Democrats must RESIST the Trumpziism radical evil agenda and stop Trump from breaking laws

Now is the time to call out the lawmakers who are cowering instead of challenging Trump’s abuse of power.

Echo opinion published in The Plain Dealer Cleveland Ohio

❗❗The Trump administration is breaking laws, illegally dismissing federal employees without cause, flagrantly ignoring court orders, and denying human beings their due process. 

What are Democrats doing❓ They are squabbling among themselves, exactly what they shouldn’t be doing. Instead, as the minority party, they must target Republicans.

Believe this: Not all of the Republicans in Congress can remain so intimidated by President Donald Trump that they are willing to disregard the Constitution, which clearly states that Congress, not the president, determines what is lawful and allocates the money. These legislators are aware that the president, like them, swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

If the president is ignoring his oath and outright defying constitutional mandates, it calls for action. Republican senators and representatives, many of them lawyers, certainly know this and must be publicly singled out, and not just criticized but shamed, loudly and specifically.

They must be reminded that they are Americans first, above party affiliation, and that when a president engages in law-breaking and violation of his oath -- virtual definitions of high crimes and misdemeanors -- it is actually treasonous for a member of the legislature not to deal with such a president in harsh and immediate ways.

From James R. Mehrling in Berea, Ohio

Omicron deja vu! Wear a mask!

Echo opinion letter published in The Plain Dealer, a Cleveland Ohio newspaper:

Wearing masks are a noninvasive mitigation effort to stop death from coronavirus and people should wear them!

It is déja vu all over again.

Last year, we reopened schools, shopping and sports venues and there was a coronavirus surge and hospitals were overrun. 

Yet, here we are again -- another COVID surge and hospitals at capacity. (Coronavirus disease: COVID-19, Delta variant and now Omicron!)

More than 800,000 Americans have died from COVID. 

If you don’t want the vaccine, don’t take it. (Maine Writer OMG- -  #SIASD!)---But, can we please at least agree that a mask is a noninvasive mitigation effort to stop death from an airborne infection?

EVERYONE should wear a mask for ONE year. Is that asking too much to save our children, our loved ones, our heroes and First Responders?

(And nurses, and physicians and health care providers!)

Or are the lunatics running the asylum?

From Robert Toth,  Lakewood, Ohio

Maine Writer P.S.
1.  Taking steps to reduce the spread of infection, including getting a COVID-19 vaccine, are the best way to slow the emergence of new variants.
2.  Vaccines reduce your risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.
3.  COVID-19 booster doses are recommended for adults ages 18 and older. Teens 16–17 years old who received Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines can get a booster dose if they are at least 6 months post their initial Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination series.

STAT pandemic tests! COVID- testing must be free with quickly reported results

Echo opinion publsihed in the Ohio newspaper The Plain Dealer, the major newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio

https://www.cleveland.com/letters/2020/08/covid-19-testing-should-be-free-and-readily-available.html

To the editor:  After being exposed to a family with COVID-19 symptoms, I attempted to get a COVID-19 test myself. With the outstanding medical resources in Northeast Ohio, this should have been simple and quick, now six months into the pandemic. 

Unfortunately, what I discovered was just the opposite.

The Cleveland Clinic and University 

COVID tests must be given promptly after exposure to the virus with quickly recported results!

Hospitals require a doctor’s order for the COVID test. 

MetroHealth cannot administer a test if you do not have symptoms. Without symptoms, I could get tested by a pharmacy testing site. 

Nevertheless, I would have had to wait three days for an appointment and results would be available in six to ten days; that meant nine to 13 days to get results from the day that I first tried to get a test. 

Consequently, I opted to self-quarantine rather than to get the test.

This experience prompted two questions: How many people would not self-quarantine under these circumstances and possibly spread the virus? What are the testing conditions in rural areas?

Accessible, free COVID-19 testing with results within 48 hours must be made available for everyone, with or without symptoms. This is available for politicians and athletes, why not the rest of us?

From Ann Pecsok, in Olmsted Township Ohio

A letter every day to Donald #45 - Ohio Resister

“The things my Dad did for his country were so hard,” Kathy says. “You know what? Darn it, I can write a letter.”

Kathy S. Hayes writes to #President45 every day and often with tongue in cheek narratives.

One woman’s guide to surviving Trump: She is writing to him, daily! — By Andrea Simakis echo published in The Plain Dealer

She’s says that she's pretty ordinary. But, she can write. (And, so she does- every day!)

