Letters for March 25, 2010

Women at work

Re “All her fault” (Letters to the editor, March 18):

John Reese stated at the end of his letter that all wives should not work for anyone but their husbands.

Excuse me? Where does Reese get off degrading our hard-working women? That dude needs to realize that we don’t live in the ’50s anymore! And the Bible quote he referenced about the wife being submissive or inferior to the husband is just plain hogwash, sexist, and without merit. Apparently, Reese is so disgruntled that he can’t even seem to hold down a job, much less a marriage—hypocrite!

If Reese had any clue whatsoever, he would understand that with the fragile economy that the United States faces, not many families can afford to live solely on the husband’s income since the unemployment rate continues to rise. He also fails to grasp the concept of how beneficial and smart women really are in today’s workforce. Some of them are even the great inventors of our time.

It’s too bad that Reese refuses to have an open mind and would rather consider all women inferior to men, no matter what! It’s obvious that Reese needs to shut the hell up and get a real life—not being such a couch potato, not getting so drunk all the time, and not degrading the beautiful, smart women in our society!

Joshua A. Dealy
via email

Where’s my money?

I am tired of not being heard and tired of being lied to, and I am tired of my income being used to support things I do not believe in. This health-care bill will mandate me to purchase insurance, which will pay for others who can’t afford it. Me, who can barely afford to buy groceries.

If I were spending more money than I had and decided to spend someone else’s money in order to take care of my deficit, I would be considered a criminal. Why is the government any different?

This health-care bill is not going to help with the deficit. There are many things that are not being reflected in the monetary costs: payments to doctors for Medicare treatments, for example, and nothing is being addressed about what has caused the costs of health care to skyrocket to begin with.

Pretty soon, it will make more sense to not work, and let others take care of me. Then what will happen? No one will be productive, and there will be no one to take care of those who aren’t producing. We will become a country of impoverished idiots because we have cut education to the point where it ceases to exist except for the few who can still afford to pay for it. We will produce nothing because everything would have long since been produced in China, leaving us as a nation barely able to take care of ourselves, and we will no longer need a constitution because we will be too dumb to comprehend it and of course someone else will tell us what to do anyway.

We need solutions. The so-called solutions being offered now are offensive and anyone paying attention knows it. The problem is we are not being listened to. My representatives have long since stopped listening to me.

We can’t continue spending. We can’t afford it. There is no money. We must cut military and subsidies and put some of the money back into our country, using the rest as a way to bring down the deficit. We are crumbling from within. We must begin now to rebuild America, now before it is too late.

Dawn Overbay
Reno

Bitter Kool-Aid

Re “A little Kool-Aid to quench the thirst?” (Reviled & Revered, March 11):

There’s nothing to top a bitter, narrow-minded conservative.

Once, in my early adulthood, my dad’s best friend—a man who had bounced me on his knee—called me a “fucking knee-jerk liberal.” I was shocked and hurt, but also educated. It was my first experience with the bitterness, the narrow-mindedness, and the outright seething, hateful passion that conservatives are capable of.

With his “jackass Democrats” epithet, John Barrette reveals this unevolved, tribal, conservative mentality. Further, by not adding an equally damning adjective to GOP—say, “pocket-lining” or “sheep-like” or, to use his style, “asshole”—Barrette reveals his bias.

Barrette’s bias is further illustrated by the side-note guiding us to a website where we can learn about “the hypocrisy and lies of Democrats.” Is Barrette’s interest in having us be aware of all hypocrisy and lies, or just those that of the Democrats, thereby serving the Greedy Ol’ Party? That answer seems obvious.

When I moved to Reno and became a RN&R reader, I was somewhat surprised that such a prominent place in the paper is given to just such a seething, bitter conservative. I see the value in it now: It exposes the rest of us to just what a force of nature they are.

Hopefully, we are compelled to band together and protect ourselves as we would from any other destructive force of nature.

Shouldn’t we have an opposing voice? A “Coombs” to Barrette’s “Hannity”? Scratch that. Not a wimpy “Coombs.” An “Al Franken” with teeth. Where do I apply?

John Bianchi
via email

Jobs before health care

Where are the jobs? Health care is not an entitlement. One has to wonder if the jobs creation measures were put on hold to gain support for socialized health care so those folks out of work who have lost their coverage will support the liberal legislation. I submit that we do not rush through a bill that will lead us to Armageddon, but put people back to work so they can afford insurance. Forcing core Americans away from hard work ethics and into a lifestyle of Californication is sure to lead to civil unrest.

Mike Arp
Reno

American first

Re “GOP candidates: Bring waste to Nevada” (News, March 11):

Mine is an unpopular position, but please hear me out. We are all simultaneously citizens of various political entities: city, county, state and nation. We are surrounded by fellow citizens at each level with whom we have common interests. All are our brothers and sisters and our loyalty to political entities is really—or should be—loyalty to those who these organizations are supposed to represent. We are all citizens or residents of the United States of America, and few among us do not value our citizenship or the privilege of living here. When the common interest of the whole conflicts with the interest of a smaller part, which should prevail? I ask this because across America in locations mostly close to rivers and lakes huge amounts of toxic nuclear waste are currently housed in appallingly dangerous facilities. Our fellow citizens in other parts of this country are at great risk.

This is a national problem, and we are citizens of our nation. We need to look beyond our own narrow fears and interests. Instead, it seems those who would use fear to alarm the public and advance their careers and agendas have held sway in this debate. These tactics have been with mankind since the dawn of time and have seldom, if ever, benefited the populace.

While entombing the waste in a salt dome that has been geologically stable for 100 million years would probably be better, time is running out. The likelihood of a terrible accident at one of the many “temporary” storage facilities across America grows daily. This must be prevented!

Yucca Mountain, while not the best alternative that could have been chosen is the best alternative to hopefully prevent the disaster that will affect our fellow Americans in other parts of our great country.

I ask, is being a Nevadan more important than being an American?

Doug Uhrig
Reno