Compromise
After this hard-fought and often bitter political campaign, I hope that we can come together as a united country so that the word “compromise” will be used again by our political representatives in Washington. That will only happen if the unreasonable and unwarranted hatred toward our president is put aside.
President Obama has reached out again to the Republican/tea-party leaders in hopes of stopping the U.S. from “going over the fiscal cliff,” which will happen if the two sides do not come together. This would be devastating to our country's standing in the world and devastating to our economy and to all Americans. The stock market will surely tumble. If the Republicans stick to the Grover Norquist pledge of no increase in taxes, an increase in taxes will happen anyway. Yes, all Americans will pay higher taxes.
It is time to stop listening to the hatred spewed by Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and their cronies and to do what is best for our country. Call your representatives and ask them to act like responsible adults and compromise. Yes, compromise!
JO ANN MOUNT
Winston-Salem
A great attraction
Regarding Scott Sexton's Nov. 20 column, “New bike trail,” a Virginia Creeper-like trail around Pilot Mountain would be a great attraction to mountain bikers and foot-travelers alike. What a great way to turn a “lemon of a fire into lemonade,” as the headline said.
Thanks to Ken Putnam and Wayne Horton for their earlier, and, I hope, continued work on this excellent project.
KEN LUMSDEN
Winston-Salem
Conservative inertia
The Republican presidential candidates contested who was the most authentic or longest conservative — all uncritically assuming conservatism to be good and virtuous. Yet now that Republicans ask, “what went wrong?” they might face the regressiveness of conservatism itself.
What is it conservatives want to conserve? The way things are or were or they thought they were, thus highly susceptible to nostalgia and status quo? Inertia by extension.
One recalls the Broadway musical and book, “Is there life after high school?” Especially for star athletes, cruelly marginalized following their glory days.
I am so old I vividly remember the 1920s, the GOP golden age of Harding-Coolidge-Hoover, when Republicans were always cheerful, charitable, hospitable, civic-minded, kind to children and animals and vital patrons of education and the arts. Af fluence enabled living as they pleased. Even then they didn’t send their children to conservative-arts colleges.
Liberals are, of course, also subject to convention, caution and respectability. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wore conventional business suits and wrote classical English.
CYCLONE COVEY
Winston-Salem
No losing
Frackers can’t lose. If they drill and find gas, there’s a market for it. If they drill a dry hole, there’s a bigger market for it.
Nuclear-power plants up and down the East Coast are looking for holes to dump their toxic waste in, so it’s out of sight, off their hands.
If frackers police themselves, there is no policing.
HAROLD HAYES
Clemmons
Disregarding doesn’t help
As a Reynolds High School alumnus residing near Hanes Park, I support high-school athletics but can’t support the three proposed options for a football stadium at Hanes Park (“School board will consider stadium proposal,” Nov 21).
The Nov. 16 letter “Hyperbole doesn’t help” offers nothing to those concerned about the Hanes Park area. It loses credibility with its disparaging tone (“typical … hyperbole,” “ridiculous,” “equally dubious”) and disregards urgent concerns of the larger community.
Consider the proposals’ impact on the community: Remote campus parking on Hawthorne Road leads to residential parking near Hanes Park. Old-growth trees are killed on the project site and along Hawthorne Road. Project structures destroy park vistas. Precious, urban green space is reduced. Access to Northwest Boulevard, a main emergency route to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, is obstructed (cars, buses, crowds).
In the Business 40 shutdown plan for future bridge construction, Northwest Boulevard is a critical outlet for rerouting interstate traffic, resulting in years of congestion. During this time, extra congestion on Northwest Boulevard from the proposed stadium’s traffic is horribly undesirable.
A 2,200-seat stadium seems overdone for a 600-900 average attendance at Reynolds home football games. Why is the primary criterion the maximum likely allowed by the Winston-Salem City Council? The larger the stadium, the larger the impact on our community.
A fourth proposed option, seating unstated, is on the hill next to Reynolds Auditorium, close to the Hawthorne Road campus parking. Of the four, this option has the least impact on the community.
BILL ALLEN
Winston-Salem
LTE1...True Believer propaganda and dissinformation. We are a nation divided down the middle for good reasons. The differences are not just trivial ones like how to get together and plant a garden and where to put the most soil, but they are very deep differences that go to the most fundamental level--tectonic plate level--as geologists would call it, between the competing ideologies. These differences are fundamental and unbridgeable. It is assumed that everyone agrees about the ends, we are just in disagreement about the means. This is over simplification that marks our political theatre.
ReplyDeleteConservative inertia. Some of the first LTE applies here too. There is nothing "regressive" about the basic intellectual underpinning of conservatism because it is nothing more than the preservation of our Founding principles of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for ourselves and future generations. "Regressive" is what we are being sold now as "progressive" or "liberal" or "enlightened" and it is none of those things. We are being sold a "future" that is eerily similar to most of the 20th Century in western and eastern Europe. We are being sold dependency, entitlement, resentment, envy and hatred all under the banner of "spread the wealth". Enforced Egalitarianism is contrary to our basic Founding principles that many of us want to conserve. What we are being sold is an easy sell but it is not new or unique and it does not make us special. This only makes us next.
ReplyDeletePeople fled Europe because of too much government involvement in their lives. Now we are 'progressing' right back to where we were in the older, European days. Of course, liberals have a nack for putting their spin on everything. Too bad it's seldom the truth.
DeleteAs always, your center for misinformation is right here in BuckyLand (similar to WallyWorld: "Sorry folks, we're closed for two weeks to clean and repair America's favorite family fun park. Sorry... uhhuh, uhhuh, uhhuh."):
Delete1. The first wave of European emigration to the New World was motivated by conquest and greed.
