Thursday, July 29, 2010
Palin says what most think about mosque
Letters to the Editor
Recent letters to the editor
- Pick of the day: Teacher's conviction should scare parents
- Letters: Payroll tax holiday is no such thing
- The Burgs letters
- Letters archive
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Palin says what most think about mosque
Re: Sarah Palin editorial cartoon, July 26:
What a cheap, misconstrued pile of political propaganda. Nate Beeler does not even scratch the surface of the heartache Americans feel concerning the sacred soil at Ground Zero. He could not resist taking a dig at Sarah Palin. That was so much easier than to actually delve into why so many folks recoil at building a mosque at Ground Zero. That would require circumspect behavior.
I don't see Palin in this cartoon drawing. I see millions of anguished American faces imposed upon the American Flag.
Think about this: a gun shop wants to build its business on Virginia Tech's campus, close to the monuments of 32 innocent Tech fatalities. Want to run that cartoon, or does the idea make you sick? It sure makes me sick, just like Beeler's cartoon turned my stomach. What is wrong with you people? Shame on you.
Baja team members tackle demands
In the July 26 news story "Buggy's big break," reporter Duncan Adams writes about Virginia Western Community College's Baja program. I am a 2008 graduate of Virginia Western and have since graduated from Virginia Tech and am currently doing an internship in Maryland. I will return to Roanoke in the fall to finish a master's degree at Tech.
I am exceptionally proud of the education I received at Virginia Western. The teachers do an excellent job educating students, especially now with budget cuts and increasing pressure to do more with less.
The achievement of the Baja team is even more laudable because the students at Virginia Western, in addition to the regular demands on them from class time and homework, also tend to have family obligations and work that take precious time and attention away from school. I am very proud of the VW Baja team for doing so well.
Bring back graduates' photos
I understand that The Roanoke Times has been cutting costs. In this day and time, with the way the economy is, everyone is cutting back. What I don't understand is why the newspaper has cut all of the high school graduates' pictures out of the newspaper. This happens only once a year. Everyone should be proud of our graduates.
My children have already graduated, and when their pictures came out, I was so very proud of them and wanted everyone to see them. After my children had all graduated, I still would look at the graduates' pictures each year because there was always someone I knew or whose parents I had known. Some of the graduates I had not seen for years.
I don't see where you have cut out anything that pertains to sports. There is a section for that in the paper everyday.
Please put the graduates' pictures back. Most everyone looks forward to that each year, including me.
It's not profitable to cease using oil
Definitely the oil industry is out of control, consumed by profits, with little care for much else. Certainly many of us share a bad habit of wastefulness and could do much better. But to say that we are the culprits behind the gulf oil spill is a ridiculous statement.
It's no mistake that the average citizen is driving around in 100-year-old technology because, simply put, there are tremendous piles of cash to be made in energy consumption and our government stands to take a huge cut of their tax base from it.
When it comes to energy policy, taxes and political campaign funding, our leaders have never been motivated to change their ways or propel us to change ours.
Solar, wind, thermo, they're all quite fine, but many great ideas from inventors such as Nicola Tesla, Stan Meyer, Paul Pantone and Jim Griggs have been purposefully shelved because they threaten the status quo. Perhaps BP is feeding our oil addiction, but it's an inconvenient truth that its greed and negligence caused the gusher.
America had problems prior to Obama
Since 1999, America has faced many obstacles to her existence, most of which occurred prior to President Obama taking office.
1999: Glass-Steagall, the law passed in 1933 that helped take us out of the Great Depression, was rescinded. This created "too big to fail" and allowed Wall Street to create complicated, fraudulent synthetic derivatives and the like.
2001: Alan Greenspan bursts the Nasdaq bubble, costing America more than $17 trillion; on 9/11, Islamic fundamentalists crash jets into the twin towers and elsewhere, claiming thousands of lives.
2003: America invades Iraq after the Bush administration blames Saddam Hussein for the 9/11 attack, though evidence showed the contrary. Subprime mortgages become the rage, almost destroying the housing market over the next five years.
2007: Chris Cox's SEC cancels Rule 10a-1, unleashing scores of insider and short sales on Wall Street.
2008: The stock market and IRA vehicles are almost destroyed as the 2007 SEC action works with the 1999 rescission of Glass-Steagall to create the perfect financial storm and greatest financial disaster in world history.
2009 to present: Business news agencies work with the insiders and shorts exacerbating the financial crisis as the legislative process slows to a snail's pace.
Solve some issues by legalizing marijuana
I have never used any substance that can't be purchased legally from a pharmacy or ABC store. However, I believe the lawmakers who are so quick to ban such substances are not doing so in the interest of public safety.
The substance mentioned in Saturday's article "Potlike products get state's attention" may, in fact, be dangerous, but real marijuana and the herb salvia divinorum are much less dangerous.
Except during the operation of vehicles and machinery, the drugs pose less threat than legally purchased alcohol. They also pose less long-term negative health threats than legally purchased tobacco.
So why is it legal to get drunk, but not stoned? Taxes. The same reason it's illegal to produce moonshine. Legislators are not against people being intoxicated, as long as it's state-sponsored intoxication.
If legislators want dangerous marijuana-like substances off the street, they need to follow the lead of other states and nations that have legalized marijuana and have found ways to regulate and tax it.
School programs around the state are being cut and people are being poisoned by legal drug alternatives. Both issues could be solved with the legalization of marijuana.
