Hartmann Report

Sabotage Ukraine aid because your donors paid you to? Sabotage your own country’s energy and environmental policies because your donors promise you millions of dollars? They’re at it again: holding up US aid for Ukraine — as you read these words — while demanding more pollution and greater profits for Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas. If it happened in any other developed country in the world, many of these senators would be in prison, or at least barred from office and paying huge fines.

Will Republicans rally unconditionally to Ukraine's side if it costs us more at the gas pump and raises the price of home heating oil? Ukrainian Member of Parliament Oleksandra Ustinova asked this morning how many Ukrainian deaths do Americans have to see on TV before we stop funding Putin by buying his oil? I’d add, how many Ukrainian deaths do we have to see on TV before Republicans stop using the Russian invasion of that country to promote the interests of American petrobillionaire oligarchs?

The Fourth Great Turning and a new geopolitical era is here. It's small comfort as we watch Ukrainians slaughtered live on television, but history tells us these turning points are real... As Russian President Putin tries his version of Hitler’s September 1939 “defensive” attack on Poland, we’ve reached the apex, the hinge, of American history’s Fourth Great Turning. And everybody sees it. Americans who were preoccupied with false claims of voter fraud and the “tyranny” of having to wear a mask or get vaccinated are seeing with their own eyes what actual tyranny looks like. Putin has miscalculated terribly. His entire career has been, much like Donald Trump’s, one of pushing moral and legal boundaries while getting off scot-free or even being celebrated for his “victories.”

Turns out this is about more than the GOP just embracing policies that lead to disease and death - those same policies also win elections while making their morbidly rich campaign donors even richer. Senator Marco Rubio says he won’t attend the State of the Union address because it requires a Covid test and he’s too busy to swab his nose. Rubio’s bizarre behavior is right in line with the GOP’s embrace of poverty, disease, and death. According to a popular meme, comedian Noel Casler (the guy who outed Trump’s drug abuse and diaper wearing) asks, “How come everything the Republican Party stands for involves other people dying?”

All the same strategies Putin uses: blood & soil (white nationalism), demonize minorities, cut taxes on oligarchs, censor schools & media, and rig elections - all to end US democracy itself.

The fate of the world and what we can do before it's too late.

The Best of the Rest of the News. The Best of the Rest of the News. — Did Chinese President Xi punk Russia's President Putin? — When will Republicans stop supporting autocratic leaders like Putin and instead support democracy? — Is President Putin the dog that caught the car? — Who is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson? — While we weren't watching, Florida's Republican House passed their disgusting "Don't Say Gay Bill." — Crazy and Ouch Alert: Dimitry Rogozin, the chief of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, says he could crash the International Space Station (ISS) into the USA if we don't stop supporting Ukraine.

Wednesday night as bombs were falling on Ukraine, Sen. Cruz was partying hard with Trump at Mar-a-Lago along with other GOP senators, having already sabotaged Biden's efforts against Putin. About a month ago, Senator Bob Menendez introduced legislation in the Senate that would have both strengthened Ukraine’s ability to fight back against an invasion and given President Biden some truly powerful sanction tools to use should it happen. Much of it turned on the Lend-Lease Act that FDR got pushed through Congress in 1941 to help England at the height of “the Blitz,” the German bombardment of London, in a way that avoided his having to declare war on Germany. It also would have freed up billions to make up for the money Congress authorized but Donald Trump froze when President Zelensky refused to make up lies about candidate Joe Biden, an extortion attempt that got Trump impeached the first time.

And here we are. This is one of those hinge points in history, a moment people remember other events in the context of “before” and “after” that moment. Cities across Ukraine are under siege as you read these words. Families gathering their most precious goods, trying to calm their terrified children, desperate to flee but unsure where to go. Americans have no memory of what it’s like to have their own towns shelled, to have their homes blown apart, to see family members die and bodies in the streets as brutal men in uniform spread terror, death and destruction. The last time an American city was under bombardment from a foreign power was the War of 1812.

The situation in Ukraine is complex and the outcome is unknowable, but potentially world-changing for free nations and the world itself... Unsurprisingly, alleged serial rapist and career criminal Donald Trump has come out in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen,” Trump told a rightwing talk show, “and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper.” Donald Trump, you’ll remember, was first impeached because the very day Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy turned down his demand to manufacture dirt on candidate Joe Biden, the White House Office of Management and Budget moved to block hundreds of millions in defensive military aid to Ukraine.