Letters to the Editor: Aug. 8, 2025
Our Mad King
Tyrants can’t handle the truth. They invent their own version, insist their subjects subscribe to it and punish those who refuse to go along.
One of the first jobs of an up-and-coming tyrant is to crush institutions that discern the truth and spread it to the public at large.
Universities, media outlets and government agencies are key institutions that seek the truth and openly act on it. Our Mad King is working overtime to bring them to heel with lawsuits, threats, and firings, and he is gaining momentum.
Our Bureau of Labor Statistics is the world’s gold standard for gathering and analyzing mass quantities of financial data and reporting it to our leaders in the form of monthly reports. Our Mad King didn’t like the most recent jobs report, so he fired the chief a few hours after receiving it, claiming it had been rigged.
He can’t handle the truth. No surprise.
While he sows confusion, distrust and bewilderment, he is getting his secret police ready for a bigger role.
His recent tax bill budgets more money for ICE than for the FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Marshal’s Service combined, along with $458 million for concentration camps. Let that sink in.
What are our masked marauders going to do, once they have rounded up all the supposed rapists and murderers in our fields, our vineyards, our nursing homes, our schools, our restaurants, our parking lots, and our construction sites?
They operate above the law, accountable to no one except the Mad King. He will find a good use for them, especially as the mid-term election approaches.
Right now, he’s trying to pick the voters. But he may decide to pick them off instead.
There will be plenty of room for the “traitors” to sleep on the concrete floor. Viktor Orbán is smiling.
Bill Johnson
McMinnville
Palestinian tilt
It’s no secret that the News-Register has a bias against the conservative agenda and thinking. Lately, that bias is on full display against Israel and the Jews.
The News-Register regularly pulls articles from The Conversation, such as the article published July 11 — “Israeli policies are creating catastrophic starvation risk,” by Yari Asi. And Jeb Bladine’s Whatchamacolumn of Aug. 1 is another classic example.
Bladine starts by asserting that “images of starvation in Gaza are at least reminiscent of unspeakable modern-era examples of genocide.”
In fact, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported just 115 deaths from malnutrition between Oct. 7, 2023, and July 25, 2025. Meanwhile:
In Ethiopia, 74,583 malnutrition-related deaths have occurred so far this year alone. This year’s count is currently estimated at 95,000 to 100,000 in Bangladesh and 33,000 to 35,000 in Angola. And in Sudan, at least 520,000 people have starved to death in the past two years.
Bladine’s column goes on to address the possibility of a Palestinian state, using the assistance of ChatGPT AI for support. It continues with a litany of reasons, mostly from the UN and International Criminal Court, supporting a Palestinian state.
Bladine’s article ignores the real reason why what is referred to as the “two-state solution” is impossible.
I encourage all to ask ChatGPT what the Hamas charter has to say about Israel and the Jewish people. That will make it crystal clear why a Palestinian state is unattainable as long as Hamas exists.
Your Whatchamacolumn would’ve been a worthwhile read if you had published both sides of the story.
Steve Sommerfeld
Sheridan
Show us the files
Considering that releasing the Epstein files was the cornerstone of Trump’s winning pitch to his conspiracy base, and that the suddenly awake Democrats say that can be done by an executive order, then why didn’t Biden do it? Or Obama?
Ann Helm
Lafayette
Comments
Bigfootlives
And people comment and say I’m crazy. If Bill Johnson actually believes what he wrote, this country is in serious trouble. And it gets worse every day.
…Universities, media outlets and government agencies are key institutions that seek the truth and openly act on it.…
You can’t be serious. Those three institutions have absolutely destroyed their credibility over the last 50 years, with a fast steam roll with Trump derangement syndrome, present company included. I would say that the masks are coming off, but they are off. While democrats hail the communist mayoral candidate in NYC as what the party wants and “is” the democrat party, see Elizabeth Warren.
Trump didn’t cause all of this hatred that the so-called truthful media and rancid, crooked politicians stealing our money and future, he revealed it, it’s always been there.
The masked thugs in the street beating citizens in Portland and across the country are not MAGA.
God help us, because this isn’t going end well.
Don Dix
Ann Helm asks a sensitive question - who has that answer?
ALLCAPS
THANK YOU STEVE THANK YOU.
