Ferri Tales

Some Republican contributors have finally realized that Donald Trump is unfit for any public office and are cutting their losses. - David Humphreys, after donating $2.5 million since 2012, said, "At some point, you have to look in the mirror and recognize that you cannot possibly justify support for Trump to your children — especially your daughters.” - Bruce Kovner donated $2.7 million since 2012 wrote of Trump, "He is a dangerous demagogue completely unsuited to the responsibilities of a United States president....  Even for loyalists, there is a line beyond which the obvious moral failings of a candidate are impossible to disregard.... That line has been clearly breached.” - William Oberndorf donated more than $3 million since 2102 said, " The R.N.C. long ago should have cut ties with Donald Trump.... Reince should be fired and replaced with someone who has the competence and leadership skills to rebuild the R.N.C.” - Al Hoffman, a former RNC finance chair...

Bruce Fowler's letter (Review, Sept. 23) is full of misconceptions, diversions, and deceptions from lies spread by the GOP, Fox "News" and Donald Trump. Without other sources, Mr. Fowler doesn't have a chance to come to valid conclusions on any of the issues he presented. His letter is vaguely written to define "deplorables" and to avoid any direct accusations, but his intent is to confuse and obfuscate, like any true Trump follower. (My numbering corresponds to Fowler's list.) 1. He alludes to the Benghazi attack and implies Hillary Clinton is to blame. Apparently, he missed the years of GOP investigations that wasted $7 million and found that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by either Hillary Clinton or Obama. However, the GOP was responsible for cutting funding that would have further secured foreign installations, including the Benghazi compound. 2. He mentions lying under oath without specifics but probably refers to the FBI investigation ...

One tactic used by the GOP is the straw man fallacy whereby one misrepresents another's position, then argues against the misrepresented position. An old example is when the GOP claimed that Al Gore said that he invented the internet. Gore was instrumental in the legislation that allowed the creation of the internet, but he never claimed to have invented it.  John Fedorchak used the straw man fallacy against Gore (why always Gore?) in his Review letter of Sept. 21 where he misrepresented the claims made in Gore's 2006 documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth .  Most of Gore's predictions were accurate, a few probably premature (Kilimanjaro ice cover), but overall the average global temperature has and will continue to rise, sea levels have risen and will continue to rise, and the ice minimum at the north pole has shrunk and will continue to shrink. The south pole is gaining less ice each year and will lose ice in the future. Republicans and Tru...

My recommendation to Warren Roberts ( Review, Sept. 20 ) is the same as I gave to John Fedorchak - stop watching Fox "News". Polls have shown that Fox "News" viewers are more uninformed than people who don't watch any news. As shown recently by the ouster of Roger Ailes because of decades of disgusting behavior toward women, and Fox's apology and $20 million payment to Gretchen Carlson, the network shouldn't be viewed by decent people interested in civil behavior toward women and unbiased reporting. Another recommendation to Roberts is to learn how amendments to our Constitution are added or removed. Briefly, each house of Congress must pass the proposed amendment by 2/3 vote. Then 3/4 of all state legislatures must approve the amendment. Neither president nor the U.S. Supreme Court are involved. Robert's mentions Christian bashing by progressives. He should be more concerned about Muslim and minority bashing by conservatives. He mentions the e...

In John J. Fedorchak's   letter to the editor (Sept. 16) replying to my letter , he said that he was "really disappointed" in me. Strange, because I don't remember making "not disappointing John Fedorchak" the reason for my being. Apparently John disagrees with my positions about Donald Trump and the GOP, and his reply to my letter of Sept. 13 gives me another opportunity to disappoint him even further. He disagreed with my statement that Trump and the GOP would gut the EPA and wrote that it is a deceptive claim. As a matter of record, the 2016 GOP platform includes Trump's promise to get rid of the EPA and when Trump was asked what departments he would get rid of, he said, "Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations." John claimed that environmental regulations that give us clean air and water are killing jobs and the GDP. In fact, under Obama, the stock market has gone up, corporatio...

