Donald Trump only wakes up when he can bully, lie and denigrate Americans and people he wrongly perceives as being weak

Echo opinion letter published in The Virginian Pilot newspaper:

Trump’s ugly coercive style rarely has positive results

Donald Trump is the American bully — and nobody likes a bully. Throughout his political career, his communication style has heavily relied on public humiliation, aggressive behavior and personal attacks. When dealing with individuals — including political rivals, journalists and private citizens — he frequently uses derogatory nicknames and targeted social media campaigns to isolate and disparage his targets.

Internationally, this confrontational approach translates into a transactional foreign policy — everything is a deal.

What kind of deal can he make❓ Rather than relying on diplomacy using professional negotiators, he frequently uses public threats, tariffs and the withholding of foreign aid to pressure both adversaries and allies. This behavior often undermines international agreements and strains traditional diplomatic alliances.

This pattern is starkly visible in Latin America, where his playbook is designed to force sovereign nations into submission. His approach in Venezuela was to arrest President Nicolas Maduro on narco-terrorism charges and then dictate the terms under which Venezuela can participate in global oil markets. 

In Cuba, he has boasted about an imminent friendly takeover or military intervention. Trump recently used federal indictments against former Cuban President Raul Castro to try to force political collapse in the country.

This bullying coercive style usually just makes people mad and want to dig in their heels. It rarely results in positive outcomes.

From David M. Grochmal, in Virginia Beach, Virginia

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must demand and end to Trump's evil racism!

Republicans must demand decency from Donald Trump

Echo opinion letters published in the Virginian Pilot newspaper, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Racist imagery, writing out of deep alarm about Donald Trump.

Trump's recent Truth (Fake❗) Social post depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Mrs. Michelle Obama in demeaning, racist imagery. This is not political theater or tasteless humor. It is a hate-fueled, racially motivated attack on a former president, on minorities and on vulnerable communities. It should disturb every American who believes in the promise of this nation and the principle that all people are created equal.

I’m old enough to remember the Civil Rights Movement and the state-sanctioned violence used, primarily in the South, to try to destroy it and preserve a segregated society. That violence did not begin with clubs and dogs — it began with language. Black Americans were stereotyped as inferior, lazy and less than fully human. Once pushed outside the circle of moral concern, cruelty became easier to justify.

The danger ⚠️ today is real. 💢 ❗Trump has enormous powers and has already abused them to threaten democratic institutions, alienate allies, target perceived enemies, harm people through immigration policy and enrich himself at the expense of taxpayers. Through his grossly inappropriate attacks on the Mr. and Mrs. Obama, he sends a clear signal to his cult base that racial attacks, discrimination and even violence are no longer lines that cannot be crossed.

Decency must be demanded. A president who traffics in dehumanization is unfit to lead. IOW Donald Trump is unfit to lead❗ #ImpeachTrumpNOW 

#SenatorSusanCollinsAlert❗ 

From Hank Eacho in Norfolk Virginia

Immigration walls do not work - an echo opinion from Virginia

An opinion letter published in The Virginian Pilot:

WALLS ARE a medieval solution to an age-old issue — migration. 

The stupid, expensive, useless and cruel Trumpzi evil wall

Since the earliest times, people have moved over the surface of the planet trying to improve their lives. They make a harrowing decision to uproot themselves from the place they know, who they know, the patterns of their ancestry and their language and culture to a place where everything is unknown.

Today, migrants are moving out of the Middle East due to endless war and famine. We have Central Americans are coming to America because of death threats, hunger and joblessness.

The current political climate has not helped their plight. To be crystal clear: It is not against any laws for migrants to seek asylum after crossing the border.

Despite the numbers of people seeking asylum here, illegal immigration is at its lowest point since 2007. But the anti-immigrant rhetoric has only increased. The current White House occupant has claimed, falsely, that migrants are disease-ridden invaders and parasites who exist solely to take things from hard-working Americans. These words are specifically designed to incite fear and loathing so that Americans will look for a leader to "save us" from these "others." Anyone who buys this line should be ashamed. The (henious!) Trump administration's policy of separating children from their families is one of the most shameful episodes in our nation's history, right up there with our history of slavery and the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.

Trump wrongly wants a huge, forbidding wall. But it is unnecessary and expensive. The budget proposed to build the wall is more than has been spent since the inception of Customs and Border Patrol. And he says that Mexico will pay for it.

But walls don’t work. They can be impressive, such as the Great Wall of China. Or oppressive, such as the Berlin wall. They can be torn down, tunneled under, climbed over or circumvented. They can even stymie security efforts as well as function as a physical barrier to birds and bugs and other important natural migrants. But they don’t actually work in the long run.

