Hartmann Report

All Republicans who want to survive a GOP primary must bow to the "Biden didn’t really beat His Orangeness" line, just like they were required to “take a vow against communism” back in the 1950s. Lauren Windsor is a journalist’s journalist (disclosure: I’ve supported her work, and you can, too) and she just got Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson to essentially expose for the world the real con the GOP has been running for decades. It’s burning across the internet right now, as you can see on her Twitter feed.

Trump has so far avoided the final fate of Abimelech, who was taken out by a woman...or has he? Back in November when it was clear that Trump had lost the election in an historic landslide of 7 million votes, a fascinating CNN piece noted how he and his top officials were working to create absolute chaos during the presidential transition specifically and intentionally to sabotage the incoming Biden Administration. “Some observers,” the authors noted, “pointing to Trump's rush to pull troops [out of Afghanistan] over unanimous objections from the military's most senior leaders as well as NATO commanders, question whether the President and his officials are trying to salt the earth for Biden.”

It’s probably beyond the power of human nature to prevent this from happening again, but we must not resign ourselves to another authoritarian movement now rising to power in America. Get active! "The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy’s whisper above its breath Meant shameful scouring and bonds and death! —John Greenleaf Whittier, “How the Women Went from Dover”

The best of the rest of the news. — Thomas Paine once pointed out: “The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is consistent with justice would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon those who should propose to take away that right from others. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.” Republicans, however, think that restricting the right to vote is simply good politics. Many Americans disagree with them and are planning protests today across the US for voting rights.

Bush & Cheney have gotten away with lying us into two wars & wildly enriching their friends; meanwhile, more people are dead & the media won't even ask the right questions. Will we ever learn? The big question in the media today is, “Will Afghanistan again become a ‘breeding ground’ for terrorists who may again attack America?” It’s the wrong question. We’ve all heard that question asked, in a dozen variations, probably a hundred times in the past few months in the media. And it’s not just the wrong question: it strengthens the GOP frame that lets George W. Bush off the hook for many of his worst failures and crimes. Afghanistan had little to nothing to do with 9/11.

We must abandon our simplistic worldview and stop thinking that somebody or something (or as-yet-undeveloped technology) will save us. There are two thought poisons embedded deeply in western culture, and together they threaten to kill us all, or at least turn the world into a hellscape we’d never wish on our grandchildren or anybody else, even Republicans. They’re the collision of salvationist christianity and Cartesian thinking. In a way, these philosophical contemporaries brought us our modern conception of hell, as characterized in the third triptych by Hironymous Bosch on which Leonardo DiCaprio based a documentary about global warming.

Get ready for the Supreme Court & a handful of GOPers to put Trump, DeSantis, Scott, Cotton or Hawley into the White House regardless of the 2024 election outcome - unless they are stopped now. Former US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman has created a bit of a stir in legal circles recently by pointing out that at least three “conservatives” on the US Supreme Court are embracing a Trumpy concept that the Court can go even further than it did in 2000 and essentially award the presidency to whomever they choose via a corrupt deal with Republicans in state legislatures.

What red blooded, Nazi-arm-band-wearing, Confederate-flag-waving, Capitol-invading, gun-toting, Trump-humping American patriot could possibly object? Now that the Pfizer vaccine has received full approval and is widely available across the US, it’s time to back it up with a vaccine passport. Those of us who did the right thing and got vaccinated are sick and tired of living a half-life because of all the covidiots out there who refuse to get vaccinated. Let them “stand on the outside” of American business and society “looking in” for a change. No shoes, no shirt, no vaccine passport, no service.

Yesterday afternoon while watching CNN, Louise and I were treated to an ad by the Wall Street-funded “No Labels” group that finances the “Problem Solvers Caucus” in Congress, extolling the virtues of Kurt Schrader, a Democratic Congressman who represents part of Portland. It’s grim enough that Schrader was one of the 9 Democrats who threatened to blow up President Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure deal; now he’s being lauded on my TV by the very fat cats who own him.

The best of the rest of the news. — Remember when then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said that the Benghazi hearings would cut into Hillary Clinton’s favorable ratings enough let Donald Trump beat her in 2016? “[W]e put together a Benghazi special committee,” McCarthy said. “A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.” Now Republicans are planning a repeat if they seize control of the House in 2022, only this time to batter President Biden with the Afghanistan pullout. The biggest problem they may encounter is that multiple Republicans who were in Trump’s administration, including his Defense Secretary and National Security Advisor, have said that he stupidly sold out America and turned Afghanistan over to the Taliban with no conditions and no plan to get out our allies, leaving it all for the next president. Democrats may want to respond with, “Go ahead, make my day.”