Donald Trump spreads lies and the cult followers believe whatever untruths he spews

Echo opinion letters published in the Los Angeles Times

Maine disqualified Donald Trump from its 2024 primary ballot, the second time this month that a state has made the historic move regarding the former president.

To the editor: I think we learned from the 2016, election that reporting former President Trump's lies without qualifying them leads many people to believe his untruths. 

While the media have adapted and now will say when his statements are indeed lies, we need to stay vigilant.

In the Associated Press article you published about the former president's criminal trial in New York, the recounting of defense attorney Todd Blanche's statements about Trump unfairly having to stand trial while running for president was not qualified. 

Thus, people could believe this is a legitimate claim.

The fact is, what's outrageous is that someone who is on trial is running for president. What's outrageous is the suggestion that the court is out of line for requiring a person to be held accountable for his actions by a jury of his peers.

From Carolyn Manetti, in Los Angeles

To the editor: Trump wrote on social media that his legal troubles are a "Biden-directed Political Witch Hunt for the purpose of Election Interference."

Somehow, Trump is assuming that Trump secretly managed multiple criminal indictments in both federal and state courts, directing appropriate resources with impeccable timing, and always maintaining the upper hand on his opponent.  

From:  Mark Osterstock, in Ladera Ranch, California

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is owned and kow-tows to billionare friends

"Yass" man or "Ass" man❓  Governor Abbott's owners.

Echo editorial published in the Houston Chronicle:

Greg Abbott doesn’t get it (unless 💲money is attached....)
To be clear, the governor gets it, literally, when it’s in the form of a $6 million 💲campaign donation from the richest man in Pennsylvania. 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is bought and paid for by 💲billionaires.

Jeff Yass, billionaire co-founder of a Philadelphia-based investment firm, is an anti-public school zealot who believes in using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private-school costs. His Christmas gift to Abbott last month is “the largest single donation in Texas history,” our 💲6 million man in the governor’s office crowed.

What Abbott doesn’t get — or refuses to acknowledge — is any sense of the needs and preferences of his fellow Texans. 

With financial backing from a trio of West Texas oil billionaires, Tim Dunn of Midland and the Wilks brothers of Cisco — all three Christian nationalists — he’s tried to muscle school choice through a regular session of the Legislature and two special sessions. 

In fact, Abbott  was swatted down each time by an unlikely coalition of House Democrats and, most recently, 21 mostly rural House Republicans. Abbott’s opponents on the issue are lawmakers who recognize how damaging tax-subsidized private-school funding would be to public schools, to students and to their families.

Abbott will now add his newly acquired 💲6 million to a 💲32 million campaign war chest he’s amassed. Although the three-term governor is not up for reelection this year, he’s using a portion of the money to bankroll vengeance ❗against lawmakers in his own party who heeded the call of conscience and responded to the concerns of their local school districts.

As Abbott and his 💲billionaire💲 buddies seek to, in essence, privatize public education, Texas schools are languishing, mainly because their budget requirements got entangled with our governor’s Captain Ahab-style obsession. Facing higher operating costs, the need for teacher pay raises and enhanced school-safety mandates, public school folks watched their elected representatives fritter away their time in Austin last year trying to appease Abbott while failing to pass a multibillion dollar omnibus school funding package.

“They're holding hostage all of the funding that is vital to the backbone of the economy that is Texas — and that's public education,” Superintendent Eric Wright of the Hays Consolidated Independent School District told the Austin American-Statesman recently. School administrators in Klein, Alvin and elsewhere have told the Chronicle how they’re having to maneuver to meet basic needs.

Even though some school districts already are operating at a deficit, the governor vows to thwart desperately needed funding until he gets what he wants on school choice. “I am in it to win it,” he likes to say.

Meanwhile, Texas youngsters from impoverished families are likely to go hungry when school lets out this summer, because Abbott is one of 15 Republican governors who rejected a new food assistance program. (Would you have expected otherwise from a governor who continues to oppose Medicaid expansion, despite the benefits expansion would bring to uninsured Texans and struggling rural hospitals?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program offers a monthly stipend of 💲40 per eligible child for food assistance when the child is not in school. 

In a state with the second-highest rate of food insecurity in the U.S., according to USDA figures, an estimated 2.9 million Texas kids could have benefited.

Abbott said no thanks, and state officials said they didn’t have the resources to implement the program, despite the fact that nearly 1 in 6 Texas households struggles to get enough to eat. More than 1.7 million families — approximately 4.6 million Texans — are at risk for hunger.

“Behind these sobering statistics are our neighbors struggling to put food on the table, pay rent and keep the lights on,” said Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, the state association of food banks. 

 “These staggering numbers reflect the growing need food banks are seeing in communities across our state. The end of pandemic-era relief efforts, inflation and the high cost of food is making it harder for Texans to afford basic necessities.”

