Author: Thom Hartmann

American families with children, and the American Dream they are trying to live, are about to face a serious crisis. Counterintuitively, the pandemic brought a child-care boon to working families with kids. This was in large part due to the extraordinary efforts of Nancy Pelosi in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, who got billions for expanded childcare funds to families in distress. Although these were technically emergency funds, they were similar to normal, routine programs offered by virtually every other developed country in the world. But when the pandemic was declared officially over, Republicans dug their...

While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there is a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself. Funded by rightwing billionaires who, themselves, view democracy as an inconvenient pain-in-the-ass and, when Democrats talk about them “paying their fair share,” an actual threat, these MAGA Republicans have also joined forces with wealthy international elements dedicated to ending democracy all around the world. They are supported by a media machine itself largely created by rightwing billionaires — Murdoch’s Fox “News,” over...

House Republicans have revived the infamous Swiftboat lie strategy that helped defeat John Kerry in 2004. In essence, it involves relentlessly lying about a candidate and smearing his or her name and reputation in the hopes it’ll shave a few points off their popularity with independent voters. While virtually 100 percent of the men who served with Kerry in Vietnam spoke glowingly of his service, a group who did not serve with him made up lies and exaggerations. And the Swiftboat effort was well funded: Clarence Thomas’ sugar daddy Harlan Crow threw big bucks into it in 2004. Kerry and those...

Today is 9/11, the event that first brought America together and then was cynically exploited by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to have a war against Iraq, followed by their illegal invasion of Afghanistan just a bit more than a year earlier. Yet the media today is curiously silent about Bush and Cheney’s lies. Given the costs of both these wars — and the current possibility of our being drawn deeper into conflict in both Ukraine and Taiwan — it is an important moment to discuss our history of wars, both illegal and unnecessary, and those that are...

The first Republican debate of the 2024 election cycle took place in Milwaukee on August 23. While all the drama seemed focused on whether or not anybody beyond Chris Christie would take a serious swing at Trump, much of the evening’s time was devoted to trashing President Joe Biden. So, for anyone still clinging to their sanity after enduring all the lies, here is a quick summary of the things that Biden has accomplished with a little help from Democrats in Congress in his first two-and-a-half years in office. First of all, Joe Biden has restored trust, confidence, and...