Must be kidding about

Obama Web site

Re: "Public option crucial for health care reform," Letters, June 30: http://healthcare.barackobama.com/stories?

Miss Liles, you're kidding right? Ha ha, hee hee.

Jean Fisher

San Marcos

Flood the mailroom!

Our senators and representatives seem to respond to the weight of actually delivered mail. Rarely is there a response to e-mails or phone calls. The phone calls are too often busy. If one is fortunate enough to get through, most messages aren't delivered to the respected official anyway.

What to do? To counteract their apathy, it is essential that the congressional halls be flooded with delivered mail in order to get their attention to our concerns.

I am advocating making a master copy of your letter of concern (health care, cap and trade, out-of-control spending, etc.) and sending one letter a day in the regular post to them for four weeks. That would be about 20 to 30 letters per person per month. When these bags of mail hit the office, halls and desks of your chosen elected official, I guarantee you our collective voices will be heard.

A modest expenditure of about $20 to $30 for a month would do nicely. Imagine how much satisfaction you will get each day as you drop it in the mailbox to accumulate with the other millions of letters choking their offices.

How much is your freedom worth?

Donald Brust

Valley Center

Kern's resignation would save money

Councilmember Jerry Kern has said the recall would cost $500,000. This is completely false. There is another way that would cost Oceanside virtually nothing â€"â€" follow the same model/format used to fill the city treasurer position.

If Councilmember Kern has the best interests of the city at heart, he should resign, the recall petitioners could withdraw their positions and the City Council could appoint an interim councilmember to fill the vacant position. This saves the city all the money because filling the vacant position by appointment would be the best use of our tax revenue. Councilmember Kern demonstrates he has the best interests of the city at heart. He could also submit his name with other applicants as well, if he desires, thus saving the city a half-million bucks.

This removes from the table, for once and for all, this silly argument about money. How do I know? Because it happened to me with Councilmember Kern.

Remember he voted to appoint the treasurer's replacement instead of holding an election because it would cost the city too much money? Will he say the same thing here, or will his own words apply to himself as well? I'd like to know.

James "Jimmy" Knott

Oceanside

Expanding Palomar airport ludicrous idea

I applaud Nora LaCorte's letter of June 15. Her letter wouldn't have been necessary if the county hadn't failed, after spending millions in taxpayer dollars, to secure an appropriate site for a new airport to replace or complement Lindbergh Field. McClellan-Palomar Airport is not an appropriate site! …

Now the county wants to foist more air, noise and traffic pollution on the Oceanside, San Marcos, Vista and Carlsbad residents under the pretext of creating jobs … without any regard to decreasing quality of life and property values in surrounding areas.

The negative declaration on the county's Land Use Plan is just a backdoor attempt to expand services and to make it easier to extend the runway to allow larger aircraft to use the airport without doing an Environmental Impact Report.

They have even hired a spin doctor with taxpayer money to tout the financial benefits, ignoring the losses residents will suffer because of declining property values. The property tax losses to the county and cities alone could amount to millions.

Granted, the airport was here before many of the homes were built, but they are here now and the idea of expanding services and extending the runway … is ludicrous.

John Morris

Carlsbad

Boos and cheers

I can't believe all these Mickey Mouse awards thrust upon the North County Times. I didn't notice a gold star for having the errors, omissions and plain old screw-ups in every edition.

Also, three cheers, bravo and amen for Mr. Don Snyder (June 26) for his great letter blasting (and justifiably so) the never-ending flubs and mess-ups by the year-after-year incompetence of the Oceanside City Council. How much longer until somebody paints a white line denoting a right-turn lane on Mesa Drive going east onto El Camino going south? I won't mention the stupid, useless and unnecessary stop signs all over town. It's like beating a dead horse.

G. Charles Evans

Oceanside

Budget stuck back in the 1990s

California state budget problems? All state budget problems?

Budget: The real problem is the budgets laid out have not kept up with the cost of living and still remain frozen in the 1990s.

We the people have suffered because of government's spending on lobbyists' pet projects that have come before the real meat of the matter. That's what we are all upset about. Quit cutting the things we need and cut the things we don't.

How about those limos and expensive luncheons that are equivalent to nothing, how about those private jets, how about stupid pet projects that amount to nothing until 10 years from now?

Yup, I'd say we're a fed-up nation that is tired of paying for the government screwups.

Shari Land

San Marcos

'Cap and trade' is really 'crap and made'

"Cap and trade" is better described as "crap and made." It's set up as America's biggest Ponzi scheme since Bernie Madoff. The idea that we can trade carbon credits for those who pollute to continue to do so is stupidity.

When buying a piece of property, the county demanded mitigation for the helpless gnatcatcher that might mate. I needed to buy two additional acres to offset the damage that I would be making. As if the sentient little bird had enough understanding to relocate 500 miles north?

Cap and trade will be nothing more than an excuse for graft and fraud as exemplified by a Chinese factory already traded four times to help some poor overpolluting, money-grabbing industrialist to alleviate his over-active conscience as he does his part in the destruction of humanity. His trade of his carbon output will have been marginalized by that same factory over and over again, and in the process the whole of mankind will be saved.

Thank goodness for "crap and made." It is nothing more than crap and we have all just been made to look like fools.

Welcome to the reality of modern politics. Long live Obama!

