​“The Fools[] on the Hill…standing perfectly still”
--Paul McCartney
 
“There are poleznyye idioty (useful idiots) and then there are…just idiots.”
--Attributed to V. Putin
 
The bravest man on the planet is gone, brutally murdered by Vladimir Putin. Aleksei Navalny’s assassination was probably inevitable given his career as the biggest thorn in Putin’s side and potential threat to the Russian dictator’s brutal, 25-year dictatorship. Eventually, every Putin critics dies at his hands, so Navalny’s demise was predictable and inevitable. Putin’s dread of his late adversary is so deep that he won’t even allow a public funeral, which might turn into something even he cannot control.
 
But why now? What is it about the present time that prompted Putin to act? Here’s a plausible theory:
 
Recently, Donald Trump announced his intention, if elected in November, to refuse to honor U.S. obligations under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which commits alliance members to come to the defense of one another. In other words, an attack on one is considered an attack on all. The only time Article 5 has been invoked in the 75-year lifetime of the treaty was following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Our NATO allies rushed to help us go after the terrorists.
 
Trump went even further than a refusal to honor Article 5. He actually invited Russia to attack NATO countries! Of all of his servile kow-tows to his puppetmaster, Putin, this one was both the most craven and the most shocking. It sent European leaders reeling and panicking.
 
Putin must have been over the moon with glee when he watched the Trump video.
 
But Trump’s red-carpet invitation to Putin was not the only reason the Russian despot is beside himself with joy. Congressional Republicans have also been rushing to appease Putin and encourage his worst instincts.
 
Putin, observing Republican reluctance to support European security, could not believe his luck.
 
But that was not the end of the handouts Republicans were gifting him. A majority of Senate and House Republicans have spent months stymieing Biden administration and congressional Democrats’ efforts to supply Ukraine with the military aid necessary to resist Russia’s invasion of our democratic ally. At this writing, the House of Representatives isn’t even in session, having been sent home by Speaker Mike Johnson, the latest in a long line of weak, incompetent mediocrities (Hastert, Boehner, Ryan, McCarthy, Johnson) spit up by the Republican caucus into the Speakership.
 
Even this degree of toadying was not the end of Republican sycophancy to the Russian murderer. Despite the best efforts of Gym Jordan and James Comer, two committee chairs who have devoted themselves to impeaching President Biden instead of governing, their prize witness was revealed to be a conduit of misinformation from Russian intelligence agencies. Which makes them willing tools of the enemy. There is a word for what these aiders and comforters of Vladimir Putin are doing: Treason.
 
Topping off the abject abasement was MAGA-mouthpiece, Tucker Carlson. The disgraced Fox News ex-con job and perpetraitor (not a misspelling) of lies, gushed about how great Russia is compared to America after his debacle of a visit to Putin’s fantasyland and his fawning interview of the Stalinist murderer. Following his Mother-of-All-Softball interview, Carlson embarked on a tour of Moscow that left him awestruck with the magnificence of Russian life. He couldn’t wait to contrast what he saw with the American carnage back home.
 
Enabled by Carlson, Donald Trump and his congressional Republican grovelers, Putin felt this was the perfect time to act against Navalny with impunity.  With the U.S. in cowering retreat from Ukraine and NATO and stunned by how easy it was to turn Trump and key members of Congress into willing Russian agents, he could rid himself of his principal opponent with minimal blowback.
 
Note that Trump has been out-of-character silent about Navalny’s murder. His only comments involve comparing what happened to Navalny to his own U.S. legal problems. He achieves new depths of repugnance with every bad breath.
 
While there are literally thousands of reasons for not electing Donald Trump or, for that matter, any Republican now that so many of them have bowed down in abject servility to their orange demigod, one that stands out most glaringly is their unwavering support for America’s mortal enemy, Vladimir Putin.
 
