Remember all those cowboy movies where somebody gets caught stealing a horse or cattle or doing something illegal and the town folk get all riled up and form a posse to get that guy and string him up?” And then the “good guy” comes along and talks them out of doing that? Apparently our president seems to think he’s the good guy whose job it is to keep those “Bad Gummint People” from locking up all his Good Friends who, like him, has “done nothing wrong.” After all, he was just just proven innocent for what those “awful government people” came after him for. And his own lawyer said “If the president’s intent was for the good of the country/national security, he isn’t committing a crime or can be punished for it.” And so anyone who even accuses him of criminal actions can be punished by the president for it. After all, his reasoning goes, “that’s only fair.” Oh, and if they don’t “love their enemy (i.e., the president), they are obviously not acting like a true Christian (but implying that he himself is a Christian who does “love his enemy.”) Never mind anything like forgiveness or Romans 12:19.
Trump is making himself judge, jury and executioner, a one-man band. And then proclaims that only he can fix all the problems of the world! So: Wall off Mexico.
End all immigration.
Be nice to dictators (like him).
Let him do whatever he wants! After all, only he knows what is best!
But hasn’t anyone noticed that “He who must be pleased” is never pleased, no matter what? And besides, who made him God? Besides him, of course.
Check out Proverbs 24, 25, 26: Some things to think about. God’s word.
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine
Contrary to what most people are taught to believe, it is not only possible but necessary for people to experience the Almighty directly. It is not from a book, but from that fact of being live and conscious that this occurs.
Remember: Everything we feel is Divine, as is the ability to feel itself. We need to know God right now.
MARK IVAN, Calexico, Calif.
Gene Lyons writes [in the 3/1/20 TPP] that “Sanders supporters can’t see the forest for the tree.” In my opinion, it is Lyons who is out of line. He is “distressed” about potential protests at the national convention should Bernie not be the nominee. Well, if Bernie earns the plurality of delegates (as now seems likely) I am sympathetic to the brothers.
Last presidential election, the Democratic party smothered the Bernie nomination and the well-funded but arrogant nominee (Hillary) went on to lose the election. If Bernie has mandarins like Lyons clutching their pearls, so much the better: the only way to beat DJT is to run a fierce anti-establishment candidate and, with Warren’s recent poor showings (and the effective mocking nickname “Pocahontas”) she cannot play that role.
The excellent columns by Crowther and Parton vividly and accurately portray the difficulties ahead for the Democratic nominee. We need a tough and disciplined candidate and cadre — people who communicate their contempt for both political establishments and DJT. I will follow the rule “no matter who, vote blue” but will be resigned to four more years unless the nominee is a fighter with street cred. Where the candidate honeymooned or the color of vests his supporters might wear, means less than nothing.
JOHN D. PALMER, Huntington, W.V.
Every reasoned American and global citizen needs to take a stark unwavering look at Donald Trump’s $4.8 trillion dollar budget proposal. If there was ever any doubt about the clear and present and growing danger that Donald Trump and his Republican lap dogs present this budget proposal has removed all the blinders.
Trump’s budget proposal, if adopted, would increase military spending to levels unimagined and unrivaled in human history. Included in this unprecedented war economy bloat is the damning and life threatening escalation and development of America’s nuclear arsenal,-which includes the implementation and deployment of “low yield nuclear weapons,”-which military planners tell us are suitable for use in conventional conflicts.
In a rational, civilized world anyone who advocated the development and potential use of “low-yield” nuclear weaponry would be given extended sanctuary in a well funded mental institution. In modern America these planners are given the keys to the planet’s future.
The proposed budget also shreds and guts our environmental protection agencies and organizations. Those agencies charged with preventing impending environmental apocalypse are or would be gutted like a fish. This is an admirable duality — increased military spending with an emphasis on first strike nuclear capability, while shredding those meager environmental safeguards that have been under sustained Republican attack for decades. And finally, we have the devastating attacks on the poor-the cutting of food stamp programs and student aid-which is outright class war fare and would if enacted lead the nation to levels of poverty and economic inequality unrivaled in US history, including the era of the Great Depression.
Trump’s budget proposal simply highlights and confirms what has become the new American reality. Our republic has been destroyed and replaced by an imperial oligarchy that has hollowed out if not destroyed the American middle class while at the same time building and sustaining a permanent war economy that left unchecked will lead to disasters and wars of unimagined magnitude. Citizens need to take collective action and embrace those principles and ideals that give humanity a fighting chance for survival. The choices have never been as clear as they are today.
