Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

To the Editor: In July of 2018 I wrote a letter to the Editor which stated, “What is almost 100 percent certain…is that Trump’s businesses are kept afloat by laundering money for the Russian mafia, oligarchs and other crooks. This has been going on for years.” I added, “The Russians are able to control Trump…by threatening to cut off the source of funds that keep him afloat….” Trump’s tax returns, released against his will, four years after his promise, show that he personally owes the banks $400 million, due in the next few years. No bank would loan this kind of money to Trump (six …

Read more

“The watchword is only one, categorical and challenging for everyone. It already flies across and lights the hearts from the Alps to the Indian Ocean: Winning! And we will win, in order to finally give a long period of peace with justice to Italy, to Europe, to the world.” – Benito Mussolini, (1883 – 1945) declaring war, June 10, 1940 –=≈=– “That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.” – Mark Twain

To the Editor: A Limerick for direct-to-consumer drug marketers: Kybella Latuda Embrel Tried to understand Pharma’s ad Hell But the rash and the wheezing The dribbling and sneezing Neither Flomax nor Reclast could quell. Donald Venes Undisclosed Secure Location

To the Editor: As a person with a federally recognized disability in the form of a mental illness, I continue to experience discrimination in my local community. Since November, 2013, this has been my unfortunate experience with a small, privately-owned business in downtown Rochester, New Hampshire. Despite the stigma and stereotypes of mental illness, at no point in time did I become violent or threatening towards the owner of the business in question. Paradoxically, it was the business owner who descended to the level of discourtesy, profanity, personal put-downs, and threatening me with violence. When I called my local police to report his threat, he …

Read more

To the Editor: John Donne’s poem could not be more prophetic than it is with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg—“ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Her death is a tragedy not only for the loss of a great person, but for the Republic she served so well. While we grieve, we still have work to do. With apologies to Abraham Lincoln, “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which [she]…so nobly advanced.” We need to pay close attention to the next Supreme Court associate justice. Trump already has announced his plans …

Read more

Dear Editor, I am a Republican who will be voting for Joe Biden. To all who are planning to vote for Donald Trump, including people that I know and love, please read on. You and I probably get our news from different sources and, as a result, we may have a different understanding of various issues. But the following are facts that I don’t think you would dispute and I ask that you consider them. Why do you suppose that five of the President’s hand-picked advisers have been found guilty of crimes, some of whom are in prison as you read this? (Michael Cohen, Paul …

Read more