the courts, elections, politics, education, financial systems, the media and public discourse... everything imaginable to poison liberal society.
And they’ve done it all in plain sight.
And the response of supercilious, rich, dilettante liberals has been... silence. Ennui. Complacency beyond comprehensibility.
Good one..I sat in FDRs Leather Chair in his Library at Hyde Park..it was humble,but Powerful place.He was send to have an "Awesome Aura".. Elected to the Presidency 4 Xs..He ended WW2 ostensibly, creating A bomb,He gave us Social Security.He knew the world was a Global Community.Today Oligarch owned and operated MassMedia would have destroyed him👿 And today OUR MassMedia NEVER,EVER talks about him, because he was a TRUE BLUE DEMOCRAT☑️💙🇺🇸
In the near future, it could easily be justified by the climate crisis. The money will be needed for the bare minimum to assure our survival.
Aside from that, I like President Biden's message today to have a minimum tax percentage for anyone making the big bucks.
Recently retired Representative Pete DeFazio advocated very strongly for taxing each stock transaction a very small amount. Wall Street responded by making sure they funded his opponent's campaign. Pete won, their out-of-state election interference failed, and DeFazio educated the voters. Let's do that transaction tax!
Thanks for confirming my sanity. On my list of "what to do" is to outlaw billionaires but all I ever see is arguments about 2% or so of surtaxes as their "fair share."
Hi. Change of topic. What the heck is going on at the border? No news of daily crisis. No admin update of success. News has shifted to crisis in western hemisphere (msnbc today). Fascists states still sending national guard in (so they say) via press releases. What for? Where is the news debunking all this?
All re-tread. Instead of haranguing on the status quo, why not propose some private sector innovation that our young people could latch onto. I am sick of these diatribes.
Is that really you Ginger? Or is it a bot that grabbed your screen name?
I take umbrage with your depiction of Thom's lessons as pedeantic.
His books and analysis of current events is invaluable, you may have heard it before, or parts of it, but there are always new readers who never heard him before. In fact I delete almost everything from my inbox, except my Thom Hartmann library.
Now if you are looking for pedantry. Try TRMS, he takes one simple subject which can be covered in, at most, five minutes and spins it into a 45 minute pedantic rant. I agree with her politics but not her style, and she is always safe to stay away from subjects which will get her fired by her corporate masters.
Sometimes I think that the whole point of things like TRMS is to prevent people from reading source materials.
A classic example was the day the Mueller report came out when Rach got on TV and tells everyone. "Hey this is 1500 pages you're not gonna read it."
Somehow, a little potential disclosure that there's an executive summary consisting of 4-5 pages sitting on top of it just failed to make it.
So the point is that her viewers should watch corporate propaganda / biotech commercials for 20 minutes out of an hour and be told not to read anything that has a 5 page summary, that they could've easily read during the commercial breaks!
And with this lack of reading the executive summary people like Bill Barr could easily manipulate the public about what was actually stated by mueller. About "collusion", for example, right in the executive summary that nobody read.
I agree. I also notice how the talking heads on TV, and critters like Hakeem Jeffries and Ro Khanna, flipped scrip so fast with the compromise budget deal, and are now selling it as a terrific triumph, overlooking the caps on social spending, and the 3.6 % increase for defense. (Sad little fact is that the defense budget is a black hole.
When McNamara was Secretary of Defense, he instituted a zero base budget, in other words instead of basing you budget on last year, you had to justify your budget as if it was the first e ever. and I did not find that hard to do at all. In fact, as a spec ops team leader, I easily justified a million dollar budget, for a 12 man team.
By the way I don't watch MSNBC any more, just establishment drivel, and every one of their programs hash, and rehash the same three subjects, and not the really important ones like what emissions are doing to the climate, because that might mobilize the people who would demand changes from the carbon and auto industry, who have share holders who sit on the Board of Directors, who are the real power. They hire the CEO, COO, CFO and give them orders to bring back the most positive quarterly return possible.
Keith Olbermann and Tiffany Cross found out what happens when you cross that line.
Chris Matthews problem was sexual , not political.
