Readers Write: Honor and dishonor in Washington and beyond

It's no longer about party affiliation. It's about our country — its credibility, respect and honor. Kudos to U.S. Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker for finally verbalizing disdain for this president. But now we need the members of Congress, both parties, who are NOT retiring to have the courage to stand up against the Donald Trump behavior of immorality, untruthfulness, name-calling and downgrading of the presidency. I ask Congress, sincerely, to REALLY make our country great again!

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Flake's brave calling out of President Trump and the current state of our politics ("GOP Sen. Flake: 'I rise today to say, enough,' Oct. 25) reminds me of Joseph Welch famously calling out Communist witchhunter Joe McCarthy in 1954, saying: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

In what is hopefully a similar "emperor has no clothes" moment for the Republicans who know better, Flake's speech on the Senate floor eloquently described how Trump's constant stream of vulgarity and dishonesty cannot become normalized. I pray more Republicans join him in putting country over party so we can remove, or at least contain, this national embarrassment before it's too late.

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When the current Republican majorities claim that tax reform is necessary, the rationale used seems to skirt the obvious: Why should we offer tax reform to corporate CEOs who have no intention of reinvestment to "spur economic growth"? That's merely a euphemism for trickle-down economics, an idea proven to have never worked, due to the fact that extra cash gleaned from harsh cuts elsewhere does not inspire entrepreneurs. If they have a solid business plan, and they need that extra money to implement it, they could easily develop a program where individual corporations apply for it, and then implement it. After a certain time passes for proper review of the project to verify that it's meeting criteria, tax credits can be applied retroactive to the date of application. This way, taxpayers aren't simply handing out revenue to a majority of CEOs who simply don't care, and we can follow up with the ones that do.

Reliance on GOP assurances is no good, and we found that out on Tuesday when Corker and Flake both vilified their own party and their president, then went into the Senate and voted to repeal the consumer protections against bad bank behaviors. Just, wow.

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All the hubbub between certain lawmakers and Trump almost ignores the real, underlying problem. Even though the warning signs were clearly there for all to see who wanted to see them during the run-up to the election, Trump was elected. Granted, he was elected by a minority, but still there were enough of those voters to subject the rest of us to this walking disaster (to use one of Trump's words from his constricted vocabulary). And, according to current polls, most of those voters still back their juvenile president. They are indeed "base." All of these realities are what is most scary. There's enough ignorance out there that Trump is in the White House. Enough people in Germany were ignorant, too, when they essentially let Hitler come to power. No, Trump hasn't called for extermination of groups he sets up as scapegoats, but semi-extermination is already being attempted — for example, demanding a policy that will deny many people effective health care.

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I am so tired of hearing about "the base." Let's be real about who and what they are: deplorables, driven by fear and hate, nourished by a toxic right-wing media, and representing a mere 30-some percent of the population. That means we are being governed by a small minority, whose views are strongly rejected by the majority of the country. Meantime, our government institutions (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy and Education departments) are being subverted into something grotesquely opposite of what they were established to do for the common good of the people.

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Well, well, well. After the mainstream media bombarded us for more than a year with the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, it turns out that the real Russia collusion event was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paying for a bogus dossier from Fusion GPS that was false ("Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Trump-Russia dossier," Oct. 25).

Worse yet, the dumb decision to hand over 20 percent of American uranium to Russia coincided with about $140 million being donated to the Clinton Foundation by firms associated with the Uranium One deal, and Bill Clinton more than doubled his speaking fee to give a speech in Moscow and meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin during this time frame.

It is disturbing that President Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Robert Mueller, Jim Comey and Rod Rosenstein had some involvement and oversight in this event. Yet they covered it up and were complicit in the wrongdoing. Congress should assign an unbiased and untarnished special counsel to investigate this corruption at the highest level of the Obama administration.

Shame on the Star Tribune and the rest of the mainstream media for promoting this false narrative. The only large media company that was skeptical from the start was Fox News. Everyone else lost a great deal of credibility.

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So Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (as well as one of the losing Republican presidential candidates) hired Fusion GPS to do their "opposition research." At least they were keeping it local and hiring a U.S. company. The Trump campaign offshored its "opposition research" to a foreign entity: the Russians.

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Most people would expect the most prominent front-page headlines and stories to be those of the most interest and significance locally, nationally and internationally. The Oct. 25 front page has the story about Flake's criticism of Trump as the most dominant story in the center of the page with the stories of Gov. Mark Dayton backing PolyMet mining and the Democrats paying for Russian research in lesser prominence across the top and lower down. The PolyMet story, of course, is of interest locally, but the Russian research story is certainly of much greater significance nationally and internationally than the Flake story. Flake is not running again, most probably because of his loss of respect and resulting increase in support of his competitor in his state of Arizona. It is of little interest to the state of Minnesota and should be an inside-page short story at best. The fake prominence you gave it reflects only on the distaste of the Star Tribune writers for the Trump presidency.

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Our daily news seems to be gravitating to the gossip standards of the National Enquirer and other such provocative publications. It is unfortunate that our respected GOP politicians are stooping to that level to gain popularity in the public forum, mere parting shots on their way out of politics. Transparency should reflect results, and not necessarily the often-contentious belabored journey. Have the backbone to confront your President Trump face to face during your many opportunities for direct communications with him. These Twitter wars and public rants are getting old and continue ineffective.

We need our leaders to maintain their dignity, and to direct and rectify their complaints among themselves. Focus on the substantive agenda we elected you all to contribute to; do your jobs and do them to the best of your abilities. Voters have enough anxiety facing personal problems every day, while worrying about the future world we are creating for future generations.

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Floods and fires come and go. As do news cycles. How is Houston? How is Tampa? How is Santa Rosa?