So "Re-electing President Obama in 2012 would be a disaster for America"? (Readers respond, June 10.) Yeah right, and Osama bin Laden's death was a great tragedy to freedom lovers everywhere.

The only looming disaster in 2012 is the possibility (getting slimmer every day, thankfully) that the craven Republicans and their phony-populist, corporate backed and directed "tea party" fanatics can hang on to power and not be sent back under the rock they crawled out from.

Fortunately, America is beginning to see through their lies and obfuscations. The recent rejection by seniors of the Paul Ryan plan to "save" Medicare by destroying it should show these new corporate robber barons that ordinary Americans won't fall for their smoke and mirrors.

But of course it's all part of the Republicans' bigger plan: to keep doing everything they can to destroy America, from watering down the stimulus package to shielding the parasites in the banking industry that caused the financial crisis, so they can blame everything on President Obama. Since they have no new ideas of their own, only tired old ones that we already know won't work (tax cuts for the rich!!!), their only hope is to make things so bad that people vote for them out of desperation.

William Smith, Baltimore