Back to Yass, who’s not struggling to put food on the table. The Pennsylvania mega donor is worth an estimated 💲30 billion. His firm, Susquehanna International Group, was an early investor in TikTok. An avid poker player, he got his start as an investor when he and some of his college pals years ago came up with a sophisticated computer scheme to bet on horse and greyhound races.

He has spent more than 💲100 million on political campaigns in recent years, mainly supporting candidates who falsely claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen, who oppose abortion and who rail against teaching critical race theory in the classroom, in addition to backing school choice.

Our Texas governor is proud to be a Yass man, although if he thinks the billionaire’s investment will be enough to swing the school choice issue in Texas, he might consider his new benefactor’s recent record. Last November, Yass invested huge sums in six races — local and statewide races across Pennsylvania, as well as races in Kentucky and Virginia. The results suggest he might want to stick to dogs and ponies. Every one of his candidates lost.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, it's the students and teachers who are losing. While Abbott counts his winnings at the political poker table, Texas schools are starving. 

Governor Abbott doesn't get it. Or, wait, wait... maybe he does❓😕

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has a lot of explaining to do for her constituents

About the time Congresswoman Stefanik is criticized by national and her own home state media, he has a lot of explaining to do.😮😬

Elise Stefanik ambitiously wants to be the former guy's choice to run (reported in the The Washington Post)...as vice-president❓ Obviously, Stefanik never learned Mother Lesson 101:  Beware who you choose for friends, because they will define you.

Rep. Elise Stefanik is obsessed with former guy Trump

An opinion published in the Albany, New York newspaper Times Union: No doubt U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York District 21 Schuylerville is basking in the outrageous national outrage over her use of the word “hostages” to express her wrong minded sympathy — even solidarity — with the hundreds of seditionists, police assailants, vandals and other thugs convicted in the January 6, 2021, attack on our democracy. Provoking outrage to generate attention is, of course, the MAGA modus operandi.

January 6th convicted sedition rioter the QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley

But this is not just the usual hyperbolic blather from another sycophant of Donald Trump. And Americans shrug off such rhetoric at our nation’s peril.

This offense — a perversion of the very meaning of the word “hostage” — is not some mere bit of demagoguery. It’s part of a broad and relentless assault on the foundations of our republic by Mr. Trump and his loyalists.

There was Ms. Stefanik on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, echoing Mr. Trump’s depiction of the Jan. 6 mob as “hostages,” even as she equivocated by insisting she condemns violence. She’s still using the incendiary rhetoric — the big lie that the 2020, presidential election was stolen from Mr. Trump — that incited that violence.

To call the January 6th insurrectionists “hostages” is to turn the word on its head. It demeans and diminishes the plight of the very real hostages being held around the world. The terrorist organization Hamas still holds an estimated 120 of the more than 230 Israelis and other foreign nationals it kidnapped in the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Russia is said to have taken at least 20,000 Ukrainian children captive in its invasion of Ukraine, though some estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. Russian President Vladimir Putin wantonly imprisons political rivals and critics of his war, and even foreign journalists such as Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal. Russia and other repressive regimes like Iran and North Korea have held Americans and other foreigners hostage on minor or trumped-up charges as propaganda tools or pawns in foreign policy.

The January 6th rioters aren’t unwitting, innocent victims of a terrorist organization or a rogue regime. They’re criminals who attacked the heart of our republic, the Capitol in which the representatives of the people had gathered to affirm the results of a free and fair election, the very foundation of our representative democracy. They sought to overturn the results of the 2020, election — which President Joe Biden won decisively by more than 7 million votes — and to reinstall Donald Trump as president instead.

Of the more than 1,230 people charged with federal crimes for their role in that attack, about 730 have pleaded guilty and roughly 170 were convicted at trial, according to The Associated Press. 

Two suspects were acquitted. Some of the leaders of armed, violent anti-government groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump, drew long sentences of up to 22 years in prison. Others with lesser involvement were sentenced to terms of months or even days.

It’s worth noting that, according to The Washington Post, the majority of punishments — 67 percent — were below federal sentencing guidelines.

Yet here comes Mr. Trump, calling these thugs “hostages,” and suggesting that he’ll pardon them if he’s elected president. There’s Ms. Stefanik right behind him, parroting his corruption of the word and recklessly speculating that these people have been treated unfairly.

Who is it, we wonder, that Mr. Trump and Ms. Stefanik so sympathize with? Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, perhaps, who drew the longest sentence, whom Judge Amit P. Mehta called “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and the very fabric of our democracy”? Or Christopher Worrell, who was convicted of using pepper spray gel on police officers? Or Jonathan Pollock, who has been on the run for months, accused of punching police officers, pulling one down a set of steps and attacking another with a riot shield? Or Danny Rodriguez, who drove a stun gun into a police officer’s neck? Or Thomas Webster — a retired New York Police Department officer — who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer defending the Capitol that day?

