The zealot ex-chair and his wife had moved out of state by the time I started writing letters in 2015. My first was in May. It supported the re-election of my friend Nancy Rickard to the Port of Siuslaw Board of Supervisors. I then wrote this brief letter to the Eugene Register-Guard.
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As evidenced by his recent column in this newspaper’s commentary section July 24 regarding the starvation of women and children in the South Sudan, Nicholas Kristof is a remarkably compassionate American. On the other end of the human spectrum are presidential hopefuls Scott Walker and Ted Cruz.
Printed July 28, 2015, in the Eugene Register-Guard
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Two letters written by Florence Republicans got me going locally. First was Boomer Wright’s letter. He was upset that the Obama administration had negotiated an agreement with Iran to stop its development of nuclear weapons.
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I appreciate reading the thought-provoking and well-supported letter titled “Gamble Worth Taking” (Aug. 5). God bless America and free speech! If we were down at Three Rivers Casino playing “Texas Hold‘em,” I might agree that that is a gamble well worth taking. However, I believe we should call this treaty what it is: appeasement.
The gamble here concerns appeasing a radical Muslim theocracy that has professed in more than “scurrilous profanity” that they hate America, have called for a Jihad against America and have threatened Israel and its people with extermination.
Iran is recognized by our state department as a main contributor and supporter of terrorism around the world. What happened to the administration’s stand on not negotiating with terrorists? Are we betting on the age demise of the hardliners Mullahs (there are no young hardliner Mullahs to take their place?), the threat of mutual self-destruction, the good will of moderate Iranians (the term “moderate Iranians” might be a bit of an oxymoron), and on the Koran’s commandment to love thy infidel neighbor?
Are we gambling that Iran will not make or use the bomb they profess the right to create and have threatened to use against Israel and America because they have a paper treaty with the Great Satan? If we are to believe what our present administration says about our foreign policy, why don’t we believe what Iran has and is saying about their foreign policy?
Their words and actions have been very clear. I think the well publicized Iranian state-supported rallies where hard-liner Mullahs preach hatred toward everyone and everything not of their religion, then encourage mobs of people to carry “I hate American” signs and then burn our flag message seems pretty clear.
Is appeasement the best we can do?
Boomer Wright
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Jimmie Moe was upset about Democrats, abortion, and Planned Parenthood.
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Abortion on demand is the law of the land. So why all the fuss over body parts of Americans that did not quite make it to that first breath?
Abortions came into vogue during the 1920s, when a woman, Margaret Sanger, started the movement in our country to eliminate or reduce the number of less-advantaged children being born in America. Eventually, she was shunned by society for her beliefs of and in a pure race.
In the modernization of America some time after World War II, her ideas were given new berth, and in Roe v. Wade, her dreams became a reality.
So many individuals of color are being denied life that eventually the race will be reduced to be inconsequential in the scheme of life in America. In some of the latest stats available, twice as many African Americans are denied life through abortions as compared to all other means (murder, accidents, etc.).
So, is this a liberal cause or just women’s rights? How did someone so lacking of compassion and so biased become the heroine of today’s liberals? I ask this because individuals like Nancy Pelosi in 2014 and Hillary Clinton in 2009 are both recent recipients of the “Margaret Sanger Award” for their contributions to her cause. In their acceptance speeches, they both praised Sanger’s coverage and devotion.
Today, the liberals, through slick media campaigning and effective slogans, make Planned Parenthood into a compassionate and caring alternative to childbirth. Is this really the easiest solution for some of our economic problems?
Jimmie L. Moe
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I had to respond.
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Praise be that we don’t have August 15 Siuslaw News letter writers Boomer Wright and Jimmie L. Moe running our country.
Boomer declares the administration’s proposed nuclear arms deal with Iran to be appeasement. The Iranians are such awful people. We intrepid Americans are so antiseptically pure. (When in mankind’s history was any large group of people such?) It’s either them or us. Bomb the tar out of them. That’s the ticket!
Jimmie believes that men such as he know better about women’s reproductive practices than women. The straw-person in his attack on Planned Parenthood is the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger. Jimmie alleges that Sanger “started the movement in our country to eliminate or reduce the number of less-advantaged children being born in America. … Twice as many African Americans are denied life through abortions as compared to all other means (murder, accidents, etc.)” because “the latest stats” show it. Whose stats? Jimmie’s final hammer blow of condemnation is his statement that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have “praised Sanger’s courage and devotion.” Jimmie has paraphrased comments made by the crazy-minded neurosurgeon and GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson.
