Vote American
I am deeply concerned about our wonderful America. We are facing the most critical election since the Civil War. After some hundred years, we have arrived at a major fork in the road.
This is a time in our lives when we must have the courage to vote American, which is a significant cut above either Democrat or Republican. We must decide if we are going to have an America where "We the People" are in charge, or if we are going to turn it over to a relatively small group of self-proclaimed elite who think they can run our lives better than we can ourselves.
These so-called "elite" turn their backs on many of our founding principles established by James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and others — principles that have served us so well for over 200 years.
I shudder when I think we just might fail to vote for the preservation of the great America we have known.
W. DAVID STEDMAN
Winston-Salem
Impact of the message
I am a gay man and I want the same rights that others have that ensure they cannot be discriminated against because of their skin color, their religious beliefs, or — gasp — whom they love. I also am a scientist and know that being gay or lesbian is as natural as being left-handed. It is who some of us happen to be.
What the pro-amendment campaign neglected to recognize is the impact that their messages send to young people. Gay and lesbian youth have high suicide rates. This isn't because being gay is hard; rather, these youth must endure a context that makes their lives difficult. Passage of this amendment sent a negative message to young people and makes life harder for them.
Those who voted for the amendment also did not do what is right for people like me, who pull their weight, pay their taxes and want to live their lives just like their neighbors. Instead, they chose to hurt those they know, like and love, including coworkers, friends and family members.
What is sadder, though, is this amendment was not about taking away my right to marry a man; it was about some North Carolinians saying "you are so not equal that we want to reinforce it with a constitutional amendment." The North Carolinians who voted for the amendment already had what they wanted; gay marriage wasn't legal before the amendment. Now many more North Carolinians, not just those who are gay and lesbian, will pay the price.
SCOTT D. RHODES
Winston-Salem
Being aware
I have just returned from Florida, where the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman travesty made front-page headline news day after day, and week after week. The news media could not seem to get enough of it, even when there was really not any "new" news.
In North Carolina, carrying guns when you are out walking appears to be legal. "Protecting your home" by using them also seems to be legal. In reality, what a disaster could develop from that.
Just being alert and reporting unusual activities is a great deal more logical; being aware of who lives in the neighborhood and what kind of a car they drive; knowing who is frequently out of town or on vacation; noting what happens when a house or car alarm continuously sounds. Are they just ignored or should they be reported? Are strangers wandering around with no seeming purpose?
It is much better to report unusual activities to 911 than to try to confront them ourselves, particularly with guns. As the words in a popular song say, "Leave your guns at home."
WILLIAM B. COVINGTON
Winston-Salem
Mr. Covington:
ReplyDeleteI wish life were as simple as you make it out to be. You see, many of us want to dump our problems off on somebody else if we can. It appears to be a natural born instinct for many people. Picking up the phone and dialing 911 may seem like the easy, and the right solution to all our crime related problems. But what some people seem to forget, is that's precisely what George Zimmerman did in the beginning. Look at where he's at now?
Some people may say if he didn't have that 'stupid' gun, he would be in the fix he is in today. Again, but what people fail to realize, is that dear old George could also be dead from having his head cracked open on that sidewalk that Martin was banging his head on.
Yes Bill, life is so fluid and complicated that most of us do not know what the next moment will bring, much less the next day. So if you want to rely on 911 to save your life in an emergency or other circumstance, do so at your own peril. Don't try to force your stupidity on the rest of us. Pleeeeeeeease!
BTW OT -- I tried Tate's the other night. My martini (Sapphire w/ a lime twist) was very good, if a little heavy on the vermouth. But I like 'em bone dry, so I can't blame the bartender.
ReplyDeleteHa, ha...you just want the bartender to look at the vermouth bottle but not pick it up...me too.
DeleteI always say "Extra, extra extra dry." Usually works.
There have been a number of maps published showing the outcome of the vote on Amendment One, but none of them show the widely varying percentages, ranging from 89% for in Robeson County to 79% against in Orange County. two grad students at UNC-Charlotte have remedied that. There are several interesting maps on their site, but the yellow one near the bottom shows how wide the margin was in each county.
ReplyDeleteAmendment One Map
11 counties won the redneck award: Monroe, McDowell, Rutherford, Yancey, Alexander, Columbus, Bladen, Robeson, Sampson, Terrell and Chowan.
Interestingly enough, these same counties have been hotbeds of Ku Klux Klan activity since Reconstruction. Once a bigot, always a bigot.
