Was failure a

flop or a plot?

An analysis of the events on July 13 near Butler, Pennsylvania, leads one to a binary choice. Either the U.S. Secret Service and local police were absurdly negligent in their task of protecting Donald Trump, or else there was a barely veiled deep-state plot to get him killed.

It is one thing to be incompetent (this fiasco after all involves the government), but to be absurdly negligent defies any rational or charitable explanation.

Why was the roof on which the would-be assassin crouched left out of the “inside security perimeter” when it was, by a rifle’s standard, a stone’s throw away from the rally platform?

Moments before the first shot rang out, a cop found himself face-to-face with Thomas Crooks’ weapon, yet this was not instantly communicated to Trump’s bodyguards. Why was there no drone reconnaissance? Was the Secret Service in fact short-handed that day, or simply nearsighted from birth? How could the authorities have lost track of a suspicious man among a discrete crowd of red-hatted people when in a jiffy the FBI can grab an insurrectionist grandmother three states away from the U.S. Capitol?

When Director Cheatle observed that the roof in question was “too sloped” to be a safe lookout for her counter-snipers, did a gang of roofers laugh out loud in unison at a bar?

Why was Trump allowed by a clumsy, diminutive DEI agent to expose his vulnerable head to further danger as he yelled, “F-ght, f-ght, f-ght.”?

Why no press briefings? In an informational void, the roots of conspiracy theories readily grow, like air plants.

Patricia Gbur

Wood Dale

Recent news reports have reflected on the rapid rate at which tornadoes are striking Illinois.

In 2010, I wrote a paper for my master’s degree elucidating the trend in tornadoes in the Southeast versus rising temperatures. In that paper, I demonstrated how tornadoes were becoming more common with climate change and how tornado intensity would be creeping north along with increasing temperatures. If I extended the timeline for my data to 2024, the trend would be steeper, meaning hotter temperatures and more tornadoes post-2009. Records confirm the steeper incline.

Most of these trends would have signaled the kind of storms we’re now having to occur in 2030. But they are occurring much earlier. Why is that? Part of the acceleration was caused by the Trump presidency. When he reversed hundreds of climate change restrictions, he set the fight against climate change back at least five years. The other part is the Republican Party’s malevolent refusal to recognize climate change.

Here’s an interesting fact: According to the National Weather Service, heat kills more people each year than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined. So, we’re compounding disaster mortality.

Only the uninformed, misinformed, or fossil fuel sycophants deny climate change. Ignoring climate change is a path to self-destruction. So, if you want to stay on this self-destructive path, vote for Trump, no matter who runs against him; and let your children and children’s’ children dance with death.

Jim Arneberg

Hoffman Estates

Re: the July 19 letter from Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi titled: “Yes, we need actions that honor Vietnam vets”:

I am a veteran from the Cold War Era during which 382 died from hostile enemy actions and 126 are still on the rolls of the missing in action. Yet, there’s still no monument or a memorial in Washington, D.C., or at any veterans park to our service and their sacrifice your, and my freedom that has been taken for granted.

Since 2017, I have written Rep. Krishnamoorthi four times asking him why he had never signed on as a co-sponsor to the House resolutions that were put up for the Cold War Service Medal Act. (In fact, none of our representatives from Illinois have signed as co-sponsors to any of the bills that would recognize our service during the Cold War, regardless of political party.) However, in August of 2021 I saw where Rep. Krishnamoorthi found the time to be a co-sponsor to Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s bill to posthumously award a Congressional Gold Medal for Mahatma Gandhi for his works at peace.

I guess this is Congressman Krishnamoorthi’s way of “honoring our commitment to our veterans.”

We who served during the Cold War are long overdue recognition. We took the same oath as all the others who served before and after us at a time when it wasn’t so popular to serve in the military.

So I’ll leave you this question: what we did Cold War Era Veterans do that was so wrong that all of you politicians have ignored and dismissed our service and casualties?

David Kumpula

Hoffman Estates

Front Page comment (No doubt Heritage Foundation approved): “GOP leader slams ‘years of lies.”

Liars think everyone lies, because they see the world through their own lying eyes. If Biden has been lying about his mental acuity, he and his administration had the best economy in the history of the U.S. What is that saying about the rest of the presidents? Record stock market, highest employment, most diversified, capable administration, and more. This is backed by statistics (to Republicans that is fuzzy math, unless it leans their way).

Sixteen Nobel Laureates signed a letter warning of bad economic results in a Trump second term. Following the Heritage Foundation’s economic policies led to the worst economic disasters in our lifetime. The Heritage Foundation’s mandates of deregulation of financial institutions led to economic disasters during Republican administrations. Reagan’s S&L disaster into George H.W. Bush’s term, and then George W. Bush’s 2008 economic disaster.

The Daily Herald listed page after page of foreclosures of homes, businesses, property and sheriff’s sales in DuPage and nearby counties. These added billions to the federal debt and took 10 years of taxpayer money to pay for. It seems that we want to do this again bigger and better.

“Example of nation’s decline”? I have not heard any Democrat say that Trump put in danger was anything they wanted. They know a gun is a weapon of opportunity and anyone can be a victim. Trump’s rallies do not allow guns and do not believe their own words “a no gun zone, is a kill zone.”

Also, Democrats know that a martyred politician (or attempted martyr) gets more sympathy votes. Get a clue.

Sandy Sanders

Naperville