Well, part of it is what Chomsky has said forever, which is that the conservatives tell you exactly what they want whereas the liberals are more interesting because you have to dig to see what they're really up to.
With msnbc it's a system to limit critical thinking, nuance and historical understanding.
Chris hayes in the past week asking utterly stupid questions about debt ceiling deal, never mentioning the most basic underlying aspect which is that the military budget just got ramped up to 850 billion!
Everybody already knows that it's a charade over debt limit and it's a political ploy, but the most important thing for people to understand is that we have this gigantic military
budget that both parties continue to just drive higher, and that's the net result of the whole thing.
Of course its MSNBC's sister station right next-door to it that Is parading hedge fund professionals all day as heroes, and they go to work to explain how the government can't ever regulate anything relating to climate ....or whatever else they gonna say.
I was really horrified when the Brnovich decision came down from the Supreme Court, and I think it was Pete Williams on MSNBC went on the air that night and tried to say that this was no big deal. He said some of these Arizona restrictions were already in place in previous elections, etc and no big deal...., but being a long-standing attorney and constitutional law follower - I read the actual decision. That's when I became so frustrated with what MSNBC was doing with this, because in Alito's decision, he basically overrules the entire concept that had been accepted uniformly by all kinds of ideologies on the warren court ..... That voting is a fundamental right!
The whole idea of voting voting being a fundamental right, was specifically overruled by his decision in that case, and MSNBC provides a an enormous public platform to tell people that this is no big deal!
I cannot help but agree, with a minor exception for Chomsky. I was a big fan, until he climbed in bed with Putin. Maybe he is just an old nostalgic Tankie, But Putin is a horror as bad as Hitler.
Wow, I would perhaps suggest that you keep such vile and digusting anti-semitism away from here, as I didnt think of this as the appropriate forum for that.
Also it seems worth noting that msnb's website often has material that is seemingly much better than what you see on TV, such as this about the military spending being the real crux of debt ceiling deal:
Very interesting MSNBC talks out of both sides of it's mouth, paltering, misinfo, lying by omission, yet they soeak out of the other side of their mouth, on a website, which very few watch.
As regards military spending, the military industrial complex has made sure that there is at least one contractor or subcontractor in every district.
The Air Force and Army use something called honey comb, which is a 3 to 4 inch wide piece of cardboard, that pulled out has cells in the shape of the octagon of honey comb cells, then glued between to sheets of thick brown paper. It is used to cushion heavy equipment and sensitive loads when air dropped.
There was in the 1980's only one manufacturer, an old woman in Texas. Her cat got sick and she shut down for a month, and the air freight specialist had to make their own, terrible job, you need proper machinery to mass produce the stuff.
Anyway every congressional district has at least one company that has a defense dept contract, even if it is only making cockpit handles. And that is why no one messes with the defense budget.
Just this week on time so he was saying how with 1/4 of the money involved in the trump tax cuts we could publicly buy out the energy majors and get a better grip on climate policy.
This is a very big lift, of course not something that's going to happen anytime soon, but the mere idea of it and the understanding of the relative size of monies involved is a very powerful thing.
Another area that should be taken more seriously if one believes in any ability to maintain a private market system is the initiatives concerning E.S.G. investing, and how E.S.G. investing ties into citizens United concerns, and rules could force disclosures of whether companies are making political contributions that are "unaligned" with their esg policy.
The USSR is held up as an example of how the economic system of communism doesn't work.But what is unknown, and buried especially by libertarians, that the USSR was in a perpetual depression, because of its slavish devotion to proto libertarian Marx's sacralization of the gold standard, where in one ruble was worth. 987 grams fine gold.
And they only put into circulation, the amount of rubles that were offset by the quantity of gold. Creating a perpetual depression, long lines, a shortage of consumer goods, even bread and meat, which they blamed on the exigencies of war. the cold war.
Marx's hatred for the middle class, was disguised as bourgeoisie , he believed like Hamilton, and yes the founding fathers that the country should be run by an elite,
The existence of a healthy, vibrant middle class is the enemy of the plutocrats.
It is rung on the ladder up to privilege and power, and a rung on the way down.
