Our democracy
I want to thank every person in Forsyth County who voted in the last election, Democrat, Republican, independent and libertarian. What makes this nation great is our democracy, and that is made even greater when more people take the time to vote.
I also want to thank all the people who gave their time to volunteer for all the candidates, whether they won or lost; you are still a winner because you gave your time to be part of something larger than yourself.
We are Americans; we hold our heads high and overcome any hardship thrown in our way. God bless these United States of America.
NORMAN HOLLEMAN
FORSYTH COUNTY REGISTER OF DEEDS
Winston-Salem
Protect our parks
First, congratulations to those who won elections to the state legislature and governor's mansion.
Second, I urge caution in various areas.
In the past 20 years, state funding for buying parks and historic sites has enabled the protection of places like Chimney Rock, Grandfather Mountain and Hanging Rock State Park and historic land at places like Bethania, Bethabara and Valle Crucis. Such funding has encouraged more than $75 million in private cash donations to help the state buy park and historic land, meaning that many parks and historic sites were bought for 50 cents on the dollar by the state of North Carolina.
This was not environmental regulation. This was buying land from people who wanted to sell the land.
I encourage our newly elected leaders to uphold the provision in the N.C. constitution that calls for the protection of parks and historic sites and to continue providing a sensible level of funding to support the protection of places like Grandfather Mountain, Hanging Rock and Valle Crucis.
R. MICHAEL LEONARD
Bethania
Obsolete?
One of the old Rod Serling Twilight Zone episodes from the 1950s featured Burgess Meredith as a retired librarian who kept books in his apartment and refused to conform to the group-think of the ruling government. He was brought before the ruling body, ruled “obsolete” and sentenced to death. He never bowed to the will of his government, which hated the idea of an individual defying its power.
Now, Democratic and news-media pundits are gleefully declaring the Republicans, more specifically conservatives, as “obsolete.” The cover of the Nov. 19 failed Newsweek has a banner that reads: “GOP: You're Old. You're White. You're History!”
Our crime, apparently, was talking about the need for fiscal discipline in the federal budget while more than half of the electorate was agonizing over how young women could afford birth-control pills and how many abortions they could have if they couldn't afford birth control. We conservatives wanted to know how four Americans died in Libya at our embassy, while more than half the electorate wanted to know why anyone would want to stop funding the world’s most famous multi-millionaire yellow puppet, Big Bird.
Who knew until this election that the old Superman saying: “Truth, Justice and The American Way,” also, like Twilight Zone, from the 1950s, would be ruled “obsolete”?
CLINT JOHNSON
Jefferson
The real issues
What happened and why? When it comes to the election results, that question seems to be on the minds of conservatives and the topic of discussions among many friends. All the TV pundits and talking heads have reasons and opinions, but the Nov. 9 column by Cal Thomas, “Four more years of decline,” gives the best explanation.
Unfortunately, it’s also obvious by the recent comments in The Readers' Forum that many voters cast their ballots based on issues that have absolutely nothing to do with solving the problems that face our country. They don’t seem to care about the economic issues, the unemployment situation or our continued dependence on foreign oil. All that matters to some is their belief that the taxpayer should supply women with their birth-control pills and that the government should sanction gay marriage.
How sad that America is fast becoming a socialist state because many voters don’t care about the real issues. Now this country must face the results of the election.
BOB REED
Advance
Necessary note
I was not among the many people who wrote to ask that Miss Manners be reinstated in the Journal. I thought about doing so many times but just never got around to it. I felt it would lead to the same result as all the requests to bring back Richard Creeds’ column that dealt with words and word meanings that you removed several years ago.
However, I do know when a “thank you” note is necessary, and it is now. Both my husband and I enjoy Miss Manners and we thank you for listening to the folks who took the time to write requesting you return her to Tuesday mornings. We also thank all of the readers who took the time to write.
JAYN SCHOLLANDER
Winston-Salem
LTE #3: Talk to the empty chair, Clint.
ReplyDeleteLTE #4: " . . . many voters cast their ballots based on issues that have absolutely nothing to do with solving the problems that face our country"?
DUH!!! EVERYBODY knows what the REAL issues are: OLD,WHITE, GRUMPY MEN controlling women's reproductive choices and who gets to marry whom!!!
wait for it . . .
DeleteWhite men provided the leadership to make this country what it is. Take your bigotry some place else.
DeleteSomehow these Rielle Hunter wanna bees think it's okay to be a bigot, if they're a liberal.
DeleteHAH! HE TOOK THE BAIT!
DeleteYou first, Limp Dick. Oh wait, your name is Tim.
