Nov. 14, 2012: Voters; Obama; trick-or-treat; white people
Why did W.Va. voters reject access to care?
Editor:
I can't understand why West Virginians vote against their best interests. President Obama put a health-care bill in place that clearly helps every West Virginian. Republicans are determined to overturn it by telling many lies about it. It does not take money from Medicare; it does not have death panels; nor does it limit your access to good care.
Republicans in the House and Senate promise to repeal what is helpful to our citizens and take us back to a system that limits quality health care to only those who can pay high prices for it. In West Virginia, we have an aging population and one of the lowest income rates in the nation. Why did West Virginians vote for those who care so little about the health care of our citizens?
Virginia Lynch Graf
Charles Town
Obama's extremism squanders good will
Editor:
In President Obama's first meeting with Republicans in Congress in 2009, he told them, "I won and you lost," and that is how his quest for change began.
Shortly after Obama took office, I became disillusioned with his constant misrepresentation of his true agenda. For example, the president bragged about his "all of the above" energy policy, when in reality he was doing his level best, and with great zeal, to render coal, oil and gas obsolete.
The president has accomplished little during his tenure and the country has suffered unnecessarily due to his arrogance and refusal to talk and work openly and honestly with others. At first, I agreed with the president, in principle, but became appalled at his indifference toward the people and the economy of our country. He is too extreme in his quest of socialist policies - and the sad thing is, a milder and more realistic implementation of those policies might have done the country some good.
Last, but not least, with the playing of the race card, he has squandered much of the good will and loyalty that early on inspired and championed his presidency. To his own detriment, he has abandoned the fact that no matter our station in life, we are all God's children, and that alone may be his undoing. Obama could have learned from much from President Clinton's playbook of moderation and compromise, but alas he has proved himself too arrogant for his own good.
Von Albert Ehman
Charleston
Stop letting religion dictate trick-or-treat
Why did W.Va. voters reject access to care?
Editor:
I can't understand why West Virginians vote against their best interests. President Obama put a health-care bill in place that clearly helps every West Virginian. Republicans are determined to overturn it by telling many lies about it. It does not take money from Medicare; it does not have death panels; nor does it limit your access to good care.
Republicans in the House and Senate promise to repeal what is helpful to our citizens and take us back to a system that limits quality health care to only those who can pay high prices for it. In West Virginia, we have an aging population and one of the lowest income rates in the nation. Why did West Virginians vote for those who care so little about the health care of our citizens?
Virginia Lynch Graf
Charles Town
Obama's extremism squanders good will
Editor:
In President Obama's first meeting with Republicans in Congress in 2009, he told them, "I won and you lost," and that is how his quest for change began.
Shortly after Obama took office, I became disillusioned with his constant misrepresentation of his true agenda. For example, the president bragged about his "all of the above" energy policy, when in reality he was doing his level best, and with great zeal, to render coal, oil and gas obsolete.
The president has accomplished little during his tenure and the country has suffered unnecessarily due to his arrogance and refusal to talk and work openly and honestly with others. At first, I agreed with the president, in principle, but became appalled at his indifference toward the people and the economy of our country. He is too extreme in his quest of socialist policies - and the sad thing is, a milder and more realistic implementation of those policies might have done the country some good.
Last, but not least, with the playing of the race card, he has squandered much of the good will and loyalty that early on inspired and championed his presidency. To his own detriment, he has abandoned the fact that no matter our station in life, we are all God's children, and that alone may be his undoing. Obama could have learned from much from President Clinton's playbook of moderation and compromise, but alas he has proved himself too arrogant for his own good.
Von Albert Ehman
Charleston
Stop letting religion dictate trick-or-treat
Editor:
Halloween fell on a Wednesday this year, and in most places that was the evening kids went out trick-or-treating. Not so in Kanawha County, however. Despite this being perhaps the most religiously diverse county in the entire state, county commissioners decided to schedule trick-or-treating on Tuesday, because some people like to go to church on Wednesday evening.
What gives with this shameless display of religious favoritism? I find it ironic for a couple of reasons.
For example: One October a few years ago, I hear one woman remark to another, "We don't celebrate Halloween. We think it's the devil's holiday." It's a common sentiment among evangelicals, who probably shouldn't be participating in Halloween no matter which day of the week it falls on.
Even more ironic is the fact that so many of these good Christians will go trick-or-treating dressed as vampires, zombies and serial killers one night, then go marching off to church the next.
The next time Halloween falls on a Wednesday will be 2018, and hopefully by then Kent Carper will have been replaced by someone not so willing to give preferential treatment to one particular religious group.
Chuck Anziulewicz
Spring Hill
Whites no longer dominate America
Editor:
George McGovern, who died Oct. 20, tried to hurry history. And as one of his heroes, Adlai Stevenson, once said, that is never a wise thing to do.
McGovern and his movement saw the future of this country much more clearly than did most other people of that time (the 1965-75 period). They saw that the industrial age was coming to an end and America and the world were entering the post-industrial age.
In no case was this more true than in the matters of sex, gender, race and color. What we are now witnessing, four decades after McGovern's landslide loss to Richard Nixon, was what was foreseen by the South Dakota senator and his followers at that time. We see white male dominance as no longer a certainty and the United States on its way to becoming a nonwhite-majority country.
William R. Brown
South Charleston
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