It doesn’t take a mind reader to know that Ms. Stefanik’s concern isn’t on the conviction of these criminals, but on her own political fortunes, which she has chosen to bond with her obsession for Mr. Trump’s.

Media must expose Trump incompetence. Just listen to Trump's unhinged rhetoric

Echo Opinion by Jackie Calmes published in the Los Angeles Times: I watched a Trump rally so you don’t have to. 

But you need to know what Trumpzi is saying.

Donald Trump is spewing Fascism!

Donald Trump famously benefited from billions in free media in his 2016, campaign — way too much, as some in the business later conceded. 

1)

Back then, Trump was a ratings monster (or a 😨😩mobster❗); cable TV networks covered his rallies start to finish, as millions of Americans tuned in, out of horror or glee, at his shameless (and👺👹 ugly) shtick: What would he say next❓

Eight years later, the networks have pulled back. Even Faux News no longer gives the former president as much attention. 

Indeed, viewers have Trump fatigue, his opponents and supporters alike. Only obscure right-wing channels that cater to MAGA types carry the full rallies in real time; the rest provide video snippets, if that.

Yet voters shouldn’t ignore Trump on the stump, especially given that his and President Biden’s respective age and mental acuity are the overriding issue in their seemingly likely 2024, rematch. A majority, I think (hope?), would come away without a doubt about which of the two candidates is unhinged. 

Donald Trump is unhinged and proves it in his Nazi style beer hall crazed cult rallies

For those not inclined to stream an entire, roughly 90-minute bizarre Trumpzi show — even his fans often start walking out mid-rally — I watched so you don’t have to.

My selection was Saturday night’s performance in Waterford Township, Michigan., a working-class area north of Detroit. 

Against the cold at the airport there, Trump was in a full-length black coat and black leather gloves, recalling his appearance at the January 6, 2021, rally where he told the Capitol-bound crowd, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Much of his rhetoric and style was familiar as well — often incoherent ramblings, falsehoods, indecent asides (he took a swipe at 99-year-old Jimmy Carter, who just marked a year in hospice) and sophomoric insults of his many “enemies” in both parties.

Some Trump critics say he’s gotten worse in his hate-mongering, like his recent rally talk of political foes being “vermin” and of immigrants “poisoning” the nation’s blood. He didn’t repeat those Hitlerian echoes in Michigan, though the sentiment was there. However much he ratchets up his rhetoric, it hasn’t really changed — the bigotry, lies and disrespect for democratic norms and rule of law are all still part of the playlist.

One thing there is more of than in the past, despite the kids in the audience: profanity. And more than ever, given the scores of criminal charges and mountain of legal penalties he’s facing, there are his grievances. These aren’t rallies anymore. They’re pity parties.

After the first half-hour or so, what struck me most was not what Trump said, but how his audience responded. A Trump rally speech isn’t punctuated by applause like the thousands of aspirational addresses I’ve heard before from other politicians. 

Instead, Trump’s supporters emit constant catcalls, boos and their own favorite profanities, in approving response to his nonstop caterwauling (a shrill howling or wailing noise like that of a cat).

Just minutes in, for the first of many times, he assailed “Crooked Joe” and called Biden “the worst president we’ve ever had.” (Fact check: ✅An updated ranking of U.S. presidents just that day, by leading scholars, had Trump repeating as the worst; Biden debuted at No. 14.) Trump polled the crowd on whether to call Biden “crooked” or “sleepy”; the former won.

He name-checked “Birdbrain” (Nikki Haley); two prosecutors, “Deranged Jack Smith” (“He’s an animal”) and “Fawwny” (Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis); Nancy Pelosi (he suggested her wealth is somehow suspect); and Barack Hussein Obama. He’s still purposely mocking the Germanic pronunciation of retired Chancellor Angela Merkel’s name; he did so during an anti-trade tirade about “stupid” Americans buying so many German BMWs, Volkswagens and Mercedes-Benzes — most of which would have been made in South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, respectively.

Trump seemed to sap the crowd’s initial energy by whining at length about the previous day’s news that New York Justice Arthur Engoron — “a crooked judge,” he claimed three times — ordered him to pay about $450 million in penalties and interest for financial fraud. It’s “the weaponization of this horrible legal system,” he said, adding, “This is the real threat to democracy.”

It was all about him, just as his indictments and trials for fraud, sexual assault and defamation and election subversion are all his. 

Yet, Trumpzi wanted to have the adoring crowd believing his self-inflicted legal woes are theirs too.

“These are Democrats that definitely hate me,” he said of his antagonists, starting with Biden. “They hate you too, I have to tell you.” At another point: “We’re all in this together.” And an hour in: “Every time the radical-left Democrats, Marxists, Communists and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of honor. I am being indicted for you. Never forget.”

