Hartmann Report

Thanks to the Republican Party, fully 82 percent of all the human beings living in the world’s wealthy countries killed by firearms lived in the USA… Yesterday a 28-year old graduate of a Christian school shot up the place, killing three 9-year-old students and three adults. This was almost 2 years to the day that Republican Governor Bill Lee signed a wide-ranging gun deregulation bill allowing Tennesseans to carry guns — open or concealed — without a permit or any other government interference. Republicans are trying to distract America from the easy access Audrey Hale had to weapons of war by discussing Hale’s personal life, but the availability of guns and the Republican embrace of death as a political weapon are the only real issues here. We’re the only developed country in the world that unconditionally allows civilians to own military-style assault weapons, that allows “open carry,” and that lets gun manufacturers openly buy politicians (thanks, Republicans on the Supreme Court).

This is how democracies are transformed into fascism oligarchies. Political power, wealth, and impunity for me, Republicans say, but not for thee. The Republican Party has adopted a motto embraced by despots throughout history. In other democracies, people are rebelling against this embrace of fascism: will we here? They’re revolting in the UK against Boris Johnson’s lack of accountability, viz “Partygate.” In France, people are burning things in the streets protesting President Macron’s raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 without subjecting it to the accountability of a vote of parliament or the people.

A novel written 136 years ago is as brilliant and compulsively readable as it was when Grover Cleveland was president... In this Sunday excerpt space, in addition to publishing chapters of my own books, I occasionally slip in a review of someone else’s book. This one is particularly well worth reading! Ralph Nader told me about this novel, first published in 1888, and how it was one of the major inspirations for the Progressive movement of the late 19th century. It positively inspired Bernie Sanders’ hero Eugene Debs, for example, Nader told me. At the time, I was also reading Dan Brown’s book, ”The Lost Symbol,” an excellent novel in the classic, formula-adventure-fiction of this century that’s so much fun to read. But once I started reading Bellamy’s book, I had to suspend Brown’s: Bellamy’s book totally captured me, even though it was written more than 100 years ago. The plot device of Bellamy’s novel is that the hero is “Mesmerized” — hypnotized — and the trance is so deep that he wakes up in the year 2000, his bodily functions having been so dramatically slowed that he’s still a young man in his twenties and in fine physical health (albeit a bit hungry and weak).

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Who regulates the Supreme Court? — Medicare Advantage companies are throwing everything they have at Congress and the public to preserve their corrupt cash cow. — Latest rate hike: Why is the Fed playing with fire? — Hospitals are shutting down their obstetrics and childbirth departments because of the abortion ban: how many women will die? — Did China’s President Xi just own Russia’s President Vladimir Putin? — “Banning Books But Not Guns—What the Hell Are We Doing?” — Geeky Science! Trump helped the GOP become the party of death via the EPA. — Crazy Alert! Fox host is upset because an underwear company is using a model who’s disabled.

Instead of being in Congress or on TV, they should be in a court of law answering for the deaths and destroyed families they’ve caused in their quest for political power and advertising dollars... Rand Paul was shocked this week to learn from the CEO of Moderna that more people get inflammation of the heart from catching Covid than from the mRNA Covid vaccines. Republicans in Missouri just passed legislation outlawing an employer’s ability to fire workers who refuse to take vaccines. Republicans in a dozen state legislatures (so far) have put forward legislation preventing medical licensing boards from punishing doctors or nurses who prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. It’s the law now in North Dakota and Tennessee.

The next two or three election cycles will determine our nation’s fate: a more widespread democracy or the Russian-style fascism promoted by Trump and DeSantis. Stay tuned and stay woke! Why are Republicans proudly waging a “War on Woke”? First, some background. In 1938, Lead Belly sang a song about the “Scottsboro Boys,” a group of young Black men and boys who were falsely charged with rape and sentenced to the death penalty in Alabama in 1931. In the song, he talks about meeting the Scottsboro defendants, saying: “I made this little song about down there. So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep your eyes open.” The phrase had a major revival in the Black community, as NBC News notes, in 2014 after Michael Brown was murdered by Ferguson, Missouri white police officer Darren Wilson. “Stay woke” meant “keep an eye out for white cops who want to kill you” and to stay alert to and aware of other aspects of structural racism in American society.

Bullying has now become the trademark behavior of the GOP, the result of Donald Trump’s entrance on the scene in 2015 when he successfully bullied and cowed every other GOP presidential candidate... Donald Trump has provoked a bullying crisis in America that extends from elementary school all the way to Congress. It’s time to say, “Enough!” Marjorie Taylor Greene, an infamous bully who once chased then-17-year-old Parkland school-shooting survivor David Hogg down the street screaming epithets at him, bullied her pooch Kevin McCarthy into threatening New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg with a congressional investigation if he didn’t back off from prosecuting her role model, Donald Trump.

Sadly, it’s clear that neither Bush nor Cheney will be held accountable for their lies and the blood and treasure they cost. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s war against Iraq, which followed their illegal invasion of Afghanistan just a bit more than a year earlier. Given the costs of both these wars — and the current possibility of our being drawn deeper into conflict in both Ukraine and Taiwan — it’s an important moment to discuss our history of wars, both illegal and unnecessary and those that are arguably essential to the survival of democracy in the world.

It's now a certainty that the last legitimately elected Republican president who wasn’t a traitor to the United States was Eisenhower. In aggregate, this should be the biggest story in the media... It’s dizzying: in this one week we learn that there’s a witness to Reagan’s 1980 treason to seize the presidency, and that Donald Trump, who gave the Russians a spy in his first week in office (among other treasons), will be indicted for the crime that helped him avoid losing to Hillary Clinton. This is on top of Nixon’s well-documented treason with Vietnam and Bush’s explicit lies about Iraq. It's now a certainty that the last legitimately elected Republican president who wasn’t a traitor to the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower. In aggregate, this should be the biggest story in the media.

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. It is true, that in the meantime, we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, and long oppressions of enormous public debt. …If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost. For this is a game where principles are the stake." —Thomas Jefferson, writing about the conservative John Adams presidency