Letters: Aug. 15, 2024

Shame on the United States

Gaza, Palestine has fewer people than Minnesota does. Can we imagine 40,000 of us dead because of bombs made in some foreign country? Houses, clinics, schools, universities destroyed in our state. The bombs and bullets used to kill these people are made right here in the U.S. and sent to Israel to murder. And the money comes from us the tax payer. Does the U.S. government ask us what it can do with our tax money? The university where I once taught in Gaza has been destroyed. The suffering is unimaginable but the U.S. government and the weapon’s industry know exactly what they are causing.

Palestinians are dying of disease and malnutrition because Israel wants them to die. And Biden, et.al. want the same thing. America is a killing machine-mafia on a huge scale.
America is the enemy of humanity. We need to wake up. These so called representatives of the American people are criminals of the worse kind. Instead of being in Congress or the White House they should be in prison.
Shame is what I feel about the United States government.
Steve Johnson
Ely, Minnesota 

Take a look at what Trump has in mind for you

Before folks rush to vote for Donald Trump, it would be a good idea to look over Project 2025, the blueprint for another Trump administration that has been written and published by Trump’s buddies at the Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025 includes something for everybody, more power and riches for the rich and cuts and misery for the rest of us. In particular my fellow veterans may wish to pay particular attention to Chapter 20 by Brooks D. Tucker. That chapter is about what Trump and his cronies will do to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Among other things the plan advocates privatization of the VA and cuts to existing veterans benefits for veterans and members of veteran families. The plan also advocates making it much harder for disabled veterans to qualify for disability compensation. Among other things it limits the amount of time a disabled veteran has to apply for compensation though many disabilities manifest many years after military service ends. In short, Chapter 20 advocates revoking much of the progress on veterans benefits that the major veterans organizations have fought for and won over the past several decades.

Read Project 2025 for yourself at: project2025.org/policy.
Trump has referred to our war dead as “Losers” and “Suckers.” Evidently the Heritage Foundation and Trump feel the same way about live veterans. Perhaps they also think we will be stupid enough to vote for Trump after we read Project 2025.
Jason Maloney
Washburn, Wisconsin

Trump’s nothing burgers

Trump’s “criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris.... ran afoul of the facts.”
Trump falsely claimed Harris voted to “cut Medicare by $237 billion and betrayed American seniors.” But the legislation allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices and reduces costs for some seniors.”
“He pointed to Harris’ support in early 2019 for Medicare for All, saying she “endorsed outlawing private health insurance entirely.” Harris also proposed a plan that included private insurance later that year, but regardless, “she isn’t supporting Medicare for All now.”
Trump also distorted the facts in claiming that Harris, a former prosecutor, “couldn’t pass her bar exam.” But she did pass California’s bar exam on her second attempt.
And, Trump also claimed that Harris previously “supported mandatory gun confiscation,” without mentioning that she talked about having a mandatory buyback program (only) for so-called assault weapons.” Harris’s campaign told us “she is no longer pushing a buyback program.”
He also claimed Harris’s votes “created the worst inflation in half a century.” (Economists) say the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is primarily to blame.”
He wrongly said inflation was the “worst “we’ve ever had” under this administration. “The worst was in (1919-1920.)? – huh?”
“Trump falsely said Harris supported abortion ‘even after birth,’ and he wrongly said ‘all legal scholars wanted the issue of abortion rights to be returned to the states.
In Minnesota on July 27. Trump made some of the same claims about “Medicare, inflation, and abortion.”
Have you noticed a pattern? Almost everything he says isn’t factual. But like any good lie or conspiracy theory, (some) of his claims include a few facts, (sandwiched between endless lies and fabrications)!
Still, when factcheck.org looks at Trump, they must evaluate objective facts before they are assessed...it can’t claim that (Trump supports deny ALL rights to get abortions)--you see, He once did! But, During the 2015 primaries- he also spoke lovingly and protectively about LGBTQ people and promised all voters things that he does not support now. Like any shrewd politician, he “evolves “ constantly--setting forth a path that goes wherever the political winds go, doing anything he must to get votes!

Trump said that Harris “cast the tie-breaking vote to cut Medicare by $237 billion,” telling the crowd in Minnesota that “she betrayed American seniors.” He’s referring to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate with Harris’ tie-breaking vote, but the law doesn’t cut benefits for seniors--It could, in fact, lower what some seniors pay for prescription drugs. However, FactCheck.org cannot objectively say Trump (is planning) to cut Medicare--yet extreme right Republicans are asking to see all the figures in the latest Medicare budgets before they are passed? Hmmmmm? Could this be A portent of the future? You tell me? Republicans keep saying Medicare and Social Security are “pyramid schemes” — sounds to me like they’d trim it severely or cut it out entirely if they could. So if Dems can’t put any checks on Trump’s power in 2025, Trump will likely become a dictator for more than one day, And, he will use his unchecked “official actions,” to end Democracy as we know it – ASAP!
Peter W. Johnson
Superior, WIsconsin

Trump was not the first

With so much said about the attempted assassination on Donald Trump I realized after listeningg to all the coverage people now days don’t seem to know much about American History when they were saying that it was the first time that it had happened. Everybody should know that it’s not the first time. The first time a president was assassinated was Lincoln. The last assassination attempt before Trump was Ronald Regan. Some of the people are old enough that they should have known that. Watching the Olympics they were saying about how history is taught to French children so history will hopefully not repeat itself. History should also be taught here more too so that people will know that Donald Trump was not the first to have someone attempt to assassinate him.  

I also remember Jay Leno having on his show a segment called Jay walking where people were asked questions on the street and how many didn’t know history or the latest on politics either.
Cecilia Hill
Duluth, Minnesota