Trump’s continued denial of his 2020 defeat peppered his remarks throughout. “We won twice,” he blurted at one point. He blamed his failure to finish a border wall on the fact that “the election was rigged.” He repeated his lies about 2020 voting fraud in majority-Black Detroit, long-debunked by the state’s Republicans, Trump’s attorney general, courts and anyone who looked at the facts. (“We gotta watch Detroit. Boy, oh boy, oh boy.”)

“American carnage” was a big theme, just as in his 2017 inaugural address. “Every single one of our rotten cities are being run by Democrats,” Trump said, stoking the nation’s red rural-versus-blue urban divide. “We are worse than a Third World country. … Look at our airports,” said the man who repeatedly promised an infrastructure bill. (It was Biden who delivered😊; his bipartisan infrastructure law includes $25 billion to modernize U.S. airports.)

Trump returned again and again to blaming Biden for the crush of migrants at the southern border. “Welcome to the Congo, people,” he said, claiming Africans were coming from prisons and asylums. 

Trumpziism, the former guy promised (with Nazism 卐

enthusiasm 💀) “the largest deportation in history,” which would be economically calamitous, and took credit for a new phrase, “Bigrant crime” — as in, Biden migrant crime. “Oh, that’s good, that’s smart,” he said, pointing to his brain.

Non sequiturs were constant. Trump went from grousing about his Georgia case straight into unrelated, and chilling, talk of indemnifying police charged with misconduct once he is president: “You can stop [crime] in one day, in one hour, if you got really nasty and really tough.” And there was this: “The great capital, Washington, D.C., is under siege. I will always defend Medicare and Social Security — unlike Birdbrain.”

I kid you not. That’s what he said. If you don’t believe me, watch for yourself.

Spoiler alert: The man is not fit to be president. Trumpziism is Facism in the evil vein of Nazism.

@jackiekcalmes

MORE TO READ

Elise Stefanik shape-shifted from conservative Republican to MAGA diva

Echo opinion letter published in the Press-Republican newspaper, published in Plattsburg, New York.

(Maine Writer- My nickname for Rep. Elise Stefanik is "Lady Macbeth of Congress.  Seems to me, many of constituents conceptually agree with me.😑😆)

Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a Reagan appointee (1987), presiding over a court proceeding called the January 6th insurrection the “antithesis of patriotism.”

Elise Stefanik is auditioning to be a MAGA "president of vice" to run with the Former Guy

He wrote, “In my 37 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream. I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.”

Nevertheless, New York District 21, Representative Elise Stefanik has wrongly described the January 6th defendants as “hostages.”

She is one of Trump’s allies whom Judge Lamberth is addressing when he says, “I cannot condone the notion that those who broke the law on January 6 did nothing wrong, or that those duly convicted with all the safeguards of the United States Constitution, including a right to trial by jury in felony cases, are political prisoners or hostages.”

If you support Stefanik, you cannot be a patriot. A patriot upholds our nation’s laws.

From Michelle Zelkowitz in Elizabethtown, in Essex County, New York

And this.....TO THE EDITOR: 

Who would have thought that a vote for Elise in 2014, would result in a leader of the radical far-right and a threat to our democracy?

Into her first term, Elise lived up to the promises she made to those voters who elected her. She was the youngest woman to be elected to Congress, a fresh face with new ideas. She was Harvard educated and claimed to be a constitutionalist, with knowledge of and respect for the Constitution as created by the nations founders. 

Her efforts in congress were directed primarily to serving the people of the 21st District. However, that person is not recognizable anymore. Jamie Raskin, representative from Maryland and former constitutional law professor, said recently: 

“A hallmark of fascist political parties is that they don’t accept the results of elections if they don’t go their way. Stefanik is now embracing this tactic to prove to Donald Trump she’s the most obsequious sycophant in the Republican party and can bow and scrape even better than Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

I doubt that many of those who voted for Elise in 2014, would have imagined her transformation into an “ultra-MAGA” (her words) supporter of a would-be dictator. She seems to be blinded by runaway ambition at the expense of her original principles for which she was elected.

Our democracy is strong because of it’s ability to weather the storms that arise from time to time. This is done through debate, negotiation, compromise and always anchored by the balance of power between the legislative, judicial and executive branches, which are guided by the Constitution.

It’s not perfect but it has survived for nearly 250 years and is much better than being governed by arbitrary authoritarian rule. I hope people in the 21st District and in the nation as a whole recognize this threat and vote accordingly.

It may be our last opportunity. 

From Bill Bradley in Plattsburgh, New York

No One, not even the former guy Trumpzi, is above the law

ACLU- Trump has conflicts of interest with foreign institutions and officials, has misstated his assets to avoid tax liabilities, or has violated financial disclosure obligations.”

“Trump claims… that this authority ought not to extend to investigations of the president. He contends that he should be immune from all state criminal investigations as long as he remains in office. And he objects that the congressional committees are impermissibly pursuing law enforcement objectives, not legitimate inquiries to inform legislation.” 😲😠

Echo opinion letter to the editor of The Cap Times, in Madison, Wisconsin: On  the "Fake Trumpzi" Truth Social, 😕😠Donald Trump insisted that a president must have immunity in order to properly function and do what has to be done for the good of the country.

