President Donald Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin inspires comparisons with the meeting in late September 1938 between Adolph Hitler and UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain returned to the United Kingdom on September 30, 1938 and declared \u201cPeace For Our Time\u201d.<\/p>\n
He achieved that peace by giving Hitler the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in exchange for Hitler\u2019s promise that he would not threaten the rest of Europe. That meeting resulted in the Munich Agreement.<\/p>\n
Less than five and a half months later, Hitler breached the Munich Agreement and invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in World War II. Unlike the meeting between Trump and Putin, the media at the time extensively covered the results of the meeting between Hitler and Chamberlain. Most of today\u2019s journalists were not even born by March 15, 1939, the date of Hitler\u2019s invasion, so it is not surprising that the Trump\/Putin meeting results are not a red flag to today\u2019s journalists.<\/p>\n
But the Trump\/Putin meeting has all the earmarks of that historic meeting between Hitler and Chamberlain, which was proof that appeasement is not a peaceful solution to aggression.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, the Trump meeting with Zelenskyy and the European attendees will be successful in convincing Trump that giving up parts of Ukraine in exchange for \u201cpeace\u201d is the same fool\u2019s errand that it was in 1938\/1939, and Ukraine deserves continued support from the US.<\/p>\n
William Holben, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n I find it interesting and infuriating that Trump thinks he has the authority to give part of Ukraine to Russia without any input from Ukraine.\u00a0 I wonder how Trump would react to Canada conspiring with Mexico to give Texas back to Mexico without input from the US.\u00a0 How can anyone support Trump’s obvious effort to curry favor with the communist dictator, Putin, with whom Trump is so enamored and who Trump is so desperately trying to emulate?<\/p>\n Larry Bailey, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n It comes as no surprise that Trump has caved to Putin over the ceasefire and betrayed Ukraine. His long history of making grand claims about his abilities and influence have always turned out to be titanic lies. He will happily let Ukraine be forced to cede territory to his KGB pal and abandon NATO. Putin will continue to attack Ukraine, killing thousands of innocent civilians, and Trump will do nothing but to continue his illegal, unconstitutional farce of a presidency, enriching himself and all his wealthy cronies while he impoverishes the working people he swore to stand up for.<\/p>\n Thomas M. Holzfaster, Lakewood<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cPutin praises Trump\u2019s efforts to end war.\u201d The guy who invaded Ukraine to satisfy his own quirky itch to expand his empire, praises the energy and sincerity of someone else\u2019s effort to untangle a very simple knot. Putin started the Ukraine war for no good reason. He could stop the war by ordering his armed forces to stop killing people. How he praises Trump or anyone else for their efforts is mere propaganda to pretend simple truth is an intractable problem. The USA should not buy into Putin\u2019s cynical con.<\/p>\n Randy Livingston, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n In our history, has there ever been anyone allowed on U.S. soil that has been wanted for war crimes such as Putin? Perhaps, Trump could have redeemed himself by having Putin arrested while he is in Alaska. So many women and children kidnapped or murdered by Putin.<\/p>\n Wayne Wathen, Centennial<\/em><\/p>\n What did Trump get from his meeting with Putin? A big fat nothing burger. It was a lost opportunity when Putin agreed to ride with Trump — they could’ve whisked the Russian dictator away and locked him up for what he is: an international war criminal!<\/p>\n Then guess how fast a ceasefire would happen?<\/p>\n Jerry Witt, Commerce City<\/em><\/p>\n I am a life-long Democrat, and I always enjoy Krista Kafer\u2019s column. When I don\u2019t agree with her, she gives me food for thought and reminds me there are still thoughtful, careful and considerate republicans who have not drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid. When I agree with her as with this Sunday\u2019s column, I am pleased to be reminded there can be commonalities across the aisle.<\/p>\n I found \u201cThe plural of anecdote … is not data\u201d, so meaningful today where the Trump administration cherry picks, and blows out of proportion specific instances to demonstrate the need for their draconian policies. Her description of guardrails related to past and current information technology gives me hope that somehow truth will prevail, and we will be able to get a grip on AI delusions presented as fact and viral bigotry and hatred.