Author: Thom Hartmann

Philosophies of governance: Why it is impossible for right-wing governments to handle a crisis

Jerusalem-based reporter Isabel Kershner recently wrote about the horrors since the October 7 attack and the worries Israelis have for how the ongoing war against Hamas may go. “All this is happening,” she noted in the article’s third paragraph, “amid a total breakdown of trust between the citizens and the state of Israel, and a collapse of everything Israelis believed in and relied on.” She then quoted a Tel Aviv author, Dorit Rabinyan, who spoke of the sobering reality Israelis are facing because they had chosen Benjamin Netanyahu as their prime minister: “We have woken to a terrible sobriety about whose hands...

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Ability of Hamas to evade Israel’s Iron Dome defenses points to possible intel leak from Trump to Russia

On October 7, Hamas launched a brutal, horrific attack against civilians in Israel. While there is a very real history that has led up to this, there is no justification for it. Even in a state of war, civilians must be protected. This horror raises a couple of important questions. First, did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses that helped them pull this off? Second, how might this play out, how might it be resolved, and how can America and the world avoid the mistakes from previous but similar situations? Pondering these questions on October 7, I...

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The root of chaos in Congress can be traced to a lack of accountability for the crimes of January 6

Kevin McCarthy is humiliated, the first Speaker in history to have been thrown out of his office by his own party or any political party, and the House has been thrown into chaos. By Matt Gaetz, a bizarre congressman under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sex trafficking minor girls in Florida. Putin, Xi, and MBS are loving this, as it freezes America’s ability to defend our democratic ally Ukraine, further destabilizing the international order and providing China with a model for their hoped-for attack on Taiwan. And because Putin is loving it, Trump mandated it to his...

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Propaganda War: How social media and the Internet became new battlegrounds against wannabe tyrants

Russia is not just at war with Ukraine; they are also in a cold war with us. And recently Putin got a significant victory in that war, which is now being fought on the battleground of social media and the Internet. Representative Matt Gaetz and Senator Rand Paul helped lead Putin’s victory this week in his cold war with America by stripping aid for Ukraine out of the continuing resolution to keep our government funded for the next 45 days. It was a clear signal from Republicans in Congress to Putin that if he can just hang on long...

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How Republicans began phony impeachment hearings to divert attention from their real crimes

Republicans in the House of Representatives today are opening a phony “impeachment hearing” using Hunter Biden as a foil to try to destroy Joe Biden politically. They never even held a vote to establish a committee for that purpose. It is purely theatre. Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate have an opportunity to examine some actual, egregious, and destructive-to-the-country crimes committed in the White House by Trump and his family members that they’re apparently going to whiff. They need to hear from us. Hunter Biden, at least, is now pushing back against this vicious and dishonest GOP smear campaign even...

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How Red states use stolen tax revenue from Blue states to fund a reinvention of the Confederacy

America is rapidly bifurcating, becoming two nations, and one of the main drivers of the process is a federal system that encourages Red states to mooch off Blue states, using essentially stolen tax money to reinvent the old Confederacy, “own the libs,” and wage “war on woke.” Most Red states have become oligarchic white supremacist medieval-like fiefdoms with obscene levels of often multigenerational wealth at the top, extreme poverty at the bottom, and working people, women, and minorities kept in subordinate roles through explicit government and corporate policy. In this, these Red states are following the once-classic European and...

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