Let’s get right to it:
It’s Much Worse than I Anticipated. I read every disturbing, poorly-written page of Project 2025 during the campaign, which Trump denied knowing about and now is implementing item-by-item. Much of it appeared so extreme and irrational that I did not believe that even Republicans were that loony. I was way off base. Some of the most “out-there” items have come to pass or can be expected as the coup d’état that began January 6, 2021 moves forward.
A Cabinet of Unqualified Crackpots and Charlatans. A falling-down drunk sexual predator and serial mis-manager in charge at the Pentagon? A Russian asset that Kremlin insiders call “Our Girl” directing national intelligence? Hegseth and Gabbard are the poster children for national security malpractice. A vaccine-hostile crank at Health & Human Services who claims that Covid was designed to keep the Chinese and Ashkenazy Jews from contracting it? A Trump flunky consumed with retribution heading the FBI? And these are only the tips of the licebergs.
A Senate of servile sissies. I don’t want to hear any more about the independence of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. These two joined their emasculated colleagues in endorsing most of a cabinet of singularly unqualified cranks. Profiles in cowardice, indeed.
Mitch McConnell is no great dissenter. Now that it can make no difference, McConnell becomes the lone Republican vote against some of Trump’s worst cabinet picks. This from the man who is primarily responsible for Trump being where he is today. McConnell could have stopped all of this if he had voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment following his incitement to insurrection on January 6, 2021. Enough members of his cowardly caucus would have followed him then and we would have been rid of the Orange Threat. Now it is too little, too late. I predict that future historians will condemn Mitch for his craven cowardice when courage was needed.
Where is George W. Bush? The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was W’s crowning achievement. PEPFAR has saved more than 25 million lives, primarily in Africa, Trump’s illegal shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has put PEPFAR on the chopping block. Bush needs to get out from behind his easel and loudly object to this evil scheme.
People are dying because food and vital medications are rotting on African docks. Unable to be distributed to people in need because USAID contractors that do this work have been put in limbo by Trump and Co-President Musk. Not only is this in violation of Congress’s power of the purse. It is also a criminal waste of taxpayer money.
JD Bowman/Hamel/Vance (he changed his name twice) Should Be Disbarred. Early on in law school (if not long before), students learn that (1) there are three co-equal branches of government, and (2) the courts have the power to determine the constitutionality and validity of the acts of the other two branches of government. “Checks and balances” in Madisonian parlance. Apparently, VP JD wasn’t paying attention. Any attorney who says that the Executive Branch can and should ignore court orders with which it disagrees should not be allowed a law license. Hop to it, Kentucky Bar!
As if JD wasn’t incendiary enough….Following his insulting and obnoxious Munich Security Conference scold-polemic directed at our European allies, Bowman/Hamel/Vance took the opportunity while in Adolf Hitler’s German heimatstadt and the locus of the West’s shameful 1938 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia to meet with the Führer of the AfD, Germany’s neo-Nazi party. He pointedly did not meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. For 85 years, appeasement has been a dirty word. Trump, Vance and their ilk are rehabilitating it. Neville Chamberlain is opening his umbrella.
Not to be outdone…SecDef Hegseth disgraced himself at the Munich Conference when he delivered Ukraine to Vlad the Impaler on a silver platter. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) called it a “rookie mistake.” That implies that Hegseth will improve the longer he is in the job. Good luck with that!
The Great Dealmaker strikes again. The President who ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban is now serving up Ukraine to the Russians. Who goes into a peace negotiation announcing what the eventual outcome should be? In this case, allowing the aggressor to keep the territory it wrested from Ukraine, declaring Ukraine a neutral nation, denying it any hope of future NATO membership, and announcing that the U.S. is bailing out of its defense obligations under Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Trump is even blaming Ukraine President Zelenzkyy for starting the war! This is revisionist history on a level with the whitewashing of January 6. No wonder the champagne corks are popping all over the Kremlin as they watch, deliriously ecstatic, while the U.S. retreats, its tail between its legs.