Thom speaks to this often, in his discussion of Lewis Powell.
Marx lived and worked in London, so he was obviously working within the context of how the British empire operated, and that was under the gold standard, which, according to even some of the greatest US scholars, worked enormously well and provided an efficient mechanism for trade that only failed to work in the 20th century when the British empire became less dominant.
Some of our greatest scholars point out that is the issue of currency and currency exchanges that is critical to understanding world history.
So that today's world involving the US dollar is directly within this important framework. If you have to pay your debt in foreign currencies, then you have to produce things that are valuable, but if you are able to live off the fruits of the labors of people all over the world whose products must be in markets based on your home currency, without actually producing anything at home - that's because you have a currency that allows you to control production and trade without contributing as much in labor or anything tangible.
In reference to your claim about Marx and the bourgeoisie I think it's helpful to look at Hannah arendt's work and her chapter called "political emancipation of the bourgeoisie" ....
Her main point was that the bourgeoisie of Europe grew to benefit from imperialist policies that governed how the European empires treated people and resources in foreign lands, who under imperialism could not be brought into the more democratic / liberal environment of the countries in Europe, and that race-based thinking resulted from this reliance on imperialism to support the lifestyles of the bourgeoisie.
Oh I know and am an admirer of Ahrendt. And yes there are valid points. However elimination of the middle class, does not solve the problem of aggression and colonialism, because the European Powers, and Asian powers were into aggression and imperialism thousands of years before their was middle class or bourgeoisie.
Slavery is as old as mankind, it became race based when Columbus discovered the Carribs. At first the Taino, then when they Spaniards wiped out the indigenous the Spanish and Portuguese resorted to Africans who were themselves being enslaved by neighboring tribes, who were by my reckoning, Muslims and they are still being enslaved, this time by taking away passports in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait
For purposes of that era, to be more technical it was not about middle class because there wasn't any such thing in Europe. Arendt focuses on the whole idea of the nation - state which created a structure of equality -created an equality of laws treating citizens equally. I think it's pretty clear that arendt tried to show that fascism was a kind of direct reaction against the era and principles of the "nation-state."
If you are talking about the 1920's and 1930's there was indeed a large middle class.
Fascism is an instrument of the corporatists, who want max profit, and the cheapest labor (variable cost). Mussolini's Chamber of Deputies was comprised of representatives from corporations, and as long as they were making money, I G Farben, Krupp, Bayer, Messerschmidt, Porsche were just fine with Hitler, in fact they and Preston Bush, financed his road to power, and they profited well not only from the war, but Hitlers slaves.
It's amazing how so much of the battle today connects back decades to Reagan and Bush 1. We have Neil on the court instead of his mom Anne at epa, mentioned here. We have biden and Clarence in the most critical seats, who squared off over confirmation over 30 years ago.
The society seems to be frozen in a kind of neoliberal hold that disallows new people or new ideas to surface.
This seems to be much bigger than tax policy, although of course it's tax policy that drives much of the inequality and other neoliberal characteristics engrained after decades of the market-based policies.
I think it's been expressed pretty well by Thom - neoliberalism has indeed failed us, and that a lot of the rancor and upheaval in the society has to do with economic uncertainties, constant disruptions of institutions, the lack of control over peoples own lives and their ability to provide for their futures in a way that they can understand or have some degree of control over.
In forums like this, unlike most media, people are looking accurately and fairly at fascism and trends that are so alarming and we look at historical precedent, see that it was not just economics that drove fascist trends but (esp with Nazis) an intense propaganda focus, constant manipulation of public sentiments.
While tax policy and economic inequality is an the important thing it's not disconnected from all the rest of the neo liberal infrastructure, which includes this vast propaganda system developed by these so-called technology companies, which are in fact behavioralism companies.
