We now have only one political party that has the interests of the country in mind. Bipartisanship is a dead letter. Democrats continuing to exert themselves to achieve it is a fool’s errand.
 
The Republican Party has become an extremist cult, bereft of policy prescriptions, contemptuous of science and facts. It has entirely abandoned both the values that made this nation the envy of the world and the political consensus that has endured successfully for so long. 
 
Republicans began journeying down this perilous path in the mid-1990s. Under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, they began to abandon bipartisanship in favor of unabashed obstructionism, opposing anything Democrats proposed. Their rhetoric followed suit as they turned policy debates into pitched battles, painting the opposition as the “enemy,” one that must be trounced at all costs. Instead of seeking compromise, they turned politics into a zero-sum game: if one side was to win, it followed that the other side must lose. Meeting halfway was out of the question.
 
Part of that all-or-nothing strategy mandated the use of outright lies and, to quote former Trump shill, Kellyanne Conway, “alternative facts.” This was a tactic straight out of Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi playbook. It worked beautifully. The theory, proven over and over during the Third Reich, was that if you told a lie often enough and shouted it loudly enough, people would believe it no matter how preposterous it was. Donald Trump learned this via his Birther canard, which he exploited so effectively that it became the platform for his road to the White House. Now he’s doing it again with the oft-refuted lie that the election was stolen from him.
 
Along the way from Gingrich to Trump, Republicans discovered that hate, fear, anger and lies were highly effective building blocks upon which to campaign. Policy proposals were abandoned in favor of fealty to an aspiring autocrat and resort to culture wars. Nothing was too extreme, petty or ridiculous to be discounted as a political wedge, be it turning tragic, brain-dead Terri Schiavo into a political football, fake hysteria about supposedly gay Teletubbies, “canceling” Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potatohead, or politicizing rational and essential public health measures such as mask wearing and physical distancing during a virulent pandemic.
 
Democrats recoiled in disbelief that an American political party would stoop to such depths to secure and retain power, and that a large segment of the voting public bought into this nonsense and did not care if democracy perished. Moreover, they continued to play by the rules when their opponents so clearly favored a scorched earth, take no prisoners approach. They remain rule-bound today despite a mountain of evidence that this plays right into the Republican strategy.
 
President Biden’s hope for bipartisanship is a non-starter. Republicans demonstrate daily that they have no intention of reaching across the aisle unless it is with a figurative, fully-loaded AR-15 assault rifle. If one side treats politics as a jihad while the other continues to believe that compromise is a worthy goal, you know who is going to prevail. It’s time for Democrats to throw off the shackles of polite restraint and go for broke. That means getting rid of the filibuster and going it alone to pass legislation critical to saving democracy and improving people’s lives. Waiting for Republicans to come to the table as honest brokers is waiting for Godot. It will never happen.
 
The GOP’s recent performance art ought to be enough to wake Democrats up:

• Republicans calling the January 6 attempted Trump coup d’état in which five people died and 140 law enforcement officers were injured just another “normal tourist day” at the Capitol;
• Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-SS) equating mask mandates with the Holocaust;
• Liz Cheney’s prospective primary opponent who statutorily raped a 14-year old calling their relationship “like Romeo and Juliet;”
• Arizona’s Rube Goldberg recount borne of the Big Lie;
• Matt Gaetz urging a crowd to “use the Second Amendment” to rebel against the government; and
• Republicans’ refusal to support a bipartisan January 6 Commission that they themselves negotiated.

 
This is all the proof one needs that trying to work with these people is a waste of time and energy. The argument that ending the filibuster sets a dangerous precedent that Republicans will exploit the next time they are in charge is no longer relevant. If Democrats do not act now to save themselves and us, there will be nothing left worth saving.
 
The country cannot viably function long-term without two legitimate political parties. Eventually, that will catch up with us to our detriment. Meanwhile, Democrats must go it alone. It is up to them to prevent today’s GOP-crafted culture war from segueing into an actual bloody shooting war that will tear this country apart.
 
Dick Hermann
May 28, 2021

Once again an eruption of Israeli-Arab violence has led to global condemnation of Israel. This is no surprise given the disparity in casualties despite prior Israeli warnings that it was about to strike Hamas installations, and the perennial curse of anti-Semitism that is never far from the surface.
 
