UP! SPEAK !?!

A NONPARTISAN warning for future elections: gerrymandering, voter-roll purges and extreme forms of voter ID are now, if not legal, according to the Supreme Court are condoned by them. So vote — if you still can! AmeriKa! SAD! RLE

AFTER INVOKING their patriotism for votes, after using their memories for leverage in negotiations, our president can’t respect the bones of our soldiers by being present at their repatriation. He can, however, use them one more time at a political rally the same day they come home. JMR

COME ON ACLU and the city of Albuquerque! The panhandling that is going on at the intersections all over the city is an eyesore, but it is being attacked from the wrong angle. You are arguing about a person’s right to be panhandling and whether it infringes on their constitutional rights. Well, I have seen women sitting on a strip of the median that is just barely big enough for their body. I’ve also seen older people with canes maneuvering through rocks on a narrow piece of the median. I say this is a safety issue, and I’d hate to be the person that accidentally hits an old man as he stumbles trying to get his footing and falls into a traffic lane! Please put a stop to it for the safety of the people panhandling and for the motorist driving so close to them! PDJ

“YOU NEED a picture ID to buy groceries. GROCERIES!” Trump asserts. Well, you need an ID to buy your ciggies and your booze, but who calls them “groceries”? Trump’s more out of touch than when George H.W. Bush was bedazzled by a supermarket price scanner. Fact: few people need a photo ID to buy most things. So it does not follow that we should have to show a photo ID in order to vote. CK

ONE THING the media and the elites keep neglecting to point out in covering the trade war with China: China can’t compete with a tit-for-tat tariff battle. We import about 20 to 50 times the amount of goods they import from us. Eventually, they will run out of things to tariff and Trump will still have another $200 billion to $300 billion worth of items left to tariff. A trip to any store, and the plethora of made in China items will tell you who has the most to lose. BC

“SHOULDA, COULDA, woulda,” says Grisham regarding getting the ditch in the South Valley cleaned out. Pearce just got it done! Roads to elections are paved with getting it done! DT

WHO KNEW? I’ve been buying groceries for all these years not knowing I was supposed to show a picture ID! JL

I SEE (U.S. Sen.) Martin Heinrich has a new political ad touting his visiting all four corners of our state. I am most amazed that he even remembers where our state is located. RDH

APS SHOULD look into trading or selling their unused portable buildings to the city of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County for use in the proposed homeless tiny home villages. They’d be excellent for communal kitchens, meeting rooms, excess storage, recreation areas, management offices and other things there given their size, and could easily be modified inside if necessary for bunk barracks or split into family housing. Why build new ones when perfectly good usable surplus buildings already exist? JSD

… WITH MY wife soon becoming a U.S. citizen and needing to learn the “Pledge of Allegiance,” I’ve begun to really think about that pledge. … When we join the military or assume public office, we swear to defend the Constitution, not the flag, from all enemies, foreign or domestic. So I propose a change: … I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America. And to the democracy, for which it stands, one nation, united, with liberty and justice for all.

A pledge to our Constitution, the rule of law, cannot be misconstrued. Different interpretations can be made over a flag with no instructions. … Every country has a flag. Only the United States of America has the Constitution. TB

AUG. 3 story on tiny homes: APS has a backup of portables, how about using them for the homeless and vets? The story on channel 13 Thursday night suggested they were going to give them away. Here is a home already built. Use them. TDK

AGAIN THE concern about the far right lane on Central Avenue before you hit Girard. The city needs to put bright signs — yellow — with big arrows pointing down to the lane saying “right lane turn only” way before you get there, not 30 or 40 feet before you get to that point. Use common sense. And again, let’s put a straight 10 cents on the dollar in the city — you won’t miss it — and use it wisely, not for the mayor or any city employees, but for the city itself. LRVP

WHEN POTUS proposed trade tariffs to even the playing field , progressive politicians and media chicken littles broke down and claimed this will destroy the United States. Europe renegotiated and the trade deficit just fell by $52 billion. This was not reported in any mainstream media outlet. Sticking your head in the sand and wishing something will or will not happen never works; only good hard work accomplishes that. SB

WHEN I said that the USA will win the trade war, I didn’t mean that some of us wouldn’t reap benefits right away. It’s going to be a little tight for a while. Yes, MK, the rest of the world is bigger, but don’t you know that size doesn’t matter? JD

TRUMP SUPPORTERS: If you really aren’t able to recognize that he lies pathologically on a daily basis about things large and small — many of which are very easily refuted — how on earth do you go through your life without being lied to or scammed? DG

FOR ANYONE interested in buying TrumpCare, the new inexpensive alternative to the ACA, rather than waste the money (and you are), why not just send the money to me because I’m having trouble paying my health care since Trump made all the sabotages to the ACA! You will get the same benefits (none) and I won’t have to crowd fund my bills! RLE

IF JIM Acosta of CNN does not want to be told to “get out” or his reporting called “fake news”, he might consider reporting the news without bias, calling POTUS supporters “dumb rednecks” and highlighting the continued physical threats made to this administration’s personnel. This highlights why these mainstream media outlets are dying in their viewership numbers. SB

THE PRESS is upset by the President’s “attacks” on fake news. I’d be a lot more sympathetic if the press actually did its job and reported facts rather than propagandizing anti-Trump rhetoric, and fomenting actual attacks on the President and his supporters. BB

LET ME get this straight: the Trump administration trots out its cyber experts (NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, etc.) to proclaim that they all agree that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and will continue to do so, and yet Trump continues to call the “Russia thing” a hoax. Are we witness to an alternate universe: there’s Trump and then everyone else? Sad, and frightening. GG

APS SUPERINTENDENT promises major changes at Hawthorne Elementary after SIX consecutive failing evaluations. Why didn’t APS take this action after the first bad evaluation? Does it take negative public headlines and/or threats of closure to motivate APS to act? JM

SOME PEOPLE are bent on smoking through OPM — other people’s money — on “medicare for all.” Don’t they realize that the people who are on medicare actually worked for 30 or 40 years and had deductions from every paycheck to cover it … ? There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. J.B.

WITH THE local TV and radio stations’ constant unexplained personnel changes, incomplete reporting and endless self-promotion, it is a shame that a city of Albuquerque’s size, and one that has a “major” newspaper, lacks a media critic. Does the local media have an agreement not to criticize itself? RB

BEAUTIFUL WRITING, Maddy Hayden, on the Sandia solar facility article — interesting, accurate, and, at times, lyrical. KAT

BEING A LAWYER …I sometimes tune in to CNN to get a good laugh as they push ridiculous theories of collusion or obstruction of justice. Collusion is not even a crime, anyway. PM

LEBRON JAMES worked hard for his money and is doing incredible things to help his community. Donald Trump pilfered money from his own fake charity to buy himself a giant portrait of Donald Trump. BF

INSTEAD OF everyone in the administration having a different interpretation of every tweet POTUS sends out, they should just say they are all fake news. CM

MORE THAN five dozen people were shot in Chicago last weekend; at least 12 died, but what have we heard about it? If over 60 were involved in a school or workplace shooting, that would have been at the top of the news, if not the only news. Are we to understand that unless a large number of people are killed by one person, at one time, in one small place, it doesn’t really matter? BL