True believers and the killing of Charlie Kirk

Ah, our true believers.

If, in your open support of one single political party no matter what their intention, you only vote either Democrat or Republican and never alter your vote, you are a true believer.

If you belong to the ever-growing mob of people who protest by carrying placards, bullhorns and hastily-prepared signs, and you loudly shout your slogans at the opposition, you are a true believer.

If you follow the taunts of a certain congresswoman who advocates getting into the faces of your opponents who care to dine out at an open-air restaurant, you are a true believer.

If you celebrate the murder of a conservative activist or imply that his murder might have been caused by the Jan. 6 rebellion group and not an insane partisan, you are a true believer.

If you identify with any or the above, you, fellow American, are the subject not yet in custody.

Allen R. Remaley

Saratoga Springs

McCarthy doesn’t want competition

In a recent CBS6 report, Mayor Gary McCarthy’s remarks about Council President Porterfield and Council Member Farley made one thing clear: he wants a City Council that will simply agree with him. Dismissing Porterfield’s work on economic development as nonexistent and accusing Farley of having, “the worst attendance record in a century,” is a thinly veiled attempt to tear them down.

These kinds of attacks carry racial undertones; dog whistles meant to discredit leaders of color while rallying certain voters.

Equally troubling is how the Democratic endorsement process was manipulated. Porterfield and Farley were initially backed by the Democratic Executive Committee, but McCarthy and party insiders overturned that decision behind closed doors to promote his “hand-picked challengers.”

Endorsed candidates enjoy real advantages: party machinery, organizational support, and crucial help collecting petition signatures.

Porterfield and Farley received none of that yet still gathered enough signatures on their own to qualify for the ballot. Instead of accepting their success, McCarthy used a proxy to challenge those signatures, a tactic he also successfully deployed against Republican candidates.

The pattern is clear: he wants no competition. Voters should see through this. Support the real Democrats, Porterfield and Farley, on line D, the Working Families Party.

Ellie Pepper

Schenectady

Politics in America has gone the wrong way

As the villains met in China recently, yucking at their favorite Trump stories, our own hero failed to end any wars, then blows up a Venezuelan drug boat and declares war on his own country. ICE, ICE, baby!

It’s not OK for comic book masked men to arrest innocents mixed in with the real bad guys. We should be protecting the back door from a foreign attack. Are you paying attention?

All this money being saved by eliminating essential services looks like it’s going to the immigrant hunt, Trump’s Crypto grab, and don’t forget, the golf weekends.

While activist Charlie Kirk was young and popular, he still brought Trump’s modern divisiveness to Utah and paid for it with his life. Reflect the influence of Trump for a moment and say this was shocking. It wasn’t.

Further, any political speaker doing an outside gig needs the plexiglass protection indefinitely.

First Lady, invisible Melania, could be consoling the Epstein victims. Why isn’t anyone asking what she knows?

Final thought. Whose word in a crisis can you trust the most: Zelenskyy’s or Trump’s? Not a trick question.

Dave Barnes

Rotterdam

Trump tramples words of Statue of Liberty

The Trump presidency is continuing to ride roughshod over Congress, threaten the independence of federal regulatory bodies, challenge the authority of cities and states and secure the Supreme Court’s consent to expand executive authority, if only for the time being, with nary a whimper from the Republicans.

In eight months, we have drifted quickly into an authoritarian form of governing with a potential dictatorship, a la........

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