Today's show was a "Best of Thom Hartmann", because Thom was in Seattle for a private preview of a feature-length documentary produced by Leonardo DiCaprio titled "The 11th Hour". Thom is in the movie.
The show comprised elements from 20th, 26th and 27th June, and included…
The main story was President Bush commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence.
Guest: Larry Johnson, former Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department officer with the Department of Counter-Terrorism. Expert on terrorism, aviation security and crisis and risk management. He also blogs at Huffington Post. The outing of his former colleague, Valerie Plame.
Guest: Ambassador Joe Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame, who was outed.
Guest: Joseph Farah, WorldNet Daily. He believes Libby should have received a pardon.
Why was Thom broadcasting, if not come hell, then come high water?
On America's birthday, Thom talked about the first revolt against the first really big transnational corporation, and what America is celebrating independence from.
Thom talks about Jefferson’s ownership of slaves, and our use of slaves.
Why should we care about the bill to do away with the penny, which costs more to produce than it is worth?
About whom did Senator Brownback say, "By his words and deeds he chose to place himself above the law. By his words and deeds he has undermined the rule of law in America to the great harm of this nation"?
Guest: conservative Devon Herrick), senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Michael Moore's movie "Sicko".
Guest: Sarah Van Gelder, Yes Magazine. She visited Cuba late last year to study the health care system there.
Guest: Christy Harvey, Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress, and editor of Mic Check. Troubles at the Embassy in Iraq.
Guest: Steve Rendall, senior analyst at FAIR, and co-host of their CounterSpin show.
Guest: Faiz Shakir, Research Director at the Center for American Progress and Editor of ThinkProgress.org.
As usual on Fridays the first hour of the show was devoted to "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, discussing a wide variety of issues.
I just went to the Wall Street Journal, and it said it was free today. So if you want to look at any of the wsj articles that Thom mentions, tonight's the night.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
What is it that Americans are beginning to figure out?
Michael Moore socking it to Wolf Blitzer.
Guest: conservative Kfir Alfia. His book - "A Field Guide to Left Wing Wackos".
How much government should we have? What are the boundaries of public function vs. private function?
Who was it who said, "I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions"?
Who is more likely to use marijuana - someone from the USA, or the Netherlands?
Guest: Robyn Simon, VP of Communications for the National Women's Political Caucus of California. They aim to have 50-50 representation by men and women by 2020 - the 100th anniversary of the year that women obtained the right to vote. At the current rate of progress it would take 200 years.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Guest: Eli Lehrer, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He says that private security firms can protect you better then our Armed Services. Can Government protect "us" from Electricity Blackouts to Airport Security Problems?
Guest: TJ, Loaded Orygun, Portland, Oregon. How Senator Gordon Smith and Dick Cheney's caused the largest Salmon kill in Oregon and the Northwest in the history of United States - just to get Gordon Smith elected.
Guest: Larry Scott of VA Watchdog. Jim Nicholson. Soldiers being shipped all over the south, veterans want the hospital built somewhere, stop fighting. New Orleans has fewer people now. Partisan, Republicans are saying look elsewhere.
Who has "taken an excursion into fantasy"?
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
As usual on Fridays the first hour of the show was devoted to "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. He could be with us less time than usual as he was at Arlington National Cemetery for the funeral of a Vermont soldier.
Also as usual on Fridays, the rest of the show was "Anything Goes".
What jobs do you think Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and others are suited for?
Who won today's presidential straw poll?
The interruption of the first Hindu prayer in the Senate.
Corporate personhood.
Who was today's jolly good fellow, for saying to the president, "Well, it’s delusional, to say the least. As I said earlier, and you heard me say, it’s a failed policy wrapped in illusion."
Who was Thom thinking of when he said the following? "If the terror that we have to worry about is people who base their actions in the here and now on how things are going to be after everybody who is here and now is dead and gone, or how they're going to think of us, I am very concerned."
