Hartmann Report

Will Republican extremism and hate for the New Deal — programs that have become absolutely essential to our even having a robust middle class — become grist for the media mill? Sometimes a little socialism is a very good thing. But don’t tell Mike Pence or the billionaires who bankroll him and his GOP colleagues. Or, for that matter, the 109 Democrats who were suckered into joining every single Republican in the House of Representatives to vote for a resolution saying that: “Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America.”

"Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776." —Susan B. Anthony "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." —Timothy Leary

— A young man with a UnitedHealthcare health insurance policy who had ulcerative colitis in a bad way. The company worked very, very hard to deny him care. — Rep. Ilhan Omar was booted off her committee while pro-Hitler GOPers go on committees - what? — How Biden owned Kevin McCarthy. — The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that courts can’t take guns away from men who are under restraining orders for beating and threatening to kill their wives. — You can get away with voting fraud if you’re a Republican. — republicans in the House of Representatives vote to end Covid precautions as a study finds Covid is the third leading cause of death among children. — Crazy Alert! Tucker is claiming NBC is pushing for the genocide of white people. — Geeky Science! Coffee doesn’t “give” you energy: it just borrows it from the future.

Our media and politicians need to figure out that it’s not a slur to call a fascist a fascist. It’s merely descriptive. Ron DeSantis appears to have succeeded in his attempt to bully the College Board into stripping Black Lives Matter, discussion of gay Black thought leaders (perhaps like James Baldwin, whose mother was born enslaved?), and multiple well-known Black authors from their African American Studies Advance Placement course.

With Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career. Rosaline is a 60-year-old Floridian who hopes she doesn’t get seriously ill because she’d be wiped out by the increase in her already burdensome medical debt. She has no insurance, and won’t qualify for Medicare for another 5 years. Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark.

So here we are in 2023 and the real beliefs and plans of the Founding generation — slaveholders and abolitionists alike — have dissolved into a blur of BS, Qanon, and fundamentalist religion. Yesterday “Paul from Woodenville, WA” called into the show and asked, perhaps rhetorically, what the end goal of the GOP was for America. “What kind of a nation are they trying to create here?” he said. The answer is straightforward. Today’s radical Republicans are trying to turn America into a Christianized version of something like Pakistan.

While the GOP are in the pocket of the chemical industry, we can still lobby them as citizens to do something about PFAS chemicals and their impact on us, our children, and our grandchildren. How’d you like a side of liver cancer with those fries? Testicular cancer with your chicken sandwich? Childhood obesity with your “kid’s meal”? These were the findings of a 2022 analysis of wrappers performed by Consumer Reports while looking for chemicals called PFASs in packaging for fast food products sold across America.

Now we learn Barr apparently went so far as to cover up Trump’s involvement with Putin, providing opportunities for Trump to extort Ukraine and pass classified documents along to Russian Intelligence. The Manchurian Candidate was apparently more than just a movie. A Russian agent in the employ of one of Putin’s oligarchs was paid millions to run Trump’s campaign and was passing secret campaign information to Russian intelligence that they used to target specific groups of American voters via Facebook and Twitter. When this treachery was referred to the FBI, the lead agent there was later, it turns out according to The New York Times, also in the employ of Putin’s oligarchs.

"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved anyone. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: “I am busy with matters of consequence!” And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man—he is a mushroom." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Tyre Nichols: We've Seen Too Many People Murdered By American Police. — Can the debt ceiling be abolished or will the GOP dig in on slashing Social Security & Medicare? — Bill Barr was the most corrupt Attorney General in modern American history, both when he helped George HW Bush avoid prosecution for Iran/Contra in 1992 and when he helped cover up Trump's multiple connections to Russia and that nation's help for him in the 2016 election. — How is the manufactured outrage going for Fox-So-Called-News? — Hispanic voters are the target of a new multi-million dollar effort to swing that voting block to the right. — How is Chevron getting away with a $75 billion stock buyback after price-gouging Americans & slamming the climate crisis? — Fascism Alert! Major corporations are backing book banning politicians. — Students are suing Ron DeSanctimonious over AP African American studies. — Crazy Alert! You'd think George Santos would be more careful now that everybody in the country has figured out that he lies almost as often as Donald Trump, but…no.