It clarifies the present crisis to understand the history leading up to it. In 1948, when the United Nations blessed the creation of a Jewish state, Israel’s barely 1 million Jewish settlers were threatened with annihilation by the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. As the Arab armies massed on Israel’s borders, their leaders took to radio to urge Arabs living inside Israel to get out while they still could leave. Hundreds of thousands abandoned their homes and escaped what they believed to be the Israeli threat, which was non-existent. Israel’s enemies herded them into refugee camps, refusing to allow them to assimilate into their societies in order to make a propaganda point. Their children and grandchildren are still confined there today.
 
Israel survived that initial existential peril, only to have to defend itself from extinction three more times over the next 25 years. In the 1990s, a “two-state solution” came close to realization, only to be scuttled by the Palestinian side. Since then, arriving at a peaceful settlement has become intractable due to the fracturing of the Palestinians: while the West Bank Palestinians are relatively moderate, Hamas in Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005, is a terrorist group. Any Israeli agreement with the former faction would be rejected by Hamas. Hamas’ charter contains the following assertions that make a permanent negotiated solution impossible:

• There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.
• Israel must be eliminated from the face of the earth.
• It is the duty of all Muslims to kill Jews everywhere.

 
In addition, the charter contains numerous lies designed to inflame Palestinians against Jews and Israel:

• Jews stood behind World War 1 so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate.
• Jews established the League of Nations in order to rule the world.
• Jews also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading war materials, and prepared for the establishment of their state (no mention that 6 million Jews “prepared” in gas chambers).
• Jews inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council in order to rule the world.
• There was no war that broke out anywhere without Jewish fingerprints on it.
• The Jews’ scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a monstrous fabrication attributed to the Russian Tsar’s secret service…these fictitious Protocols were a major influence on Adolf Hitler).

 
The situation has been aggravated by Israel’s settlement policies under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is beholden to extreme right-wing religious zealots in order to cling to power. Absent a rethinking of these policies, there can be no hope for even a limited accommodation with West Bank Palestinians.
 
It is important to note that Israeli Arabs are citizens, enjoy freedom to worship as they choose, and are members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), among other entitlements. There is no Muslim country in which Jews enjoy anything remotely comparable. Jews, to the limited extent that their once vibrant communities have survived at all in Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, etc., are subject to the most flagrant discrimination imaginable.
 
When Hamas launches thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets, Israel naturally responds with attacks on Hamas’ installations in Gaza. Hamas purposely embeds within civilian residential buildings and fires its rockets from their backyards. Civilian casualties ensue even though, as mentioned above, Israel gives advance notice to evacuate. Hamas then garners sympathy for what look like indiscriminate Israeli bombs. Hamas did not give comparable warnings before launching 4,000 rockets against Israeli civilians.
 
The Associated Press, whose Gaza headquarters was bombed because its building was also likely a Hamas sanctuary, is complicit in Hamas’ effective propaganda campaign about Israeli brutality. Why? Because of the concessions the AP made to Hamas that constrain its freedom to report accurately, without bias, what is happening in Gaza. The AP has made similar concessions limiting its press freedom in order to do business in China and other repressive countries.
 
The current cease fire (as of this writing) will likely be only a temporary respite.
 
Dick Hermann
May 21, 2021

​I disagree with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on virtually every issue. Her no-holds-barred support for the disastrous Iraq War, perpetrated in large part by her father’s lies and cooking of intelligence, her strong defense of Bush Era torture policies, and her dog whistles to the Birther movement, were deplorable.

But that was then and this is now. Today she deserves our applause for doing the right thing in calling out the Bigly Liar, Donald Trump, and his Big Lie about a stolen election; for being the lonely voice in the wilderness when almost all of her Republican colleagues are fearful, craven and spineless, terrified of arousing Trump’s anger and vengeance, and disdainful of democracy.  Instead, they are perfectly willing to countenance his lies and overlook what he is—a corrupt, immoral incompetent whose ineptitude and general malice caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, an economic disaster of historic proportions, and four years of chaos and mismanagement that backslid America in countless ways.

Unlike her cowardly colleagues, Cheney should be commended for trying to eradicate the stench of Trumpism from our society and politics. She quite rightly says that we must never allow a creature like Trump to ever get close to power again, not if we want to preserve our fragile democracy and the rule of law. She is embarked on a battle to save her party, one that I think she will lose in the short term. Having now lost her House leadership position, she might also lose her congressional seat next year when Trump’s wrath zeroes in on her full-bore.

I suspect Cheney is betting on the long game, for the time when Trump’s loathsome presence flames out, engulfed in a flood of criminal prosecutions that either put him in prison or at least  beyond repair. When that happens, and lickspittle wretches like Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Lindsey Graham, “Gym” Jordan and their gutless ilk have been consigned to their proper place in history’s dumpster, she will be in the enviable position of being able to revive both her political career and her party.

