Donald Trump and maga Republicans want to support a terrible name change for Department of Defense

In the responses to the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025,  in Orem, Utah, the preponderance of messages calls for bringing down the heaated political rhetoric in American's political discourse.  This bipartisan call gives us even more reasons for Republicans to stand up for something....anything❗...and oppose changing the name of the Department of Defense, to include the word "war", as proposed by Donald Trump. Makes no sense to wail about the intensity of brutal political attacks occuring too frequently in America, while putting he word "war" into our national Department of Defense. 💜😥

Echo opinion letter published in The Chronicle, a Washington State newspaper:  In an act that is bizarre even by the standards of this incompetent presidency, Donald Trump has announced that he intends to rename the Department of Defense, which was created in its current form by President Harry Truman, 78 years ago.

The new moniker would be that which until 1947, applied to the Department of the Army alone, the Department of War.

Truman's decision, of course, was issued in the immediate aftermath of World War II. America and its allies had emerged triumphant in this most destructive of armed conflicts, and were determined that no such horror would happen again.

A part of this determination was simply to alter the nomenclature. War was awful and unmentionable. Defense was acceptable.

It appears that every other nation on the planet has adopted this usage. France dropped its Ministry of War in 1947, and Britain relabeled its War Office in 1964. A quick Google search of over 100 nations reveals that while all have a defense ministry, none use the word "war" in the title.

Were Trump's plans to be realized, this country would be even more of a pariah than it has been since the Donald took office. The symbolic damage to our international image would be devastating.

It is significant that our president faked an affliction of bone spurs to dodge the military draft in his youth, and that he hasdodge the military draft in his youth, and that he has spent his entire adult life publicly bragging about his supposed prowess with women. This Department of War nonsense, "a message of strength," suggesting "maximum lethality," in Trump's words, is just another manifestation of his inadequacy and narcissism.

One wonders, furthermore, whether other government offices might be retitled. As reformulated in the Trump era, should the Department of State be the Department of Hate? How about the Department of Health as the Department of Disease? And why not the Department of Justice as the Department of Just ICE❓😟

Trump's deployments of National Guard and U.S. Marine units in various cities are all about trying to steal next year's congressional elections. If his health permits, he will try to steal a third term in 2028, and to hell with the Constitution.

From Joseph Tipler in Centralia

Trumpziism is Trumpist Republicans that lie about everything!

Echo opinion letter published in The Chronicle, a newspaper published in Centralia, Washington.  

This is an interesting opinion letter! 

Those with strong memories may recall that on the very first day of the Trump presidency, Jan. 20, 2017, the new administration claimed despite all eyewitness and photographic evidence that the Trump inauguration crowd was the largest in history.

Maine Writer - check this site here for photographs taken when protestors demonstrated after the 2017, Trump inauguration.

But not only did the Trump presidency begin with a lie, its mendacity has moldered and metastasized ever since.

A combination of photos shows the small crowds attending the inauguration ceremonies of Donald Trump, left, and the enormous crowds that celebrated the inauguration of President Barack Obama. These pictures were taken by Reuters, and were not the edited NPS images. Photograph: Staff/Reuters

The security of military and intelligence data always has been a top concern of the nation-state. The compromise of such data often has been of enormous consequence.

During the Civil War, for example, two Union infantrymen accidentally discovered a copy of Confederate battle plans, Special Order 191, wrapped around a cache of three cigars. Although slow and overly cautious, as usual, Union commander General George McClellan was able to use this information to stymie General Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North at the epochal Battle of Antietam, on Sept. 17, 1862, the bloodiest day of the entire war.

During World War II, at a secret facility at Bletchley Park, England, Ultra cryptographers successfully hacked the German Enigma military code transmitter, allowing Winston Churchill to boast in private that he knew Hitler's orders to Rommel before Rommel. 

Nazi neglect of its security apparatus undoubtedly contributed to the successful Allied campaigns in Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily and Normandy, and may even have swung the balance.

Mar-a-Lago: tRumpzi took stolen documents to his country club in Palm Beach, Florida. 

But, now we find that when Donald Trump left the White House, he hauled off crates of highly classified information to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Some of these documents were labeled "TS/SCI," an abbreviation for "top secret/sensitive compartmented information," the highest classification extant.

Without exception, such documents are meant to be read only in secure government facilities and should never be moved from such facilities without clear and urgent cause. To do so is an irrefutable violation of the Espionage Act and of other federal laws as well, and indisputably opens the door to many forms of malfeasance, including the illegal transfer of such information to foreign powers and treason.

Yet on Aug. 12, 3rd District congressional candidate Joe Kent posted that "the FBI leaked the nuclear documents nonsense to seed yet another narrative based on fake information that will be way too classified for them to release, we'll just have to trust the 'vanguards of democracy' w/another kangaroo court."