The Thursday Afternoon Massacre. Seven Justice Department attorneys, most them conservative Republicans, who were working on the Eric Adams slam-dunk corruption case resigned after the Trump administration dropped the indictment against Adams in return for his cooperation with Trump’s anti-immigration show. The very definition of a corrupt quid pro quo. It certainly did not take long for corruption’s stink to engulf the new DOJ leadership.
The Democrats Still Don’t Get It. The Democratic National Committee’s recent meeting was a rehash of the same tired material voters rejected in the election. Moving away from identity politics and the insipid “politics of joy” was so offensive and at odds with reality that voters elected a twice-impeached, four-times indicted insurrectionist/convicted felon. Moreover, they elected mild-mannered Ken Martin, another Minnesota Nice Guy, as their chair. They need to be out there every day with credible spokespersons (uncharismatic Chuck Schumer won’t cut it) explaining to voters what the impact of Trump’s actions will do to them and making them angry about it. Anger, as they should have learned from Republicans, is a powerful motivator to voters. Go with the tough guys and gals like Jamie Raskin, Rahm Emanuel, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker. Junk lame slogans like Schumer’s “We Will Win!” Stop wilting in the face of the Trump/Musk onslaught.
A tiny glimmer of light at the end of the democracy deconstruction tunnel. A handful of the “timorous cowrin’ beasties” (a tip of the tam o’shanter to Robert Burns’ To a Mouse) who comprise today’s Republican Party are beginning to mouth meek little squeaks about the impact of the Trump/Musk devastation on their complaining constituents who are losing jobs, contracts and local infrastructure projects. Can this really be the second guardrail (the courts being the one and only at this point)? They will have to conclude that their re-election prospects are threatened more by unhappy constituents than they are by the deranged intimidator in the Oval who has them shaking in their jackboots.
Dick Hermann
February 21, 2025
It’s Much Worse than I Anticipated. I read every disturbing, poorly-written page of Project 2025 during the campaign, which Trump denied knowing about and now is implementing item-by-item. Much of it appeared so extreme and irrational that I did not believe that even Republicans were that loony. I was way off base. Some of the most “out-there” items have come to pass or can be expected as the coup d’état that began January 6, 2021 moves forward.
A Cabinet of Unqualified Crackpots and Charlatans. A falling-down drunk sexual predator and serial mis-manager in charge at the Pentagon? A Russian asset that Kremlin insiders call “Our Girl” directing national intelligence? Hegseth and Gabbard are the poster children for national security malpractice. A vaccine-hostile crank at Health & Human Services who claims that Covid was designed to keep the Chinese and Ashkenazy Jews from contracting it? A Trump flunky consumed with retribution heading the FBI? And these are only the tips of the licebergs.
A Senate of servile sissies. I don’t want to hear any more about the independence of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. These two joined their emasculated colleagues in endorsing most of a cabinet of singularly unqualified cranks. Profiles in cowardice, indeed.
Mitch McConnell is no great dissenter. Now that it can make no difference, McConnell becomes the lone Republican vote against some of Trump’s worst cabinet picks. This from the man who is primarily responsible for Trump being where he is today. McConnell could have stopped all of this if he had voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment following his incitement to insurrection on January 6, 2021. Enough members of his cowardly caucus would have followed him then and we would have been rid of the Orange Threat. Now it is too little, too late. I predict that future historians will condemn Mitch for his craven cowardice when courage was needed.
Where is George W. Bush? The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was W’s crowning achievement. PEPFAR has saved more than 25 million lives, primarily in Africa, Trump’s illegal shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has put PEPFAR on the chopping block. Bush needs to get out from behind his easel and loudly object to this evil scheme.
