Letters to the Editor 1/16/25

Israel, not Canada, should become the 51st state

President Trump has proposed that Canada become the 51st state, however I believe that a more appropriate selection would be Israel. The benefits to both the U.S. and Israel would be enormous..

As a U.S. state, Israel would no longer have to go it alone for its defense. Not only would it have the full capability and resources of the U.S. military behind it, but all NATO countries as well. Given that seemingly most U.S. politicians in Washington currently consider Israel to have a special relationship with the U.S., typically described as “iron-clad,” it seems natural to formalize this relationship with statehood and all the attendant benefits

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel has cumulatively received $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in U.S. foreign aid. That is a staggering amount, larger than the annual GDP of the vast majority of countries. Imagine that. And just this month, President Biden requested an additional $8 billion of aid for Israel. You would think that the many uninsured residents of Los Angeles who lost their homes in the recent fires would be a higher priority for this $8 billion.

Statehood would also enable the U.S. to collect income taxes from Israel, which would help pay for the defense and other resources that I and other American taxpayers pay to massively fund Israel’s military. Israel would save lots of money because they would no longer need to have to spend so much of their GDP on defense, and they would no longer need to require their youth to serve in the military.

The United States’ rule of law would also be a great benefit to the residents of Israel, all of whom would be guaranteed equal rights, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Approximately 50% of the population of “greater Israel” (which include the occupied territories) would no longer be second class. The Palestinian residents would no longer have their land stolen and would no longer be threatened by both the state and vigilante settlers. In the occupied West Bank, they would be able to travel on the same roads and take the same busses as Jews, which is currently not the case. And they would not be subject to the ongoing genocidal slaughter. Immediately, the U.S. could start to restore its reputation of supporting human rights rather than being a complicitous partner in the current holocaust. Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?

I propose the name of the 51st state to be Holyland.

Lloyd Baroody

Lakeville

The coverup of Joe Biden’s decline

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) recently claimed that he only became aware of Joe Biden’s severe cognitive decline after Biden’s disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump last June.

This is the same line that most Democrats and liberal media are peddling today - that they had no inkling until late in Biden’s term that anything was seriously wrong with the doddering old president.

Actually, the whole country knew about Joe’s condition back in 2020. The national joke then was that his “basement campaign” wasn’t about sheltering from COVID but hiding his cognitive decline from the American people.

After Biden’s inauguration, it only got worse. He avoided unscripted forums, gave few press conferences and had early “lids” on his workdays. When he spoke from a teleprompter, he often got mixed up and read the stage directions, then had to be led away because he didn’t know where to go. His bewilderment was increasingly obvious.

Whenever right-wing media reported Joe’s gaffes, brain freezes, vacant stares, wanderings and stumblings, the entire liberal establishment from the White House to the mainstream press pounced on it as partisan “cheap fakes” from “Faux News.”

But it wasn’t fake, and we are still learning just how bad Biden’s condition really was. The Wall Street Journal recently reported a former Biden aide quoting a national security official in March 2021, just weeks after Biden took office, “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.”

It is beyond shocking that a sitting U.S. president was so recurrently gaga that matters of state had to be put off until his “good days.” One wonders how many life-and-death decisions Joe made (or failed to make) on his bad days. Did lapses occur during the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal?

Biden’s entire senior staff and cabinet must have known what was going on. And there must have been rumors and whispers floating around Congress and news outlets. The debilitating decline of the commander in chief should have been of the highest national concern and priority with full public disclosure and constant news coverage.

Instead, Democrats and liberal media angrily denied that anything was wrong with Joe. They called him one of our greatest presidents ever. They claimed he was “always sharp in the Situation Room,” as if he could reverse his deterioration at will.

The Democrats were even running Biden for a second term, risking national security by hoping he could function in ongoing crises, until that fateful June debate exposed the greatest presidential deception since Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke in 1919.

Even now, concerns are dismissed with excuses. Peter Baker of the New York Times recently gaslighted that confronting Biden about his condition would have been too difficult - like the dilemma children face in taking the car keys away from aged parents.

Except this wasn’t the car keys. It was the nuclear codes.

Every enabler who participated in this malfeasance should be ousted. Just how many “bad days” were there?

Mark Godburn

Norfolk