Donald Trump and the Republicans owe the truth to Americans instead Trump invents one crises after another

Echo opinion letter published in The News-Gazette an Illinois newspaper: "distractions and distortions" and now we can add the unprovoked attack in Iran to this dangerously growing category. 

Question❓  Are Americans any safer today because of what Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing to destroy our democracy❓

Answer- Of course not. Americans are all less safe, regardless of where we are in the world, even while living in our own nation as legal citizens.

Trump's misuse of troops is just a ploy: What Donald Trump is busy creating in Los Angeles was so predictable. In fact, Kamila Harris predicted it during her 2024 campaign. 

Trump is aving a terrible time. A former ally (Elon Musk) attacked him and his policies, a loud clamor for the release of the Epstein files was heard, a bad series of economic reports was not released, Republican senators balked at his “big, beautiful bill,” and the Ukrainians kept fighting on.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump played the proverbial big guy card by calling on the U.S military to launch a devastating bombing on the soverign nation of Iran, without provocation to cause this aggressive attack. 

Faced with all these negative events, the Trump playbook calls for one approach — go on the offensive with distraction and distortion. In spite of the fact that the Los Angeles police thanked protesters for practicing their First Amendment rights in an overall orderly and peaceful manner, and Governor Gavin Newsom saw no pressing need to take additional steps, Trump decided to send in the National Guar

What better way to distract people from all the negative stories Trump doesn’t want the voters to focus on. It’s too bad he didn’t make the unilateral decision to send in the National Guard on January 6, when a truly violent protest took place at our nation's Capitol.

From Scott Davis in Champaign Illinois

Coup d’état: January 6th was a seditious attack by right wing insurrectionists

Echo letter to the editor | Aim of January 6 riot was to seize power. Published in The News-Gazette newspaper, in Illinois.

(Ya' Think? 🤔)

Aim of Jan. 6 riot was to seize power!

There are hundreds of posts about plans to attack the Capitol. 

Writing in response to a February 18, letter in which the events of Jan. 6, 2021, are downplayed. In the letter, the horrible events are described as a “protest gone bad, not a threat to the government.”

Unfortunately, the facts don’t support such a claim.

The Cline Center for Advanced Social Research has compiled the authoritative list of attempted insurrections globally since 1947. So what was its determination? “The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, was an attempted coup d’état: an organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition by displacing the power of the Congress to certify the election.”

More damning are the admissions of guilt by participants themselves. On March 2, Joshua James pleaded guilty to “seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding.” James is one of 10 members of the Oath Keepers similarly charged and the first to admit his role.

Robert Palmer, who recently pleaded guilty to attacking police with a fire extinguisher, shared his motivations and regrets at sentencing, saying the former President Donald Trump “kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny. Little did I realize that they were the tyrannical ones desperate to hold on to power at any cost.”

Indeed, there were participants whose intention was not the violent overthrow of our government. However, to label the events as a “protest gone bad” is to excuse a coordinated, violent attempt to undermine our democracy.

From Todd Sweet, in Champaign, Illinois

Ignore history and we are condemned to repeat it in Ukraine

Maine Writer preface:  This opinion letter reinforces, in my mind, the reality of calling the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, what it is: World War Three.  "....condemned to repeat it", i.e.,  September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.

Putin must be stopped!  Putin must go!
Echo opinion letter published in The News-Gazette, in Champaign, Illinois.

A time for war and a time for peace.

Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Belarus, Kazakhstan and now Ukraine. Next, Moldova, the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, maybe even Germany.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a serial killer and mass murderer. He has to be stopped. If he is not stopped, his ally, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, will see the West’s passive, weak-kneed response as a green light to invade Taiwan.

Where will the U.S. fight? Will the fight be easier later, or now, when Ukrainians are putting up such stiff resistance and insist they could win with air support? I hope our government stops dithering while mass murders of civilians are growing by the day.

President Joe Biden, please send planes. There is, as the Bible says, a time for peace and a time for war. 

Ecclesiastes 3:  A time to kill and a time to heal;

                         A time for war and a time for peace

This is the time for war.

