Hartmann Report

Bannon’s grift in East Palestine is the smallest of the small, after his being busted for a “Build the Wall” scheme and others, but is still emblematic of the Republican strategy at governance... Nobody ever accused Republicans of not knowing how to make a buck or BS-ing somebody into voting for them. Lying to people for economic or political gain is the very definition of a grift. Whenever there’s another mass- or school-shooting, Republican politicians hustle out fundraising emails about how “Democrats are coming to take your guns!” The result is a measurable and profitable spike in gun sales after every new slaughter of our families and children, followed by a fresh burst of campaign cash to GOP lawmakers. But the GOP’s ability to exploit any opportunity that comes along — regardless of its impact on America or American citizens — goes way beyond just fundraising hustles.

Leadership from multiple venues in American journalism should get together and decide what photos to release, for maximum impact and minimum trauma. And now we have another mass school shooting, this time in Tennessee with three 9-year-old girls dead as well as 3 adults. Immediately followed by another pathetic Republican congressman claiming that Congress can’t do a thing. A community is grieving, schoolkids across America are terrified, and after 130 mass shootings in the first 87 days of this year — 33 of them in schools and colleges — you’d think average Americans would finally understand the horrors of the gun violence Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court have inflicted on us. This is a phenomenon as systemic and unique to the United States today as Jim Crow was in the 1950s. The gun control movement needs to learn from the Civil Rights movement. Back in 1955, young Black people like 14-year-old Emmett Till were routinely murdered by white people all over America, usually with no consequence whatsoever.

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.