Letters to the Editor: Trump 03.16.17

If you are looking for this week's letters that are not related to President Trump, click here. 

Remove the President

Springs

March 7, 2017

Dear David:

A specter is haunting the United States of America — the specter of a president slowly descending into insanity.

I accept that Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Now is the time for Republican leaders across the country to raise their collective voices and accept that our president is mentally unbalanced and is unfit to continue as president. No one should despair.

The 25th Amendment is clear, and as often is the case in times of crisis, consulting the owner’s manual for America will provide useful guidance.

This is not a partisan issue. The best strategy for partisan Democrats would be to keep Mr. Trump around and watch as his steady mental deterioration continues. That strategy would not only guarantee the Democrats the presidency in 2020, but they would also recapture majorities in the House and Senate. 

If Republicans are not motivated to remove the president for the good of the country, they should do it for the sake of the party. Our vice president is more than up to the task of taking on the presidency, and while I oppose almost everything he stands for, he is the constitutional answer to the problem of a president unfit to hold office.

ARTHUR GOLDMAN

Hate Is Not Good

Hampton Bays

March 3, 2017

Dear Sir, 

How sad what’s happening to our beautiful country. The radical liberals with all their hate, not just for President Trump, but for all the ideals he and God-loving Americans want for this great country.

The liberal media shows so much disdain for what is right and good about America. Thank God President Trump has surrounded himself with strong and capable men and women to withstand this onslaught. 

If only the Republicans would have had the nerve to take on Barack Hussein Obama when that guy was president.

Every so often, I put one of the liberal TV channels on, just to remind me as to how empty they are and the slanted so-called information they project to the empty audience. 

On TV I watch Fox News, channel 26. For fair and balanced reporting on the radio I listen to WOR, AM 710, for great talk shows.

I hope and pray the liberals are going to bury themselves in their hate. Hate is not good for the heart.

God bless President Trump and his beautiful family.

Yours truly, 

JOHN PAGAC

A Liberal

Springs

March 3, 2017

David:

In response to Bea Derrico,  I think I can safely say you voted for #45, “I refuse to use his name.”

While running for the office of president of these United States he openly accepted the endorsements of many hate groups, the Klu Klux, Klan, the American Nazi Party, the alt-right, who are white supremacists, and all the while he continued to spew hate at every one of his rally speeches! 

He is a racist even though he states he’s not. He also incited violence at almost all of his rallies! He openly admitted he would grab women by their P****S just because he could! He is a bully, a braggart, and a brat who avoided the Vietnam War using five different deferments! He states, “I love the First Amendment, nobody loves it more than me,” and then proceeds to bar reporters from his press conference! 

Look at the racists he appointed to his cabinet, Steve Bannon of the alt-right, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a truly Southern gentleman who has seen and condoned many a black man hanging! Number 45’s first address to Congress the other night almost sounded like a sound human being; he must have rehearsed it over and over and still it came out as though a 6-year-old were speaking. If you go back and check it, you will see he never uses words like the ones he used that night, they are just not in his vocabulary, ever.

This is one of the reasons why he lost the popular vote! Last of all, you call me a liberal as though I would mind. “If by a ‘liberal’ you mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools their jobs, their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies, if that is what they mean by a liberal, then I’m proud to say I’m a liberal.” (John F. Kennedy, Sept. 14, 1960.) 

KEN RAFFERTY

Mogul of Mayhem

Springs

March 13, 2017

Dear David:

He never tires, he tweets and conspires, been doing this for years, creating fears and obsessed with destroying his predecessor — wildly calling him illegitimate for years, and now a felon, and no one is yellin’? 

His Kool-Aid-drinking Ministry of Misinformation mouths only falsehoods and creates alternative realities. Congress has been reduced to a dog chasing its tail, investigating investigations and false accusations. He is a liar, just as much as the kid who says the dog ate his homework, or Jeff Sessions, who says he did not meet with the Russians. 

There are reasons North Korea is testing missiles, South Korea is nervous, Germany’s increasing its military, China is making deals and threats in Southeast Asia and increasing its navy, the Baltic and Scandinavian states are uncomfortable, and a Russian spy ship is off the East Coast — not to mention mischief in the Mediterranean by the Iranians, a breakdown in relations with Mexico, or the latest WikiLeaks hacking bomb just dropped. I have not heard this president of the United States explain one policy, or speak with substance on any issue. I have heard him announce, pronounce, dictate, threaten, prevaricate, accuse, intimidate, and boast about those abilities he has to negotiate.