Dick Hermann
February 23, 2024

​“Perception is reality.”
--Lee Atwater
 
There once was a President of the United States who was a very decent man with a good heart. He was well-meaning, but stumbled when events took a bad turn. He donned a cardigan sweater, went on national television, and virtually begged the public to turn its back on cynicism and have some optimism instead. It was not a good look.
 
Instead, the public perceived him as weak, unable to exert control over both foreign and domestic events. Once that perception became baked in, there was nothing that could be done to reverse it. He was crushed by the landslide that cast him out of office at the next election.
 
Joe Biden is beginning to be perceived as another Jimmy Carter, but with an added problem: his advanced age. While 2024 is by no stretch a repeat of 1980, it contains elements of that year that should terrify Democrats. If the steady drumbeat of polls that show Donald Trump extending his lead over Biden aren’t scaring the socks off Democrats, then they aren’t paying attention.
 
At this point, I believe that Biden’s only hope for re-election would be if he could make this contest yet another referendum on Trump. As adverse events pile up on his watch, that may be impossible.
 
Ukraine funding is now at high risk. Abandoning that heroic nation’s desperate fight for freedom and democracy would also be disastrous for the West. China’s rhetorical war on Taiwan is escalating. Initially supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, right or wrong, may have been a miscalculation by the administration. Its backtrack since then is not resonating. At home, the border has been allowed to become a passionate issue and not only for Republicans. Democratic cities also criticize the administration for doing little or nothing to stanch the flood of illegal immigrants now straining their resources to the breaking point. Biden appears reluctant to use his bully pulpit to garner support for the border bill that congressional Republicans demanded until Trump ordered them to kill it. Texas has all but declared war on the federal government and, at this writing, is getting away with it. Every time Americans go grocery shopping is a bad day for Joe Biden. Prices are still high and are a gut wrench for family budgets.
 
Moreover, Joe Biden looks weak. His poor mobility is obvious as he shuffles to podiums and up-and-down the steps of Air Force One. He speaks in a low voice when he should shout his outrage. His affect and deportment communicate that he is an old man. He won’t get any younger by election day. Which directs more attention to his Number Two. However, his Vice President is widely viewed as not being remotely ready for prime time.
 
Once the voting public senses that a president has lost control over things, that is all she wrote. It will not matter that he has accomplished some great things such as the Rescue Plan, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, student loan forgiveness, strong economic growth, low unemployment, higher wages, the lowest inflation rate in the developed world, etc. If people don’t feel it, it is not happening for them. You can’t change their minds about that.
 
Americans do feel that things are out of control. And they blame Joe Biden.
 
We are a people who invariably live in the moment. “What are you doing for me now to make my life better?” overwhelms anything good that might have happened in the recent past, as well as the picture of a bright future that Biden and his party might paint should he survive the election.
 
You can argue all you want that there is still time to turn this thing around; that Trump was an abysmal failure as President; that he massively mismanaged the pandemic; that he tried to overthrow the government; that he is a criminal, a fraudster, a misogynistic sexual predator, a grifting, chaotic, ignorant incompetent, autocratic wannabe and a lying buffoon whose mental health is visibly deteriorating. He, however, is not going to be blamed for the present mess. Actually, he can be blamed for much of it, but the voters will not see it that way. He is not sitting in the oval office.
 
Joe Biden should put the democratic (small “d”) future of the country ahead of his own ambition. He should graciously get out of the race in favor of his party’s strong, younger bench. Then all of the attention would turn to Trump, his plummeting cognition and his Brobdingnagian character flaws and policy deficiencies. The nation could be saved and democracy and the rule of law could prevail and continue. Too much is at stake to allow one man’s ego to risk the nation’s ruin and the devastation that a second Trump term is sure to inflict.
 
There is little point in arguing that Joe Biden is in better shape mentally than 77-year old Donald Trump.  Despite Trump’s daily fusillades of deranged statements, the public does not view him the same way that it does Biden. That may be because Presidents command total media attention while candidates do not. Thus, most voters do not get to witness every deranged Trump harangue.
 
