Letters for January 26, 2012

Misfire

Re “Aim for the Stars” (Letters to the Editor, Jan. 19):

William Ewart, please Google “Edwardo Sencion” or “IHOP shooting,” and you may be able to figure out why Bruce Van Dyke is not a fan of AK-47s and the like.

Steve Lambert
Sparks

Editor’s note: An illegally altered AK-47 was used in the IHOP to kill four people and wound seven others.

Revolting tyranny

Re “Welcome to the machine” (Feature story, Jan. 19):

Here is how it works. We buy things from China that we don’t need, they take the money and loan it back to us to pay for our entitlements and pork-barrel programs. It’s a vicious circle that is very dangerous since the money we borrow is not all going to increasing our GNP. For the first time in history, our debt exceeds our production. China heavily taxes our goods going into their country, and we don’t tax theirs coming into ours. We are a joke in China. But yet, looking back in history, Communism has never worked. Better for the people? Let’s look at China’s history. Mao Zedong in 1958 moved farming from family farms to large government operations. From 1958 to 1962, millions died of starvation before they abandoned the experiment. Some 45 million people died of hunger or were killed for revolting under Zedong’s rule, more than Hitler and Stalin combined. Government is not the solution, it’s the problem. If you are truly a compassionate person and want to help the poor, asking government to get more involved is not the answer. Tyrannical leaders have always been socialist, never has a capitalistic leader committed atrocity as did Mao Zedong, Hitler or Stalin. Socialism breeds tyranny.

Mike Arp
Reno

Good question

Has anyone noticed that all of the construction on the northbound lanes of U.S. 395 and I-580 from Moana Lane to I-80 is finished and has been for a couple of months? All of the traffic cones are gone, all of the lines are painted, all of the construction equipment and workers are gone. Checking the NDOT website, it is not listed as a construction zone. But it is still posted as a 55 mph construction zone. Why?

Tony Bertucci
Reno

Van Dyke for County Commission

Re “The BVD platform” (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Jan. 12):

I totally agree with the BVD platform. I long for a candidate with that kind of message. Why are there labels like R and D on every issue? Just because one side is for a solution, why is the other side always against it? Meanwhile, nothing gets accomplished. I just don’t think our uneducated, media-brainwashed society realizes how royally we are getting screwed so we aren’t getting pissed off. And the D’s and R’s like it that way.

Matt Larsen
Reno

Fight the power

Re “Welcome to the machine” (Feature story, Jan. 19):

I realize that the mere use of the word “revolution” would likely put me up for Guantanamo Bay. But let’s get real, what besides technological advances makes us (the privileged) any different in our current views on hunger and world suffering from Marie Antoinette’s view, “Let them eat cake,” of centuries past? The same altruistic 1 percent is still fighting to end hunger and homelessness globally. But we as a group of inhabitants have not become more civilized, nothing has changed in hundreds of years. For the most part, mankind as a species is scraping the bottom.

How can we justify that we came to America seeking our own religious freedom only to end up slaughtering its indigenous people and bloodying the land? How can we justify believing that we knew more than the people who had lived here for hundreds of years before us? Refuting their advice on how to survive a winter we didn’t believe was coming, we lost over 90 percent of the original settlers that first winter. The books say through “hardship.” So, they sent more of those same close-minded people over. people who punished their own for holding different religious beliefs than they did! Sound familiar?

Now we are doing it on a greater scale and backed by military weaponry. Low and behold, we did the same thing hundreds of years ago. Beating down with our weapons the funny looking people who we told we meant no harm. That, of course, was just before we turned on them, killing the greater portion of their people and ultimately robbing them of what was their birthright. Then we topped off the whole massacre by falsifying the accounts of it in our history books, passing it along as truth and teaching the lies to our own children!

It’s no different now! All the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy-a-town-square protesters are people who know something is wrong but don’t know what to do about it. So, they allow themselves to be bundled into a mild sounding group that really says nothing because they are afraid of what has become Big Brother! The majority of us keep track of it all by TV, Twitter, Facebook, treasured blogs. I am not the one who wrote “when good people stand silently by, evil predominates,” however I know it to be true.

I don’t care what your color is. I don’t care what God you pray to, or for that matter if you pray at all! I care that when I look into someone’s eyes I see a real person in there, not that I’m looking into cold and unfeeling shark’s eyes. I care that when I see someone hungry, they are fed. If they are cold blankets are shared with them. When children cry out at night someone should be there to console them! I care that thinking people band together and speak out, voicing their true feelings.

I don’t have all the answers to anything. But I do know where this direction is taking us all and that is somewhere no human wants to go!

There is only one solution. We the people must band together to fight for Humanity.

We must all choose Humanity! (Not to be confused with “Choose humans,” which is a very different category).

Jerry Lee Wade
Reno

I bop, you bop, she bop

Re “The one-fisted tango” (Ask a Mexican, Dec. 29):

It is to be noted that Gustavo did not quote from the Holy Bible any scripture of the alleged sinful nature of masturbation.

The Catholic and Protestant communities would do well to remember 1st Samuel 1:2-8, which in part states, “And he had two wives; … but (one of them) had no children. … But unto (her) he gave a worthy portion; for he loved Hannah: but the Lord had shut up her womb. … Then said Elkanah her husband to her … am not I better to thee than 10 sons?”

Also of interest may be Genesis 13:10.

Pleasure. The root of existence. Mexicans and Americans and just about everybody would do well to remember, in the case of the one-fisted tango, the virtues of loyalty and moderation, two of the seven heavenly virtues (www.deadlysins.com) which without, we would not exist at all.

Kristin Smith
Via email

Editor’s note: Genesis 13:10 says, “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.” Not quite sure what this has to do with impure acts, but it sure inspires the desire to go home and turn on the internet. And while nobody here has ever comest into Zoar, we’re sure she or he is nice.

Correction

Re “Anti-birth control petition filed” (Upfront, Jan. 19):

We reported that the proposed “Prenatal personhood” initiative petition, in seeking to outlaw abortion, provides exceptions for rape or incest.

In fact, it does not make such exceptions. Section 3e of the petition reads, “No prenatal person shall be killed because he or she was conceived in rape or incest.”