By the way, I’m a lifelong pacifist who participated in non-violent demonstrations during the 1960s with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Mississippi. If Putin had been in charge, I would be dead. Sometimes, the moral and the practical line up.

A statue of St. Michael the Archangel stands in the center of Kyiv, depicted with a shield and a sword, as the protector of the capital of Ukraine and the entire country, which is now threatened by the unprovoked invasion of Russia.

There is a moral imperative to help Ukraine, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that things will be worse for us if we don’t and Putin succeeds in crushing another country.

MAX KUMMEROW, in Urbana, Illinois

P.S. IMO The only way to stop World War Three, is to destroy Vladimir Putin.

Recent illegal airstrikes into Iraq are high crimes

"...violated not only the United Nations Charter but also the principle announced by the U.S. and other world powers at the Nuremberg trials.."

The News-Gazette (Champaign–Urbana)- echo opinion letter:

The illegal U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani should be sufficient grounds for additional articles of impeachment.

Recent illegal airstrikes into Iraq would be, too. In committing these high crimes, Donald Trump violated not only the U.N. Charter but also the principle announced by the U.S. and other world powers at the Nuremberg trials that “waging aggressive war” or “violations of sovereignty” are capital offenses. The U.S. officially incorporated both into its own law.

The claimed exception of “imminent threat” is a transparent lie. 

For any threat to be imminent, it must be in progress, not “developing plans,” as the administration claims. Then it would be necessary to take out fighters, not planners. Officials now say there are no imminent threats, compounding the contradiction.

Was Soleimani himself going to plant explosives? Add to this the recent report that Soleimani may have been in Iraq negotiating peace with Saudi Arabia.

The Iraqi parliament has demanded all foreign troops leave, but Trump refuses, further violating sovereignty. This after the U.S. invaded and overthrew the previous Iraqi state based on ridiculous lies.

And before that, the U.S. and Britain had overthrown the elected Iranian government, installing the Shah’s brutal torture regime, which led to the Islamic Revolution. What success.

Democrats may fear impeachment on such grounds, however, due to the risk for future Democratic presidents — all the more reason Republicans should support Trump’s impeachment.

From Ricky Baldwin, Urbana Illinois

Donald Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office - an Illinois echo

An echo opinion letter published in the Illinois newspaper The News-Gazette 

Donald Trump must be removed

During the infamous “telephone call,” (traitor) Donald Trump asked the Ukraine President  Volodymyr Zelensky to “look into horrible” things done by the Vice-President Joe Biden and apparently dangled military aid as a carrot to do so (i.e. quid pro quo). If that wasn’t bad enough, Trump also brought up the conspiracy theory about “CrowdStrike.”

CrowdStrike is the cyber-security firm that said Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) computer server, stole documents and gave them to WikiLeaks. These emails were then released to the public, all of which was confirmed by U.S. intelligence.

In spite of this confirmation, it appears Trump was pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate and disavow CrowdStrike’s Russian findings.

The Mueller Report, eight U.S. intelligence agencies and both parties on Capitol Hill are all in consensus that, as Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, said, “Russia conducted an unprecedented influence campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral and political process.”

And, the first sentence of the Mueller Report says “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
Most recently, the acting DNI (Director of National Intelligence), during congressional testimony, said our “greatest challenge is to maintain the integrity of our election system.”

Donald Trump must be impeached!

Still, Trump has repeatedly denied Russian interference in the 2016, election, tried to obstruct the Mueller investigation a dozen times and actually defended Vladimir Putin on the national stage in Helsinki.

As he actively seeks foreign help with his (corrupt!) election campaign, Trump is obviously not defending the sovereignty of our elections nor our Constitution. 

Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office.

Dave Schwenk Urbana Illinois

Evil Donald Trump inflames racial divisions- echo opinion from Illinois

Echo opinion published in The News-Gazette, a newspaper published in Champaign, Illinois. Here is a letter written by John Palen.  

Donald Trump is certifiably crazy!

Trump is repeatedly slow to condemn white supremacists who endorse him, and he regularly retweeted messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign.