2. The second wave was motivated by the prospect of cheap, or even free, land and economic prosperity.
3. The third wave was motivated by famine and disease.
4. The fourth wave, now in progress, was motivated by the prospect of economic improvement and education.
The very last reason during all these waves has been government and politics, virtually statistically negligible.
Of course, liberals have a nack for putting their spin on everything. Too bad it's seldom the truth.
DeleteI saw Vivian Burke today over at Forsyth Hospital. She was driving her black Cadillac. She waived me in front of her, and I just stayed put. No reason to get run over by the most famous city council person in Winston. She was driving pretty good for someone that's as old as Methuselah.
DeleteJust the other day I was having a chat with Vivian Burke, who is in the process of writing her autobiography about her life of many accomplishments, as opposed to the no-accomplishment lives of many do-nothing losers in our town.
DeleteShe mentioned that 50 years ago, one of the biggest problems in the black community was illiteracy, but that through a determined effort, great strides had been made in that area. I asked her for an example.
"Well," she said "Fifty years ago most black people spelled the word 'knack' as 'nack'. Now hardly anyone except ignorant old white men does that."
OIC!
Good afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: Compromise is a 2-way street. Obama, the Senate and the House are all going to have to give up something in order to get a deal done. Taxes will have to go up (R compromise), and spending will have to come down (D compromise).
LTE 2: Not familar with the Virginia Creeper trail. Sounds creepy (couldn't resist that one!), but it may be an idea. There are lots of trails in the Apps already, so don't see where one more would hurt.
LTE 3: I thought the R's had a strong shot at the Presidency if they nominated the best candidate, but would lose if they went for whomever won "Most Conservative". Romney was not the most conservative by a long shot, but he campaigned as a "severe conservative" to get the nomination, then had to backpedal to have a shot in the general election. Although this has been the R formula for decades, the D's have won the plurality vote in 5 of the last 6 presidential campaigns which suggests the public is no longer buying it. Reagan won big by embracing a big tent philosophy for the GOP. Today, large portions of the GOP want to kick out anyone who doesn't meet 100% compliance with orthodoxy. Catering to ~20% of the electorate while condemning the other 80% as "unclean" is a sure-fire losing proposition.
LTE 4: Modern geology has made the discovery of prime spots for fracking almost a certainty in comparison to the wild cat days of 100 years ago. Mr. Hayes appears to be unfamiliar with the requirements for nuclear waste disposal (not just any hole will do), but I do agree that self-policing generally amounts to no policing.
LTE 5: More RJR stadium which I don't give a flip about. I do agree the cited LTE which tried to make Huber Hanes a NIMBY was just silly.
The "Virginia Creeper" may sound creepy, but it isn't. It was originally a short-line mountain railroad that ran across more than 100 trestles from Abingdon, Virginia, to Todd, North Carolina, just north of Boone, a distance of 75 miles, from 1900 until 1977. The line was owned by the Virginia-Carolina Railway Company until 1919, when it was sold to Norfolk & Western Railway Company and was designated as the Abingdon Branch.
DeleteAfter the last train, the North Carolina portion of the right of way was returned to the original owners, but the Virginia portion became the property of a variety of local and federal government entities. The rails were removed and the right of way was developed into a multi-use trail for hikers, bicyclists and horseback riders.
The trail offers spectacular views and a great experience for everyone from the lazy to the vigorous outdoors type. We have tried a wide variety of those experiences over the years.
The name comes from the "Virginia Creeper" plant which is the most common of the dozens of plant varieties along the trail, but it also refers to the speed of the original steam trains along the mountainous terrain.
Virginia Creeper
I actually kind of liked Jon Huntsman, which was probably the kiss of death.
DeleteThe kiss of death for Huntsman was that he refused to transform himself into an idiot like the rest of the GOP "candidates". Smart guy...maybe still a future if something approaching sanity happens...don't hold your breath, though.
DeleteA rare conjunction here: I liked Huntsman, too. He understands that ideology cannot legislate different laws of physics. His party does not understand that.
DeleteLaughter is the Best Medicine...
ReplyDeleteSomeone just mentioned that tonight's Monday Night Football game involves the Carolina Panthers (2-8) vs the Philadelphia Eagles (3-7). One wonders why anyone would watch a game between two such pathetic teams. Several answers have been suggested by my friends.
ReplyDelete1. I am a professor at the University of Chicago studying the dynamics of failure and the stress involved.
2. I enjoy watching automobile accidents, train wrecks, plane crashes and other depressing shit.
3. My TV tuner is stuck on ESPN.
4. I have no life, so enjoy being around others who are in the same situation.
5. Early in life I made a very bad choice, so am a lifelong do-or-die Panthers and/or Eagles fan, so have no choice in the matter.
Our panel has determined that #1 is almost certainly BS because a true academic would still be immersed in studying the hapless Republican Party, perhaps for the rest of their lives. We do express our sympathy for #s 2-4 and suggest psychiatric counseling or a new TV, whichever is appropriate. If the second, there is still almost 1 1/2 hours left in the Black Monday sale. You can avoid store violence by ordering online.
We have determined that #5 is the only valid answer. But we would point out that even Southern Baptists recognize some level of self determination, so you can avoid hell by switching your allegiance to the New England Patriots. God loves for you to suffer, but She does not love failure itself.
Actually, Panthers QB Newton is putting on a bit of a show. And ESPN's announcers are doing an enthusiastic job of covering these hapless teams.
ReplyDeleteOne reason why I feel sorry for sports announcers in general.
DeleteFor what they're paid, I'd say sympathy is unnecessary. Actually, they seem to be enjoying themselves. Of course, that may not be so, which is why they are doing a national telecast, pros at their jobs.
DeleteToilet Bowl or no, the Panthers won.
DeleteNow, if the Steelers' QB can come back healthy . . .