This is just garbage. Kent is a military veteran, as was his wife, Shannon Kent, a cryptologic technician who died in combat in Syria during the Trump presidency.

Clearly, this is a sensitive matter, but Kent, of all people, should know better.

Joe Kent (shame on him!) not only is a doormat for Donald Trump, he simply does not know what he is talking about.

From Joseph Tipler, in Centralia, Washington State

Opasnost' - Evil Vladimir Putin will move beyond Ukraine

Echo opinion letter published in The  Chronicle, a newspaper serving Centralia, a city in Lewis County, in Washington state.

Delusional Vladimir Putin is dangerous! 

Опасное письмо два

Putin has his sites on the Baltics regardless of the consequences:

Speculation is rampant that if Vladimir Putin prevails in his evil and shabby war with the people of the Ukraine, his next targets will be the small Baltic states, of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 

Like Ukraine, these three nations were parts of the Russian-dominated Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was dissolved by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

Unlike Ukraine, however, these democracies are members of both the European Union and NATO. Any armed violation of their territories would entail war with the United States and the other major western powers, as guaranteed by treaty.

But not so with Moldova. Like the Baltic states, this small nation was one of the 15 constituent republics of the USSR. Like Ukraine, however, it is not treaty-bound with the EU or NATO, and more likely would whet Putin’s appetite.

Putin is one of the world’s most cynical and dangerous men and a hideously unworthy steward of the Russian people’s interests.

Moldova shares its entire eastern border with Ukraine, and this boundary is bereft of major geographical hurdles, such as mountain ranges or large bodies of water. In terms of both land area and population, the country is less than one-tenth the size of Ukraine.

To its tremendous credit, Ukraine has defended itself against Russian treachery with valor and persistence. But Moldova would simply be too small to offer much resistance.

Particularly in time of war, statecraft often demands the selection of the least unpalatable of alternatives. The current American and NATO policy, limited to arming Ukraine and squeezing Russia hard economically, is the most advisable and must be maintained to the hilt.

Were this policy to fail, Ukraine would be imprisoned in the dungeon of a Russian-dominated dictatorship with Moldova sure to follow. The lunatic Putin might then be tempted to hit the Baltics.

War between the Western powers and Russia could go nuclear. 

Moreover, the potential here for danger and destruction would be beyond all prior human experience.

It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes. There certainly aren’t.

Joseph Tipler, in Centralia, Washington

#FormerGuy lost his aspiration to be "ein Führer"!

This opinion letter was published in The Chronicle, a Washington state newspaper.  In fact, this is another in a series of opinion letters published by unrelated writers, and printed in many US national newspapers, where the comparisom is made with Trumpzis, and Nazis, and the Former Guy and the Nazi Führer.  

One wonders whether the narcissist Donald Trump realizes how calamitous his life has become. Not only has the #FormerGuy president lost the popular vote two times running, but his fatuous attempts to cling to power, culminating in the horrific assault on the nation's Capitol, have devastated his reputation and all hopes for a financial or political comeback.

The Trump "brand," the basic source of the president's wealth, fame and power, was built on an image of success and glamor, effortlessly achieved. This was always exaggerated, of course, and now has been utterly trashed.

A case in point: Deutsche Bank, the sole moneylender to Trump of any consequence for many years, is cutting all ties to The Donald. Trump owes hundreds of millions to this firm, and now may be unable to repay or to refinance this debt.

Also, the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) has scrapped plans to hold the 2022 PGA Championship at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump is an avid golfer who loves to associate with sports celebrities, and the blow to his pocketbook and to his ego must be (yes indeed it was!) enormous.

Similarly, Bill Belichick, the legendary coach of the New England Patriots, has refused an offer of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing recent political unrest. Belichick is a patriot in more ways than one.

Most important, myriad state agencies in New York are aggressively investigating Trump's innumerable financial dealings. It is probable that the president will face serious charges regarding bank fraud, insurance fraud and tax fraud.

Unlike "collusion" and "conspiracy," furthermore, financial crimes are comparatively easy to prove.

More to the point, they could not be nullified by a presidential self-pardon, which would apply only to federal malfeasance.

Exactly what the storming of the Capitol was intended to achieve remains nebulous.

Evidently, the goal was to roil such chaos as to enable an act of martial law and a derogation (belittling) of the U.S. Constitution.

Sort of an American version of the Reichstag fire. (The German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933.)

Indisputably, Trump is capable of provoking such contretemps (disputes). The #FormerGuy has no moral bearing whatsoever, and damns all criticism of his "stable genius" as treason. Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!

In 1941, Churchill said of Hitler: "Nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler's footsteps, every stain of his infected and corroding fingers, will be sponged and purged and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the Earth."

Is it fair to apply these words to Donald Trump? Not entirely, but close enough. 

From Joseph Tipler in Centralia, Washington