It’s beyond time that some perspective be introduced into this boondoggle. We all need to step back and look at the situation through clear lenses, not those of red or blue. Of course, our borders should be secure, and we have proved that they are, since fewer immigrants are coming here.

We need to help people improve their lives at home, so they don't have to come here. And we also need to recognize and celebrate the ideas that have made this country such a beacon for people in need. To do anything less is simply un-American.

Nancy Pope from Norfolk Virginia

Thank a veteran with "care for veterans" - echo veteran's opinion

https://pilotonline.com/opinion/letters/article_cecba91c-e949-11e8-be85-7b793c677320.html

Echo opinion letter published in The Virginian Pilot


I AM A U.S. NAVY veteran who served from 1964 to 1968.

In the past week or so, I have noticed a lot of fanfare, photo ops, parades and other events related to Veterans Day. TV news shows, The Pilot and other outlets gave our veterans lots of attention.

Now that Veterans Day is over, we need to turn our attention to what really matters for our veterans.


I don't want people to thank me for my service. I don't want to see veterans' organizations supporting political parties or particular politicians.

I watched a TV news report recently that Veterans Affairs hospitals are proud to report how the wait of number of days for a veteran to see a primary health care provider has been reduced. Days! And the VA officials were proud of this progress!

If I need medical attention, I can drive a short distance, go to a "walk-in" clinic, see a doctor and be treated quickly. The comparison with how our veterans are treated is ridiculous. Could a draftee or enlistee tell the federal government that he or she would like to wait days or weeks before they would enter the military, when they are called to serve?

These are the men and women who volunteered to serve our country. And this country (USA- Defense Department alert!) has a defense budget that is larger than the defense budgets of all the other developed countries on the Earth. We can send people off to war, it seems, but we cannot provide them proper medical attention when they need it.

PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) has always been a factor for our veterans. I know a World War II veteran who could no longer see food being thrown away after he was part of the liberation of Jews from concentration camps. And I personally knew a man who returned from duty in Southeast Asia, left the barracks at Oceana on a sunny day in 1967, drove to the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, sat on the steps leading to the beach and took his own life.


When it comes to veterans' benefits, talk is cheap. I'm tired of the rhetoric. It is a disgrace.

Harold Smith  Virginia Beach

Help for DACA "Dreamers" ~ its about doing what's right

Another gem editorial published in The Virginian Pilot ~ high energy editorials~!!!

An opinion echo with a four star rating! 

THE TIMING of Donald Trump’s heartless tweet that “DACA is dead” could hardly have been worse, coming not quite an hour after he had tweeted “Happy Easter!” that Sunday morning.

But, considerations of the meaning of the season of Easter for Christians and Passover for Jews aside (also, Eastern Rite Easter on the Julian calendar), the tweet and the flurry of others that accompanied it would have been ill advised even if he’d waited to send them.

For one thing, as has been proven repeatedly, impromptu tweets are hardly the best way for the president of the United States to issue policy statements or negotiate politically. Trump is the country’s leader now, not a reality TV personality.

Dear Donald Trump, It's time ~ past time ~ for new leadership aka "You're FIRED!"

What the country needs — what it has needed for months — is serious, consistent leadership on important questions about the future of thousands of “Dreamers” — young Americans who are law-abiding, productive members of society, yet who live under the threat of deportation because they are here illegally, through no fault of their own.

When Trump announced last September that he (cruelly) planned to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, he couched his move in terms of giving Congress six months to come up with a legislative solution for dealing with the Dreamers.

On one level, Trump’s action made sense. The DACA program shielding law-abiding Dreamers from deportation was created by an executive order of President Barack Obama. 

Obama thought this group deserved protection, but he was unable to get a Republican-controlled Congress to provide it.

As Trump’s decision to end DACA demonstrates, an executive order is a risky way to establish an important policy because another executive order could easily reverse it.

Legislative action would have been preferable. But DACA was already in place, and thousands of Dreamers were participating in good faith. And, because DACA was limited and specific — applying only to people who arrived in the United States by 2007 and before they turned 16, and who were under the age of 31 when DACA took effect in 2012 — there was little reason to change it.


An even bigger problem with Trump’s cancelling DACA in favor of congressional action is that Congress is still sharply divided. It’s difficult to get anything — even protection for the Dreamers, which polls show has widespread support — passed. Sympathy is strong for these people, who were brought here by their parents and have grown up as Americans. They haven’t been in trouble, or they wouldn’t have qualified for DACA.