How could the media put Michael Moore out of a job?
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Hey Sue. If this is the wrong place to ask this, sorry, please point me to the right place.
I listen to Thom 98% via podcasts, via the free unedited casts on iTunes from the White Rose Society. There are no updates there for the shows from last Friday or yesterday. Any idea of the problem?
Second one: with the changes to Thom's website, meaning the opening of all the message boards to all members, etc, does this change anything with regard to getting podcasts via the White Rose Society? I see that on Air America's site, you need to join as a premium member to get the podcasts there. Thanks for your help.
How conservative economic policies have been destroying the middle class, economic opportunity and families of America for 26 years.
How they have been destroying families in Iraq and how there is a concerted effort to gin up consensus for a policy of attacking Iran.
Guest: conservative presidential candidate Dan Gilbert, who claims that the "Democratic political agenda" is breaking down America’s family values. His answer for everything is tax cuts.
Economics rant.
Upcoming events.
Republicans are focusing on Iran, but it is mostly people from Saudi Arabia getting involved in violence in Iraq.
Lieberman, McCain, Kyl, Graham, and Coleman's Iran Amendment.
Guest: Terry O’Sullivan, General President of Laborers' International Union of North America Topic: Labor issues. 80% of the Marquez Brothers workers signed up for union, but were harassed.
How did a vanishing cow save Thom?
Reid To Force All-Night Filibuster On Iraq Withdrawal.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Is it time to re-boot our entire way of government, or at least the processes by which it's running?
Harry Reid tonight is going to stand up to the Republicans.
Parallels between President Polk's war against Mexico, against which Conggressman Abraham Lincoln stood up, and President Bush's standing up to power. Even staunch conservative Bruce Fein, who wrote articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton, believes impeachment should be used to restore checks and balances.
The false dichotomy that conservatives believe, that the more safety and security have the less freedom you have, or, the more freedom you have, the less safety and security you have. If you have maximum freedom it does not mean that you will have large amounts of safety and security. Not at all, but safety and security, on the other hand, are a necessary precondition for freedom.
Guest: Amanda Terkel, Associate Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress. New National Intelligence Estimate just released.
Call the "listener comment line" to voice your opinions on 503 323-6620 if you don't want to be live on air or can't get through. Max 30 seconds, please, and it may be used on air.
How do we take back America, and the constitution, the entire government? Get active and participate.
Guest: Jim Dean, chair, Democracy for America. A new national grassroots network.
How can we restore Habeas Corpus?
Guest: Congressman Jerrold Nadler on his bill to restore Habeas Corpus. Tell your congress person you want both Habeas Corpus and the right to protest torture.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Thom: "How can we restore America to being a constitutionally limited, representative Republic? How can we restore the rule of law? How can we elevate the Constitution to the status it once had, and elevate our nation to being the example, the beacon, the city on the hill to quote John Winthrop, paraphrased by both JFK and Reagan, that every other country in the world looks to and says, 'we want to be like that'? Because right now, the countries that are looking at us and saying, 'we want to be like that', are not exactly the kind of countries that I think any of us would want to live in."
Guest: Bruce Fein, a constitutional scholar, a lawyer, international consultant, and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, an organization devoted to restoring checks and balances and protections against government abuses. He served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration as general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission and has been affiliated with conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, and now writes a weekly column for both the Washington Times and Politico.com. President Bush has used "signing statements" to invoke presidential authority to challenge provisions of legislation passed by Congress, he's challenged a federal ban on torture, and had used the Patriot Act and numerous other assertions of congressional power to look at US citizens. As recently as December, Bush asserted the authority to open U.S. mail without judicial warrants in a signing statement attached to a postal reform bill. Are these grounds for Impeachment? Are there other remedies? Caesar never claimed as much power as Bush has. Bruce Fein was on for the first hour, and you can hear an archive of the entire interview at KPOJ.