We see cnn becoming fascist conspirators, we see Elon musk's impact on Twitter (noted by thom this week) as ramping up fascist posts and sentiments - and we see a society unwilling to acknowledge or address the extreme and rampant manipulation of the public, moving people further away all the time from any grounded, historical, scientific or fair-minded assessment of the world today. I continue to be stunned by how ignorant our society has become, how professionals with graduate degrees often know absolutely nothing about history or science etc (prof tim Snyder commenting for years that the internet makes us dumber, an alarming trend for democracy)! Jon Taplin has showed how the system of technology / media has crushed "creatives" and consolidated income in concentrated business interests, and various writers have shown that people vote against their own economic interests (with tax policy etc) because the propaganda systems focus on identity politics which tend to override economics when certain base or emotional (tribal) aspects of people's sentiments are preyed upon.
Thom's work and media has been a clear example of really worthwhile and valuable information, so sorely needed, against an overwhelming tide of manipulation and ignorance.
A big amen to this: " various writers have shown that people vote against their own economic interests (with tax policy etc) because the propaganda systems focus on identity politics which tend to override economics when certain base or emotional (tribal) aspects of people's sentiments are preyed upon.
Thom's work and media has been a clear example of really worthwhile and valuable information, so sorely needed, against an overwhelming tide of manipulation and ignorance."
This is the battle between the amygdala and pre frontal corrtex, it is starting to be recognized.
I find it illustrative, that these"macho" men are in reality frightened mice. That these big, bad, Oath Keepers and "patriots" are so easily terrified of "woke" , it is now a substitute for liberal, and these big bad mo fo's wet their pants at the thoutht of them.
Marc S
just now
I am trying to find the details of a podcast I heard just last week with a writer making your exact point - what a ridiculously limited concept of "masculinity" is being extolled by these right wingers, when masculinity has always included more of an ability to be considerate, restrained, thoughtful, etc.
Excellent, when I was growing up Men were looked up to that were considerate, restrained, thoughtful, etc, but it was also the damning era of Father Knows Best (Augustus Caesar's Law of Pater Familia...ugh,. Mixed feelings there.
Amygdala - yes that's it. I barely knew how to spell it but that's definitely part of how we need to understand the propaganda system and how people are being manipulated. We all need better info / learning on this !
There is a recent study by neuroscientists. They came to the same results as this non scientist, except that they introduced a region of the brain (and I can't remember it) where the processing of info takes place. Also it seems that when we sleep, the brain processes info to be retained, we call them dreams, a sorting board so to speak. Anyway it is fear, irrational fear, that is the tool of demagogues, extremists and authoritarians.The fear is indeed a phobia and it is long lasting, and hard to deprogram.
Our Oligarch owned and OPERATED MassMedia has played the Most Influential Role in Keeping the Public Focused on Ridiculous people,and Subjects. CNN latest parlayer of total crap TV..sold to the masses.We now underEducate everyone.Of course we will have Massive Die offs.
Label them “the toxic rich”: the illness they infect us with is deadly.
Good one!! They really are Psychopaths
Thank you for making the facts clear for us to understand; for repeating them so we'll remember. Thank you for tying the components together with one another and with history. Thanks too, for showing up the goppers/repubs "arguments" for what they really are -- twisted lies. Please keep going. Not so long ago, I hadn't heard of you or your writings and books. I am thankful for what you have taught me. I saw through T-rump years ago, so I'm not easily conned. But what you write helps me see a clearer picture. The gop/repubs have recently really shown who they truly are and actually have been for many years. The extremism has crawled from the woodwork, bare and stark. Ruthie B
Im taking the liberty of borrowing from Mary Olivers’ Redbird’ book of poems
Of the Empire
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury
Of many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people ( other people), for dogs , for rivers. All the world,in our eyes, they will say was a commodity. And they say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, , and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart in those days, was small and hard, and full of meanness.
"YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT", Obama's great quote is still in the minds of the Trump supporters. Striking up an innocent conversation at a local grocery store In rural Arizona last night, with a woman my age. I happen to mention that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was our greatest president, and that he built the middle class. She angrily looked at me, like her eyes were deadly laser beams, she abruptly raised her voice and said "hard work built America". I pointed out that the third world Nations citizens, even work harder and have even less money. To which she abruptly walked off. The right wingers are going to have to lose their guns, minimum wage, freedom of speech and of thought, kidneys, be sold as slaves, starved, tortured, drink and eat toxic food and drugs and water.... before they come around. By then, what little is left of their brain will resemble a pickled drug addict's brain, and it will be too late.
