Mickey for president
Friday, August 29, 2008 1:30 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleAug. 29 Letters to the Editor
Mickey for president
In his Aug. 27 letter, Dwight Dunn urged everyone to write in Hillary Clinton’s name on their presidential ballots. While I acknowledge his disgruntlement with the two major party candidates, Dunn might as well write in “Mickey Mouse” on his ballot because it will accomplish the same thing ... absolutely nothing.
While I defend Dunn’s right to vote for whomever he pleases, I believe it is irresponsible to waste a vote on a “candidate” with no possibility of winning. This is the most significant presidential election in many years, and the only way that we can ensure that the country begins to head in a new direction is to vote for a candidate with a realistic chance of winning. In my book, that candidate is either Barack Obama or John McCain (aka “Bush Lite”). (Oops, is my party affiliation showing?)
Edward Therrien
Castle Rock
Dorn for SPI post
Terry Bergeson, Superintendent of Public Instruction, has expressed shock and sadness over the low WASL scores OSPI has just released. Scores are declining for some grades.
Bergeson said, “It isn’t a problem with the test.” She promises that her office has examined it. In the next breath she said, “Something is happening with the kids.”
If we back up and review the past 12 years, we’ll find Bergeson has blamed the federal government, the teachers, the parents, the former governor ... and now she’s hit an all-time low: blaming the children. When will the insanity end? Vote Randy Dorn for superintendent.
Shawna Anelon
Kelso
Change in America
You can talk change all you want and blow more smoke than an old steam engine, but until some fundamental changes are made in our system, change will just be lip service.
First, our laws are too complicated for the lay person to understand since they are written by lawyers. If the explanations of laws by the authors are simple, just make those the laws or the government should give us all legal training.
Old men cannot make fundamental changes in their own thinking let alone our government. They are guided by their old experiences, old training and old ways. If you have hit the mandatory retirement age, you are no longer able to run for public office, banned, period. Go put your teeth back in and take grandma to dinner. You are out of touch with the majority of Americans and you think you can change America?
Lastly, let’s have a law that you must be either side of the median income and age of the average American — just for kicks say, $25,000 and 10 years for a start — to run for public office. Now there’s real change in a couple of ways.
Bill White
Kalama
VFW post honors victims of 9/11
This letter is in response to a letter that a gentleman wrote about not honoring the people of 9/11 here in our area.
I am a member of the Cowlitz Valley Ladies Auxiliary, VFW Post 1045, here in Longview and we have honored the POW/MIA and 9/11 each year.
We have a ceremony at our VFW Hall each September with prayers and speeches, and then we release black-and-white balloons for the POW/MIA. Each year we add a red balloon, then we release them and watch all of them go high into the sky.
It’s really a special thing when people go by while we let the balloons go by our flagpole and cars go by honking and waving at us.
This year we will be doing it again and releasing seven red balloons, along with the black-and-white ones.
And I know other groups also honor 9/11 victims, but it’s just isn’t all put in the papers every time. So people should not say no one honors victims of different tragedies and other things.
Our Post and Auxiliary honors all we can that we know, and we help out as much as we can.
Jeannette Dreier-Johnson, Auxiliary Secretary
Longview
Celebrate city’s 85th anniversary
The Longview ‘23 Club is celebrating Longview’s 85th anniversary in the form of a no-host dinner meeting Oct. 6, with socializing at 5 p.m. and dinner at 6:30 p.m.
The Longview ‘23 Club is a social organization dedicated to perpetuating the memory and maintaining the unique history and archives of those who planned and labored to create, develop, build and grow Longview into the beautiful community it is today.
There are two types of Longview ‘23 Club members: 1) Lineal descendants and the spouses and family members of people who were here in 1923, and 2) Honorary members — those people who share our love for Longview and its beauty and history and support the above stated goals who are more recent to the community than 1923. Both types of members are important and are welcome.
The dues are reasonable at $2 per year for a single person or $4 per year for a family. If you are a descendant or someone who loves Longview and its beauty and history, the Longview ‘23 Club invites you to mail your contact information to Longview ‘23 Club, P.O. Box 934, Longview, WA 98632. We hope you will join us in celebrating and maintaining our unique heritage.
Kaye Clinch, Longview ‘23 Club President
Longview
Choose hope
Initiative 1000 would further establish suicide in the world as an accepted social norm for resolving pain and disability, both physical and psychological. Courts in time would inevitably extend this new “right” to others demanding it. The effect on society would be more frequent recourse to killing and fewer resources committed to the relief of underlying causes. We are being asked as a society to succumb to our toxic environment and choose death over life, and death nullifies all future choices.
We all have choices to make, both as individuals and as a community. What kind of a society do we want to live in? The unintended social consequences of I-1000 may well rival those of the sexual permissiveness and easy divorce which have caused so much pain and suffering for those who bear the burden of other people’s destructive choices.
Choose hope over despair. Vote no on toxic I-1000.
Dan Duringer
Washougal
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