DeleteYou missed me chewing your fat buttocks out, didn't you Rielle?
DeleteI've been trying for years to get fired from volunteer work. How did you do it, Tim Britton? Maybe I should ask Charles Bean?
DeleteBTW: Have the REAL Tim Britton message me. I'm trying to schedule some legal issues around his.
LTE #3 Obsolete? and LTE #4...The Real Issues.
ReplyDelete--In 2010, there was a Republican wave that crashed the legislative beaches nationwide with the mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs. When the wave subsided all that was left on the beach was a trash heap of anti-abortion laws, in the past two years alone, 32 states have adopted some form of abortion restriction, sonograms, personhood. In the first six months of 2012, 15 states passed 39 restrictions on abortion. Last year, 24 states passed 92 restrictions, an all-time record. Virginia even tried to legislate trans-vaginal probes. That was enough to scare me. When South Dakota was forced to drop the idea of murdering abortion doctors, Nebraska and Iowa picked up it, a "justifiable homicide" bill would allow homicide if committed by a person while resisting an attempt to harm an unborn fetus. In Georgia, a Republican recently introduced a bill mandating that victims of rape, stalking, harassment, and family violence be reclassified as "accusers". Our own Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sponsored an amendment prohibiting teaching hospitals from receiving federal funding if they teach doctors how to perform abortions. "Legitimate rape," "God's intentional gift," and one wonders why these were issues?
--During a meeting of the state House Appropriations Committee on efforts in Kansas to shoot feral swine from helicopters. Republican state Rep. Virgil Peck suddenly had an idea. "Looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works," he commented, according to a recording posted by the Lawrence Journal-World, "maybe we have found a problem to our illegal immigration problem." Voter ID laws, voter suppression tactics limiting early voting, anti marriage equality.
--"When Louis Brandeis called state legislatures "laboratories of democracy," he couldn't have imagined the curious formulas the tea-party chemists would be mixing in 2011, including: a bill just passed by the Utah Legislature requiring the state to recognize gold and silver as legal tender; a Montana bill declaring global warming "beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana"; a plan in Georgia to abolish driver's licenses because licensing violates the "inalienable right" to drive; legislation in South Dakota that would require every adult to buy a gun; and the Kentucky Legislature's effort to create a "sanctuary state" for coal, safe from environmental laws."
--The Republicans of 2010 were social wolves in jobs sheep clothing. I could go on and on, but the election on November 6th, speaks for itself and Republicans like Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Susana Martinez, Bill Kristol, Ben Stein, have also spoken.
To paraphrase Herman Cain: Don't blame Sesame Street, don't blame the big "gifts," if you don't have the White House and you're not in control of the Senate, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if Democrats succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed. Face it, the Republicans failed this go 'round.
DeleteObsolete. I used to enjoy the Twilight Zone back in the "obsolete old days" when I could visit family or a neighbor that had a tv. Wasn't it Newsweek- or was it Time that ran a headline after the 2008 election- "We're all Red Now". One of them did. “GOP: You're Old. You're White. You're History!”. Speaking of history, the Dems need to sober up a bit and remember some history too. The last century will do fine. Ever increasing dependency is not noble. Republicans are good at misreading election results and Dems are good at over reading. A growing class of AINOs-- Americans in name only- is an affront to Liberty.
ReplyDeleteThe real issues. They are big and ugly and are going to be faced one day. Kicking the can down the road will only keep us going for so long. We seem bound and determined to join Japan and the Euro Zone in this activity. Meantime, to win an election in this environment, give credit to the Obama campaign, they went narrow and negative and pulled it off. Farther down the ballot however, the GOP made gains in governorships and lower offices. This national fish may be rotting at the head but that can be stopped. Instead of secession I believe we should try Federalism. We have our Founding Framework available when the time comes. Decentralize, localize, privatize.
ReplyDeletePoor UN Ambassador Susan Rice
ReplyDeleteWhy are a bunch of white men 'picking' on poor pitiful African American Susan Rice? Because she screwed up, that's why.
Some of my bosses used to hand me a script and tell me to go deliver it. I'd read over it, and it was truthful, I'd go do it. But often times, I had to tell them to go pound sand, because it was a bunch of Rush-like HS.
If you deliver the words, you own them. Grow up Susan Rice.
LTE #1 & 5 – Let’s see…so far Dave Plyler, Evelyn Terry and now Norman Holleman have minded their manners and thanked the public for electing them. Where are all the rest?
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, when you walked down Fourth Street, you spoke to everyone and they spoke back. Today you’re lucky to get a reply from one out of four. Are all the others sociopaths? Lawyers are the worst.