A law to replace DACA might have made it through Congress if Trump had provided strong leadership or even a consistent, reasonable stance that would have let leaders of both parties know what they were dealing with. Instead, he gave them tweets, attempts to tie the fate of the Dreamers to a border wall or other drastic changes in the immigration system, and positions that changed from day to day. So nothing was done before DACA expired last month, and Congress is now focused more on the November election. The Dreamers are in limbo, fearing deportation as arguments continue in federal courts over the cancellation of the program.

The futures of 700,000 or more law-abiding U.S. residents — about 12,000 who live in Virginia – are at stake. 

Maybe something yet could be done, if Trump would step up, speak out about how wrong it would be to deport them and urge congressional leaders to do the right thing.

Instead, Trump gave us a flurry of (horrible!) Easter Sunday (and Easter Season) tweets. He blamed Democrats for not fixing a problem he created. Referencing a Fox News report about a “caravan” of people marching from Central America toward the U.S. border, he suggested that immigrants are trying to come to the United States to take advantage of DACA — even though DACA would not apply to them. He ranted about building a wall. He declared the death of DACA.

It’s time — past time — for real leadership. (?Fire Donald Trump!)

Scott Pruitt never was qualified to protect the enviornment

Echo editorial from The Virginia Pilot

EPA's Pruitt a terrible choice ~ He must be fired:

"..made a career out of genuflecting at the altar of oil and gas, industries..."

By The Virginian-Pilot Editorial Board

NOT ~ Scott Pruitt

SHORT OF nominating an actual oil derrick or a landfill to the post, Donald Trump couldn’t have done worse than tapping Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Scratch that: Neither an oil derrick nor a landfill possesses the administrative skills needed to undermine those federal laws and programs established to protect Americans’ soil, air and water, all of which Pruitt has done.

Here’s someone who made a career out of genuflecting at the altar of oil and gas, industries for whom he eagerly carried water while serving as attorney general of Oklahoma.

He once received a letter from Devon Energy, one of the state’s largest energy companies, in opposition to federal limits on methane leaks, and forwarded it to the EPA — replacing little more than the company’s letterhead with that of his office.

It was also in that office that he demonstrated his contempt for carbon emissions limits, among the many other environmental laws he considered an unlawful imposition on the states such as his.

And it was in that office that he made it his mission to dismantle the Clean Power Plan advanced under President Barack Obama, believing it harmful to the economic aspirations of energy companies … er, American workers.

It was therefore an unwelcome, and wholly distressing, development when Trump tapped Pruitt, not simply for a job in Washington, but to lead the nation’s most important environmental watchdog agency.

The president has made a habit of picking as department heads those individuals most committed to sabotaging the very agencies they’ve been asked to lead. Pruitt is arguably the most egregious — the highest-profile rogue in a gallery of them.

Closer to home, his elevation to that influential role posed a particularly ominous menace to this region, home to the second-largest population in the United States facing the threat posed by rising sea levels.

Though land subsidence contributes to that problem, the climate is changing for the worse as a result of human activity — a position that is indisputable by anyone other than the willfully ignorant. Loosening laws meant to curb emissions and lessen climate change is akin to pouring salt in a self-inflicted wound, and Pruitt was all too eager to do so.

And yet, it’s unlikely that his sinister approach to managing the EPA will be Pruitt’s undoing. Rather, it’s almost certain to be a comparatively banal brand of corruption that is infuriatingly commonplace in the highest echelons of the Trump administration.

Since taking the EPA helm, Pruitt has compiled a rather impressive roster of misdeeds.

He ordered construction of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office for no discernible reason. He has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for his personal security detail and air travel, which he demands be exclusively first class.

He took a trip to Morocco on the taxpayers’ dime, using it to pitch that country’s government on the benefits of natural gas. 

Pruitt used a little-known provision in the Safe Water Drinking Act to increase the salaries of two political aides by more than $80,000 combined.

And then there’s his housing situation. Pruitt has been renting a room in a townhome for $50 a day, which anyone familiar with District rental prices would identify as a sweetheart deal. The co-owner of said townhome? The wife of an energy lobbyist.

Now, citizens shouldn’t expect Pruitt to really have to account for these actions.

A Congress led by Republicans has shown little interest in looking into the rampant corruption by members of the Trump administration. And when he’s relieved of his duties — a time that is almost inevitable given the proclivities of this president — he’ll probably land quite comfortably in the corner office of some energy lobbying firm.

But that moment really cannot come soon enough. Having a director of the Environmental Protection Agency wholly uninterested in protecting the environment is a national embarrassment, and Americans deserve much better than the worst option available.

Scott Pruitt has never been qualified to protect the environment. His goal is to create profit margins for rich industrial polluters.