Things seem bleak, but it's that very bleakness that history tells us produces movements to overthrow psychopathic oligarchs.

Democrats thought they'd come up with a solution, or at least a good start toward a solution, to the crisis of climate change — one that would also create millions of good paying jobs to revive the American middle class after the Covid shock. It was all in their $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill.

And then came the headline: Kyrsten Sinema Just Threw an Unexpected Wrench Into Biden's Infrastructure Plans, quoting the Democratic senator saying, "I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion."

She, like Joe Manchin, is apparently at least partly in the employ of the oligarchs or, like Paul Ryan, hoping to catch a great-paying gig with them when the voters kick her out.

We live in a time of crisis. Man-made climate change ravishes our nation and planet while a deadly virus shows us the limits of neoliberalism and the importance of a well-functioning government.

But the biggest crisis both America and the world face is the problem of psychopathic oligarchs, as these are the people who created and funded denial of our climate crisis in the face of science's warnings over the past 50 years and are making it difficult to get the Covid and other health crises under control (among other things).

Read more at HartmannReport.com.

-Thom

Thursday's Daily Stack

Article: "America's 4th Turning Has Arrived — Which Path Will We Take?" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "THE BUSINESS COUP OF 1934" by Bruce Dunlavy.

Article: "McCormack–Dickstein Committee" by Wikisource.

Article: "Paul Ryan Is Poised to Earn Millions When He Retires Next Year" by Bloomberg.

Article: "The Dark Money Influencing Senator Manchin's Right-Wing Agenda" by Sharon Zhang.

Article: "Kyrsten Sinema just threw an unexpected wrench into Biden's infrastructure plans" by Cody Fenwick.

Book: "All The World's A Stage" by Dennis Weaver.

Book: "The Fourth Turning" by William Strauss, Neil Howe.

Article: "Workers Beg Joe Manchin to Save West Virginia Pharma Plant as His Daughter Walks Away with $31M" by Democracy Now!

Article: "14,000 scientists warn of "untold suffering" if we fail to act on climate change" by AJ Dellinger.

Article: "Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa. June 27, 1936" by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Article: "US economy back to pre-pandemic peak - but latest growth slower than expected" by John-Paul Ford Rojas.

Article: "Sinema's star is plummeting among Democrats even if Republicans love her" by Kerry Eleveld.

Video: Sen. Bernie Sanders' Two Solutions to Healthcare & Infrastructure.

Article: "Newsom's biggest recall danger: Complacent Democrats who don't turn out to vote" by Julia Wick, Phil Willon.

Prop: "Proposition 47: The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act".

Article: "Seventeen states have enacted 28 new laws making it harder to vote" by Janie Boschma.

Article: "He warned democracy was in peril. And that was before the Capitol riot" by Mark Z. Barabak.

Article: "Pat Toomey announces retirement from Senate, won't seek office in 2022" by Tyler Olson.

Article: "Rob Portman" (R-OH) by Wikipedia.

Article: "Tim Ryan" (D-OH) by Wikipedia.

Article: "Pelosi calls Kevin McCarthy a "moron" for criticizing mask mandate" by Zak Hudak.

Article: "Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for all employees returning to offices" by Ben Popken and April Glaser.

Article: "Goldman Sachs orders employees to report vaccination status" by Matt Egan.

Article: "Not again: Another heat dome to bring scorching temperatures to continental U.S." by Andrew Freedman.

Video: Climate Change: Can We Stop Deadly New Phase? (w/ Dr. Michael Mann).

Video: Science Talk with Jim Massa.

Article: "How the Republican Party Has Conned America for Over 30 Years" (two Santa Claus theory) by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "1033 program" by Wikipedia.

Article: "New World Order (conspiracy theory)" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Georgia GOP will steal the next election. Senate Democrats have to end the filibuster to stop them" by Joan McCarter.

Article: "Republicans In Georgia Are Targeting And Removing Black Election Officials" by Jason Easley.

Article: "V-safe After Vaccination Health Checker" by CDC.

Article: "The Great Reboot: Airport security app Clear looks to score with U.S. 'vaccine passport'" by Paresh Dave.

Site: "Clear Health Pass".

Article: "Excelsior Pass" by New York State.

Article: "Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record" by California.

Article: "Biden promises no new taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. Experts doubt he can keep that pledge" by Lorie Konish.

Hour Two: What will be the impact on America if the 3.5 infrastructure is passed or defeated?
- Economist Dr. Richard Wolff, Democracy At Work / Author of numerous books - his latest is The Sickness is the System (now also available as an e-book)

Article: "GDP Rises 6.5 Percent in Second Quarter, Passed Pre-Pandemic Level of Output" by Dean Baker.

Article: "Market fundamentalism" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Historical Income Tables: Income Inequality" by US Census Bureau.

Article: "Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis" by James Rickards.

Quote: "When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable." - attributed to Arnold Toynbee.

Article: "Great Depression" by Wikipedia.

Article: "American Civil War" (1861 - 1865) by Wikipedia.

Article: "American Revolutionary War" (1775-1783) by Wikipedia.

