Response to Trib letter opposing mail-in voting

It’s puzzling my fellow Glen Ellynite Dan Schuchardt (Letters, April 20) has “serious concerns about our ability to prevent substantial voter fraud” if we go to mail-in voting this November. Is he unaware that mail-in voting is the primary procedure in 5 states and can be accessed in 28 others with no cause required? Since 2000, over a quarter billion such votes have been cast. Oregon has sent out a hundred million mail-in votes during this time. There was documented voter fraud…an infinitesimal 12 cases, amounting to 0.0000001%.

Besides concern about phantom voter fraud, Schuchardt ignores the pressing need for mail-in voting this November. “Sounds like a good idea, especially in these times”, drastically understates the voting crisis we’ll face if, as predicted by top US virus experts, we’re hit with a double whammy of covid-19 and seasonal flu this fall. Schuchardt’s letter dares not utter the word ‘pandemic’.

Nor does Schuchardt detail the cause of his concern. But Trump’s statement “If we have mail-in voting we’ll never see another Republican elected again” provides a clue.

US can’t supply PPE but sure can supply bombs

“There should be only one fight in our world today, our shared battle against Covid-19. We must mobilize every ounce of energy to defeat it.” – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The US response to that plea? More bombing than ever, at least in the poor African country of Somalia. Trump has dropped more bombs on Somalia in the first 4 months this year than Obama dropped there in his 8 years. Last year Trump nearly doubled Obama’s 8 year total.

Does even one in a hundred Americans know that? Or that we have about 800 military staffing 5 bases? Our reasoning is that the anti-government group al-Shabab, once they take over the Somalian g, overnment, will plan attacks against our homeland. Sure.

We do know that the US has likely the worst response to the pandemic in the industrialized world with nearly 900,000 infections, including 48,000 dead. One reason has been our failure to provide early warning, PPE and testing. Maybe if we switched our priority from perpetual war to the fight called for by Secretary-General Guterres, we might start flattening the infection curve instead of Somalian villages.

Venezuelan response to pandemic shames US

As of April 22nd, the US has 820,000 infections with 46,000 deaths. Venezuela has 300 infections with 10 deaths. That disparity is not due to higher US population which is 11 times that of Venezuela. Our infection rate is 2,700 times that of Venezuela and our death rate an even steeper 4,600 times. Yet, we continue to strangle Venezuela with economic sanctions to achieve regime change that have killed tens of thousands with no relief for the pandemic.

In a perverse irony, US sanctions have steeled Venezuelans against the virus. They have brought Venezuelans together to survive US cruelty, making it easier to forge a national will to stamp down the virus. They benefit from a national health care system which the US disdains as socialism; the scourge America is trying to overturn in Venezuela.

Venezuelans have a government that, unlike the US, mobilized promptly when the virus appeared, shutting down the entire nation in a unified fashion. It partnered with Cuba, Russia and China to supplement its own crash program to produce PPE. Help from the US? Zilch.

The Nicholas Maduro administration suspended rent payments, imposed a nationwide hiring freeze, provided worker bonuses, prevented the cut off of phone and internet services, arranged for thousands of bed space at hotel chains, increased availability of both food and healthcare. These measures enabled Venezuela to avoid the higher rates of infections and deaths in neighboring countries run by toady leaders supporting US regime change there.

US response to the pandemic is the worst in the industrialized world. It is so bad Venezuelan citizens in the US are begging the US to allow flights out of Miami to return to a homeland that knows how to control the virus. Venezuela, reeling under grotesque US cruelty against the 28,000,000 Venezuelans we’re hoping will topple the hated Maduro, has put the US to shame.