Otis
Bill,
another piece of the puzzle of why maga thinks everything is going well is magical thinking....on everything...but especially on how tariffs work. Here is a post I saw that struck a chord with me:
"It's way worse than that. My brother in law thought that if a Chinese item costs $100 and there was a 30% tariff say, China would pay $30 he'd only pay $70. So, he thought everything imported would cost less."
treefarmer
Heartened by your letter Mr. Johnson. Seems many of our fellow citizens are feeling demoralized by the firehose of calculated chaos, some still cling to the lies and false hope they were fed during the campaign, and perhaps a few actually savor the cruelty and oppression because: “I am miserable so everyone else deserves to be miserable too.” I have observed that on occasion, when enough outrage is demonstrated by the people, the autocrat has backed down. In the big picture, there are millions of us voicing our opposition. I maintain faith that patriotic Americans will continue to resist. 'We the people' got rid of a king once, can we do it again?
Mr. Sommerfeld ~ I must take issue with your premise that “It’s no secret that the News-Register has a bias…..” That’s a secret to me. I have been reading this paper for decades and while I have not always agreed with what they print, I have not perceived “bias.” Could it be that “bias” might be defined as perspectives that differ from one’s own?
Ms. Helms ~ I wish I knew the answer, but what IS clear is that Obama and Biden had the means to release the entire Epstein horror story and didn’t. (However I don’t recall either of them promising to do so.) I also recall that trump was President when Epstein was arrested and indicted (July 9, 2019) and he didn’t seem to have any more interest in the matter at that time than Obama or Biden demonstrated. Subsequently trump raised hell during his campaign and riled his supporters up with the idea that the files were filled with info about Democrat predators. Recently he declared that the files were a "hoax" and ultimately demanded that everyone just drop the whole thing. He proclaimed that those who refused to do so were ”dumb” and he didn’t want or need their support. Couple this with the transfer of child predator Maxwell to a minimum security facility and the only explanation I see is an ominous cover-up.
treefarmer
Re bigfoot’s comments: on another thread you title trump as a “President” and thank him with all caps, but here you seem to acknowledge “this isn’t going to end well.” (I obviously do believe what Mr. Johnson has outlined above.) You are right when you observe that trump didn’t cause all of the hatred and division, but perhaps we can also agree that he capitalized on it to make specious ludicrous promises he never intended to keep. Instead he swapped the old clustercluck with his own self-enriching version of the same – so - out of the frying pan, into a far more malevolent fire. Consider that he replaced the masked thugs you mention with HIS masked thugs. The difference being that those other thugs could be rounded up and put in jail where they belong, but trump’s thugs are immune from all consequences under the color of law. (History documents that an autocrat needs an authorized cadre of brown shirts to enforce his imperial dictates……. given their increased power and funding, ICE certainly fits the bill.)
You said it, and I lend my voice to your plea …….God help us.
NJINILNCCAOR
Steve said:
“It’s no secret that the News-Register has a bias against the conservative agenda and thinking.”
Not true.
At least not in the News Register I have been reading.
Otis
Mad King indeed. Really wondering what JD is waiting for. That Kennedy Center presser was just absolutely deranged.
treefarmer
Otis - Deranged is a perfectly accurate description of the presser, but it is just one more element in the authoritarian take-over of America. In true autocratic form, history is being scrubbed and re-written, social safety nets have been systematically dismantled, the education system has been perverted, the legal system (except for a few courageous judges) is completely loyalty based and corrupted, violent criminals continue to be pardoned and released on the streets, health “care” is now subject to the whims of a madman with a worm in his brain, all of our personal information has been given over to those who will use it for purposes we have yet to have revealed, our military is illegally commandeered to patrol and control our cities....... so, coupled with the efficiency of the fear and propaganda campaign, the question becomes – how long will millions of Americans tolerate the assault on our freedom and disregard/fail to recognize the decimation of the Constitution? (Chapter and verse from the autocrat’s playbook.) Looks like the lessons of Germany have been forgotten, a lapse that continues to hasten the diabolical undoing of our fragile democracy. Are we teetering on the edge of too late? I continue to hope not.
AKH2OGUY
To those of you that think I have responded by saying no bias in the N-R you’ve been reading, please let me know the last time you saw a commentary by a guest writer or a column that even had a conservative bent.
treefarmer
Hello H20GUY ~ can’t say I recall ever having read a comment from you so am not familiar with your thoughts on N/R bias one way or another. I am sincerely interested to know what you would consider a “conservative bent,” and what you would like to see more of in the editorial and guest commentary if you are inclined to post your views? (And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the editors read our comments and welcome (civil non-accusatory) perspectives from their readers.)