Thom Hartmann is a Dweeb-or in his words:Has the Rise of Conservatives in Media and Politics Over the Past 26 Years Led to a Police State in America?

This has to be the most preposterous question ever:Has the Rise of Conservatives in Media and Politics Over the Past 26 Years Led to a Police State in America? Yes our pied piper of the left wing wackos is framing the USA as a Fascist/Police State without even a hint of irony that maybe more of his "facts" come from such liberal strongholds of the country. But we already know that his rose colored glasses only see that conservatives are the ones that want to promote Fascism when in fact Fascism is a theory deriving from and sustained on Socialist Principles. Anyway let us look at his proofs:

...And was Carol Anne Gotbaum a Victim of That? The daughter-in-law of one of New York's top officials yelled, "I'm not a terrorist!" and apparently fought with security and police in the Phoenix Airport before being wrestled to the floor and handcuffed. She was then shackled to a table in a holding tank and left alone. She died while seven police officers sat in their security office nearby.

Ok, so we have a lady screaming in a public place about terrorism, that could lead to panic and could be a diversion for a terrorist plot was subdued and held in detention. Nothing seems wrong with that. It looks like no one wanted to be her baby sitter after her public tantrum.

A student of color in LA had her wrist broke by a school security officer after not cleaning up dropped birthday cake to the his satisfaction. During the attack he called her a nappy head. This 16 year old girl was expelled and arrested for littering and battery. But wait.there's more -- when her mom went to the school to complain of the girls treatment and demand the security officer be arrested -- she was arrested and suspended from her job with the school district. The assault was caught on the cell phone of students nearby.

And Thom see no irony that he not only used the source InfoWars.net for his primary source from Alex Jones but the videos were taken from Fox News!!! PrisonPlanet and InforWars are extreme Libertarian wackos and for Thom to attack Libertarians that are actually reasonable and then to take to word of the wackos makes me wonder if he even considered his sources of information?

A UCLA student was tasered by police without cause for studying in the university library without having his ID. Following Police orders to leave, the police tasered him while he was walking towards the door.

So at a "Liberal College" in a liberal town we have security guards that used too much force to enforce the regulations. The UC system is already noted for any liberal cause being good to protest on campus already as we saw in More Crazies at UCSB.

Para-style raids on homes have a 1300 percent increase over the last 25 years. The total annual arrests jumped from 3.3 million in 1960 to 14 million in 2004.

I don't see the second sentence in the article but I guess if the technique is working then we would expect that yes more criminals are rounded up. I did think the following needed highlighted:

Cato has released Balko’s new paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, which tells some of the stories of the innocent people whose homes were raided, and who lost their lives, to this new form of terrorism. It also documents over 150 examples of botched police raids.

So 150 "botched" raids vs. 14 million arrests. While I agree that the "War on Drugs" is another war that was never won or can be won. But that none of this indicates a Police State only that the laws are being enforced by our police and some security guards. So if we are afraid of a Police State forming then Legalize drugs and allocate our Law enforcement resources in more productive uses.

Police officer and security officers should learn how to restrain people in non-violent ways and train for dealing with citizens as human beings? Are we all becoming potential terrorists in the eyes of security and the police? Is authority making this clear with warrant less wiretapping our email, mail and a militarized police department?

Yes, and that Thom is just silly since they are using less than deadly force when encountering potential troublemakers. I would also point out that must be liberal idea to make statements as questions to somehow suggest that they are only asking a question when the question was already answered in their head. Also note that the government does not wiretap emails or mail and even when it was wiretapping it was not recording whole conversations only select words and patterns of calling. Much of the information that the government is now using is readily available through the market so is it really a question of Privacy?

Meantime a local middle school in Oak Park, Illinois has banned hugging -- calling the school a hug-free zone. The Principal says rampant hugging in creating bottlenecks in the hallway and making kids late for class.

Well what type of community is Oak Park, Illinois:

Oak Park has a long history of encouraging and maintaining racial and ethnic diversity, much of which was started in conjunction with the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. The village operates a Diversity Assurance Program within its housing programs department to ensure a stable, diverse, and integrated population. Years ago, Oak Park eliminated the use of "For Sale" signs in front of houses, widely considered one of the keys of success to maintaining the high diversity.

Yes a solid Blue Stater with police problems? Funny that. But the story gets more interesting (note that the link to Chicago Times is no longer valid and this comes from Hugging Banned in the Hallways of an Illinois Middle School):

Hugging is now off limits at an Oak Park middle school.

The new policy went into effect at Percy Julian Middle School last month because of administrators’ concerns that so-called “hug lines” in the hallways were making students late for class and causing bottlenecks in the halls, according to WBBM-Channel 2.

Percy Julian Principal Victoria Sharts told the station hugging is “more appropriate for airports or for family reunions than passing and seeing each other every few minutes in the halls.”

Sharts also said some hugs between students were “too long, too close and usually between boys and girls.”

The school’s 860 students are not allowed to hug anywhere inside the building.

OK, so they may be late for school but also note the innuendo on sexual harassment issues. Yes our Liberal doctrine of sexual harassment must be stopped everywhere except when it is a President that you like does it...

Lastly this link at Just say “no” to hugs? explains the issues fairly well.

Let's talk about being a "we" society again where all people are valued and get our police and security officers trained appropriately.

Sorry but this is six-sigma thinking and not reality. Thom Hartmann has not shown any systemic failure of the system or even a pattern to this "crisis" but just a group of random events to spell out a vacuous philosophy of "train" more of the people. I am sure the people that have these jobs already have enough diversity training to last a lifetime without Thom giving them more. What we have is just 3 simple events that got out of hand out of a population of 300 million. Seems like a spectacularly low incident rate that I feel extremely comfortable saying the USA is not a police state from that article. But there is still a question of whether Thom Hartmann is a fascist? All this talk about "we" and them cons then maybe he is promoting Fascism? (Yes I could not resist a couple of question marks.)
Links:
A New Yorker’s Puzzling Death in the Phoenix Airport

Community responds to Taser use in Powell

Police SWAT raids: The new domestic terrorism?