Hartmann Report

Before you say that what the GOP is doing won’t work or can’t end democracy in America, you may want to make a trip to Budapest. The GOP seems to have gone nuts. But, in reality, they’re following a plan. And it’s not even a new plan; it’s worked elsewhere. Seventeen Republican-controlled states have now passed 28 voter suppression laws, in most cases even asserting that if elections don’t turn out the way the Party likes they can simply change or ignore the results. It’s driven Texas legislators, faced with another law like that, to flee the state in a desperate effort to preserve their voting rights.

Letting Americans die to win elections. Is that how low today’s GOP has sunk? What other possible explanation could there be? Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week, “A surprising amount of death will occur soon...” But why, when the deadly Delta variant is sweeping the world, are Republicans and their media warning people not to get vaccinated? There’s always a reason. People don’t do things — particularly things involving a lot of effort and a need for consistency — without a reason. It just doesn’t happen. No matter how bizarre, twisted or dysfunctional the reason may be, there’s always a reason.

If the filibuster can’t be done away with or turned into a “Jimmy Stewart filibuster,” then Congress has the obligation to Act on the “Nuclear Option.” The US Senate is back in session today, as Texas Republicans prepare to pass another massive voter suppression bill. The only remedy available to the American people is for the federal government to use its constitutional authority to regulate federal elections to block what President Biden has referred to as the GOP’s “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”

President Biden fired the Trump holdovers at the head of Social Security and Medicare... What happens when the GOP actually flips an election?... The brutal, punishing, racist Republicans strike again.... Are hate and death all they have left?...Evangelical Christianity is dying, and the GOP is what's killing it... When big American corporations claimed they would no longer send money and other support to those members of Congress who actively worked to overturn the 2020 election…they lied... Congressman Chip Roy comes right out and tells a group of Republican activists that their entire legislative and political strategy for 2021 and 2022 is to prevent Democrats from getting anything done for the American people... Who would oppose teaching our children the true racial history of America?... The Second Amendment is a failed experiment, and it's time for reasonable people to admit that fact... The Weather Channel says they'll be documenting the role climate change plays in today's extreme weather events. So, how does the billionaire Murdoch family empire respond to this? They're rolling out a new weather channel themselves, Fox Weather... Over at Daily Kos, GoodNewsRoundup has compiled "Fifty Great Things Biden Has Accomplished in less than half a year in office."

Between great wealth, control of the media, police-state tactics and social media-driven “militias,” authoritarianism is itching to take over completely. We are on the brink & must stop them . In an oligarchy, the rich can get away with anything and average people who try to stop harms to themselves and their communities get crushed. We’re now there; the question is whether we’ll pull back from this horror show, or whether it’ll continue its evolution toward a full-blown police state.

Jim Jones was a piker. Trump has him totally beat. For every person who listened to Jones and died from cyanide, 438 people died because they listened to Trump and didn’t take Covid seriously. Representative Jackie Spears got it right, and she should know. Back in 1978, Spears – then a 28-year-old aide to Congressman Leo Ryan – flew down to Guyana to investigate reports that Reverend Jim Jones was stealing money from his parishioners and subjecting them to horrors ranging from rape to beatings and public humiliation to “rehearsals” for mass suicide. Reverend Jones didn’t take kindly to their showing up and ordered them all killed.

Flipping the national conversation from CRT to the GOP’s 52-year racist election strategy history will be the only way to clean up all the “crap” Republicans are today using to “flood the zone”. “Be Afraid of Black People” is the GOP’s main message to white voters these days, leveraged by lies about an obscure academic pursuit sometimes called Critical Race Theory (CRT). Many white voters, it turns out, are listening.

So, if the majority of Americans want Scandinavian/European healthcare, schools, unions, wages and taxes-on-the-rich, why don’t we have these things?

The best of the rest of the news this week. — Donald Trump learned the way of mob bosses from his first lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, whose other “big” clients were John Gotti of the Gambino crime family and Jeffrey Epstein. That’s why Trump has always run his business (and the White House) like a crime boss would, refusing to put anything in writing, asking lawyers not to keep notes (and tearing up the translator’s notes from his time with Putin in Helsinki). As Michael Cohen has noted in sworn testimony before Congress, “Trump talks in code” to get things done…a variation on Henry II’s coded-assassination-request about Archbishop Beckett: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

The 40-year con by wealthy developers, fossil fuel companies & morbidly rich billionaires, who’d rather shoot up into outer space than pay their taxes, has to end or more people will die. The collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Florida, the deterioration of infrastructure all across America, and our failure to plan for or respond to the threat of climate change all have the same source: greed. And it’s killing us.