Richard Taylor

Vista

Bilbray gets it wrong again

Last Friday, Brian Bilbray voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill designed to kick-start the clean-energy economy by increasing the amount of clean and safe renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

Unfortunately, Brian Bilbray failed to grasp the importance of ending our reliance on fossil fuels and creating new green jobs and voted against the bill. Again, Bilbray just doesn't seem to understand that our nation's security depends on energy independence.

We have the technology today for each of us to be producing and using clean, safe and renewable energy. All we lack is the political will to get us there.

Elizabeth Taylor

Encinitas

Enough already with Michael Jackson

I'm already tired of all the hype concerning the death of Michael Jackson. If you think for a minute he will sprout wings and fly up to heaven, forget it! This guy was, in his day, a great entertainer, but greed and fame took over his life and led him down the path to ruin.

I don't doubt one bit that he was guilty of all the charges placed against him from time to time, but he had the wealth and fame to buy them off. There is no one to blame but himself. I hope he enjoys his afterlife in the warm climate below.

Fred Ragland

Fallbrook

What water shortage?

It has only been a few years since I moved to a San Marcos senior mobile home park. I was wondering whether the strange compulsion to regularly wash one's house only exists in my park, or is it universal? I have lived in houses all over the world prior to this move and, other than when I was ready to paint, I never felt I couldn't wait for Mother Nature to wash my house.

Water shortage doesn't mean anything to these people. Rather than take advantage of the fact they live on smaller lots than most houses and could substantially contribute to conservation, they feel that somehow they have to catch up by washing their house every six months, driveways every month and cars weekly.

Now, I am going to catch hell from my neighbors for this letter, but hey, somebody has to say something.

Don Peck

San Marcos

Shame on him?

Shame on me! In her letter (June 23), Mary Lovelady wants to shame me for calling Frank White an idiot for his actions in the Lowe's parking lot.

To support her argument, she states that Officer White faced " … a car with tinted windows. How could he know how many more … were in that car, or their intent?" Ms. Lovelady is absolutely correct, how could he know? Therefore, the only course of action is to draw his gun and start blazing away, and through his own car window without rolling it down first, not knowing what he was shooting at.

In the dictionary, "idiocy" is defined as "something notably stupid or foolish." Does blindly emptying your gun into a car of which you know nothing about the occupants fit that definition?

Now that Officer White has been exonerated by a jury, I guess his actions weren't idiotic, and as Ms. Lovelady portrays him, he is "a fine young officer."

Bill Homann

San Marcos

The real Fourth of July message

I'm investigating the Declaration of Independence, which says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident," a circular argument validating itself. I'm using an objective arbiter, Edmund Burke, to contrast the term "consent of the governed" with his basis of a civil society: "that no man should be judge in his own cause." What do you think people will consent to but the part of them that needs to be governed? The proof is in your own government, which is enforcing the racket within yourselves.

It worked at first because America was a British carry-over; then it became the cultures transplanted from Europe. Left on its own, America has bottomed out morally and spiritually and the claim to independence has turned into bondage to an ungovernable nature.

Speaking of nature, the Founders claimed its laws which their favorite philosophers, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau et al., said we had to evolve from into civil society; hence your circular argument and no independence from the worst part of yourselves.

Edward Karlson

Oceanside

Still inborn, not chance

Frank Lancelotti (Letters, June 29) equates behavior with inborn traits, saying that handedness and homosexuality can be altered. The behaviors can be altered, but hand dominance and sexual orientation are inborn.

Alteration can be costly. For example, "Converting the innate handedness … often leads to very serious disorders and irritations in the brain" ("The Converted Left-Hander," http://www.linkshaender-beratung.de/english/ConvertedBook.htm). Heterosexual behavior can be altered as well. …

Lancelotti says, "… it is not up to me to supply proof that homosexuality is not inborn." That's true, but immaterial. I have presented compelling evidence that sexual orientation is inborn. He disagrees, but is unable to refute it.

Regarding "gender-inappropriate play," Lancelotti says: "A child would have to 'learn' that dolls are for girls." Wrong.

As Matt Ridley puts it in "The Red Queen," " … (A boy) baby … is mentally different from a girl baby from its first day on the planet" and "We give boys tractors and girls dolls. We are reinforcing the stereotypical obsessions that they already have, but we are not creating them."

Lancelotti says: "Homosexuality provides no constructive purpose … other than personal satisfaction." Even if true, so what? Many of life's pursuits have no other objective.

John Terrell

Fallbrook

Welcome to 'Obamanation'!

Three mega-American icons who were taken from our midst last week were uniquely American. They all had humble beginnings, worked hard to develop their God-given talents, made the necessary personal sacrifices and turned out to be enormously successful in life, principles that founded this country.

The entire perspective, however, has changed in the last six months. Dumbing down of Americans is at full speed. There is a strong desire to level the playing field, destroying America#,s leadership in the world.

The sheeple wait with bated breath and hands outstretched for President Obama to produce wind and solar power to light their homes, propel their Obama-mobiles, fix the education system to enable filling out welfare forms, to regulate breathing to suit carbon footprints, to measure sugar and fat in their lunches and to decide whether their life is worth saving through a certain medical procedure!

It will not be long before the "shining city on the hill" turns into a "green utopia" when the sheeple in garbs of Leprechaun start bumping into one another on our streets!

Keshava Prasad

Escondido