So, how are we going to bring about a true reform of a truly broken system? The worst, the most badly broken system of all the industrialized countries in the world at providing health care to its citizens, one of the essential elements of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, like at the core of life?
Guest: State Senator Sheila Kuehl, about her effort to insure all Californians with a single payer system.
Upcoming Events in Grand Rapids, MI.
Who wrote, "The Founders well understood the difficult tradeoff between safety and freedom"?
Thom: "First Bush, Cheney and Gonzales came for the terrorists, but I was not a terrorist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the enemy combatants, but I was not an enemy combatant, so I did not object. Then they came for the protestors resisting "free speech zones" near Bush campaign rallies and speeches, but I was not a protestor and so I only voiced my unease. And now, in yesterday's executive order, Bush may be coming for you and me."
Go to Thom's site to see the trailer for a film that Thom is in, Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie "The 11th Hour" to be released this summer.
Guest: Larry Johnson (note changed web address), former Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department officer with the Department of Counter-Terrorism. Expert on terrorism, aviation security and crisis and risk management. He also blogs at Huffington Post. Article: Deep Shiite, We’ve Driven Off the Cliff.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sue N,
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Guest: Paul Craig Roberts, an economist, nationally syndicated columnist, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, known as the father of Reaganomics. He's the former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Scripps Howard News Service, and was a former contributing editor to William F. Buckley's publication, the National Review, author of the recent article, "Impeach Now: Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy". Transcript. You can hear an archive of the entire interview at KPOJ.
Guest: Congressman George Miller (7th district, CA), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee and author of the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 (H.R. 2669), which the House passed 273 to 149 on July 11.
How many times did Mayor Giuliani boast he cut taxes, prior to the 1984 steam pipe exploding in New York City?
Who said, "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are ..., and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."?
Call the "listener comment line" to voice your opinions on 503 323-6620 if you don't want to be live on air or can't get through. Max 30 seconds, please, and it may be used on air.
Guest: Christy Harvey, Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress, and editor of Mic Check.
O'Reilly sent a reporter to question a sponsor of the Yearly Kos convention. What kind of can of worms has he opened?
As usual on Fridays the first hour of the show was devoted to "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. The all nighter on Tuesday. The National Intelligence Estimate. Education. Trade agreements.
Fox News pestering the boss of JetBlue, sponsor of the Yearly Kos.
Distribution of wealth, resources. Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour" film. Human population. We're using a quarter of all the photosynthetic output of the planet right now, and the consequence of that is that we're driving all these other species extinct.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Guest: Chuck Morse, a conservative intellectual who ran for Congress against Barney Frank, a veteran radio commentator, author, columnist, and business owner. Taxes.
How can we repair the damage the Bush administration has done to our government and to our commons?
Guest: Congressman Peter DeFazio. As a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure “bubbleroom” in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack. On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED
Judging by his recent testimony, either Gonzales is lying, or there is another program we don't know about. The program that Comey said was discussed at Ashcroft's bedside 2as up for renewal on March 11 - a 6 months anniversary of 9/11.
The Bush is organization taking functional arms of government, for example FEMA, and turning them into arms of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is operating like an organized criminal syndicate.
Guest: Rob Kampia, Executive Director, Marijuana Policy Project. Has the Drug Czar's office been politicized and partisan?
Guest: Mike Davis, senior fellow at the conservative think tank National Center for Policy Analysis, and an economist at SMU's Cox School of Business. Republicans' resistance to expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Whose economy is it?
The House Judiciary Committee has voted to hold Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten in contempt of Congress. This now goes to the floor, probably after the August recess.
Guest: Congressman Jim McDermott, Washington State. Iraq.
"Everything You Know is Wrong" Guest: Steve Hasson, cult counselor and mind control expert, former member of the Moon cult. The Truth About Sun Myung Moon.
Guest: Larry Scott, VA Watchdog. Veterans Affairs.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
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