Ferri Tales

Without  torturing the definition, treason is "the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance," and to which one has sworn an oath to protect and defend. To prove treason, our Constitution requires "testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act." The penalty for treason against the U.S. is death or not less than 5 years in prison with a minimum fine of $10,000. The current problem of treasonous attacks on the U.S. from internal actors is that too few traitors have been held accountable for their actions in the past.   During the Civil War, William Mumford was executed for treason in 1862 for raising a Confederate flag after tearing down an American flag in New Orleans.   Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, and his generals were clearly traitors. After the war, Davis was locked up for only 2 years. There was no accountability for his generals. All were given amnesty by President Andrew Johnson and allowed to return to p...

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 ...

As amazing as it sounds, I found the friend that Craig Pierce talked to in his letter to the editor of June 27, 2014. I asked Craig’s friend if he really thought that America was burning and he said that he did because that’s what Fox “News” told him to think. I told him that Fox “News” wasn’t a real news program. I asked him to stop watching it for a while and to read or watch some reliable news sources, and suggested anything but Fox. Being a reasonable fellow, Craig’s friend said that he would and get back to me as soon as he could. In a few days, we talked again and he said that he couldn’t believe how biased Fox “News” is, and was shocked to find out what was actually happening outside of the GOP and Fox information bubble. He told me of several epiphanies after realizing what was really happening in the country and the world. - He couldn’t believe how much money the GOP is wasting on investigating the IRS non-scandal, and how Darrel Issa is grandstanding. And he was dismay...

Recently after listening to yet more blatant lies from Fox “News” and Republican Congressmen, my wife asked me, “Why do they do that? Why do they say things that are so easily shown to be false?” Easy question, I told her, “Because it works.” I borrowed Duane Campbell’s words from his letter of May 29 to illustrate the Republican tactic of asking rhetorical questions as a pointless attempt to make a point. In his letter, he asks multiple questions from the GOP playbook on Benghazi, not seeking answers, but merely to sound serious. Benghazi has been thoroughly investigated and the conclusions from multiple investigations over 20 months were that there was no cover-up or conspiracy. To show that Campbell was not looking for answers, in the on-line comments section of the Review’s letters section, answers to Campbell’s questions were thoughtfully and respectfully presented by a writer who goes by “subscriber2”. Campbell’s on-line reply was “I love to engage on issues, and I almost...

I offer my sincere condolences to those who believe that there is an ongoing cover-up of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya in which 4 Americans were killed. They assume that the recent vote on May 8 by the House to establish yet another investigation into the Benghazi attack and that the incessant droning about Benghazi cover-ups on Fox “News” actually means that a conspiracy or cover-up exists. Since the attack and over a period of 20 months -- after 13 hearings, 50 briefings, 25 transcribed interviews, 8 issued subpoenas, more than 25,000 pages of documents, 6 congressional reports, a postmortem by the NY Times, and a detailed analysis by the journalist Michael Hirsh for Politico magazine -- no evidence of a conspiracy or cover-up has been found. The House’s call for more hearings began after an email surfaced showing that Obama administration officials were concerned about the president’s image in the days after the attack. Of course, there were no c...

The 63rd annual National Day of Prayer was held on May 1, 2014, and was locally observed in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Towanda, PA. As in the past, prayers were offered for “guidance, protection, and strength,” according to the coordinator Nancy Schrader. She also stated in the April 26 Daily Review that, “The Pilgrims at Plymouth relied on prayer during their first and darkest winter. Our founding fathers [sic] also called for prayer during the Constitutional Convention,” and that “... this annual observance will bring Christians of many persuasions together.” Fortunately, the Pilgrims’ prayers were answered because only slightly over half of them didn’t starve or freeze to death during that first brutal winter. Only through divine guidance did our Founding Fathers get most of the Constitution right, leaving out some minor items like ruling that slavery is immoral, or that women should be able to vote. Sadly though, because the event will only "bring Christia...

Senator Pat Toomey (PA, Republican) is probably too busy to answer Victor Lawson's open letter to him in the Towanda Daily Review on March 6, 2014 about President Obama ripping the U.S. Constitution to shreds. Mr. Lawson wrote that he doesn't want a form letter, so here is how I think Mr. Toomey would reply. Dear Mr. Lawson: If Mr. Obama were actually violating the Constitution, we would have an impeachable offence and would act. However, keep in mind that the "Obama is ripping the Constitution to shreds" line is only empty rhetoric from the GOP propaganda arm, Fox News. It keeps our base riled up and donations coming in. In other areas, the secret GOP Contrivance Committee has been aggressively trying to fabricate evidence for the IRS and Benghazi scandals, but the Democrats keep providing solid evidence to thwart our efforts, in spite of the heroic theatrics by Representative Darrell Issa. Our secret GOP Outrage Department will continue to be outrag...