The classic rejoinder to the “hard work built this” cliche is, “Yes. But WHOSE work?”
The Baby Birchers have been plotting a hostile corporate takeover of the US since the Goldwater debacle of ‘64. That election was the first generational referendum on the legacy of the Roosevelts and Truman. Goldwater championed the Birchers’ avaricious aspirations, and he took a pasting. So they quietly dug in for multigenerational siege warfare of deep tunneling and sophisticated propaganda. They’ve invested billions to corrupt the courts, elections, politics, education, financial systems, the media and public discourse... everything imaginable to poison liberal society.
And they’ve done it all in plain sight.
And the response of supercilious, rich, dilettante liberals has been... silence. Ennui. Complacency beyond comprehensibility.
Good one..I sat in FDRs Leather Chair in his Library at Hyde Park..it was humble,but Powerful place.He was send to have an "Awesome Aura".. Elected to the Presidency 4 Xs..He ended WW2 ostensibly, creating A bomb,He gave us Social Security.He knew the world was a Global Community.Today Oligarch owned and operated MassMedia would have destroyed him👿 And today OUR MassMedia NEVER,EVER talks about him, because he was a TRUE BLUE DEMOCRAT☑️💙🇺🇸
“There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.”
- Cornel West, author and philosopher (b. 2 Jun 1953)
Thanks again Thom for an excellent assessment of what needs to happen for our Democracy to thrive.
In the near future, it could easily be justified by the climate crisis. The money will be needed for the bare minimum to assure our survival.
Aside from that, I like President Biden's message today to have a minimum tax percentage for anyone making the big bucks.
Recently retired Representative Pete DeFazio advocated very strongly for taxing each stock transaction a very small amount. Wall Street responded by making sure they funded his opponent's campaign. Pete won, their out-of-state election interference failed, and DeFazio educated the voters. Let's do that transaction tax!
Thanks for confirming my sanity. On my list of "what to do" is to outlaw billionaires but all I ever see is arguments about 2% or so of surtaxes as their "fair share."
Funny you mentioned the Dick Van Dyke Show. My last Substack was when I played an old best friend of Mary's: https://open.substack.com/pub/suzannetaylor/p/a-window-into-my-life-1?r=22nl7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
And for your absolute over-the-top pleasure, someone put together dance numbers from that show: https://www.facebook.com/22920632/videos/183600571252724.
They will cry like a stuffed pig!
It makes sense but it's impossible these days. The Republicans and Fox News would never let it happen.
Hi. Change of topic. What the heck is going on at the border? No news of daily crisis. No admin update of success. News has shifted to crisis in western hemisphere (msnbc today). Fascists states still sending national guard in (so they say) via press releases. What for? Where is the news debunking all this?
All re-tread. Instead of haranguing on the status quo, why not propose some private sector innovation that our young people could latch onto. I am sick of these diatribes.
Is that really you Ginger? Or is it a bot that grabbed your screen name?
I take umbrage with your depiction of Thom's lessons as pedeantic.
His books and analysis of current events is invaluable, you may have heard it before, or parts of it, but there are always new readers who never heard him before. In fact I delete almost everything from my inbox, except my Thom Hartmann library.
Now if you are looking for pedantry. Try TRMS, he takes one simple subject which can be covered in, at most, five minutes and spins it into a 45 minute pedantic rant. I agree with her politics but not her style, and she is always safe to stay away from subjects which will get her fired by her corporate masters.
Sometimes I think that the whole point of things like TRMS is to prevent people from reading source materials.
A classic example was the day the Mueller report came out when Rach got on TV and tells everyone. "Hey this is 1500 pages you're not gonna read it."
Somehow, a little potential disclosure that there's an executive summary consisting of 4-5 pages sitting on top of it just failed to make it.
So the point is that her viewers should watch corporate propaganda / biotech commercials for 20 minutes out of an hour and be told not to read anything that has a 5 page summary, that they could've easily read during the commercial breaks!