An appellate court countered that the public interest in criminal accountability "outweighs" the potential risks of chilling presidential action and that presidents should face indictments like everyone else.

Former Guy Trump is the first president to ever face criminal indictment. Indictments are not issued willy-nilly, nor for purely political purposes. We as a nation can trust our system of justice.

No other candidates for the presidency are advocating for immunity as hard as Trump. He only cares about it for his own selfish want for a specific lifestyle. His vision of America. What's good for Donald Trump. Nothing else and certainly not for the good of the country.

If he were really concerned for the future of the American presidency, the executive branch, he would make a presidential precedent and own any convictions. Show the people we have equal justice under the law, where no one is above the law.

And if he's as good a negotiator as he claims, he could use all that business acumen to do a deal. Perhaps just trading one country club for another, for a few years. Taking that time to write a memoir. 

I even have a title in mind, "The art of needing to make a deal."

From Bill Walters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin

Urgent call to permanently eliminate the hypocrisy of Trumpziism from America

 

• llot

Echo opinion letter published in The Forecaster Portland Maine: Trump supporters need to separate fact from fiction

For the upcoming 2024, presidential election, I wish more Americans, especially Trump supporters, would become more curious and willing to educate themselves about who this man really is, namely, by separating fact from fiction. Hopefully, the majority of responsible voters will consequently decide to permanently eliminate him from the political arena. Our unfolding American tragedy must end. Why?

Its main protagonist, Trump, is a megalomaniacal narcissist with autocratic tendencies, who lacks decency, humility and empathy. He ruthlessly uses any possible venue, and people, for personal gain, political and financial, the latter at times illegally. For example, he rails against illegal immigrants, but he has employed and often exploited them at his businesses. Also, labels on many products he and his family are selling state “Made in China.” While “America First” is important and often vital for American workers, for the Trump clan it obviously is “Our Profit First.” Excusing this blatant hypocrisy is shortsighted.  

Blindly believing Trump’s manipulative, inflammatory and often factually false rhetoric is not only irresponsible, but devastating for the future of American democracy and the world order. Saving America’s standing requires a “no” vote for this morally bankrupt, unqualified man.

And to the many who know these truths and have acknowledged the destructive ambitions and total lack of integrity of their GOP candidate, but still enable his run for the highest office, I pose these questions: Country first – really? How many of their principles are they willing to sacrifice? What has  happened to their self respect?

From Sigrid Fischer-Mishler in Harpswell, Maine.

Vladimir Putin murdered the brave Aleksei Navalny and Donald Trumpzis cult knows it!

NPR- Prison officials in Russia say opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in an Arctic penal colony. They say they're investigating his cause of death. Navalny had been in shaky health after surviving poisoning that he blamed on the Russian government.

The Kremlin denied it. But, Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Russian government - and leader Vladimir Putin - always feared Navalny's opposition to their regime.

Echo opinion letters published in The New York Times:

"You are not allowed to give up." -- Alexei Navalny

4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024, was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and political prisoner.

Aleksei Navalny’s courage, fortitude, indomitable spirit and unshakable moral clarity will stand the test of time and serve as beacons of hope for victims of oppression and totalitarianism everywhere.

While the world mourns his passing, Mr. Navalny’s legacy and all that he stood for during his relatively short life will never diminish in their capacity to inspire the collective will to be free despite the seemingly overwhelming obstacles in realizing this basic human desire in many parts of the world, including Mr. Navalny’s homeland. From Mark Godes in Chelsea, Massachusetts

To the Editor: Aleksei Navalny’s heroic efforts for the principles of freedom, even up to his death, is in stark contrast to those Republicans in the U.S. Congress who refuse to pass an economic/military aid bill to support Ukraine’s effort to thwart Russia’s invasion. Shame on them. From John W. Kusek in Ithaca, N.Y.

To the Editor: With the death of Aleksei Navalny at 47, after he was apparently in good health and spirits just the day before, the ultimate responsibility rests with Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Navalny no doubt knew that his return to Russia after Mr. Putin’s agents attempted to kill him by placing a deadly poison in his underwear was a high risk. Yet, he and his organization persisted in exposing the massive corruption and evil of the Putin regime in spite of Mr. Navalny’s Arctic imprisonment.

No wonder the Ukrainians are fighting so bravely to escape Mr. Putin’s tyranny. How despicable that Donald Trump and his enablers undermine what Mr. Navalny and so many others have died for: democracy.  From Tom Miller in Oakland, California

Senator Angus King extends to Ukraine a strong statement of bipartisan support

Echo statement from Maine Senator Angus King:

"Nearly two years ago, on February 24, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in a heartbreaking, unprovoked attack on a democratic nation. He thought the war would be over quickly and that the free world would watch and do nothing.

