Hartmann Report

Bigots are switching to “creative expression” instead of religion as the club they’ll use to beat down public accommodation laws. The Supreme Court appears hell-bent on making America bigoted again. Step-by-step, they’re undoing every bit of progressive legislation from the past 80 years that they can find. Now they’re going after the right of gays and lesbians who want to get married to shop for a website, or pretty much anything else that requires “creative” effort.

All these rich and powerful men think they’re “secret geniuses”; once they’ve concluded the “truth” of their own infallibility, they stop listening to those whose opinions contradict their own. It was a mistake a flock of geese wouldn’t make. It was a mistake nature and evolution have designed against in all animal life. But a small group of humans keep making it over and over again, and our Supreme Court has made the situation far, far worse. There’s a reason Donald Trump just came out against the United States Constitution, and it’s not because he’s simply a fascist or that the guy he paid to show up for his classes in prep school and college didn’t fill him in on civics.

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. For over a century, most states used biometrics to verify voter identity. Signatures done in front of a witness are nearly impossible to fake (unlike IDs, which can be easily faked). Polling place workers would compare the original registration signature with the signature of the person signing in to vote, and if they didn’t match, the worker would disqualify the voter. When the Motor Voter Act was passed in 1993, not a single state required proof of citizenship to vote, and there was no national problem of voter fraud. The threat of a few years in jail is more than enough to discourage even the most ardent partisan from trying to double-vote or fraudulently vote. 

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Is Bidenomics Working? Sure looks that way. — Speaking of those rail workers, the administration’s proposed 7 sick days would have cost the railroads $321 million a year. — The 11th Circuit Court has finally told Trump that he’s not above the law. — Will Putin face a worldwide tribunal for his crimes against humanity in Ukraine? — New bipartisan Senate study shows we’re still failing to confront “the persistent and lethal” threat of white supremacist terrorists within the United States. — Has Alabama brought back debtors’ prison? — Geeky Science! How about a roof full of solar panels to go with that new electric car? — Crazy Alert! Why would evolution put stripes on zebras instead of something looking more like camouflage?

"Voter fraud" today is every bit as phony an issue as was Nixon’s “drug crisis” in 1971. But our media is almost completely overlooking the story... Finally, The New York Times figured out something skeezy was going on in Georgia. From their article yesterday titled Turnout Was Strong in Georgia, but Mail Voting Plummets After New Law: “Data released by the Georgia secretary of state showed that mail voting in the state’s November general election plunged by 81 percent from the level of the 2020 contest. While a drop was expected after the height of the pandemic, Georgia had a far greater decrease than any other state with competitive statewide races, according to a New York Times analysis.” Ever since 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court blocked full enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, the GOP is making voting easier for rural and suburban white people and harder for urban Black people. Particularly in Georgia. This is voter suppression at a world-class level, worthy of Putin or Orbán.

While our media tries to pretend racism is limited to a “fringe” made up of “outliers” like Fuentes, the reality is much closer to the mainstream base of the GOP than most are willing to admit. Republicans are finally getting around to condemning Trump for having a Thanksgiving week dinner with Nick Fuentes. In front of a crowded dining room that rose to their feet and applauded when Trump, West, and Fuentes walked into the room. For the cameras and the world to see. Senator John Cornyn of Texas is the Senate Minority Whip — essentially the number two Republican in the Senate behind Mitch McConnell — and for four years was the chair of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, in charge of getting Republicans elected. And, like the old pro he is, Senator Cornyn knew how to play Trump’s embrace of antisemitism and racism perfectly, producing an elegant shout-out to the white supremacist base back home that his people will love and remember for years. And he did it all without paying even a tiny price with the media and the public.

Was there a conspiracy — even if it only involved a handful of people — at the highest levels of our government to end the American Experiment that was only defeated by sheer luck? Congressman Ron Paul’s former staffer, Elmer Stuart Rhodes, leader of the Oathkeepers, was just convicted of seditious conspiracy. But how did he and his merry band get close enough to Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi to present the kind of deadly threat they tried to carry out?

They see themselves as standing apart from the rest of humanity, as even genetically superior to the rest of us. Whether they believe their god sent them or that their DNA is superior to the rest of us, the new supremacists who own the GOP represent a threat to American democracy. They’ve tried to conquer America three times in the past: will they do it this time?

Algorithms used in social media are not tuned for what is best for society. They don’t ask themselves, “Is this true?” or “Will this information help or hurt humanity?" The man who coined the term “virtual reality” and helped create Web 2.0, Jaron Lanier, recently told a reporter for The Guardian there’s an aspect to the internet that could endanger the literal survival of humanity as a species. It’s an amazing story, and I believe he’s 100% right. Humans are fragile creatures. We don’t have fangs or claws to protect ourselves from other animals that might want to eat us. We don’t have fur or a pelt to protect us from the elements. What we do have, however, that has allowed us to conquer the planet and survive for eons is our interconnection with each other, something we generally refer to as society, community, and culture. Humans are social animals. Our ability to share information with each other in ways that are meaningful and credible has been the key to our survival.

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. Exit Polling around the World Most Americans, when they hear the name Viktor Yushchenko, vaguely remember a Ukrainian politician lying in a hospital bed with a severely disfigured face, the result of poisoning with a deadly form of dioxin, the toxic ingredient in Agent Orange. But it was exit polls that got him there.  Exit polls are polls taken outside of voting stations or polling places, where people who have already voted are questioned as they’re leaving. They’re considered far more accurate than other types of pre- or post-election polling because they don’t rely on people answering their phones, returning a mailed inquiry, or asserting that they intend to vote when they may well not.