I hope Congress figures this out before the president’s and the U.S. government’s credibility is totally corrupted. Already this president has greatly destabilized the world and his office. He has eviscerated the Departments of State and Defense, and other departments. His priority should be to deal with real issues honestly, and not make false accusations. He humiliates and traffics in vulgarity, insults, and untruths. He inflicts his vindictive and vicious venom to create chaos and bait-and-switch. 

The man is a liar, pure and simple. 

Demagogues proclaim the press the enemy of the people. The press is the Fourth Estate, doing its job questioning this “so-called” populist and his mob. Remember Huey Long and Father Coughlin? Remember Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy? Talk about witchhunts and slime! This modern mogul of mayhem, this American Berlusconi took life lessons from both. 

Remember Deep Throat? Remember Nixon and his enemies list? Remember Woodward and Bernstein? We have been here before.

He lies. Lock him up.

BETSY RUTH

Incompetent Buffoonery

East Hampton

March 12, 2017

To the Editor:

“A contagion of buffoonery” is perhaps the most appropriate title for the new Republican health care bill. While Trump had nothing to do with creating the document, his imprimatur of incompetent buffoonery is all over it.

The pathology of U.S. health care has always been the bane of its existence. It is the philosophical disconnect from practical human interaction that is at the root of the problem, the essential empathy that allows people to interact as humans rather than as a subspecies. As we pretend to be a Christian nation when it suits our needs, one is hard pressed to find the presence of Jesus in our health care philosophy.

Putting a price tag on what every advanced country in the world sees as a right is Trumpian at best. The idea that our parents and grandparents, kids born with lymphoma, or soldiers returning with scrambled psyches have a measurable dollar value begs the question of our humanity. The idea of saving money on our most needy to feed the coffers of the wealthiest seems unworthy of celestial blessing. The soulless piggery of the Republican plan leaves no illusion, despite their cries to the contrary.   

Obama looked at the 40 million Americans without health care and the 100 million with substandard care and heard the cry for universal health care. Unfortunately, the Democrats lacked the competence and a strong belief in the process to do the right thing. They bowed to the conservative mantra about saving money and had to pretend that the new bill would save trillions of dollars. It did for a while, before it didn’t. Obama understood what was necessary, but didn’t have the support he needed.

The new Republican bill is all about cutting costs and giving huge tax breaks to the top 1 percent (all of Trump’s cabinet members). They could kick 20 million people off their plans and many millions off Medicaid expansion if the bottom line was better. The problem is that many of their supporters would be shafted in the process and might vote them out for breach of promise. So, with an expected level of incompetence infected by the buffoonery contagion, they produced a pointless bill that resembles the Affordable Care Act without any of the human philosophical basis necessary for health care.

Universal care is the only human response to the ever-present pathology. To mask their lack of Christian humanity, Republicans elevate cost and profit to the same plane. Unwillingness to pay for what is essential to every citizen’s life is the soulless black hole of capitalism: One should never let human needs interfere with maximizing profits. The square peg in a round hole guarantees that every new program designed to cut costs will eventually fail.

In a profit-based system no one will insure seniors, P.T.S.D. victims, the disabled, and people with pre-existing conditions, if they have a choice. It’s screwed by definition, or we are.

The Trump effect, incompetent, soulless buffoonery, has infected almost all of the Republicans, who are on bended knee genuflecting before our racist, misogynist leader. For seven years they babbled about a new and better plan, and they have come up with garbage. Even the buffoon admits that’s it’s complicated. That’s why it took the Dems 18 months and 2,200 pages to craft the bill.

NEIL HAUSIG

Believe It or Not

Springs

March 13, 2017

To the Editor:

A miracle on March 8 outside the West Wing of the White House: Donald Trump was further “confirmed” (accused?) as “supportive,” “ethical,” “fully versed,” “very aware of the problem,” “productive,” “compassionate about the issues,” “confident.”

Every single one of the above and more were clearly stated by, believe it or not, Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and noddingly approved by Congressman Peter Welch (D-Vt.). This happened following their meeting with the president in the Oval Office about the pharmaceutical industry prescription drug prices. Mr. Cummings submitted, “Affordable prices combat high prices” during the typical press stakeout, responding to many related detailed questions. 

Yes, Representative Cummings — the reluctant inauguration-and-joint-Congress-speech attendee, the refusenik to stand up, the impeachment preacher from the first day of the final count — the same one. Proof: address the issues. Disregard trivial, nonsensical, irrelevant distractions, and sincere elected servants will do the job. Yes, America, there is a Santa Claus. 

EDWARD A. WAGSCHAL