Article: "Chicago school of economics" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Milton Friedman" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Robert Bork" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Paul Krugman" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Joseph Stiglitz" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Keynesian economics" by Wikipedia.

Article: "17 Senate Republicans Vote To Advance Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill" by Andrew Solender.

Article: "Biden's $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal advances in the Senate in major test vote" by Joseph Zeballos-Roig.

Article: "Kyrsten Sinema earns adoration from GOP & Rick Santorum for opposing filibuster reform" by John Gallagher.

Article: "Falling cases in the U.K. are not a sign that the U.S. can safely remove masks or drop restrictions" by Mark Sumner.

Book: Collapse (How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed) by Jared Diamond.

Article: "Easter Island" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Tuskegee syphilis experiment" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Operation Warp Speed" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Trump Falsely Claims Credit For Pfizer Vaccine, Though Company Did Not Take Government Funds" by Andrew Solender.

Article: "Germany funded the development of Pfizer's COVID vaccine—not U.S.'s Operation Warp Speed" by Riley Griffin, Drew Armstrong, and Bloomberg.

Article: "2021 Texas power crisis" by Wikipedia.

Bill: "H.R.1 - For the People Act of 2021" by Rep. Sarbanes, John P. [D-MD-3].

Bill: "S.1 - For the People Act of 2021" by Sen. Merkley, Jeff [D-OR].

Case: "Buckley v. Valeo", 1976

Case: "First National Bank Of Boston V. Bellotti", 1978

Article: "Blue Origin Jeff Bezos Post-Flight Press Conference Transcript" by Rev.

Hour Three: Wildfires in the Arctic & the Looming Climate Catastrophe
- Dr. Jason Box, professional physical climatologist, studying Arctic climate since 1994 / Danish Geological Survey for 8 years supporting numerous climate monitoring activities

Site: Arctic Monitoring & Assessment Programme (AMAP).

Article: "Arctic Climate Change Update 2021: Key Trends and Impacts" by AMAP.

Article: "Permafrost Becoming a Carbon Source Instead of a Sink" by NASA.

Article: "Study Warns That Arctic Has Been Warming 3 Times Faster Than Rest of Earth" by Kenny Stancil.

Article: "Heating Arctic may be to blame for snowstorms in Texas, scientists argue" by Oliver Milman.

Article: "That Heat Dome? Yeah, It's Climate Change." by Michael E. Mann and Susan Joy Hassol.

Article: "What is the jet stream?" by Met Office.

Article: "The Russian heatwave of summer 2010" by Met Office.

Article: "2010 Pakistan floods" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The heatwave of 2003" by Met Office.

Site/movie: Carbon

Site/movie: Green World Rising

Site/movie: Last Hours

Site/movie: Restoration

Article: "Clathrate gun hypothesis" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Canada weather: Dozens dead as heatwave shatters records" by BBC.

Article: "Evangelical pastor demands churchgoers ditch their masks: 'Don't believe this delta variant nonsense'" by Jaclyn Peiser.

Article: "14,000 scientists warn of "untold suffering" if we fail to act on climate change" by AJ Dellinger.

Article: "World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021" by William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Jillian W Gregg, Timothy M Lenton et al.

Article: "Ice core" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Drug Maker Viatris to Close W.Va. Plant Employing 1,500" by AP.

Article: "Closing the Largest Generic Drug Plant in the US Is a Sick Joke" by Laura Flanders.

Article: ""We Can't Reach Him": Joe Manchin Is Ghosting the West Virginia Union Workers Whose Jobs His Daughter Helped Outsource" by Katherine Eban.

Article: "'Love, over everything': As West Virginia struggles with foster care crisis, families step up" by Hannah Rappleye and Brenda Breslauer.

Article: "Jim Justice" (WV governor) by Wikipedia.

Video: Ted Kennedy on Republicans and Minimum wage. "When does the greed stop?"

Article: "Fact check: Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket launch didn't emit carbon" by Miriam Fauzia.

Article: "'Here's the truth America': Crenshaw challenges 'game-changer' CDC data in BIG way" by Vivek Saxena.

Article: "Trump's PAC collected $75 million this year, but so far the group has not put money into pushing for the 2020 ballot reviews he touts" by Josh Dawsey, Rosalind Helderman.

Article: "Israel will give third Covid vaccine shots to those over 60" by Patrick Kingsley.

Article: "Pfizer to ask US to authorize third Covid vaccine shot as booster" by Reuters.

Article: "A blood marker predicts who gets 'breakthrough' COVID" by Smriti Mallapaty.

Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET

Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA, 17th District / Vice Chair-Congressional Progressive Caucus) will be here to talk issues of the day and take your calls.

Plus, Medicare For All NOW!! - Larry Cohen, Board Chair - Our Revolution / Board chair-Democracy Initiative / Past President-Communication Workers of America (CWA)

And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...

The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week for "we the people"

And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...

Dr Jason Box Says We're On "Catastrophic Path." (w/ Dr. Jason Box)

If Infrastructure is Defeated the Outlook is Grim (w/ Prof Richard Wolff)

Delta Variant: What Do We Do Now?

Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year (w/ Philip Rucker)