Hartmann Report

The new GOP motto might as well be, "We don't need no stinkin' issues; we just want power and revenge for the heroes of the Old South and the New Insurrection." Have you noticed how rarely Republicans talk about actual issues?... All of this is because the GOP is now a post-politics party.

In our post-Citizens United world, when industry or a "generous" billionaire opposes a policy, what they want beats democracy almost every time... Exactly 178 years ago this month, French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier calculated the existence of the then-unknown planet Neptune based on irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, which he postulated were caused by the unknown planet's gravitational pull. Some invisible force was clearly distorting Uranus' orbit, and, when he did the math, he'd not only discovered but accurately predicted the location of the planet Neptune. Many Americans watch our generation's political dysfunction and Congress' inability to get simple things done that would help our country and world and wonder, "Is there a dark planet, some dark force, that is pulling at and distorting our politics?" Turns out, there is. Read on.

Trump's Legacy and the Weaponization of Lies in the 2024 Election. Hitler's brilliant propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, famously told the Fuhrer, "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth." Donald Trump and the MAGA faction of the Republican Party have taken Goebbels' advice to heart, and it's going to make this fall's election one like we've never seen before. Already they've been lying so often and so effectively that nearly all Republicans, and majorities or near-majorities of Americans, believe: — the GOP lie that we're in a recession (we're in better shape, in most ways, than any time since the 1960s and inflation last month was zero while Ronald Reagan never got it below 4.1% in his entire eight years); — Republican lies about crime being up (it's down dramatically since Trump); — their lies that "Democrats want elective abortion up to the moment of birth" (none have ever said that); — Trump's lie that the 2020 election was "stolen" from Trump by "voter fraud"; — GOP lies that the southern border is "wide open"; — the Republican lie that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy and must be saved by privatization or benefits cuts; — their vicious lie that queer people are pedophiles targeting America's schoolchildren; and — their NRA lie that more and more deadly guns will keep our kids safe.

Corporations have successfully argued before the Supreme Court that they should have First Amendment rights of free speech, Fourth Amendment rights of privacy, Fifth Amendment protections against takings, and 14th Amendment rights as “persons” to “equal protection [with you and me] under the law,” among other “rights of personhood.” It’s long past the time that these “persons,” when they become egregious and recidivist criminals (and particularly when they repeatedly kill people), be treated the same as human criminals: remove them from society permanently. New, smaller, more innovative companies can fill the spaces now occupied by bloated corporate criminals. The result will be (as it was after AT&T was broken up in the 1970s for violating anti-monopoly laws) an explosion of innovation, com- petition, and opportunity.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Thankfully, I’m getting over Covid. — Horrified critics blast Fox’s Ingraham for suggesting a 50-year MAGA reich is possible. — Clarence Thomas, who only barely disguises his hatred of our nation, just guaranteed more mass slaughters. — American healthcare spending is almost double of every other country in the world…and as much as half of that money is going into the pockets of hospital, healthcare, and insurance industry executives and shareholders. — Few dispute that Trump and his enablers are sociopaths (who else would delight in ripping nursing babies from their mothers and then trafficking them into Texas, the nation’s #2 producer of child pornography?) — Heat: the Great Killer. — Crazy Alert! Trump supporters are all-in on the idea that the Earth is “flat as a pancake.” — Hypocrisy Alert! Republican candidate for Colorado’s 4th Congressional district Richard Holtorf paid for his girlfriend’s abortion and bragged about it on the floor of the Colorado legislature. — Wisdom School Alert! robert wolff's Ancient Way of Knowing — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert! — Morphic Resonance: The “Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon”

There's way too much celebrating around the unanimous SCOTUS decision yesterday which The NYT characterized with the headline, "Supreme Court Maintains Broad Access to Abortion pill." It didn't… There's way too much celebrating going on around the unanimous Supreme Court decision yesterday that The New York Times characterized with the headline, "Supreme Court Maintains Broad Access to Abortion Pill" and The Washington Post headlined, "Supreme Court upholds broad access to key abortion pill mifepristone." In fact, the Supreme Court took no such stand with regard to mifepristone, abortion, Plan B, or even contraception. They merely said that the doctors who brought the case had not yet suffered any actual harm themselves, and therefore had no basis to sue in the first place. Turning the case down was also a quick-and-easy way for the Republican justices on the Court to get out from under the spotlight glaring on personal corruption, bribe-taking, and their other anti-woman decisions, causing people to think that maybe they can be reasonable, Sam Alito arguing otherwise notwithstanding.

So, really, Musk and Bezos are just echoing a thought virus that has infected much of humanity since the early days of evangelical religion and warfare… Elon Musk, the father of eleven children, thinks that declining population is a crisis and the world needs more babies —particularly those with his DNA — or there will be a crisis. For example, he recently proclaimed: "Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming." Billionaire Jeff Bezos echoed the idea promoting the fallacy that more people means "more Einsteins."

No matter how hard Republicans try to reinvent the Founders & Framers in the image of their libertarian billionaire patrons, the reality is that America was history’s first great liberal experiment... We’re hearing a lot of rhetoric from Republicans these days — particularly those on the Supreme Court and their nutty wives — suggesting that the Founders and Framers of the Constitution would feel right at home with Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Donald Trump. They’ve even appropriated some of the flags the Revolutionary generation used, as if to say they’re the real heirs to American patriotism. Don’t believe it.

Are Americans catching on and increasingly rejecting horses, sparrows, and politicians who try to sell them on more trickle-down tax cuts for the rich? They're at it again. And it's not even original: the trickle-down economics that two-dozen Republican governors and Trump are reviving as you read these words has a long history. "Trickle down," of course, was the theory advanced by Ronald Reagan that if America only made rich people massively richer with staggering tax cuts, ending anti-trust regulation, and government subsidies for their industries, they would use all that extra free money to build new factories, hire people, and the abundance would trickle down to the average worker. It was a lie, but it wasn't the first time the GOP had tried that lie. Then knew exactly what they were doing, and what outcome it would produce. Instead of raising the pay of their workers, the rich people on the receiving end of Reagan's, Bush's, and Trump's tax cuts simply added the cash to their money bins and investments, bought new yachts or trophy wives, and blasted themselves into outer space on penis-shaped rockets.

The bottom line is that we — as a nation, voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full Republican experience. Which is why we're no longer listening to the Republican politicians' BS… Donald Trump tells us we are experiencing "American carnage" and the solution is to round up and put into concentration camps 11 million immigrants; imprison prosecutors, judges, Democrats, and reporters he says criticized him; and replace the FBI and our court systems with his own armed cadre that is loyal to him. The Proud Boys are stepping up again, and he is embracing them. Seventy million Americans — and commentators across the massive rightwing media ecosystem — agree with him, as I learned Friday when I debated a conservative talk show host in New York before an audience of hundreds of rightwing (and a small handful of liberal) talkshow hosts and program directors at the nation's largest convention of talk radio and television media. (Glenn Beck was the keynote speaker.) How did we get here?