JIM SAWYER, Edmonds, Wash.
A good legal defense is nimble. Trump’s impeachment team opened with “Nuh-uh!” and evolved to “Yeah, so?” The prosecution only had evidence.
The process was redeemed from total wash-out for its glimpse into Trump’s writhing intellect. (Reliable sources, who have peered into Trump’s ear with the light just so, report his brain is a pulsing, orange ooze that glows slightly at the prospect of “cheeseburger” or “teenage trim.” Ideas come to Trump as the spirochetes reach consensus.) Specifically we learned what Trump meant by “perfect call.”
Using “perfect” to describe a call is not just the babble of a simpleton less than conversant in English. It indicates a more profound idiocy. What Trump believed is that he had “perfectly” threaded the needle in his shakedown of President Zelensky. He had conditioned arms on a political favor without using the term “quid pro quo.” Zelensky received a message no prying investigator could possibly decipher. (As if no drug dealer has ever been arraigned for an intercepted call that “the package is on its way” without specifying narcotics!)
The impeachment process was a naked partisan exercise. Trump was impeached for cause but acquitted by Republicans who can’t get re-elected without Trump on the ballot. Trump remains convinced, though, that the law can’t touch him for the subtle Jedi mind games he applies to his grift. That is the genius of the man: equal parts ignorance and arrogance. He will continue with these petty palace intrigues because it’s his life’s work. Like he’s still on his stupid TV show telling Gary Busey to undermine Meat Loaf’s project. His reality show buffoonery is considerably more sinister as the unchecked, unbalanced president.
When it comes to a petty tyrant, the people must remove him whether for the pettiness or tyranny. Now it comes down to the election. Don’t hold your breath.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis Minn.
The “chosen one” claims to be a stable genius. True, he does belong in a barn, as no one seems to be able to rein him in. As a master of thermodynamics with a Sharpie, he plans to bring thousands of tons of coal ash from Puerto Rico to be buried in Florida. It’s our funeral. The EPA (Environmental Poison Agency) has been ordered to turn its back on those exposed to arsenic, selenium, mercury and other toxic chemicals from this carbonated anthracite. Pre-existing conditions?
In the 1340s, nearly 60% of the population in Europe died from Black Plague. As swine flu by, we’ve also had leprosy, polio, Ebola, mad cow disease and romaine recalls.
Not long ago, only whooping cough and scarlet fever were taken seriously, while measles , mumps and chicken pox were expected school days off, while calomine lotion, ginger ale and comic books (known as “funny books” then) were the basic cures. Now they cause a panic, because the immune system responds less and less to liquor, leeches and Lourdes water.
It ticks us off that some think Lyme disease comes from citrus fruit or corona virus is from a ring around a celestial body. Diamonds aren’t just for stars.
This grave matter to be interred (surely not near Mar-a-Lago) is coal ash that must put CoalASH in some pockets, while the poor souls who unknowingly mined the store wither and die in dreadful pain and suffering, as Don Juan continues to trump.
FLORA ORMSBY SMITH, Marblehead, Mass.
Ever since the Red Army took Berlin, freshman college students were warned against associating with extreme political types of either the right or left. Such advice could and was construed as the equivalent of “Stick with the mainstream, conform to middle-class morality, affirm what is socially acceptable and generally tolerated.”
Nowadays, however, being registered in either of the two major US parties won’t get one into heaven anymore. The shopworn labels of liberal and conservative have both been kicked around so long as to be meaningless.
Maybe the extremists know that by discrediting both major parties they could affect their ends. Causing apathy and even fatalism among the electorate could open the floodgates to drastic transformation.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
For many Americans to admit that Trump is a con-man, crook, immoral and cruel “leader” is to admit that America’s history and super-power status is corrupt and flawed. We are not what our history books and leaders have portrayed for too long. The average working person who has valued truth, responsibility to family and community, integrity and morality has been left behind. It is too difficult to accept that the America we have believed in no longer exists, or perhaps never did for many. Thus, the only response can be denial and refusal to look at the facts. To criticize and attempt to solve our nation’s problems thus becomes “un-American” for many. We can only hope that the core values of humanity will bring us all back to sanity before we destroy ourselves and our country.
PATSY KELLEY, McCall, Idaho
Email letters to editor@populist.com or write PO Box 819, Manchaca, TX 78652. Please keep them short.
From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2020
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