Author: Thom Hartmann

Two Santas strategy: Why Republicans use Saint Nicholas then Scrooge to shift economic messages

“The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.” — Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976 The recent headline from Politico says it all: White House’s hopes for a lame-duck debt ceiling deal are fading fast. It is no accident or coincidence that this never once happened during the presidencies of Reagan, Bush, Bush, or Trump. Or that it did happen during the presidencies of Clinton and Obama…and, now, Biden. You could even call it a conspiracy: there’s an amazing backstory — with a unique name— here. Here’s how it works, laid it out in...

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The media’s blind spot: Why blatant efforts to suppress voter participation has been mostly ignored

“Data released by the Georgia secretary of state showed that mail voting in the state’s November general election plunged by 81 percent from the level of the 2020 contest. While a drop was expected after the height of the pandemic, Georgia had a far greater decrease than any other state with competitive statewide races, according to a New York Times analysis.” – The New York Times, “Turnout Was Strong in Georgia, but Mail Voting Plummets After New Law” Ever since 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court blocked full enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, the GOP is making voting...

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President Zelenskyy’s visit is a reminder of America’s moral and legal obligation to defend Ukraine

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is visiting the United States today and speaking to a joint session of Congress. He will be pushing back against those on both the extreme left and right who keep whining that in 1991 President George HW Bush said NATO would not expand toward Russia (a comment that was never reduced to writing and never part of any agreement) and the Minsk cease-fire Agreements, which President Putin declared on February 22 “no longer exist.” Hopefully President Zelenskyy will remind Congress that America is party to an actual contractual agreement to protect the integrity of Ukraine’s...

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How conservative media reacted after discovering most early COVID deaths were people of color

April 7, 2020 was the day everything changed in America. And hardly anybody realizes it. The most unreported story of the pandemic, the one that seems destined to be overlooked as histories are being written, is what Trump did when he learned the Covid coronavirus was largely killing Black people and mostly sparing Whites. The moment he came to that realization he completely altered the U.S. response to the pandemic, leading to the unnecessary death of 300,000 to 400,000 Americans. Deaths that he and his advisors apparently believed (correctly) would be, outside of nursing home residents, disproportionately Black and...

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A War on Public Schools: How autocrats lower educational standards to dumb down the populace

Former Tea Party congressman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently put a bulls-eye on the back of the president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers. “I tell the story often — I get asked ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’” Pompeo told Semafor’s Shelby Talcott. “The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids …” I have...

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Christian bigotry takes national spotlight in latest attempt to overturn public accommodation laws

The Supreme Court appears bent on making America bigoted again. Step-by-step, they are undoing every bit of progressive legislation from the past 80 years that they can find. Now they’re going after the right of gays and lesbians who want to get married to shop for a website, or pretty much anything else that requires “creative” effort. There was a time in America when any retail business could, as the old sign said, “reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.” Often such proclamations were just slightly more subtle than the “No Negros,” “No Jews,” or...

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