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration January 20, 2017, Kathy has written to him every day -- stamped letters, not emails -- with the exception of two days in April 2017, a brief hiatus taken after she put her dog, Sammie, to sleep. That’s nearly 1,000 letters if you count the handful she sent before he took office.

Here’s your chance. Try hard not to be a fascist dictator, ok?

Sincerely,

Kathy S. Hayes

Kathy has lived in Richfield, Ohio. That's halfway between Cleveland and Akron, her whole life. When her community voted to send Donald Trump to The White House in 2016, Kathy, who’d mostly identified as an Independent, found herself in a deeply dismayed minority. Rather than commiserating with like-minded friends over cocktails, posting rants on Facebook or planting her head deep in the Lake Erie sand, Kathy put fingers to keyboard.

She addressed her letters to “President Trump” until his comments about “some very fine people on both sides” at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, two years ago. She sent her letters to “Oval Office occupant” after that. 

When some of the letters started being returned, “I started addressing them to President 45,” she says.

Kathy usually composes her letters in the evenings on a desktop computer in her library, her father’s Purple Heart medal in a glass frame on a shelf above her. Her Dad was severely wounded when a mortar shell exploded near where he and his buddies were dug in at the Battle of the Bulge.

“The things my Dad did for his country were so hard,” Kathy says. “You know what? Darn it, I can write a letter.”

Some take a few minutes, others an hour or more, depending on how much research she has to do. That might mean reading the Mueller report or heading to a nearby town to hear former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe speak about why agents opened an investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia.

Once signed and sealed, she drops her Executive correspondence in a mailbox on the way to work. Every Monday morning, she mails two letters -- Saturday’s and Sunday’s. Civic engagement is a 24-7 job; no weekends off.

Kathy is a copy editor and writer for a national business-to-business magazine, so her observations aren’t just incisive and well-crafted -- they are also grammatically correct. Occasionally, she offers the President free “language pointers” in a PS, “so that you can improve your tweets.” Or, she presents him with “a word of the day,” a game her family played when she was a kid as they gathered around the dinner table. “Compassion” was one. “Decorum” another. A third was “restraint.”

She’s gotten 23 boiler plate responses bearing President 45’s instantly recognizable Richter scale (or what I call "EEG style) signature. “I appreciate you taking the time to write. Your support means a great deal to Melania and me,” read one from The White House dated April 9, 2019.

Kathy is sure he’ll never read any of her letters. Sometimes, she’s felt like giving up. But she can’t quit now.

“I think a lot of it is standing up and saying, ‘For the record, this is not OK.’ ”

Fate intervened on a cold, rainy day last spring, when the Presidential motorcade blew by her house. She painted RESIST on a bedsheet, hung it from her porch, called a few friends and staged a “mini protest” in her front yard. Kathy’s 89-year-old mother joined her, holding a sign some 4-feet long that said “RESIGN.” Kathy’s giant sign read “I 🖤 Mueller.”

March 29, 2018

President 45,

You drove right by my house today; I was no more than 10 feet from your limousine. I hope you saw me . . . . As one of your most faithful correspondents, it was very exciting for me to be able to convey my message to you in person.

Thanks for coming to our little town, screwing up traffic for hours and sucking up local tax dollars that could have been better spent on the actual needs of our community.

Sincerely,

Kathy S. Hayes

Cleveland echo - it's patriotic to oppose incompetent Trump

Opposing Donald Trump is far from irrational: 

Echo letter to the editor published in Cleveland.com

I have a message for those who continue to complain that The Plain Dealer has an “anti-Trump bias”; and that those of us who oppose this (#fake) president are irrationally angry. I disagree with practically everything Donald Trump and his administration stand for. I also felt the same way about the George W. Bush administration.

The difference now is the constant barrage of antagonistic, insulting, childish, and flat-out dishonest statements and behaviors from the man who is supposed to be the leader of the free world. 

In fact, Trump has disparaged the (free) press, demeaned and insulted our allies, expressed admiration for dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and despots. He has taken the word of Vladimir Putin over the findings of his own US intelligence agencies.

rump's administration may be the most inept and corrupt in our nation’s history. He is the most ill-suited man to ever occupy the Oval Office. Opposing Donald Trump is far from irrational – in fact, it is exceptionally patriotic. At this point, though, I am beyond anger. I’m just … exhausted. (But let's Vote Blue!)

Kevin Phillips,  Mantua Ohio