He was wrong❗

President of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President of Ukraine on April 21, 2019.

"The Ukrainian people came together to bravely hold the line against Putin, and America and our allies around the world stood strong alongside them.

"Together with the Ukrainians and their brave and impressive President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, we sent a loud and clear message that we will stand united against authoritarians who threaten democracy anywhere in the globe.

"Two years later, we are still fighting a battle for the soul of democracy in the world.

"That’s why I recently voted in support of a bipartisan bill to aid Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in defending themselves.

"Let me be clear: Authoritarian tyrants like Putin must be stopped, not appeased. 

"If history has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot simply walk away from the battle for freedom and democracy. Remember when Hitler swept through Europe, and the free world waited too long to stop him?

"If we allow Putin to overtake a sovereign nation, do we really expect him to stop there? Or continue eastward in a bloody campaign against a NATO nation when America would be compelled to send our men and women into a fight?

"We know Putin is out to remake the Soviet Union in his image — we know this because he has said so! Abandoning Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty would be one of the biggest mistakes our country could make. It’s something that would haunt us for generations.

"That’s why I remain more committed than ever to working toward bipartisan efforts to confront authoritarianism and defend democracy. This war is costing America only arms and ammunition; it’s costing Ukrainians the lives of their loved ones.

"Thank you for being a part of this fight. Together, we can continue the work of helping the Ukrainian people defend themselves and uphold democracy across the globe."


— Angus 💙💛

Senator Ted Cruz now wants airport security protection after he continues dealing with his Cancun escape?

OMG! 😕😠Wrong priorities:  "Cruz to Lose": Echo opinion letter published in the Houston Chronicle: 
Regarding “Sen. Ted Cruz wants private screening, security at airports for some government workers,” (Feb. 4): Sen. Ted Cruz now wants to be escorted by (presumably) armed guards in public airports at taxpayer expense. 

Maine Writer question:  Who let Cruz back into the US after he fled to Cancun?

As if the “Cruz Cancun Excursion” during the 2021, winter storm to escape the effects of that storm on his constituents could have been even more obnoxious. Imagine if, along with his bailout excursion, he had been accompanied by an entourage of large men and women flanking his excellency’s progress through the airport. The only thing I see that he hasn’t thought of in his new bill amendment is the royal red carpet he needs to have rolled out in front of him.

I worry about Cruz. He seems to have a case of terminal narcissism, a syndrome shared with other politicians of his persuasion.

From Walt Lind, in Nassau Bay, Texas

Ukrainians have earned respect, and support deserved by courage and bravery

The New York Times echo report about Ukraine:

Olena Stiazhkina, is a historian and writer, who wrote from Kyiv, Ukraine, "It usually happens in the middle of the night or at dawn. Russians seem to like to kill the defenseless and helpless. They can’t do it at the front — there they have been repelled — so in the middle of the night, they launch missiles at maternity hospitals, high-rise buildings, train stations, metro stations, schools, libraries.

The worst thing during the attacks is the endless messages we send one another. The stupidest of the stupid is the question “How are you?” That question flies above Kyiv, Odesa, Kherson, Dnipro, gathering replies. 'It fell close.' 'I see a fire.' 'We are fine but it is burning somewhere here.' 'The house across from us is no more.' 'The smell of death, my Anya said it smells like death.' Yet, there is no alternative. It is a question that, for all its ridiculousness, cannot be left unanswered. Silence means misfortune and death.

We, the people of a decade of war, are used to those. The world is talking of a second anniversary. Wrong: The war has not been two years but 10, from when Russian forces annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas. Calling it an anniversary isn’t quite right, either. In Ukrainian, the period of time equivalent to a year is defined by two words: “richnytsia” (anniversary) and “rokovyny” (commemoration). “Rokovyny” often refers to memorial services, while “richnytsia” pertains more to celebrating life. So much sorrow has settled in our memory and calendars that everything is a memorial now.

Yet despite all the “rokovyny” in Ukraine across the centuries — the Baturyn massacre in the 18th century and the Valuev and Ems decrees in the 19th century, the executions in Bykivnia and Sandarmokh and the Holodomor under Soviet rule, the murder of the Heavenly Hundred in 2014 and the recent devastation of Bucha, Bakhmut and the Kakhovka dam — we’re still here. We are still fighting for “richnytsias,” for anniversaries and jubilees of our victory."

Echo opinion pulbished in The New York Times, by Rajan Menon
Mr. Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, an American foreign policy think tank.

As the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, it has become a commonplace that time favors President Vladimir Putin. With Ukraine running low on weaponry and ammunition, American military assistance in doubt and Russia determined to fight on, Ukrainian victory now seems out of reach. Some influential experts go further, insisting that Kyiv will suffer only more death and destruction by persisting and should seek a political settlement with Moscow — even if it requires sacrificing territory.

