Rehabilitating Thom Hartmann

MeanMesa has long had the habit of listening to Thom Hartmann (The Thom Hartmann Radio Show, AM1350 KABQ, Albuquerque, 10AM to 1PM weekdays).  In fact, Thom's blog from his daily Newsletter has long been a part of MeanMesa's daily newletter to a nice group of progressive friends here in New Mexico.

However, Mr. Hartmann's whining seemed to have reached an irritating "fever pitch" of late -- especially in his criticism of our President.  Apparently, Barrack Obama just hasn't crashed solidly enough into a program of vindictiveness and revenge on the neo-cons in Mr. Hartmann's opinion.

The rest of us, striving to be a bit more mature in our national politics, are assuming that the President is not a big fan of starting a civil war with all the troglodytes who are still staggering around in Rush Limbaugh's cloud of perpetual lies and inflammation.

Still, Thom's two latest newsletters may have broken this mold.  Take a look and see what you think.

Thom's blog

The Hard Reich in the Republican Party Shows their True Stripes

It appears that the Senate Judiciary Committee's Republicans have so far one solo talking point, that being that Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an "activist judge," and because Elena Kagan clerked for him, she must be tainted by her association with him. Marshall, of course, successfully argued before the Supreme Court - when he held the Solicitor General's job that Elena Kagan currently holds - that the 1898 Plessy versus Ferguson "separate but equal" racial doctrine should be overturned, and the Court unanimously agreed in its "Brown versus Board of Education" decision. But these Southern State Senators, particularly Alabama's Jeff Sessions, are apparently still smarting over being forced by the Court to accept integration of workplaces, neighborhoods, and lunch counters. Once again, the hard reich in the Republican party shows their true stripes, and doesn't even have the common sense or moral compass to be embarrassed by it. They mentioned Thurgood Marshall - in a negative context - nearly twice as many times in their opening remarks as they mentioned their other boogeyman, the current President of the United States, an African-American who wouldn't be President if Marshall hadn't successfully argued that case before the court.

-Thom

and, 

Thom's blog

The Manchurian Candidate happened...

According to a new Pew Research Center survey, "The recession has directly hit more than half of the nation's working adults, pushing them into unemployment, pay cuts, reduced hours at work or part-time jobs." Close to half of the survey's respondents said, "they are in worse financial shape as a result of the downturn, which destroyed 20 percent of Americans' wealth." Meanwhile, Republicans are obstructing any attempts whatsoever to aid Americans in crisis, whether it be mortgage help or unemployment, and both Democrats and Republicans are joined in fearing to take on the multinational monopolies that have paid off politicians for three decades to get huge tax breaks for companies moving jobs from America to China and to destroy all the protectionist tariff and other measures this country has historically had since 1793 to keep manufacturing of everything from jeans to machine tools here in America. As a result, we don't make much here anymore other than weaponry, and since the beginning of Reaganonomics have gone from being the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor, the world's largest manufacturer of consumer goods to the world's largest importer of them. Reaganomics, Clintonomics, and Friedman's flat-earth economics have turned America into the world's largest third-world country, while at the same time China continues to protect its markets and has a growing economy and industrial base. It's almost like The Manchurian Candidate happened, his name was Ronald Reagan, and nobody has had the courage since 1988 to turn us away from his insane tax and trade policies.

-Thom