What Could Be
How sad! Senator Mitch McConnell’s stated priority is to make Obama’s administration a one-term presidency. Not get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Not create jobs. Not provide all Americans with adequate health care—none of those are as important to McConnell as removing Obama from the White House.
President Obama inherited a terrible mess: a $1.3 trillion deficit, two wars, rising unemployment and unprecedented crises in our banking system. Does anyone doubt that this is true? Let’s think a moment about what this country would be like if the McCain/Palin ticket had won. There would have been no bail-out, the economy would be in a deep depression, no stimulus would have produced no jobs. We would have escalated the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There would have been no health care reform. We would have a vice president who would make us even more of a worldwide laughingstock than George W. Bush did!
Kathy S. Grey
Via email
*
Not Your Mother’s Airport
My mother is 80 years old.
My father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, passed away in April of this year. My mother now travels on occasion to visit her children, some of whom live in states other than her own. She has never been arrested. She votes each election and attends church regularly. She raised five American children to adulthood. One branch of my family has been in this country since 1621; the Native American branch of my family has been in this country since before it was a country.
Raised in Germany because her parents could not afford to feed her in the U.S. during the Depression she was there during World War II and witnessed the oppressive actions of a paranoid government raging out of control from fright, addiction to power and stupidity.
My 80-year-old, law-abiding and loving, apple-pie-baking AMERICAN mother was pulled out of line at an airport, X-rayed and physically searched.
She stated that the she was stunned by the experience and will refuse travel by air in the future if confronted again at an airport screening.
My mother hopes this never happen to any other older people.
Do you believe it possible to stop terrorists by terrorizing Americans?
Alfred Brock
Via email
*
Germans Protest Nuke Dump
In early November a delivery of nuclear waste en route to a “disposal site” in northern Germany met with some unanticipated obstacles. Dozens of farmers lined the route determined to block roadways with their tractors; trees and stumps cut down by protestors blocked the routes and over 3,000 people gathered in protest outside the site deemed acceptable to bury containers of highly toxic nuclear waste.
The concern of the farmers and other protesters? That the toxic waste disposal site represented a poisonous long term threat to not only their livelihoods, but the health of the land and water. Along the roads people gathered to protest the government’s decision to extend the life of the country’s nuclear power plants for several years. The protest was an effort not only to voice ongoing concern and dissent over the use of nuclear power but support for local renewable energy sources.
One has to wonder how the fate of energy policy in the U.S. would differ if people who see themselves as stewards of the earth played an active role in the decision making process rather than nuclear industry professionals and regulators who prize corporate earnings over the well-being of the planet.
Amelia Shea
Peterborough