People are dying because food and vital medications are rotting on African docks. Unable to be distributed to people in need because USAID contractors that do this work have been put in limbo by Trump and Co-President Musk. Not only is this in violation of Congress’s power of the purse. It is also a criminal waste of taxpayer money.
JD Bowman/Hamel/Vance (he changed his name twice) Should Be Disbarred. Early on in law school (if not long before), students learn that (1) there are three co-equal branches of government, and (2) the courts have the power to determine the constitutionality and validity of the acts of the other two branches of government. “Checks and balances” in Madisonian parlance. Apparently, VP JD wasn’t paying attention. Any attorney who says that the Executive Branch can and should ignore court orders with which it disagrees should not be allowed a law license. Hop to it, Kentucky Bar!
As if JD wasn’t incendiary enough….Following his insulting and obnoxious Munich Security Conference scold-polemic directed at our European allies, Bowman/Hamel/Vance took the opportunity while in Adolf Hitler’s German heimatstadt and the locus of the West’s shameful 1938 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia to meet with the Führer of the AfD, Germany’s neo-Nazi party. He pointedly did not meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. For 85 years, appeasement has been a dirty word. Trump, Vance and their ilk are rehabilitating it. Neville Chamberlain is opening his umbrella.
Not to be outdone…SecDef Hegseth disgraced himself at the Munich Conference when he delivered Ukraine to Vlad the Impaler on a silver platter. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) called it a “rookie mistake.” That implies that Hegseth will improve the longer he is in the job. Good luck with that!
The Great Dealmaker strikes again. The President who ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban is now serving up Ukraine to the Russians. Who goes into a peace negotiation announcing what the eventual outcome should be? In this case, allowing the aggressor to keep the territory it wrested from Ukraine, declaring Ukraine a neutral nation, denying it any hope of future NATO membership, and announcing that the U.S. is bailing out of its defense obligations under Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Trump is even blaming Ukraine President Zelenzkyy for starting the war! This is revisionist history on a level with the whitewashing of January 6. No wonder the champagne corks are popping all over the Kremlin as they watch, deliriously ecstatic, while the U.S. retreats, its tail between its legs.
The Thursday Afternoon Massacre. Seven Justice Department attorneys, most them conservative Republicans, who were working on the Eric Adams slam-dunk corruption case resigned after the Trump administration dropped the indictment against Adams in return for his cooperation with Trump’s anti-immigration show. The very definition of a corrupt quid pro quo. It certainly did not take long for corruption’s stink to engulf the new DOJ leadership.
The Democrats Still Don’t Get It. The Democratic National Committee’s recent meeting was a rehash of the same tired material voters rejected in the election. Moving away from identity politics and the insipid “politics of joy” was so offensive and at odds with reality that voters elected a twice-impeached, four-times indicted insurrectionist/convicted felon. Moreover, they elected mild-mannered Ken Martin, another Minnesota Nice Guy, as their chair. They need to be out there every day with credible spokespersons (uncharismatic Chuck Schumer won’t cut it) explaining to voters what the impact of Trump’s actions will do to them and making them angry about it. Anger, as they should have learned from Republicans, is a powerful motivator to voters. Go with the tough guys and gals like Jamie Raskin, Rahm Emanuel, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker. Junk lame slogans like Schumer’s “We Will Win!” Stop wilting in the face of the Trump/Musk onslaught.
A tiny glimmer of light at the end of the democracy deconstruction tunnel. A handful of the “timorous cowrin’ beasties” (a tip of the tam o’shanter to Robert Burns’ To a Mouse) who comprise today’s Republican Party are beginning to mouth meek little squeaks about the impact of the Trump/Musk devastation on their complaining constituents who are losing jobs, contracts and local infrastructure projects. Can this really be the second guardrail (the courts being the one and only at this point)? They will have to conclude that their re-election prospects are threatened more by unhappy constituents than they are by the deranged intimidator in the Oval who has them shaking in their jackboots.
Dick Hermann
February 21, 2025
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