Hartmann Report

It's time to say “No” to Big Tech and “smart” appliances that are, in reality, data thieves attaching themselves to us and our homes like blood-sucking parasites. A few weeks ago our decade-old, serially-repaired dishwasher gave up the ghost, soaking the kitchen floor in the process. Louise found a replacement online that met her needs and fitted into the space we had, and two burly guys came out this week to install it while she stood outside with all the doors and windows open. “It’s a smart dishwasher,” she told me, handing me the instruction manual. “Figure out how to hook it up to my cell phone so we can control it remotely.” I dutifully read the manual and downloaded the app from the overseas company that made the dishwasher. And that’s where it got weird.

It’s a low bar, but America must become at least as functional as the NFL! How do criminals take over countries? Donald Trump, for example, is a criminal, as the Supreme Court arguably determined yesterday when they denied his efforts to claim executive privilege to conceal his crimes. And as would be strongly suggested by his son Eric invoking the Fifth Amendment over 500 times in a single deposition about fraud.

Voter fraud isn’t real, but, election fraud is very much real and alive & that’s exactly what DeSantis and the Texas GOP are proposing -- right out in the open. Republicans have been committing election fraud right out in the open since 1964 and covering it up by yelling about “voter fraud.” Remember the hours-long lines to vote we’ve seen on TV ever since the 60s in minority neighborhoods? Those are no accident: they’re part of a larger election fraud program the GOP has used to suppress the vote for sixty years now.

The morbidly rich have taken over politics, nobody trusts anybody, violence is up, gun sales have exploded & our nation experienced its first armed assault from traitors within since the Civil War. “Conservative” columnists in America are bemoaning how coarse, violent and Third-World-ish the US has become in the past 40 years. David Brooks, for example, comes right out and says “America is falling apart at the seams.”

Russell's entire political career focused on his single-minded use of the filibuster to block Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation, just like a few well-known senators are doing today... On this Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day and in this era of reconsidering monuments to people who built their careers on racism, it’s time to rename the Russell Senate Office Building, where 33 senators today conduct their daily business. This is not just a symbolic gesture: follow along with me for a moment. Democratic Senator Richard Russell was most famous as the guy who wielded the filibuster to destroy Civil Rights legislation.

Reclaiming our democracy from the ruling class... If you were looking for a date when our modern American oligarchy started, it would be January 30, 1976.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — It's starting to look like Trump may have tried to set up Stewart Rhodes as the patsy to take the fall for the deaths and destruction that Trump incited on January 6th. — Do Democrats Have Something Up Their Sleeve for Voting Rights? — Rightwingers On the Supreme Court May Not Like Workplace Vaccine Mandates But They Love State-Mandated Forced Pregnancy. — Authoritarian Watch: The War on Public Education Continues. — Is Long Covid the Most Under-Reported Problem with Omicron? — Crazy alert: Get This - Conservatives Are Trans-ing Themselves To "Own the Libs?!" — In Good News - Will voters succeed in using the 14th Amendment to bar Sedition Caucus members from running for Congress?

Are Manchin and Sinema white supremacists? Or doing the work of white supremacists who finance them? Or just cynically using white supremacy to advance their political goals? I guess the real question is, “Why?“ Are she and Senator Joe Manchin white supremacists? Or in league with them/working for them? Or two steps removed, working for people willing to cynically exploit white supremacy for their own continued wealth and power?

China is looking at their interdependence with us through a national security lens, and we should, too. I’m typing this into a computer made in China, reading it on a screen made in China. The WiFi router that’s connecting me to the internet was made in China, as is the cable modem my internet service provider put in my house. The external keyboard and backup drives are made in China, as are most of the lamps, bulbs and other appliances on my desk. My eyeglasses and the shirt I’m wearing were made in China (the pants are from Malaysia, the shoes from Korea), as is the coat I wear outside. The one medication I take is made in India out of ingredients from China. Meanwhile, this is the year — 2022 — that the government of China has ordered that all “government offices and public institutions” nationwide must “remove foreign computer equipment and software.”

Once citizens believe a nation is "a republic but not a democracy" it’s easier for a strongman to limit majority-rule voting so “only the right people” get to vote or have their vote counted. It’s one of the most toxic and corrosive memes the GOP is pushing today, that’s now being used to minimize the importance of universal, free and fair elections. Writing at the Heritage Foundation’s website in a warning about “egalitarianism,” for example, Bernard Dobski also uses the famous John Birch Society mantra as the title for his article: “America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy.”