In late August (8/21/2016), I went outside to get the newspaper (the Review, of course) and found that someone had put a Donald Trump sign on my front lawn bordering York Avenue in Towanda, PA. This is ironic since I’ve had anti-GOP signs in my front windows for almost a decade. They’ve been there in the sunshine long enough to almost totally fade away, just like the GOP is doing with Trump as the sunshine. I’ll explain. Trump’s speeches, proposals, insults, and his general bigoted obnoxious behavior define the GOP platform, except that Trump has no filter and is not subtle. His intentions expose the heretofore-disguised agenda of the Republican Party. Trump has shone the sun on the GOP and exposed them for what they really are. The GOP and Trump are one and the same -- except for a growing population of Republicans who disavow him. In Florida, under Republican control, the Zika virus is spreading because of reduced mosquito control. It took Florida decades to develop effective ...

(Image from wikamedia commons ) According to a police report in the June 9th Towanda Daily Review, a 34 year-old woman was arrested at the Robert Packer Hospital Behavioral Science Unit for aggravated assault and was sent to the Bradford County Prison in lieu of $20,000 bail. The Review wrote that the woman was "smashing windows with a dinner tray" and "began stripping tissues out of every tissue box in reach and began to explain that she had magical powers and that she was going to burn the building down, and then she would flood the building to put the fire out."  The police were probably called after the hospital security and staff realized that they were unable to properly control the situation, and the woman was subdued by the police after she punched and slapped one of the officers. [ 1 ] The situation seems to have been handled with a minimum of property damage and no serious injuries, and to my knowledge, everyone acted correctly. Yet, a woman with...

" Chasing The Dragon " (s creened at the Keystone theater, Towanda, PA in early June) is an anti-drug documentary produced through the office of the FBI director James Comey. It shows, in vivid detail, the tragedies of seven families resulting from addictions to opioid drugs, typically initiated by prescription OxyContin , and escalating to other opioids, usually heroin. Most of the victims are teens and young adults; two appear to be in their thirties or early forties. Two of the young adults died from overdoses. One died a few days after spending 7 months in rehab. I deliberately referred to the subjects of this deeply flawed documentary as victims because that is exactly what they are--victims of our failed multi-decade, trillion dollar (and counting)  War on Drugs . The War on Drugs has not only failed , it has exacerbated the problem. Our problems with addictive substances would be far less if the War had never existed. The message of the documentary see...

When I read, First Complementary Health and Psychic Fair deemed a success  in the May 17, 2016 Towanda Daily Review , I had to check the date to be sure that I was still in the 21st Century. Products presented at the Fair included reflexology, essential oils, footbath detox, Reiki, psychic phenomena, healing stones, acupuncture, herbal medicine, Plexus for weight loss, body detoxification, and homeopathy. Reflexology is based on an absurd theory that each body part is represented in the feet and hands. Multiple trials have shown it to be no more effective than a foot massage at curing or diagnosing anything. [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ] Essential oils cover a lot of territory. It’s like saying that chemical compounds can cure stuff. It depends on what is in the oils, the purity, concentration, and the condition being treated. Anecdotal evidence of effectiveness is not enough. Randomized controlled clinical trials are required, which is how real medicines are evaluated. [ 4 ][ 5 ] ...

(I live in Towanda, PA--a small town in Bradford County in the northeast part of the state.   According to the CDC , in 2014 Pennsylvania was ranked 8th in the U.S. for overdose deaths at 219 deaths per million age adjusted population.  West Virginia is # 1 at 355 per million, and the lowest is North Dakota at 63 per million. The U.S. average in 2014 was 147 deaths per million . I wrote the item below because of the local response to 3 overdose deaths in 3 days in mid-February, 2016. On May 5, 2016, an Addiction Awareness Rally was held in front of the Bradford County courthouse where local residents spoke about friends and family members with drug addictions, with truly heartrending accounts of the deaths of loved ones to addictions. It is tragically ironic that the backdrop for the speeches was the courthouse with the following words at the top of the building: Justice, Law, Mercy. As presented below, the War on Drugs has provided none of these.) The Uni...