Fighting against perceptions is like spitting into the wind. It is a strategy destined to fail.
 
Time to go, Joe.
 
Dick Hermann
February 16, 2024

​"It's time for the GOP to get their balls out of Trump's desk and vote for what you've just been yelling for for the last months,…."
--Sen. John Fetterman

There are no lengths—depths, rather—to which the Republican Party will go—sink, rather—in its fealty—servitude, rather—to Donald Trump. Its pathetic performance last week in both the Senate and House demonstrates that Senator Fetterman’s description of these duds is spot on:

Led by Caver-in-Chief, Moscow Mitch McConnell, a hollow shell of a leader whose greatest achievement these days is making it through an entire public announcement without becoming catatonic, sabotaged a border-Ukraine-Israel bill that his party demanded and got because Trump wants to use it as a campaign issue and deny President Biden a legislative victory. No surprise from the man who, nine months before a presidential election, denied a President his right to appoint a Supreme Court Justice because it was the last year of his presidency. Mitch said the vacancy should by right be filled by the new president, and then did a 180 and allowed an outgoing President to fill a court vacancy one week before the election.

So much for Republicans shouting from the rooftops for years about fixing the border problem. Their hypocrisy, which now governs their every action and pronouncement (the only governing they do), has reached mythic proportions heretofore unimaginable. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a nonentity who in other eras would have spent his political career languishing in back-bench anonymity but for the chaos that is the House Republican caucus, proclaimed the border bill “dead on arrival” and said he would not bring it to a floor vote even if the Senate passed it. Like McConnell, he too has placed what little remains of his manhood in Trump’s lockbox.

Almost lost in the Republican two-step was the embarrassing failed vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for the High Crime and Misdemeanor of…doing his job. Undeterred by this fiasco, Mini-Mike Johnson announced that he will try again to rid the country of a decent public servant for carrying out immigration policies his party doesn’t like. Wait a minute! If they don’t like what’s happening on the border, why do they resist fixing it?

The Party of Putin and Trump, aided mightily by Putin poodle Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with the Stalinist avatar, is generating unconstrained delight in the Kremlin. Vlad and his Russian Mafia capos are dancing in the corridors. Donetsk Don, Moscow Mitch and Magnitogorsk Mike have delivered far beyond expectations. In other countries, giving aid and comfort to enemies would be labeled treason and dealt with accordingly.

As if that were not enough, 62 Republican House members, led by Mad Matt Gaetz and Elise Quisling Stefanik, have introduced a resolution declaring that Trump is not an insurrectionist and had nothing to do with the January 6, 2021 insurrection he provoked. One Missouri congressmaniac even said: “In Missouri we call that just a normal day.”

I am always amazed that we have come to the point where this torrent of disgraceful behavior is deemed normal. I am more amazed that voters actually elect bungling losers such as these to represent their interests.

Capstoning this weird, whacky week in Washington, the Republican National Committee, led by the most inept party chair in history (and that is really saying something!), Ronna Don’t-Call-Me-Romney McDaniel, attempted to declare the primary season over and anoint its twice-impeached, four-times-indicted deity its presidential nominee. For her work and many years of servile fealty to the Orange Menace, her reward is getting dumped by Trump.

Meanwhile way out West in Nevada, Nikki Haley got blown out in a meaningless primary by “None of the Candidates.” There is no trumping Trump, even if he is not on the ballot. How embarrassing is that?

I suppose the only good that can come out of Republican shamelessness is that its members are now exposed for the contemptible collection of scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, knuckle-dragging scoundrels that they are. If only Americans would take notice.

God help us.