And yet, for all that, Putin’s war has failed. As Carl von Clausewitz famously stressed, war is not ultimately about killing people and destroying things: It’s a means to achieve specific political ends. Those who start wars expect to be in a better strategic position once the gunfire stops. But even if this war endswith Russia retaining all the Ukrainian land it now holds — a scenario Ukrainians would find more than unpalatable — Moscow’s position will be worse. No matter what, Ukraine will go its own way. For Putin, more concerned by Ukraine than any other country that arose from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, that alone is tantamount to defeat.

If the fundamental purpose of Putin’s war was to keep Ukraine within Russia’s orbit — politically, culturally and economically — it has had the opposite effect. Ukraine’s leaders and citizens, particularly those from younger generations, have decided that their future lies with the West, not Russia. The prevalence of this mind-set became increasingly palpable over the course of four trips I have taken to Ukraine since the invasion; no visitor to Ukraine will fail to be struck by its many daily manifestations. Everywhere you go, Ukrainians speak Western languages, particularly English, in seemingly ever greater numbers.

Ukraine tends to be depicted as an uneasy amalgam of two national communities: one in the country’s western regions, defined by Ukrainian ethnicity and language, the other in its Russophone east and south. If this was ever wholly accurate, it is no longer. To take one example, any visitor to Ukraine’s eastern and southern front lines will encounter soldiers who speak to one another in Russian and may not even know Ukrainian. But they see themselves as citizens of Ukraine committed to preventing Russia from subordinating their homeland — a cause for which they are prepared to die.

Regardless of how many innocent people are murdered, Vladimir Putin will never win in Ukraine.

More than any other event, Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, has contributed to this sentiment. Ukrainian nationalism today, transcending region and language, reflects a deep determination to forge an identity defined by separation from, even antipathy toward, Russia. Indeed, Mr. Putin may go down in history as one of its main, if unwitting, catalysts. Given his conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are really one people, such a result is especially ironic.

Putin's war has backfired not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe. The European Union, jolted into action by the invasion, summoned a common spirit in its support for Ukraine. Previously somewhat divided in its approach to Russia, the bloc has acted in near unanimity — Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary being the only exception — to oppose Mr. Putin’s act of aggression. Equally important, Ukraine’s journey toward E.U. membership, for years fiercely opposed in Moscow, is now very much in train, even if it won’t be a short ride. One sign of progress: Along with Moldova, Ukraine officially began negotiations to join the bloc late last year.

Then there’s NATO. Russia’s invasion was undeniably an attempt to forestall the alliance’s eastern encroachment, which Mr. Putin has long regarded as a threat. In the event, Russia’s assault on Ukraine impelled two more countries, Finland and Sweden, to seek NATO membership. Neither had shown the slightest inclination to sign up before the invasion and both have first-rate armies. With their addition, Russia will be even more hemmed in, not least in the Baltic Sea and by the 830-mile land border it shares with Finland.

What’s more, Russia’s attack jolted non-U.S. NATO countries into rethinking their longstanding aversion to boosting military expenditure. According to NATO estimates, the combined annual military spending of Canada and the European members of the alliance increased to 8.3 percent in 2023, from 2 percent in 2022. This year, 18 member states are reportedly set to meet the goal of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their militaries — a sixfold increase in a decade. Even in Germany, historically sensitive to Russia’s security interests and an advocate of engagement with Moscow, the mood has shifted. Its defense minister now warns that Russia has become a serious, growing threat.

Ukraine, of course, is keen to join the alliance: a nightmare scenario for the Kremlin. But even if that desire remains unfulfilled — as seems likely, at least in the near term — Ukraine will continue looking to NATO countries for help in training its soldiers, equipping its armed forces and building modern defense industries by signing agreements for technology transfers and joint production. 

Even a non-NATO Ukraine will not quite be nonaligned because of its substantial and increasing defense ties with the West.

The pessimists may be right: If American military assistance were to cease, Ukraine would find it far harder, perhaps even impossible, to reclaim more of its land and may even lose additional territory. 

Yet even a smaller Ukraine will remain strategically important. When it became independent in 1991 it ranked — Russia aside — first in Europe in size and fifth in population. Even a truncated Ukraine would be among Europe’s biggest countries, its heft added to by a battle-tested army of 500,000 that is already far larger than that of any European NATO country and that will only become stronger and more modern.

Mr. Putin sees Ukraine as a peerless prize, even a Russian entitlement. But the war he started to possess it has guaranteed that it will never be his.

President Joe Biden is the candidate with wisdom and experience. Vote Blue 2024

Houston Chronicle OPINION
//RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Houston chronicle endorses Joe Biden for President of the United States in the Democratic Primary (Opinion)

Now that the Kansas City Chiefs triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII — and without the help of Taylor Swift and the CIA, as far as we know — this nation can turn its attention to another winning team. 