Meanwhile, we will have to endure the daily hysterics out of Mar-a-Lago, and detestable anti-democratic viruses like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and their creepy colleagues as they spread their snake oil around. Instead of a brave Liz Cheney, we will have to suffer an Elise Stefanik, who jumped at the chance to sell her soul in return for power. Once she flip-flopped from her former questioning of Trump’s actions, we found out exactly what Stefanik is; after that, the only item in question was her price.

The dilemma decent Americans face in dealing with Republicans is the same that society confronts with suicide bombers: there is no defense against them. Suicide bombers want to die, thus they cannot be deterred from their murderous enterprise. Similarly, Republicans cannot be shamed into acting responsibly because they are shameless.
​
There is one thing the media can do, however. Every interview with a Republican should begin with the question: “Who is the legitimately elected President of the United States?” If they do not respond with “Joe Biden,” the interviewer needs to shut down the interview. Deceivers do not deserve airtime.

Dick Hermann
May 12, 2021

​President Biden’s American Jobs Plan proposes investing $2 trillion-plus in both physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels, water and sewer systems, electrical grids, ports, waterways, airports, transit systems, schools, broadband, etc.) and human infrastructure (job training, future pandemic preparation, workforce development, home care services, child care and much more).
 
Republicans oppose the bill, ostensibly as being too costly, and because they incorrectly claim it includes items not traditionally defined as infrastructure. Their first objection is hypocritical. Their second demonstrates historical ignorance.
 
Their sudden concern about budgets is insincere given their dismissal of deficits and debts whenever tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans are on the table. Adding more than $5 trillion to the national debt as a consequence of the Bush and Trump tax cuts was just fine with these born-again budget hawks.
 
Their hand-wringing about non-traditional infrastructure is also disingenuous given the numerous bipartisan precedents and enormous success of prior U.S. investments in both kinds of infrastructure. For example, two extraordinary post-World War II success stories: the Interstate Highway program and the G.I. Bill.
 
Interstate Highway construction cost $568.5 billion in 2021 dollars. Estimates are that the program returned more than $6 in economic benefits for every $1 of construction expense, or $3.4 trillion. U.S. corporations profited much more from the ability to move their products around the country with greater ease than they have from all of the Republican corporate tax cuts since then. The highway project was a Republican initiative approved by a vote of 89-1 in the Senate and by voice vote in the House.
 
The original G.I. Bill was the brainstorm of Harry Colmery, a former Republican National Chairman, and was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate. It sent more than 8 million World War II veterans to school between 1945 and 1956, and saved the immediate post-war economy from massive unemployment. In addition, it was an enormous investment success. Beneficiaries earned higher wages and thus pumped more money into the economy. They were able to afford homes and stock them with consumer goods. It was also the gift that kept on giving to the government in the form of increased tax revenues.
 
This first G.I. Bill cost $213.5 billion in today’s dollars and considerably more in its multiple reiterations since the original bill. Republicans should be delighted that, unlike their customary assurances that tax cuts for the rich would pay for themselves (they never have), the G.I. Bill has generated ten times the program cost in federal tax revenues. Economists across the board label it “the best investment the U.S. government ever made.”
 
Post-World War II was not the first time the country realized huge benefits from government investment in both physical and human infrastructure. The three great 1862 laws—the Homestead, Land Grant and Railroad Acts—propelled American economic growth and educational attainment for the rest of the nineteenth century and beyond. The New Deal legislation that tempered the ravages of the Great Depression was another example of the federal government jumping in to deal with a massive crisis via both types of infrastructure investments.
 
One concern worth noting: inflation. A lot of cash is slogging around looking for places to land. Prices are rising, but this may be a temporary phenomenon as supply chains disrupted by the pandemic recover. Fed Reserve chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen believe that inflation is not going to be a serious problem. I defer to their much greater expertise and experience. Moreover, the history of inflation following past massive infrastructure investments supports this assertion. The peak annual New Deal era inflation rate was 3.0 percent in 1935. The modest inflation that the U.S. experienced following World War II, likely due to the tremendous pent-up demand for consumer goods, was short-term.
 
Together, the G.I. Bill and Interstate Highway Program boosted America to unprecedented heights of economic prosperity that characterized the postwar era. Joe Biden wants to do it again by investing in order to reap both near- and long-term rewards. This time, however, Republicans, despite a history of strong support for government infrastructure investment, are irrationally opposed. Like so much about the current manifestation of their once-responsible party, this makes no sense.
 
Dick Hermann
May 7, 2021