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The United States is in real trouble -- and we are being lied to. We had 15 bases in the Middle East and now we have two. Neither of them are big enough to resupply an aircraft carrier. That is why the crew of more than 5,000 sailors on the USS Lincoln were facing littoral starvation. There are other U.S. Navy ships in the area also in dire straits. It's up to us to keep the pressure up. The most basic thing a country does for its armed services is feed them.
This administration is completely incompetent. They do not know or care if everyone has enough to eat. Call U.S. Rep. Nick Langworthy at (716) 488-8111 and tell him we care and we want the truth. If they can't feed them we should bring them home. What good does it do to let them starve? The Navy is usually pretty competent. The loss of those basses is a real blow and we will probably never be allowed to rebuild them.
It wasn't until relatives of sailors started making a fuss about starvation rations, lack of clean water and malfunctioning toilets that the administration took any notice. At first they denied that conditions were bad..
Once it was embarrassing for President Trump he took action, but not until. When Trump was asked about conditions on the ship and if the deployment was too long, he said: "It wasn't long enough." He wanted to use them longer. He didn't care if they were fed or not, he actually denied there were suicide attempts because the crew felt abandoned
We lost an independent voice when the Pentagon fired Stars and Stripes' publisher Max D. Lederer Jr., editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte for insubordination. They were the first media outlet to break the story about sailors starving. Without them we wouldn't know.
Another thing we are being lied to about is our supply of patriot defense missiles. We've been using multi-million dollar Patriot missiles to shoot down $1,000 drones. Apparently we are now very depleted; it will take years to fill the backlog.
Only the Russians and Chinese have the kind of weapons equal to the Patriot missile. The Russians are busy with Ukraine. The Chinese seem to be giving us enough rope to hang ourselves by financing our national debt. At $40 trillion, interest payments are $2.6 billion every day. Our GDP is $37.58 billion a day. We should be able to manage it but we aren't. The deficit gets worse every day. The Chinese have a philosophy "It's better to defeat your enemy without striking a blow."
Remember Langworthy has backed Trump to the hilt. He agrees with everything Trump says and he defends him slavishly. Trump clearly has dementia. He spends more time talking about his ballroom than our troops.
Elon Musk took a chainsaw to our government. He destroyed agencies that protected our food supply from contamination. Now we have recalls on all kinds of things. This too is part of project 2025. Undermining faith in the safety of our food supply is important to undermine people’s sense of safety all around. Only Big Brother can keep you safe.
We have to remember that Trump did not run on Project 2025. He denied all knowledge of it. He ran on "no new wars, cheaper gas and groceries," None of which has happened.
He did promise he would get rid of Trans people wherever he could and that he would round up the worst of the worst undocumented people, put them in concentration camps and deport them.
The thing is they are taking ordinary people who have been here 20 years and have never committed a crime. They are taking our friends and neighbors. Of course we want to stand up for them and get in the way when they are being beaten and shot. Trump and Miller are very annoyed with the protests in the streets. They want us to fall in line to accept a police force that kills with impunity. We refuse. We are a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone.
At least we tell ourselves that. That is the goal. It is not the situation we find ourselves in
We find ourselves with the Epstein files still unreleased, no indictments for anyone, no hearings, no one held responsible. We have a brand new trade war with Canada of all nations! This must be the stupidest trade war in history.
Trump is behaving more and more irrationally. He seems unhinged since he started the war in Iran. There is no easy way out.
As I said before, if they can't figure out how to resupply the ships. They have to bring them somewhere they can be resupplied. Feeding its soldiers is the most basic thing a country does for its service members.
Marie Tomlinson is a Fredonia resident.