Dick Hermann
February 12, 2024

No surprise…nullification—the argument that states have the right to invalidate federal laws they claim are unconstitutional—is back and Republicans love it. They have come a long way from the party that first formed around the idea that nullification, used as a defense of slavery, was an evil that must be eradicated. The Civil War, everyone believed, took care of that. However, during the civil rights movement’s heyday, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, respectively, had to invoke the Insurrection Act to send in the 101st Airborne Division when Southern governors defied federal edicts and attempted to deny Black students their right to an education. Thereafter, nullification was believed to be once more consigned to history’s rubbish heap.
 
Not so fast.
 
In January, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas decided to go wholeheartedly over to the Dark Side and tell the Supreme Court to take a powder. They had the temerity to rule that his attempts to block the federal government from policing the U.S. border with Mexico, including saving kids from drowning in the Rio Grande, were illegal and must stop. Incredibly, 25 Republican state governors are cheering his defiance and encouraging him to continue to ignore the Court’s ruling.
 
Two things about that decision and Texas’s defiance of it:

1. It was a 5-4 decision. Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch apparently believe that a state has the right to disregard any federal government action with which it disagrees, which is pretty dumbfounding, to say the least. 
   ​
2. The fact that half the nation’s governors believe it is just fine to nullify a Supreme Court ruling demonstrates that America’s retreat from democracy is much farther along than any of us thought. And here we assumed that the danger was merely Trump’s possible return to power.

 
John C. Calhoun’s warped 19th century notion of nullification is often considered one of the triggers of his state’s (South Carolina) secession that led very quickly to the Civil War. However, Calhoun first advanced this extreme proposition in 1828, when he opposed the federal imposition of tariffs that the South called the “Tariff of Abominations.” At the time, he was Vice President of the United States. Four years later, South Carolina enacted an Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the tariffs null, void, and nonbinding on the state. President Andrew Jackson responded by issuing a proclamation asserting the supremacy of the federal government. In short, South Carolina was nullifying the federal tariff within their state and threatened to secede from the Union if federal officers tried to enforce the tariff.  President Jackson then threatened to use military force to enforce the tariff and punish the traitors. “Old Hickory” said he would lead the troops himself and hang Calhoun from the first tree he saw.
 
Congress modified the tariff and South Carolina backed down. The crisis over nullification was thus postponed for another three decades. The Civil War resolved the matter for another century, then it resurfaced. Here it is again: Republicans are applauding Abbott’s decision to flout the Supreme Court, even though it has a conservative Republican supermajority.
 
Andrew Jackson was absolutely correct in calling nullification treason. Abbott and the 25 Republican governors who signed the letter endorsing the Texas governor’s treachery are also traitors, just like their insurrectionist presumptive presidential nominee.
 
The descent of this country into a lawless morass encouraged by major party political leaders is an alarming development that must be stopped in its tracks. If allowed to fester, it would be the end of our Constitutional system and the beginning of the darkest days in our history, an era from which we may not recover.
 
Meanwhile, Republicans, who got Democrats to move completely in their direction with respect to the bipartisan border bill, are now backing away from what is in essence their own bill because Donald Trump, who has raged hysterically about the porous border for a decade, demands that they kill the bill because he wants the border as a campaign issue. Trump’s Capitol Hill doormats are scurrying quickly to succumb to his demand, proof (if any more is needed) that they have zero interest in actually governing. It is an understatement to say that Republican hypocrisy knows no bounds.
 
The sideshow to all of this Republican malfeasance is the attempt by Republicans to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for…nothing. No high crimes. No misdemeanors. Only because they don’t like Biden administration border policies. If impeached by the House, he would become only the second cabinet secretary in 150 years to suffer impeachment.
 
President Biden could federalize the Texas National Guard, or invoke the Insurrection Act and order federal troops to the border, but chancing a military confrontation with state law enforcement under the direction of a lunatic governor is a risky proposition. A better alternative would be to arrest Abbott and his traitorous fellow governors and try them under 18 U.S. Code §2383 (rebellion or insurrection). They must not be allowed to get away with this rebellious conduct.
 
Dick Hermann
February 5, 2024