Hartmann Report

Next year may be the last chance to reclaim the values of democracy, pluralism & egalitarianism that have animated this country since her founding. Nobody can say they weren’t warned about the stakes… “Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre A former employee of Rudy Giuliani, who was hired to help him drum up business for his law firm, has sworn under oath and penalty of perjury that he told her one of the “business opportunities” she could exploit was to sell pardons to felons for $2 million each. Giuliani, she alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday, told her he’d be splitting the money with Trump 50/50. It’s an echo of a mostly-forgotten story in The New York Times from over two years ago: the $2 million figure matches what John Kiriakou told reporters and the FBI (which appears not to have followed up) that Giuliani quoted him as the cost to buy a pardon from Trump. (Kiriakou turned the offer down, noting that he didn’t have $2 million even if he were inclined, which he wasn’t.)

Apparently John Durham’s "imagination" couldn’t extend to the possibility that Trump has been a Russian asset for at least 30 years and continues to be one to this day. Why? Imagine you’re in the FBI overseeing national security and a candidate for President for the United States hired to run his campaign a man who’d: — taken $66 million from Russian intelligence services via Putin-friendly oligarchs, — helped Russia install their own puppet government in Ukraine in 2010, — was paid $1 million a year to help the corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), solidify his relationship with Moscow, — forced his party to remove references in their platform to defending Ukrainian democracy... Imagine that candidate had visited Moscow with his Soviet-citizen wife — whose father was a Soviet agent — and been groomed all the way back in 1987 by Russian intelligence (then Soviet intelligence, the KGB) to run for president.

The billionaire funders of GOP politicians could end this all in a single day — by refusing to further fund any politician who continues to embrace guns, dystopian rhetoric, insurrection, and hate... Republicans are promoting death again, this time with DeSantis signing into law a bill that eliminates legal liability for doctors and other medical professionals (including EMTs) if they choose to let you die at the scene or on the operating table, or simply turn you away to let you die alone, because of their “moral, ethical, and religious convictions.” The law says: “[T]hat health care providers and health care payors have the right to opt out of participation in or payment for certain health care services on the basis of conscience-based objections” and “prohibits discrimination or adverse action against health care providers who decline to participate in a health care service on the basis of conscience-based objection…” What started out as a slavery-, wife-beating-, and lynching-celebrating death cult fringe in the Southern Democratic Party — a group that called themselves Dixiecrats — has now fully taken over the GOP.

How Fears of Abolition Shaped the Second Amendment. "Give me liberty or give me death." —Patrick Henry. Article 1, Section 8, of the proposed Constitution had southern slave owners concerned about the future of their economy.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Was the CNN Trump town hall the worst hour on TV ever — Does America have collective PTSD from Trump’s hate and lies? — Texas wants 5-year-olds to know they shouldn’t “covet another man’s wife” and to replace school counselors with uncertified, unlicensed, state-paid “pastors” to give children “spiritual counseling.” — Geeky Science: The threat from climate change just went way up. — Will Turkey’s turn toward fascism roll back this weekend? After Brazil and Mexico electing south- and central-American versions of a progressive, is the world turning back to sanity? — Russia is building a village for American conservatives who hate gays and love white supremacy. — Would ending anonymity help clean up social media? — Good news: Illinois is bucking the GOP trend of hating on queer people, moving toward gender inclusivity instead. — Crazy Alert! Couple attacked for buying Bud Light?

Fulfilling Bannon’s and Trump’s promise to dismantle — or eviscerate — most of America’s regulatory agencies, leaving us all subject to the tender mercies of the country’s billionaires & CEOs… Republicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s.

As long as Trump — or someone who shares his fascistic worldview — heads the Republican Party, this country will continue to be in crisis. Since Trump’s arrival on the scene, this cancer has spread… On CNN last night Donald Trump doubled down on his lies in support of the white supremacist haters convicted of violently killing one police officer and sending 140 others to the hospital on January 6th. This shouldn’t surprise us. He’s getting ready to repeat January 6th after the 2024 election, and in the meantime is encouraging more hate crimes and violence against Americans whose skin isn’t white, are queer, or simply support the basic values this nation has claimed and worked toward since its founding. A new report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund documents how hate crimes have more than doubled in the United States since Donald Trump entered politics in 2015, a spike that follows an initial eruption that coincided with the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008. “Hate crimes,” as in “violence.”

The Senate is profoundly anti-democratic (a crisis amplified by the filibuster), and adding two or three states will only partially correct that, but it’s still a big step toward a More Perfect Union. Three republican presidents added new states, in every case to hold onto a Republican Senate. Lincoln did it. Grant did it. Harrison did it. If he gets reelected in 2024, Biden must do it and Democrats need to prepare the ground now. Recently, Mitch McConnell was on TV telling wealthy donors to a fundraiser in Kentucky, "We've got a 50-50 Senate right now. We've got a 50-50 nation."... This is the GOP's favorite meme — if you listen to the news, particularly the political-leaning shows, you will hear it frequently — and it's a complete lie.

It's time to call them what they are. There's nothing noble about mass murder... Imagine how the GOP would react if there was a religious sect within the country that kept blowing themselves up to kill as many Americans as possible. Like in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel. If they were brown-skinned Muslims — or lefty leftovers from the Weather Underground — strapping on suicide vests and exploding themselves in schools, malls, or places of worship, you can easily anticipate the Republican reaction.

We've done it before... Steven Spainhouer's son worked at one of the stores in the Allen, Texas shopping mall chosen by America's most recent mass shooter (as of Saturday: there were seven this weekend). He arrived at the mall just after the neo-nazi murderer had slaughtered several people, sometimes ripping their bodies and faces into an indistinguishable mass of flesh with his military style ammunition... All because a white supremacist with a "Right Wing Death Squad" patch — commonly worn by Proud Boys — across his chest decided to shoot up a Texas shopping center with a mass-market version of the rifle the Army developed in the 1960s for hunting people in Vietnam.