I’m afraid Miss Manners isn’t going to be enough to fix our social apathy problem.
LTE #2 – Agree, but am fearful that this legislature values nothing but their own social agenda above anything of substance.
LTE #3 & 4 – Bullshit. Anybody that quotes Cal Thomas is simply broadcasting their ignorance.
Does any sane person actually think that electing Mister Empty Shell Mitt Romney would have changed anything…if so, please see Dr. Atala at Wake regenerative about getting a brain transplant.
And the US has been a socialist nation since the first publicly financed road was built in the 17th century. Fools who spout the word socialist should do a bit of studying on what it means.
In the meantime, they should stop driving, so that I don't have to subsidize 50% of the cost.
Miss Manners will not fix any social apathy. The folks afflicted with such do not get past the comics, TV section, and sports pages, if they read the paper at all.
DeleteI wonder, if the talking points given to DR. Ambassador Rice, signed off on by the intelligence agencies, were the exact talking points that they wanted the perps to hear, perhaps misleading them into believing that we were not on to them? Nah, law enforcement would never try to mislead perps into complacency.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the CIA doesn't have any secrets they don't want revealed.
DeleteI think McCain and Graham are simply jealous because they are grumpy ole white men, John graduated 894th in a class of 899 students, while Dr. Rice is a brilliant young black woman who is a Rhodes Scholar.
DeletePeople making a fuss about this simply reveal their own ignorance. The consulate was a CIA cover op, which is probably why it was attacked.
DeleteThe CIA will tell us what it wants us to know, when it decides to do so. The claims that legislators have seen video of the attack are bogus. The only video shows the main gate and little more. There was no drone aloft until two hours after the attack and little of the video shot by it has anything to do with the actual battle.
I still think that the administration handled it poorly. They should have just said "We are investigating..." and no more.
Most of what was said was probably intended to be disinformation to lead the enemy astray...that is what typically happens.
Of course, the small minded could never grasp any of this, so they prattle on, parroting what Limbaugh and FoxLies says.
Shooting first and asking questions later has been a running problem in McCain's life. It just reminds me of why I voted for Obama in '08.
DeleteGood AM, foks! Josh improves, looks forward to going home for Thanksgiving. Andy the cat has perked up a little, but he has a ways to go.
ReplyDeleteFrom yesterday, string theory: very simplistically put, it proposes bits of vibrating energy in the form of loops or open-ended. These vibrating strings are the components of what we thought were the most basic subatomic particles. such as quarks (the components of protons and neutrons) and electrons, and photons, among others. The configuration of the strings and the nature of their vibrations determine the characteristics of the larger particles that they form. And much larger the particles are, as strings are many orders of magnitude smaller than the more familiar particles. Add to this, string theory consists of 9 or 10 spatial dimensions instead of just the 3 with which we are familiar, plus the dimension of time (and watch out, there may be a second time dimension as well, which would help explain some oddities of quantum mechanics).
Why string theory? Physicists and others are working on a Theory of Everything, which would unite the 2 masterpiece theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, which to a point explain how the Universe works. Unfortunately, the two clash at some point, leaving some questions unresolved. Gravity is one of the problems that makes these otherwise precisely correct theories irreconcilable. Strings are part of the effort to blend QM and Relativity into a TOE.
Part of the TOE effort was the search for the Higgs boson, detected by the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs is the force carrier of the Higgs field, which gives certain particles mass. Why particles have mass has been a long-standing question. Other questions remain: Why is the speed of light what it is, and why is that speed limit woven so tightly into the laws of the Universe? Extending that, why are the physical laws of the Universe what they are?
There you are, not exactly a crystal clear explanation, but a shot at it.
What did I tell you...ask and it shall be given...string theory for Dummies.
DeleteTune in tomorrow for a simple explanation of Romney's brain, or lack thereof.
And remember that you heard it first here.
OT, I will leave that question to others, as I am unfamiliar with biological sciences.
DeleteSpeaking of things scientific, atmospheric CO2 content is at its highest measured level, 391ppm. This contrasts with a level of appx 250ppm at the start of the Industrial (coal-burning) Revolution.
ReplyDeleteOK, we can see where you're going with this…the usual left liberal commie crap…you're implying that the fossil fuel power that made the industrial revolution happen caused this sharp increase in CO2.
DeleteWell, buddyrow, I've got some news for you. You need to read chapter 66:6 of the new book Earth: The True Story by the Reverend S. O. Beech. In it, the Reverend Beech tells the heretofore unknown saga of the Meritans, a white bread sect of Anglo-Saxon protesters who lived hidden from the rest of the world in the Nevada desert until 1945.
