Letters for December 23, 2004

Abort the debate
Re “The abortion debate,” (RN&R, Editor’s note, Nov. 18):

In connection with the recent presidential election, D. Brian Burghart posed the question to his readers, “What if you truly believe that human life begins at conception; what would you do to prevent the murder of children?”

It has been my experience that those who do hold that opinion, to the extent that it is their belief, are positive that it is God’s opinion, not their own. To prove their point, they will quote chapter and verse from the Bible.

I happen to be Christian, born and bred. As such, I respect the deep-seated sincerity of Christian fundamentalists. But I respectfully disagree.

It is writ in the sands of time, and life demonstrates again and again, that Creation ingrained humankind with a curiosity and a capacity for reason which has brought us fire, light, surgery, pasteurization, chemotherapy: many life-self-sustaining health sciences as well as other technologies, to date.

Thus, it seems that many individual decisions in life have always been and must necessarily remain just that: individual decisions.

The recent U.S. election, “Decision 2004,” seems to be a graphic demonstration of the fact that religion and governance must never marry in these United States. Religion and governance must exist like a roof and a floor, separated as well as held together by the walls, which define the structure which is our extraordinary government.

In other words, the question shouldn’t have any connection with our national election, but, this time, it did.

name withheld
Reno

Demand exit polls
Ed Gillespie, RNC Chairman and former Enron lobbyist, has called for the abolition of exit polling, and well he should; exit polls are the only reliable way to determine that election fraud has occurred.

In 2000, after the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount at Bush’s request, various newspapers continued the recount at their own expense and determined that, in fact, Gore had won.

In 2002, there was another mysterious overnight swing in favor of the Republican candidates, and in 2004 it happened again. Watch for the results of the revote in the Ukraine the day after Christmas.

If you believe that the exit polls were a more accurate representation of how we voted, sign the petition at thepen.us, and pass it on.

Chuck Garner
Doyle, Calif.

Hook generalizes
Re “Where’s the apocalypse?” (RN&R, Right hook, Nov. 18):

Mike Lafferty takes your paper to the edge of an aspect of the rap culture that befits him—the “your mama” slamming that is used to “dis” another person. For example, he makes these assertions about how liberals are running around in SUVs. Yet many of the liberals I know are walking, riding bicycles, using public transit, or driving fuel-efficient vehicles. It is more likely that the power-craving conservatives drive the large, threatening vehicles. Then he rants about how the Democrats had movie and recording stars behind them. This might well prove that Britney and Arnie aren’t really stars after all. But let me not “your mama” Arnie; I realize that the conservatives are starved for yet another B-rated actor as president.

Pretty ballsy of Lafferty to “your mama” the Ambersons when all they did was accept something at face value—that someone would forward their voter-registration papers. Much like when I recently walked precincts for a Republican. He, too, was going to assist people with voter registration. But he would have completed the task for anyone. Lafferty likes to throw numbers around like they mean something. He is right. They do. If Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, that means 56 percent were not fooled. Eleven percent of the African American vote? Wow, even my math shows that the mandate of that group is “oust the louse.”

Ben Africa
via e-mail

Yucca isn’t yucky
This month I took the Yucca Mountain tour. I was amazed by the data after touring the site, listening to explanations and hearing questions answered. I later read that in the United States during the past 30 years, more than 2,700 shipments covering 1.6 million miles have been made safely. I was surprised to learn that our wastes will be converted to solid form and can never leak, can’t explode, aren’t flammable, and it’s physically impossible to make them explode in a chain reaction.

On the tour, I learned that the access tunnels won’t be permanently sealed but blocked with the rock taken out when constructing them. The durable packages of spent fuel assemblies will be stored in side tunnels, which can be accessed if required.

What I learned made me feel better. I am disturbed that an American president is continually called a liar for proceeding with Yucca upon the advice of conventional scientists.

A. H. Wirtz
Boulder City