And with this lack of reading the executive summary people like Bill Barr could easily manipulate the public about what was actually stated by mueller. About "collusion", for example, right in the executive summary that nobody read.
I agree. I also notice how the talking heads on TV, and critters like Hakeem Jeffries and Ro Khanna, flipped scrip so fast with the compromise budget deal, and are now selling it as a terrific triumph, overlooking the caps on social spending, and the 3.6 % increase for defense. (Sad little fact is that the defense budget is a black hole.
When McNamara was Secretary of Defense, he instituted a zero base budget, in other words instead of basing you budget on last year, you had to justify your budget as if it was the first e ever. and I did not find that hard to do at all. In fact, as a spec ops team leader, I easily justified a million dollar budget, for a 12 man team.
By the way I don't watch MSNBC any more, just establishment drivel, and every one of their programs hash, and rehash the same three subjects, and not the really important ones like what emissions are doing to the climate, because that might mobilize the people who would demand changes from the carbon and auto industry, who have share holders who sit on the Board of Directors, who are the real power. They hire the CEO, COO, CFO and give them orders to bring back the most positive quarterly return possible.
Keith Olbermann and Tiffany Cross found out what happens when you cross that line.
Chris Matthews problem was sexual , not political.
Well, part of it is what Chomsky has said forever, which is that the conservatives tell you exactly what they want whereas the liberals are more interesting because you have to dig to see what they're really up to.
With msnbc it's a system to limit critical thinking, nuance and historical understanding.
Chris hayes in the past week asking utterly stupid questions about debt ceiling deal, never mentioning the most basic underlying aspect which is that the military budget just got ramped up to 850 billion!
Everybody already knows that it's a charade over debt limit and it's a political ploy, but the most important thing for people to understand is that we have this gigantic military
budget that both parties continue to just drive higher, and that's the net result of the whole thing.
Of course its MSNBC's sister station right next-door to it that Is parading hedge fund professionals all day as heroes, and they go to work to explain how the government can't ever regulate anything relating to climate ....or whatever else they gonna say.
I was really horrified when the Brnovich decision came down from the Supreme Court, and I think it was Pete Williams on MSNBC went on the air that night and tried to say that this was no big deal. He said some of these Arizona restrictions were already in place in previous elections, etc and no big deal...., but being a long-standing attorney and constitutional law follower - I read the actual decision. That's when I became so frustrated with what MSNBC was doing with this, because in Alito's decision, he basically overrules the entire concept that had been accepted uniformly by all kinds of ideologies on the warren court ..... That voting is a fundamental right!
The whole idea of voting voting being a fundamental right, was specifically overruled by his decision in that case, and MSNBC provides a an enormous public platform to tell people that this is no big deal!
I cannot help but agree, with a minor exception for Chomsky. I was a big fan, until he climbed in bed with Putin. Maybe he is just an old nostalgic Tankie, But Putin is a horror as bad as Hitler.
But it makes sense if you read https://observer.com/2016/03/algemeiner-celebrates-power-jews-at-packed-manhattan-gala/
For Putin and Murdoch are power Jews. Secular not religious, just like Chomsky.
Wow, I would perhaps suggest that you keep such vile and digusting anti-semitism away from here, as I didnt think of this as the appropriate forum for that.
Also it seems worth noting that msnb's website often has material that is seemingly much better than what you see on TV, such as this about the military spending being the real crux of debt ceiling deal:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/gop-debt-ceiling-cuts-military-budget-rcna84459
Very interesting MSNBC talks out of both sides of it's mouth, paltering, misinfo, lying by omission, yet they soeak out of the other side of their mouth, on a website, which very few watch.
As regards military spending, the military industrial complex has made sure that there is at least one contractor or subcontractor in every district.
The Air Force and Army use something called honey comb, which is a 3 to 4 inch wide piece of cardboard, that pulled out has cells in the shape of the octagon of honey comb cells, then glued between to sheets of thick brown paper. It is used to cushion heavy equipment and sensitive loads when air dropped.
There was in the 1980's only one manufacturer, an old woman in Texas. Her cat got sick and she shut down for a month, and the air freight specialist had to make their own, terrible job, you need proper machinery to mass produce the stuff.