Trump channeling Baghdad Bob at pandemic briefings

Every time Trump appears at the podium for his daily pandemic briefing, I’m transported back to 2003 for the daily press briefings of Baghdad Bob. For those too young or uninformed, Baghdad Bob was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi spokesman for the collapsing Iraqi regime under an avalanche of US bombs and tanks. With US gunfire raging in the background, Bob would declare US soldiers were committing suicide by the hundreds, were going to surrender or be incinerated in their tanks. When asked for evidence he replied “authentic sources…many authentic sources”.

Like Baghdad Bob, Trump makes delusional claims. He says no one saw the pandemic approaching but that he called it a pandemic before anyone else. Early on he said it was 15 cases soon going down to one, and that it would disappear like "a miracle". He’s claimed that every American can get a test, when it’s closer to 1%. In the country with arguably the poorest pandemic response in the industrialized world, he calls his response a perfect “10 out of 10”. But Trump goes beyond Baghdad Bob’s delusions to launch petty personal attacks against reporters, governors or anyone who tries to reel him back to reality. He retweets a call to fire his most respected, decent disease specialist, who then receives death threats. He publicly supports extremist financed public protests endangering the lives of the protesters and delaying a sane, unified response to the pandemic.

Baghdad Bob was hilarious. DC Don is deadly.

Let perpetual war be a pandemic casualty

The pandemic has shut down much activity in the US. Unfortunately, that does not include US perpetual war in the Middle East and Africa. That is unfortunate for several reasons. US warfare there should never have be started and should have been ended without a pandemic. But the coronavirus makes it more imperative that our soldiers stand down as it thrives among many military in close quarters. Look no further than the 600 sailors infected aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, one of whom just died. Perpetual war squanders treasure needed for combating both the virus and the corresponding economic meltdown. Perpetual war, the organized killing of peoples, directly contradicts the organized saving of peoples from a pandemic. On March 23, the the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterrez urged warring parties worldwide to lay down their arms to support the bigger battle against Covid-19, the common enemy that is now threatening all mankind.

The US has turned deaf ears to Guterrez's plea. The Trump administration has continued to threaten war against Iraqi militia groups seeking end of the US occupation of Iraq, claiming they are sponsored by our real enemy Iran. Massive bombings against these militia groups which are connected to the Iraqi military are still possible. A shooting war with Iran is still possible. Besides Iraq, the US shows no sign of leaving Afghanistan or Syria; the former a client state whose leaders we're propping up to do our bidding; the latter a regime change target we still seek to achieve.

Besides the bombs we drop, the economic sanctions we impose on Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela, among others, make it more difficult for them to combat the pandemic. Those sanctions were making life for their citizenry miserable before the pandemic. With it they are adding to its toll.

The pandemic has been a wake up call to virtually every American to alter numerous daily behaviors. Up till now standing down from perpetual war is not among them.

New tag line for Fox News?

Fox News, taking its cue from the Trump, is celebrating groups demanding end to shelter in place in Michigan, Maryland, California, Florida, Maryland and soon all states. The underlying meme of the protests is that social isolation is a Democratic plot to destroy the economy and defeat Trump in November. Fox’s cheering on this movement will likely further spread infections and death. Maybe Fox News should change their tag line from ‘Fair and Balanced’ to ‘Congregate and Die’.

Paul who?

Paul O’Neill, first Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush, died yesterday at 84. His death will be little noticed by the public and that’s a shame. Most have no idea of his many contributions to both business and government, much less he even existed. But we should all know and honor him for his refusal to go along with reckless Bush polices from unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthy to the illegal invasion of Iraq. Bush fired O’Neill just 3 months before the March, 2003 Iraq invasion, possibly to make cabinet agreement to that catastrophic enterprise unanimous. O’Neill responded with an excellent insider tell-all book with the telling title ‘The Price of Loyalty: George W. ‘Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill’. He describes how regime change for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was brought up at the first cabinet meeting eight months before 911. During the run up to the war, short the three months he was axed, all the discussion was how to achieve that goal, not whether it was necessary. Paul O’Neill is gone. We need more like him in government today to tell the truth and push back against mendacity and stupidity.