Hartmann Report

The Colorado GOP has a new outrage Back in 2000, Mike Pence’s family business — before it went bankrupt, sticking the state with a $20 million toxic waste cleanup bill — was called Tobacco Road; it was a local Indiana chain of convenience stores specializing in selling cigarettes. That’s probably why in 2000 Mike Pence wrote an op-ed saying that cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Whenever it came up later in campaigns, though, he’d change the subject and talk about abortion instead. Now Republicans in Colorado are trying the same little trick only this time with meat.

They have a satanic logo and openly celebrate racism & death. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine has found that while the first cases of Covid appeared in states with Democratic governors (New York, New Jersey, Washington), states with Republican governors have had a whole lot more death over the full course of this pandemic. The study confirms common sense. When GOP governors defy simple, common-sense rules like wearing masks or avoiding dense crowds, pretty much the only logical conclusion one can draw is that they’re trying to “thin out the herd” in their state, killing off those expensive Social Security/Medicare users and the state’s “less productive” disabled, diabetic or obese people.

To Get an Honest Immigration System, We Must Reverse Reaganism "Biden Faces Growing Political Threat from Border Upheaval" reads the headline in the Washington Post. But why?

How does culture decide which changes are acceptable & which are not? In 1983, Louise and I started a travel business in suburban Atlanta. Travel had recently been deregulated and the industry was like the Wild West; we invented the first “frequent-flier program” for a travel agency, and it got us on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Business was good. Louise ran the front end of the business with our travel agents, and I’ll never forget the day one of our better customers came in and said to her something like, “Hey, honey, can you get me a decent ticket to Dallas?”

Most Americans don’t realize Reagan put a tax on income from Social Security, unemployment benefits and tips. It’s time for some middle-class tax breaks. Reagan did such a great job selling tax cuts as a good thing that now Democrats should pick up some of that slack.

And they need our help; there was never a better time to get involved. Ted Cruz, who fancies himself a great performer on the stage of American politics, had an urgent message to tweet out to America yesterday. “The first weeks of the Biden administration,” he said, were “boring.”

The signal was in Biden's speech, but entirely missed by the press. As we stand on the edge of the end of the Reagan Revolution, an end signaled by one particular phrase in President Biden‘s speech last Thursday night (which I’ll get to in a minute), its really important that Americans understand the backstory.

Grifting is all the GOP has to offer anymore. It may well be the end of an era. Ten years ago, Peter Turchin published a provacative piece in Nature predicting we’d see massive political upheaval in 2020, because, he said, politics tends to go in cycles of around between 40 and 60 years, most often 50 years. He essentially predicted we’d see people in the streets last year like we hadn’t seen since the late 1960s, and it turns out he was right.

For some bizarre reason, our media has missed what’s right in front of their faces. While Fox News, rightwing hate radio and Republican politicians have been all over the “canceling” of racist Dr. Seuss drawings (by the family foundation) and Mr. Potatohead (by toymaker Hasbro), they’ve been quite vigorous in pursuing “cancel culture” in other areas.

The world is getting tired of overdressed cranky billionaire families Americans of pretty much every race, class and political persuasion are recoiling in disgust that the British royal family would even seriously discuss refusing to give security protection or a title to Harry's and Megan's son because of concerns about "how dark" his skin might be. Since our country allied with Great Britain in World Wars I and II, Americans have generally held a favorable view of the British Royals. Books, magazines and even TV shows about them are perennial and predictable best-sellers.