It seems to me that gay activists possess the same type hatred that the Klan possessed many years ago. I'm not sure they're not the bigger bigots in this equation.
DeleteLeftover from yesterday:
ReplyDeleteOT, I accept your stats re visitors to the WH, but not that I said that capo Trumka said he spoke with the WH 3X/week, not visited, so whether he is braggin' remains to be seen. The fact is that what unions want, they pretty much get from this WH. As for the SEIU visits, it was reported by other than the principals that the SEIU prez and treasurer made more than 60 visits in 2009.
Stab, California is 16 billion in debt, mainly because of union leaders' constant extortion. Wisconsin is in the same boat. That's why union people are trying to recall Gov. Scott Walker in that state. Unions don't think governmental teats ever run dry.
DeleteUnions are ruinous to our economy.
I am well familiar with CA's budget problems indeed caused in part by ruinous contracts "negotiated" between public employee unions and the pols that the unions put in office. Those pols also spent with a complete lack of reality on other things besides union contract. Their presence in office is a recommendation for banning union dues from politics.
DeleteBetween Inauguration Day and February 23, 2011,a period of 25 months, Stern visited the White House 53 times.
ReplyDeleteThen there were the visits by SEIU treasurer Anna Berger. Seems like a lot of access to me.
DeleteJeez, this is hard.
DeleteI committed a typo. The actual number of visits over a two year period was 58, 21 by Stern and 37 by Burger. Most of hers were in her role on an advisory board which had to do with unemployment. None were with the POTUS.
Anyone who has visited the White House on anything other than a public tour knows that the scene backstage is chaotic, much like Times Square on New Years Eve.
I have been there 3 times, twice representing my university and once on a private appointment with a cousin who worked there. Never even saw the POTUS (Ford, Reagan, Clinton). But I did lobby my cousin to have lunch with me, which she accepted. No telling what horrific gains that lunch made for the demon labor unions, even though our lunch conversation was mostly about her mother.
So far, the Obama administration has released records of 1.9 million visits through the end of 2011. Between them, Stern and Burger made up 0.00003% of all White House visits, statistically irrelevant.
To make the top ten, you would have to have well over 100 visits. No labor leaders are in that category. Quite a few business leaders are, including one IBM executive with 151 visits.
Given IBM's past association with the NAZIs (National Socialist Workers Party...note the "Socialist" part) and their more recent associations with Jihadist states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Jordan, I suspect that we are only weeks away from a handover of the US government to a New World Order of socialist Muslim affiliation.
Either that, or I'm just a little paranoid.
Then there was the appointment of the SEIU mouthpiece Becker to the NLRB, and that board's lawsuit against Boeing on behalf of the IAM at our expense. Some visits at the WH count for more than others.
DeleteMost of us know that the WS Journal covered up the race of perpetrators of a crimes in the Winston Salem area for over 20 years. Why? Because it was politically correct to do so.
ReplyDeleteThat type of PC cover-up is still alive and well it seems. If you read between the lines of many crime articles, it's clear that many homosexuals are engaged in violent crimes all over America on a daily basis. The mainstream, however, just fails to factually and accurately report it.
Here's a good example if you want to take a read.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57437103-504083/former-texas-priest-guilty-of-hiring-hit-man-to-plot-murder-of-sex-accuser/?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.5
Bucky, I was with you on public employee unions, but you lose me with this crime angle. Far and away, most crime perpetrators are heterosexual males. There is no gay crime wave.
DeleteAgreed....., it's been around for a long time. We just never heard about it. Sadly, those types of crimes are and were being written about in such a PC manner that one hardly noticed them. Even to this day, those crimes are being written about so as not to ALARM the general public to its prevalence.
DeleteIt has taken the heinous crimes of Sandusky and Catholic priets to raise the awareness of the general public to these hideous, homosexual, and to frequent crimes.
As always, stupid is as stupid does.
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority (we're talking over 90%) of sex crimes committed against children are heterosexual crimes carried out by white Anglo-Saxon protestant males against white Anglo-Saxon protestant females...in most cases by fathers, brothers, uncles or family "friends".
Since these crimes, as often as not committed by fundamentalist christians, are so common, they tend to be underreported. They are not really news.
On the other hand, since pederasty crimes are so uncommon, they have always been reported, going back for several hundred years now.
Only a fool who is out of touch with reality would think otherwise.