Dog-meat deals
The public is so fortunate to have had a glimpse inside the art of the deal on Wednesday. The cunning and intricate mechanism is as follows:
Trump -“Do you agree to everything I want?”
Pelosi —“No.”
Trump — “Goodbye.”
Oh, the amazing subtlety! Note the brief whiff of arrogance, yet the dazzling come-on hidden in “Goodbye.” Only a consummate dealmaker could bring this off.
It takes a dealmaker like that to have de-nuclearized the Korean Peninsula, won a trade war with China, brought home our troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and built a big, beautiful wall that Mexico paid for! Such deals!
John Sucke
Kamuela
Support things Hawaiian
A major New Year’s resolution for Hawaii’s people should be to support things Hawaiian, for we depend almost solely on tourism for our socioeconomic fabric. Like the late, great Brother Iz said, “Eat the lau lau, not the hamburger.”
Personally, I support Brother Iz’s philosophy for why should tourists worldwide come to Hawaii if there is no aloha here. The kanaka maoli, or indigenous Hawaiians are an endangered species and they can not become extinct in Paradise.
All in all, I will order the Lau Lau plate at my favorite restaurant from now on. We need more Hawaiian restaurants in the Hawaiian island chain, which is the understatement of the millennium.
Dean Nagasaka
Honokaa
A wall of untruths
We read the newspaper every day and see Mr Trump demanding a wall. He is willing to shut down our government to get his way. His reasons given are that murderers, rapists, and other assorted criminals come across our southern border.
That is not true. That is political grandstanding. It is a manufactured emergency by Trump to sway citizens and Congress to finance his wall.
The truth is that the people coming across, illegally and legally, are much less liable to commit crimes of any kind than home grown Americans. In fact, they are hard workers who take the undesirable jobs that native Americans don’t want and they work for far, far less than natives. I have worked beside some of these people and they worked me into the ground and for less than any American. And they almost never complain or get into trouble because they do not want to go back south.
Trump is all about ego. He makes demands and he expects everyone to submit to his will. He does not expect people to resist him. And when they do, he does his best to belittle them and remove them from the discussion.
Our nation is in a very real debt crisis. Our nation is in hock up to our eyes. The wall is a boondoggle that we can neither afford nor need. We are spending too much already. How about cutting back on the spending, Mr. Trump?
I think a good place to start would be projects like The Wall.
But, Mr. Trump will no doubt declare war on all who tell him that it is a waste of money. Money that we do not have and must borrow.
I must say, straight out, that the Democrats are not into saving or even cutting spending, either. But this wall is just plain ridiculous.
What this ultimately does is crush any trust in government citizens may have had (which wasn’t much to begin with).
Stop the nonsense and get our government back to work, Mr. Trump! This is not leadership. This is craziness.
Tom Beach
Waimea