Letters for January 8, 2009

More money
Re “Choose your illusion” (Feature story, Dec. 31):

This writer is fantastic, very good sense of humor. I read a lot on the internet. I am a Canadian, living in Portugal for 30 years and rarely read something this entertaining. Give this guy a raise!

Ann Lancaster
Algarve, Portugal

No nukes
Israel was taught well by our U.S. terrorist Axis of Evil: Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, etc. Israel’s military training and weapons of mass destruction have cost us taxpayers more than $159 billion in aid since 1949. Now Israel is a major threat to its neighbors with its nuclear arsenal of at least 200 bombs. Let us hope that Israel will not decide to nuke Iran!

Walden Joura
Reno

Hydrogen isn’t green
Re “Top ranking energy options” (Greenspace, Dec. 24):

It is interesting that Stanford University is pro-electric with cars, hydrogen and batteries. It brings to mind how much funding they probably receive from such industries. It actually takes more energy to make hydrogen than it outputs, much more than oil even. That means it’s even less green than current means of energy. What do you do with the battery when it needs to be replaced? Why were things like algae and biodiesel not mentioned in the article?

Biodiesel uses existing technology, diesel engines, to retrofit upon an old idea. Improving the wheel is less expensive than reinventing the wheel.

Emily Edmonds
Reno

News blackout
I don’t know about other readers, but just one picture in our media of civilian victims in Gaza would be a huge buzzkill to my weekly pilgrimage to the closest mega-mall.

Thank God I’m shielded from such images. Unless I do a search online of news sources outside the United States—as in, the rest of the planet.

Why, it might make the carnage as tragic as if it is really happening, and who wants to grasp that? Excuse me. I’m grasping my credit card, and I saw that marked-down HDTV first.

Israel seems to have taken a page from the Bush “Create More Terrorists” Doctrine. Brilliant. We Americans would understand that if there were any images of dead families published in the U.S. press.

That’s not gonna happen: Israel does no wrong. Ever.

It’s like the United States, except it’s Jewish. Someone actually said that to me. That was her appalling grasp on reality and context.

Violence never solves anything; it hasn’t yet and never will. It only begets itself, this perverse symbiosis. There are no good guys or bad guys in the Middle East. There is only religious bigotry and prejudice.

And really stupid people, which seems to be a worldwide epidemic.

Instead of teaching peace, essentially Israel resorts to total war on a refugee camp, which of course is fostering injustice and resentment. Israel’s defense is leveling Gaza and everyone in it—most of whom can’t leave. So another slaughter commences.

But one wouldn’t know that by U.S. news content. The lead story trumpets falling prices to get even more stuff no one needs.

It’s too bad Israel is incapable of taking some moral ground, though, and instead kills all these people. Combatants are one thing; noncombatants, no.

For all their preachy crap, our major ally is acting no better than Hamas.

Then again, even within view of an Obama admistration, no better than the United States.

But brass tacks, I really want to get that snappy espresso maker.

Craig Ayres-Sevier
Reno

Are you Sirius?
Re “Dog day afternoon” (Film, Dec. 31):

I figured any guy with half a ball would have panned Marley & Me as sentimental twaddle and ridiculed it as yet another moronic dog item in a nation already smothered by a glut of dog crap. But I was wrong. Apparently, Bob Grimm adored this movie, thereby proving he is a card-carrying member of the dog-worshipping cult.

Larry Taylor
Reno

Deep something
Re “Nowhere to go but up” (Know You’re Right, Dec. 31):

Wow! We here in Reno are truly blessed to have someone like Amanda Williams to share her depth of understanding on a weekly basis. Most intelligent political discourse stems from a difference of opinion or priority, but is coupled with a respect for those with whom you disagree. Not Ms. Williams, though; she rises above that. If you fall on the other side of the political fence from her, you are suffering from “blindness.” Surely anyone who voted Obama did not do so from an educated, informed point of view that differed from hers. It was “blindness” to the issues, “blindness” to the astounding capabilities of John McCain and “blindness” to the impressive resume of Sarah Palin.

We are lucky to have a visionary with greater insight and understanding than such mediocre minds as those possessed by Colin Powell, Warren Buffet, and the editorial staffs of such rags as Newsweek and Time. For the likes of conservative Fareed Zakaria to support Barack Obama just shows that his understanding pales in comparison to that of Ms. Williams. How dare he host world leaders on CNN on a weekly basis and write a weekly column in Newsweek, “blind” as he is!

Referring to Time honoring Obama as the Person of the Year, Ms. Williams smartly points out that the president-elect has yet to solve all of our nation’s problems. The fact that he has not pre-inauguration fixed everything shows how wrong voters were.

The financial crises brought on largely by the policies of the past eight years should have been solved by now, and not by the current administration, but by the man who will take office in two weeks. It takes a truly special mind to realize this. Her mastery of history reminds her that the Great Depression was over in December 1932, and that Reagan had won the Cold War in late November 1980, apparently.

Yes, to be Person of the Year should entail some sort of accomplishment, and nothing trivial like being the first African-American elected to the most powerful office in the free world. Transcending a long-standing institutional racial bias should count for nothing.

Don’t even get me started on how embarrassed I feel for having a first lady who could only manage to climb out of the ranks of the underprivileged to an Ivy League law degree! Hardly as impressive as writing a half-page editorial in a free newspaper that blindly lobs unsupported and poorly worded insults: “He got elected; he didn’t do the work for that.” Huh?

My only hope for Ms. Williams is that she continue honing her formidable skills, maybe by taking a second grade social studies class, and repeatedly share her razor-sharp political acumen with us poor ignorant asses until she is snatched up by a high-level think tank of some sort.

Greg Morrison
Reno