Since they denied all scientific knowledge, they had no cars or airplanes or electricity or movie theaters or telephones or even widgets. Their sole mode of power and transportation was dinosaurs, and their sole fuel was burning dinosaur dung.
They were a hard working, hard praying folk, who long after the rest of the nation went to the 8 hour day and the five day work week, continued to labor twelve hours a day for 5 1/2 days each week. But they were also a fun loving folk, so that every Saturday at high noon, they indulged in their one passion, the dinosaur rodeo. For twelve full hours, until midnight each Saturday, the Meritans rode bucking dinosaurs, roped bucking dinosaur calves, wrestled bucking dinosaur steers. A good time was had by all.
Unfortunately, in late August, 1945, an invisible cloud, which had originated somewhere over Japan, drifted across the Meritan's peaceful valley. Within days, all of the Meritans and their dinosaurs had perished.
A few weeks later, a Navy aviator with the improbable name of George Herbert Walker Bush was flying over the Nevada desert in his TBF Avenger, homeward bound to Kennebunkport, when he spied the grisly scene below. A team of specially trained gay Boy Scouts were dispatched to investigate. Once they had filed their report, a group of atheist scientists, realizing that their crazy theories were about to be exposed, had the area sealed off from public scrutiny, under the highest security classification ever issued by the US government. That place is still sealed off today and is sometimes referred to as Area 51.
But here's the kicker. The Reverend Beech, through application of such modes of "thought" as conjecture, guesswork and faith, has proven beyond a reasonable doubt what caused the massive increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. During the rodeos, which went on for hundreds of years, every time a dinosaur hit the ground, it emitted a massive fart. As everyone knows, one of the chief components of any fart is CO2. Case closed.
You might think you're smart, but you're no match for the Reverend S. O. Beech.
Yes, dinosaur gun blasting is no doubt the source. I stand corrected. However, I must correct you: Bush flew a TBM, not a TBF.
DeleteNow, excuse me, I must send a bad check to the Wrong Rev SOB.
Good afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: Nice to hear back from those who were elected.
LTE 2: "I encourage our newly elected leaders to uphold the provision in the N.C. constitution that calls for the protection of parks and historic sites and to continue providing a sensible level of funding..."-ummm, you do realize who was elected with a super majority in the state? You can kiss your state parks and historic sites good-bye. They'll be sold off to the highest bidder for the mineral rights.
LTE 3: "Our crime, apparently, was talking about the need for fiscal discipline in the federal budget..." - please, when did that ever happen? All I heard was abortion, illegals, voter id and gay marriage. Where was all the talk about financial discipline when GWB was turning a surplus into a deficit by starting 2 wars and creating a drug benefit while reducing taxes? Where was the outcry when Cheney declared: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter"? "We conservatives wanted to know how four Americans died in Libya at our embassy" - again, please! Where was all the outcry when 11 embassy attacks occurred under GWB resulting in 59 deaths? Did you demand answers from the GWB administration? The R party has been swung way too far to the right for most Americans to stomach. The fact the 1950's are referenced twice tells how out of touch the R's have become and why they are portrayed as obsolete.
LTE 4: More sour grapes. "...many voters cast their ballots based on issues that have absolutely nothing to do with solving the problems that face our country" - actually they did cast their ballots based on the problems facing our country because the R's were too focused on issues that didn't exist like voter id. The R's were too busy trying to make Obama a one-term deal to get anything accomplished for the country. If the R's had concentrated on getting people back to work instead of putting the govt in charge of personal decisions that individuals should make, we might have been talking about the prospects of a Romney administration.
LTE 5: Miss Manners would probably approve of a thank you LTE for reinstating her column.
It's all the Queen's fault:
ReplyDeleteLong Live The Queen
Yet another sore loser:
ReplyDeleteWest Finally Concedes Two Weeks Late
He never called Patrick Murphy to congratulate him. And his "concession" statement was self serving, ending with:
"I pray he (Murphy)will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own."
Had he followed that advice himself, he would be returning to Washington for a second term. His time in office was devoid of the first two and he never even considered the last.
He disgraced the uniform and then the Congress and in the end the nation.
I predict that his next gig will be at FoxLies®, where he will, for once in his life, be a perfect fit.
I am glad that Wordly celebrated her birthday here in NC rather than attending a play in NYC. She might have found some audience participation a ab bit distressing at one production.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/broadway_heave_handled_with_grace_0vjEsPAD8kN914Z4Wl6neP
When theatrical folks say "The show must go on" they really mean it.
DeleteOne hopes that Homeland Security is on the case.