Donald Trump is a manipulator who seeks out and exploits fault lines in people and institutions. He manipulates this in two important areas, in exploiting race and the press.

First, race:  For decades now, historians have been bringing to light the extent to which slavery was embedded in America’s founding, economy and rise to world power.

The recognition that slavery is an integral part of who we are is difficult and painful, but facing it and acting on it is a good thing. The president should be a leader on this effort.

Instead, Trump inflames racial divisions with hate-filled rhetoric, dog whistles and regressive policies in areas like immigration and voting rights.

Take his suggestion that four Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”

“Go back where you came from” is a racist trope — but one with just enough wiggle room to allow Trump’s supporters to argue there was nothing racist about it.

Trump’s slippery language leads us to the second area where his manipulativeness is clear — the press.

One job of news media is to report with a critical eye what public officials say. That’s a good opportunity when officials use it in good faith.

But Trump’s evasive, misleading, untruthful or slyly or openly racist statements put the media in a box. They can’t not write the story, but doing so, muddies public discussion.

Look at what happened on the threat of higher Chinese tariffs.

From John Palen,  Urbana, Illinois

Vote Blue in 2020- stop the Trump litany of lies

Letter to the Editor | Donald Trump betrayed the U.S.
05/03/2019 The News-Gazette

With release of Robert Mueller's report, there's speculation about what Democrats will do to hold Donald Trump accountable for his litany of lies.  In fact, 10,000 lies.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/05/03/lies-another-trump-milestone/am67Gm7MAeojoupEM8aAXN/story.html

Will Democrats make a decision to impeach? 

Or, will Democrats ride it out until the 2020 election?

Democrats hold the majority in the House, where impeachment would begin, but it's not about what Democrats should do. The more relevant question is what should we, as Americans, do about a president who considers himself above the law and who betrayed his country?

Mueller's report clearly shows that Donald Trump and his campaign associates welcomed interference in the 2016 election from a foreign power for their own benefit. And then they lied about it. Repeatedly. The president also ordered staff and aides to carry out illegal acts to obfuscate investigators. And they repeatedly lied about that too.

According to the Robert Mueller report about Russian interference in the 2016 election, we can be thankful that some of Trump's aides and staff refused those illegal orders.

Mueller stopped short of actually indicting the president because he believed that was not his job. 

Nevertheless, Mueller did present a clear case that candidate and potus Trump willfully acted in bad faith to (illegally) attain the presidency. 

From Tim Prescott, in Campaign Ill.

Racism is harming our human condition

An Illinois point of view, echo published in The News-Gazette 

View the world in new light, through the eyes of those who are the object of racist remarks. A call to improve our human condition by creating awareness about racism and its negative impact.

The News-Gazette 

Reference this news story as published on National Public Radio:

Rep. Mark Meadows, Rep. RashidaTlaib Cool Down After Fiery Exchange Over Racism At Michael Cohen Hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Dear Editor;  During the Michael Cohen hearing on February 27, 2019, when Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican from North Carolina, began speaking with a black woman standing next to him, I thought something was odd. And I didn't fully comprehend my notion until later in the day when I heard the recording of Rep. Rashida Tlaib articulating what was just a tiny mustard seed in my head earlier.

She called out Meadows for a racist act, and her vehemence as to the affront his actions and words were to the committee, Congress and our country set in motion a self reflection that has brought me understanding that I am a little bit racist.

Calling out racism is not intended to describe how the racist feels. It is intended to inform those who cannot recognize that their words and actions make others feel belittled, oppressed or unsafe.

I realized that I am blind to my racism because I don't engage in overtly racists acts and I tell myself that means I'm not racist. But still, it's likely I don't see all the little things I do, that if done to me, I'd just brush off because I don't have the same history as those I offend.

So I need to think, self reflect and see the world around me in a new light.

I need to examine my words and actions and try to see how they will affect others, whatever the issues may be. And until I can identify and react with the intensity of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, in the moment as it's happening, I cannot call myself brave, nor can I say I am not a racist.

Michael Miller  Champaign, Illinois