CelticBear’s Musings

Yesterday’s Thom Hartman Program on Air America had a couple of interesting topics:

♦ Thom Hartman: 12-5-2007
(You may want to right-click & save-as to save it as a file instead of stream it. It’s about 19MB in size.)

(I digress for a second: Today’s show he’s spending some time on the topic of telemarketers. A little serious discussion on laws, some extremely funny time on Tom Mabe and his totally f**king with telemarketers.)

Anyway, on yesterday’s show, he starts with a discussion on nuclear power. He has a guest, Gwyneth Cravens who wrote the book: Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. She started out as someone against nuclear energy, but after doing extensive research on the subject, came to the conclusion it’s the safest, cleanest, cheapest energy source we have, capable of powering factories and urban areas and the American infrastructure. There are dangers, but they’re far less serious than people believe. The waste is more manageable than people think, and there are many developments that will deal with waste even better. She advocated for more research and funding in alternative energy like solar, wind, ground heat transfer systems, etc–but she says (and so did at least one energy worker caller) that alternatives are good for peak use and supplements–but they can’t provide the power our culture needs, even with massive energy conservation. Nuclear is the only alternative to the horribly polluting, even more dangerous current method of coal burning.

But Thom Hartman, whom I agree with most of the time, is such an ideologue utopianist on alternative energy, he has no interest in listening to anything counter to his preconceptions. Erroneous preconceptions Cravens a few times counters him on saying his information is not based on peer-reviewed credible science. It was really disheartening to hear Thom act like an unreasonable jerk. In any case, this section of the show was interesting and provided a lot of good information on the topic.

But what was even more interesting, to me, is when around 37 minutes into the show when Thom starts talking sense again, and starts talking about what’s starting to be done in D.C. about the Bush crime family and charges being filed against them. He starts talking about political courage, and then the people who signed the Declaration of Independence. And he spends some time describing the 50 or so signers, what kind of people they were and what happened to them for leading the Revolution.

The signers of the Declaration were liberal radicals fighting against the conservative British rule and their supporters. They believed the government should be by and for the people, not wealthy elite, not corporations, not military rulers. They knew as they signed that when they did, they would be legally decreed traitors and subject to execution for treason. They had the courage of their convictions to fight for a secular government that for the first time in history would be designed to aid the people in not just maintaining liberty, but happiness as well! Completely new concept in the history of socio-politics!

Also, a reminder on how the Boston tea Party was a reaction expressly against the British East India Trading Company getting huge corporate tax breaks.

It’s an interesting show–check it out.