Anyway every congressional district has at least one company that has a defense dept contract, even if it is only making cockpit handles. And that is why no one messes with the defense budget.
Do you have any suggestions.
Just this week on time so he was saying how with 1/4 of the money involved in the trump tax cuts we could publicly buy out the energy majors and get a better grip on climate policy.
This is a very big lift, of course not something that's going to happen anytime soon, but the mere idea of it and the understanding of the relative size of monies involved is a very powerful thing.
Another area that should be taken more seriously if one believes in any ability to maintain a private market system is the initiatives concerning E.S.G. investing, and how E.S.G. investing ties into citizens United concerns, and rules could force disclosures of whether companies are making political contributions that are "unaligned" with their esg policy.
The myth of the private market system.
The USSR is held up as an example of how the economic system of communism doesn't work.But what is unknown, and buried especially by libertarians, that the USSR was in a perpetual depression, because of its slavish devotion to proto libertarian Marx's sacralization of the gold standard, where in one ruble was worth. 987 grams fine gold.
And they only put into circulation, the amount of rubles that were offset by the quantity of gold. Creating a perpetual depression, long lines, a shortage of consumer goods, even bread and meat, which they blamed on the exigencies of war. the cold war.
Marx's hatred for the middle class, was disguised as bourgeoisie , he believed like Hamilton, and yes the founding fathers that the country should be run by an elite,
The existence of a healthy, vibrant middle class is the enemy of the plutocrats.
It is rung on the ladder up to privilege and power, and a rung on the way down.
Thom speaks to this often, in his discussion of Lewis Powell.
Marx lived and worked in London, so he was obviously working within the context of how the British empire operated, and that was under the gold standard, which, according to even some of the greatest US scholars, worked enormously well and provided an efficient mechanism for trade that only failed to work in the 20th century when the British empire became less dominant.
Some of our greatest scholars point out that is the issue of currency and currency exchanges that is critical to understanding world history.
So that today's world involving the US dollar is directly within this important framework. If you have to pay your debt in foreign currencies, then you have to produce things that are valuable, but if you are able to live off the fruits of the labors of people all over the world whose products must be in markets based on your home currency, without actually producing anything at home - that's because you have a currency that allows you to control production and trade without contributing as much in labor or anything tangible.
In reference to your claim about Marx and the bourgeoisie I think it's helpful to look at Hannah arendt's work and her chapter called "political emancipation of the bourgeoisie" ....
Her main point was that the bourgeoisie of Europe grew to benefit from imperialist policies that governed how the European empires treated people and resources in foreign lands, who under imperialism could not be brought into the more democratic / liberal environment of the countries in Europe, and that race-based thinking resulted from this reliance on imperialism to support the lifestyles of the bourgeoisie.
Oh I know and am an admirer of Ahrendt. And yes there are valid points. However elimination of the middle class, does not solve the problem of aggression and colonialism, because the European Powers, and Asian powers were into aggression and imperialism thousands of years before their was middle class or bourgeoisie.
Slavery is as old as mankind, it became race based when Columbus discovered the Carribs. At first the Taino, then when they Spaniards wiped out the indigenous the Spanish and Portuguese resorted to Africans who were themselves being enslaved by neighboring tribes, who were by my reckoning, Muslims and they are still being enslaved, this time by taking away passports in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait
For purposes of that era, to be more technical it was not about middle class because there wasn't any such thing in Europe. Arendt focuses on the whole idea of the nation - state which created a structure of equality -created an equality of laws treating citizens equally. I think it's pretty clear that arendt tried to show that fascism was a kind of direct reaction against the era and principles of the "nation-state."
If you are talking about the 1920's and 1930's there was indeed a large middle class.
Fascism is an instrument of the corporatists, who want max profit, and the cheapest labor (variable cost). Mussolini's Chamber of Deputies was comprised of representatives from corporations, and as long as they were making money, I G Farben, Krupp, Bayer, Messerschmidt, Porsche were just fine with Hitler, in fact they and Preston Bush, financed his road to power, and they profited well not only from the war, but Hitlers slaves.