<\/p>\n Nancy Litwack-Strong, Lakewood<\/em><\/p>\n Having been an educator when Title 9 was enacted (equal opportunities for all genders in academics and athletics) and when women were finally allowed to have a credit card in their own name as opposed to their husband’s. I’m particularly sensitive to unequal treatment of girls and women. Upon skimming the Prep Preview section of The Denver Post, I couldn’t help but notice 10 of the 12 pages were devoted to male athletes and only 2 to female athletes. This certainly doesn’t look like equality to me. With the current state of national affairs, it seems that promoting equality is more important now than ever before.<\/p>\n Mariann Storck, Wheat Ridge<\/em><\/p>\n In The Post’s Aug. 19 report on a legislative attempt to “pause” Colorado’s wolf-reintroduction program, you quote the measure’s sponsor, Sen. Dylan Roberts, who says that funds allocated for wolves should be diverted to the state’s health insurance affordability fund. He’s against “spending more money on wolves.”<\/p>\n It’s true that Congress has made massive cuts to Medicaid. But this bill won’t make a dent: The $264,000 Roberts’ measure would pilfer accounts for 0.03% of Colorado’s predicted shortfall of $783 million. This is not about money.<\/p>\n It is about wolves, and Roberts’ arguments are misleading. First, he suggests the wolf program is over budget. False. The program is spending what lawmakers allocated.<\/p>\n Second, Roberts focuses on the cost of wolf reintroduction but fails to note that a key reason for that expense is Colorado’s extraordinarily generous program to compensate the livestock industry for losses that it claims, sometimes on thin evidence, are due to wolves.<\/p>\n Third, the bill would overrule the scientific judgment of Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s experts and submit to the political whims of some lawmakers.<\/p>\n Fourth, “pausing” reintroduction would threaten Colorado’s existing wolves, which right now number only about 30. Populations of fewer than 50 wolves are vulnerable to high mortality rates from disease, mortality, poaching, poisoning, and drought. A “pause” would actually take us backwards.<\/p>\n Finally, Senator Roberts effectively seeks to overturn the expressed will of the voters. He might disagree with the voters, but he is utterly wrong to undermine their vote.<\/p>\n Clint Talbott, Nederland<\/em><\/p>\n When I separated from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 the job market was horrible. I ended up in the life insurance business, using a financial planning model. Like all good financial planners, I talked about retirement planning. In developing recommendations, I asked whether each client wanted to plan with the assumption that Social Security would or would not be in existence when they retired.<\/p>\n For the next decade and a half, at least half the clients I worked with assumed it would not be available. Then I had a great deal of confidence it would be there for us. Today, with Congress pushing the problem down the road, time is short for implementing the obvious solutions to ensure the majority of seniors in our future are not destitute.<\/p>\n Mandell S. Winter, Jr., Denver<\/em><\/p>\n During a televised meeting with the Denver city council about mass city employee layoffs. Denver’s Mayor, Mike Johnston said that this has been the hardest leadership task he’s probably ever undertaken. Need I remind you that his decisions have caused this problem. As a former Denver City employee of 35 years, I can guarantee you the layoffs will be at the lower positions and not in the administration departments where these foolish decisions are made.<\/p>\n Leroy Martinez, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online<\/a> or check out our guidelines<\/a> for how to submit by email or mail.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trump has misjudged Putin and sold out Ukraine President Donald Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin inspires comparisons with the meeting in late September 1938 between Adolph Hitler and UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain returned to the United Kingdom on September 30, 1938 and declared \u201cPeace For Our Time\u201d. He achieved that peace…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1088,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kafer gives me hope that truth will prevail<\/h4>\n
Don’t forget our female athletes<\/h4>\n
Don’t put a pause on wolf progress<\/h4>\n
Losing confidence Congress will save Social Security<\/h4>\n
Who is really to blame for Denver layoffs?<\/h4>\n