Letters for November 24, 2005

Poop slinging
Re “The real obscenity is the rich and poor divide” (Letters, Nov. 10):

You are probably a liberal if you distort facts that are available to anyone who can use a search engine.

At www.taxfoundation.org, you will find that while the top 50 percent of taxpayers pay 94 percent of all taxes, as stated by Jim Romaggi, you will also find that the top 10 percent pay 66 percent, and the top 25 percent pay 84 percent. For those who can’t do the math, that means the true “middle class” pays about 10 percent of all taxes.

In a fair system, the bottom 50 percent shouldn’t pay much, and they don’t. If the Right Hook is, as Mr. Romaggi believes, “the proverbial turd in the RN&R punchbowl,” then that can only be in comparison to the watery flood of diarrhea that is the View from the Fray. Deidre Pike characterizes Valerie Plame as “a patriot, a front-line soldier in the War on Terror,” when in fact, she and her husband pulled an inside job to try and discredit the Bush administration’s pre-war intelligence (the same intelligence available to back-peddling Democrats like Harry “Pinky” Reid) that even the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said was “BS.”

Plame was “outed” by her own husband who proudly introduced her as his “CIA wife” at Washington parties, and not by Libby, as was recently confirmed by the Washington Post. Of course, liberals won’t let facts get in the way of their arguments. The Right Hook is one of the good reasons for reading the RN&R, in addition to local entertainment news and movie reviews, but I’ll take Mike Lafferty’s “firm” observations over the loose “offerings” of Deidre Pike any day.

Matt Bailey
via e-mail

Pork farting?
Re “You must be conservative” (Right Hook, Nov. 17):

I opened the paper thinking about the times of politics these days and was surprised to find the work of Mike Lafferty in publication. This pork-farting Rush Limbaugh wannabe seems to think that all it takes to be a political columnist is a low I.Q. and a high cholesterol count. Conservative used to stand for Fiscal Conservative, but over the years a new conservative has appeared, one that does not seem to have any real political knowledge and lacks what is generally known as a conscience. Cronyism and polarizing statements take priority over all else for this new political creature known as the Idiot Conservative.

You know you are an Idiot Conservative when:

• You think federal indictment is just another day at the office.

• You think the Geneva Convention is for “sissies.”

• You think Social Security is another name for Federal Petty Cash.

• You think touting the only black conservative figureheads as role models isn’t racist.

• You think fossil fuels are good for the environment.

• You think those folks in the New Orleans Super Dome were just a bunch of whiners.

• You think that evolution and global arming are crazy liberal theories.

• You suffer from amnesia at the mention of WMDs.

• You think renaming french fries “freedom fries” was a good use of a congressional session.

In a time when WMDs stand more for “Where’s My Democracy?” than “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” the people deserve a political column that has more substance than a stolen Jeff Foxworthy theme.

Misha LeVee
Reno

Supporting hatred
Re “Benchmark” (News, Nov. 3):

To commemorate the 2,000 American deaths in Iraq, you gathered and sang ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ We did, from 1993 to 2001, when Al Qaeda went from Somalia to the East Coast of America. While Saddam Hussein was violating 17 U.N. resolutions and acting like he was working on his stockpile of WMDs.

To the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual community protesting the “discriminatory” practices of the military, I believe that you yourselves are also discriminatory in that you exclude the S&M crowd and those into bestiality.

What’s really scary are those who think we shouldn’t have gone to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan because “they didn’t attack us.”

Finally, please explain how opposing recruiters on campus is ‘Supporting the Troops.’

Bill Thibault
Sparks

Bunch of hooey
Re “Age of Aquariums” (Editor’s note, Nov. 17):

How can evolutionists trust anything their brain thinks, since it was made by the same source that made their allegedly shoddy “nose drains into the lungs” arrangement? Evolutionists appear so intellectually sure of themselves when pointing out the human body’s “flaws,” but they must believe their own brain is pretty darned well-designed if they think they’re right. Or should creationists think the evolutionist’s brain is as flawed as the rest of the body? The evolutionists can’t have it both ways. Either the entire human body is a piece of junk, or it’s so amazing, we should be marveling at all the stuff it does every second of our lives. I choose the latter.

Darin Reed
Reno