We have in mind the winning Biden administration. Under the leadership of the oldest and arguably the most experienced president in American history, the team in the White House for the past three years has performed remarkably well, despite the rancor and divisiveness that have afflicted this nation for nearly a decade.
The accomplishments of an administration dedicated to governing, one that believes in the power of government to make life better for the American people, is a key reason we heartily endorse the reelection of President Joe Biden. The other reason, equally important, is to fend off the chaos, corruption and danger to the nation that would accompany the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Although Presiden Biden has some shortcomings, to be sure, but during the past three years, his administration has bee a decent and truthful potent reminder to fellow Democrats, to independents and to those Republicans who have somehow resisted Trump’s cultish appeal, that our nation has a viable alternative to dangerous Trumpziis. 

Here is a sampling:

• If it's really "the economy, stupid," that determines success in presidential elections, then Biden can probably rest easy at neutral. But, in the time of fake newsTrumpziism, "No", Bidenomics alone didn't save us, but neither did they damn us. 
• One of the clear advantages of a president as experienced as Biden is wisdom: in this case, the wisdom to get the heck out of the Fed's way as it masterfully applied the brakes to what could have been runaway inflation.
• The economy has recovered from the perils of the pandemic and is now healthier than that of any other advanced nation. With unemployment approaching a 50-year low, companies large and small need workers. (Notice the “help wanted” signs in shop windows, the “We’re Hiring” signs outside huge warehouses and distribution centers just off I-10 east of Brookshire.)
• Inflation is trending downward, somehow, despite all dire prophecies of economists, without the bitter medicine of a recession or a period of high unemployment. 
• Food prices are still high, and hard-working Americans are still wincing at grocery store receipts, but gas prices have fallen, as the U.S. produces more oil than any country in history, including Saudi Arabia. 
• In an ongoing effort to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, theBiden administration is investing $7 billion in an ambitious solar-power project and is promoting other alternative energy projects, as well.
• Biden administration in its first year managed to pass a bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that’s expected to add an estimated 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years. This administration’s “infrastructure week” is investing in clean water and high-speed internet. It’s repairing roads and bridges, upgrading air- and seaports, modernizing our power infrastructure, investing in public transit and pahssenger rail and cleaning up Superfund and brownfield sites.
• A little heralded initiative related to infrastructure involves “strategic sector” investments in employment-distressed counties around the nation. 
• In 2021, according to a study conducted by Brookings Metro (a think tank) and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, these 1,071 counties have received about $82 billion in private-sector investment from industries the Biden administration has targeted. Industries that will locate in these areas include manufacturers of semiconductors (in this country instead of China) and equipment to generate solar and wind power. 

One of the distressed areas to benefit is Wilbarger County, Texas, along the Red River, northwest of Wichita Falls. 

A $4 billion private-sector venture is constructing a mega-scale green hydrogen plant that’s expected to create 115 permanent jobs and more than 1,300 construction jobs in a county where population has declined almost every decade since 1940. It’s worth noting that Wilbarger County in 2020 cast 21 percent of its votes for Biden, nearly 78 percent for Trump.😖😒

Letter to the editor response: 

It is with great respect that I write this letter to show appreciation to the Houston Chronicle editorial board for their faithfulness to our free press. I know personally what it means to live under a government-controlled press. In Argentina, our then-president and dictator Juan Perón dissolved the free press, practically on day one. You point out the reasons for us to support Biden, and “the other reason, equally important, is to fend off the chaos, corruption and danger to the nation that would accompany the return of Donald Trump to the White House.” I wholeheartedly agree, and protecting our precious democracy should be our most important priority.

Toy B. Halsey, in Houston,Texas

Republicans own the failed bipartisan border and immigration bill. You broke it then you own it!

Echo opinion published in Texas, the Houston Chronicle 

WASHINGTON, DC — Texas' Republican senators sadly helped to block a bipartisan border security bill they said would do too little to slow crossings that have reached record highs during the Biden administration, effectively ending a months long drive to pass the first major immigration legislation in decades.

Texas Republicans Senator John Cornyn and Senator Ted Cruz

Republicans own the bipartisan failed border bill

Regarding “Cruz, Cornyn help sink border bill Republicans had long demanded,” (Feb. 7): 

Republicans, including John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, lambasted the Biden administration continuously for failing to stem the migrant tide at the southern border. 

But then, they voted against an arduously negotiated, bipartisan bill, backed by Border Patrol personnel, containing unprecedented measures to do just that. Then they twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify their opposition by mischaracterizing what the bill does. (The bill does not just “let” 5,000 people a day into the country.) 😡 Fake News ❗

We are not stupid. We all heard Donald Trump instruct Republicans to refrain from constructive action on the border so that he can thwart Biden and make the campaign claim that he is the only one who can fix it. Trump exacts compliance by threatening to direct his obedient supporters to vote against any Republican who defies him. The self-interest, hypocrisy and dishonesty of these politicians toward the country and toward all of us is staggering.

From Maureen Wharton, in Houston Texas