Author: Thom Hartmann

Nobody ever accused Republicans of not knowing how to make a buck or BS-ing somebody into voting for them. Lying to people for economic or political gain is the very definition of a grift. Whenever there is another mass-shooting or school-shooting, Republican politicians hustle out fundraising emails about how “Democrats are coming to take your guns!” The result is a measurable and profitable spike in gun sales after every new slaughter of our families and children, followed by a fresh burst of campaign cash to GOP lawmakers. But the GOP’s ability to exploit any opportunity that comes along, regardless...

Kevin McCarthy recently came back from a press trip to our southern border, full of talk about how bad the Biden administration is doing with asylum and immigration. And another group of House Republicans are “holding a hearing” at the Mexican border. If you watch Fox “News” you know all about it. Republicans have figured out how to have it both ways. They get cheap labor for their big business buddies, while stoking the hate and fear of their white racist base, claiming that Democrats are responsible for increasing numbers of undocumented or “illegal” immigrants living and working in...

Kevin McCarthy has a keen new idea about what he thinks he can get out of Democrats in Congress in exchange for Republicans authorizing the government to pay the trillions in debt that Donald Trump racked up in his four years in office. In exchange for lifting the so-called debt ceiling, McCarthy wants Biden and congressional Democrats to throw millions of families off food stamps (SNAP) and end even the possibility of any help to low-income young people unable to pay off student loans. He claims this is because the federal government can’t afford to help out students or hungry Americans....

Fox “News” has settled with Dominion, paying them about three-quarter-billion dollars and admitting that they lied. But nobody died at Dominion. Nobody’s life and family were turned upside-down at Dominion by being thrown into prison for sedition and insurrection. Nobody at Dominion was hospitalized or committed suicide because of the injuries they received at the hands of an angry mob Fox helped incite. While Dominion had a strong legal case against Fox for lying on the air and harming their business, the families of Ashli Babbitt, Anthony Antonio, three dead and over 140 injured police officers, and patriotic Americans...

Today’s Republican Party, intentionally or unwittingly, is following a script. Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” But, in fact, first they came for the queer people. A year before Nazis began attacking union leaders and socialists, a full five years before attacking Jewish-owned stores on Kristallnacht, the Nazis came for the trans people at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. In 1930, the Institute had pioneered the first gender-affirming surgery in modern Europe. It’s director, Magnus Hirschfeld, had compiled the largest library of books...

How would you like a side of liver cancer with those fries? Testicular cancer with your chicken sandwich? Childhood obesity with your kid’s meal? These were the findings of a 2022 analysis of wrappers performed by Consumer Reports while looking for chemicals called PFASs in packaging for fast food products sold across America. PFAS is an acronym for Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, a family of over 12,000 chemicals that was first discovered in 1938 by a 27-year-old chemist named Roy Plunkett. By combining fluorine with carbon, he invented chemicals that resisted water, oils, grease, and even heat: they seemed both inert...