NPR posted August 14 on the internet a fact-check article about Carson’s allegation that Planned Parenthood (PP) was started to “control the black population.” Sanger believed that people regardless of race should have the children they want. Her focus was on birth control. In 1921 she wrote: “The almost universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one of the most hopeful signs that the masses themselves today possess the divine spark of regeneration.” It was Sanger’s support of birth control that motivated her in 1946 to write: “Negro parents, like all parents, must create the next generation from strength, not from weakness; from health, not from despair."
Carson has said, “One of the reasons you find most of their [PP] clinics in black neighborhoods is so that you can find a way to control that population.” In 2014, the Guttmacher Institute revealed that 60 percent of all known abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood clinics, are in majority-white neighborhoods. In 2013 Planned Parenthood stated that “14 percent of its patients nationwide were black … nearly equal to the proportion of the African-American population in the U.S.”
But, then, I am a liberal. Jimmie knows. “Liberals, through slick media campaigning and effective slogans, make Planned Parenthood into a compassionate and caring alternative to childbirth.”
Printed August 19, 2015, in the Siuslaw News
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By now I was ready to attack first, not just respond.
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Whenever I read letters in the Register-Guard written by ultra conservatives condemning liberals and pleading victimization, I am tempted to ask them these questions:
Have you no concern about global warming and regard for your children’s and grandchildren’s future?
How would you like conservatives to be deprived of the right to vote like college students, minorities, and the elderly – disproportionately Democratic Party voters – are, being systematically deprived by state voter-identification and voter registration restriction laws?
Since when did millions of dollars contributed to political campaigns by single, very wealthy individuals become a hallmark of “the greatest democracy in the world”?
Why is it good to be on the side of large corporations that have kept the wages of their workers stagnant for decades while the income of their CEOs increases from 20 times the average income of their work force to 300 times?
When did Fox News become the citadel of truth and “all major media commentators” become, in the words of Keith O. Comstock (letters, Nov. 16) “far-left Democratic sycophants”?
Why do you suppose that institutions of higher learning -- in which highly educated instructors teach and which ultra conservative critics like Francie Duggan (letters, Nov. 16) accuse of sanctioning “radical leftist indoctrination” – don’t regurgitate the current Republican Party’s anti-equal opportunity, pro-virulent capitalistic, anti-social, anti-women, anti-science, and anti-civil rights doctrine?
Printed November 20, 2015, in the Register-Guard
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The following are two of 31 Register-Guard website comments that followed the printing of my Nov. 20 letter. The first commentator sought to answer my questions.
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1. If global warming was REAL, yes, I would be concerned.
2. No, I would not like to be deprived of my voting right. However, no one is being asked to cr@p diamonds in order to legitimize our democratic voting process. A simple, easily obtained, inexpensive, government issued photo ID will suffice. That's all.
3. One recent date comes to mind; January 2010, when a democratic process set in motion by voters (who likely had ID) concluded with the SCOTUS deciding that a business had personhood. This might only illustrate that the playing field is even, no matter which side you're on, which, I understand really isn't your point, but it does ensure its fair.
4. No one is on the side of the companies CEO's, we're advocating for capitalism. Capitalism can create scenarios, such as you've described, but it can also turn a determined, single mother into a small business owner who makes a name and place for herself. I like that side!
5. This happened around the time Obama became president and we witnessed the great migration of all media, except FOX, to his backside.
6. If said ultra-conservative comments were actually being made, which they are not, these institutions and their staff would not regurgitate those comments simply because it doesn't fit their agenda. Besides, they have a busy schedule convincing everyone to continue sucking on the government teat, while crying victim from a safe zone.
Mmmmmmkay?!
ChiefJustice101
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Here is the second message.
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The problem that Mr. Titus either doesn't understand (like most ultra leftwing democrats) or doesn't believe is that the market for successful CEO's is different than the labor market for front line production grunts. The influx of illegal aliens has killed wages on the low end of the scale ...thank you prog dems. but since none of these illegal aliens are cut from the same cloth as the ceo's their wages continue to rise based upon the results they have gotten vs some govt edict
JdunthropeMD
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