Letters to the Editor 11/6

Something wrong

Both my daughter and son work in emergency rooms; one locally as an ER nurse and the other in Redding as an ER doc. Both have children under 3 years old and both have been treating H1N1 flu patients for more than two months now. Neither has been given the opportunity to get H1N1 shots.

How can we expect these ER doctors and nurses who come in contact with infected patients every day to continue to stay well without any protection for them or their children? And what about all the other patients they see on their shifts?

And yet I read last week that Atascadero State Hospital patients and the Obama girls have all been inoculated. Something is dramatically wrong with this picture.

Linda Rawlings

Arroyo Grande

Broken promises

On Oct. 23  I read the revealing commentary by Victor Davis Hanson, concerning Obama’s “unkept promises.” This should be assigned reading for all of those who might still believe that Obama is America’s answer to all problems. Maybe you have all forgotten his melodramatic promises i.e. “close Guantanamo, immediately,” “remove our troops, now,” “warning to Iran,” “health care reform by August,” “end lobbyists in government,” “unemployment relief.”

If you think Bush missed promised targets and deadlines, listen more carefully to Obama’s theatrical hypocrisy. Fox TV commentators are bashed daily by many who probably don’t even listen to them.

This includes our president, who seems to have more time to quibble with this news station than he does to address serious problems facing our country and making urgent decisions for America’s future. Why does he care if O’Reilly, Beck or Hannity disagrees with him? Isn’t a nuclear Iran more troubling? Doesn’t Vladimir Putin cause him more grief than O’Reilly?

Is this Obama’s way of getting the American people to forget the real issues and focus on the fact that he is not living up to his “dramatic” promises?

H.D. Burson

Oceano

Books of interest

Ray Berger (Letters, Oct. 25) believes it odd that I would assert that Iran develops missiles because it fears an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

He is correct in saying Mahmoud Amadinejad has expressed a wish to wipe Israel off the map, but he knows full well that such an attack would cause us, as Israel’s ally, to counterattack. He threatened Israel to increase his popularity at home. Muslims believe Israel has taken land occupied by their religious kin for more than a thousand years. And, Israel has attacked Arab neighbors Syria and Iraq in the past, suspecting them of developing missile and nuclear capability.

The Jews’ problem with Muslims goes back to the British promise of a homeland in Palestine. Our county libraries have copies of interesting and readable books on the subject.

A good one is by former Los Angeles Times Middle East correspondent David Lamb — “The Arabs; Journeys Beyond the Mirage.” It includes the sad story of the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinians. Another interesting book in our libraries is on the British occupation before 1948, “One Palestine, Complete,” by Tom Segev.

Ken Rice

Atascadero

A legacy of Reagan

Regarding the interesting Associated Press article in The Tribune on Oct. 23: “Ships’ next stop the scrap heap.”

What the article failed to point out is these ships are the result of one of the dumbest decisions ever made by that god of Republican fiscal responsibility, President Ronald Reagan and his Navy Secretary John Lehman — a 600-ship navy. Also missing in the story is that there are an equal number of the same ships sitting in the Sabine River Pass in Texas and in the James River in Virginia. None of these ships ever saw a shot fired in anger and cost many billions to build and now more billions to scrap out. Just another example of the actions of the so-called party of fiscal responsibility. The only thing the Republicans are responsible for is the fiscal and moral bankruptcy of America.

John R. Hemming

Paso Robles

Basketball bouquet

In accordance with The Tribune’s policy of awarding “bouquets and brickbats,” I would like to offer a bouquet to the Cal Poly women’s basketball team. On Oct. 30, the team and coaching staff helped host a party at The Villages retirement community. They sang, danced, decorated and charmed the large group of senior citizens. They are truly a wonderful group of young women and a great part of this community. Kudos to my alma mater and, “Go Lady Mustangs!”

Larry Will

Pismo Beach