Comment Archives: stories: Columns & Blogs: Letters to the Editor
Re: “Letters to the Editor: January 9, 2013”
An open letter to Representative Mike Thompson:
Thank you for holding the town hall meeting on gun violence in Santa Rosa last Thursday.
As a responsible gun owner and as a professional firearms instructor, I would like to share the following thoughts with you.
Mental health: It appears from these forums that it is the overall consensus of the public is that the mental health of the individuals who are committing these mass shootings should be the top priority and the issue should be addressed immediately.
Psych drugs: It has been reported that the majority of these crimes were committed by those who were under the influence of prescription drugs or who were self medicating.
Gun free zones: Those public and private areas designated as safe zones (schools, shopping malls, etc.) are invitations to those who want to inflict maximum harm to their victims, knowing that they will not be confronted until police arrive on the scene. The NRA has recently been critiized for suggesting that armed guards be provided in schools, however it was former president Bill Clinton who originally suggested the "cops in schools" program in 1998.
High capacity magazines: Here in California we can legally possess magazines with no more than 10 rounds. If the same law is enacted nationally and another mass shooting occurs with 10 round magazines being used, do we ban those in favor of 5 round magazines or 3 round magazines, or back to single shot firearms? Where do we stop limiting the rights of the law abiding?
Assault rifles: The misconception of what an "assault rifle" is needs to be clarified. The majority of rifles available to the public these days are "semi-automatic", meaning that the trigger must be pulled each time in order to fire one round. Fully automatic weapons have been unavailable to the general public since the 1930's and are used today primarily by the military and some law enforcement agencies.
Some of these "semi-automatic" rifles are called "assault rifles" mostly due to the fact that they have been designed to imitate the visual appearance of military weapons and look intimidating to some.
The bias media: Violence is constantly glorified in movies, television shows, video games, etc. influencing young, impressionable and disturbed minds that by committing acts of violence it will give them the attention that they desire. After a mass shooting the media is quick to immortalize the instigator of these crimes to celebrity status by giving them national coverage. However, when a crime in progress is stopped by a responsibly armed citizen, the citizen who risked their own life to stop the crime receives minimal press coverage, if any.
Gun owners and the Law: It is responsibility of all gun owners to keep their firearms out of the hands of unauthorized persons by securing them when not in use. In order for the background system to work, stiffer penalties should be in place for people who break the law (a straw purchase) by buying a firearm for a family member, a friend or a neighbor.
Training & education: I firmly believe that all gun owners need education and hands on training in order to operate a firearm safely and accurately. However, I am divided over whether the government should mandate such training.
The 2nd Amendment: Established by the founding fathers to insure that citizens had the means with which to defend themselves against tyrannical forces, both foreign and domestic,
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Obama administration is intent on using “any means necessary” to restrict the average citizen’s rights to own and carry firearms by exploiting devastating events in order further their gun control agenda.
David W. Adams
NRA Certified Instructor.
NRA Certified Range Safety Officer.
California Dept. of Justice Handgun Safety Instructor.
State of Florida Concealed Weapon Permit (CCW) Instructor.
State of Arizona Concealed Weapon Permit (CCW) Instructor.
Email: firearmsafetytraining@gmail.com
Website: http://www.firearmsafetytraining.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Firearmsafetytrai….
Re: “Letters to the Editor:November 21, 2012”
To feast without fears. Many good points, Turkeys and Mother Earth will appreciate it. Yet we are less what we eat and more what we digest. Some people don't properly digest vegetable proteins, there is no one formula that fits all.
Re: “Letters to the Editor:October 10, 2012”
Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney' his vice presidential running mate. At an Atlas Society meeting celebrating Ayn Rand's life in 2005, Ryan said that "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand", and "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff."
Greenspan was born and educated in New York City, where he earned a BA, MA and, 27 years later in 1977, a PhD in economics. After earning his MA in 1950, Greenspan became a 20-year associate of famed philosopher Ayn Rand, author of books "The Virtue of Selfishness,""Atlas Shrugged" and more. Greenspan wrote for Rand’s newsletters and authored a chapter for a Rand book. As legend has it, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was once a member of Ayn Rand's 1960's salon. He was invited guest at Rand's apartment and apparently was close enough to have read her epic Atlas Shrugged as it came off her typewriter.
With his selection of Representative Paul Ryan as a running mate, Mitt Romney has told us exactly who he would be as President: a selfish capitalist. A Romney-Ryan White House would elevate selfishness above all else. To understand the values of Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan, it is necessary to understand their intellectual forebear, Ayn Rand. Ms. Rand was one of the most extreme public intellectuals of the twentieth century. As her central creed, she rejected the idea that people in a community should approach each other with charity, compassion, and altruism.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: Aug. 29, 2012”
Tuesday Sep 4th, 2012
At age 33, Ralph Reed was the Christian Right’s wonder boy.
He was anointed in a 1995 Time Magazine cover story as the “right hand of God” for spinning the trust of conservative Christians into political gold. It was Reed who built the Christian Coalition of televangelist Pat Robertson into a powerful arm of the Republican Party.
But Reed fell from grace in 2006 after he was implicated in the biggest Washington scandal since Watergate. His pal and colleague, the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty to defrauding clients of millions of dollars, some of which had landed in Reed’s pockets as well. The money spigot was now wide open. Abramoff was being paid millions as a lobbyist. Reed was being paid millions to dupe his fellow Christians.
He says he intends to build the 21st century version of the Christian Coalition, with an annual budget of $ 100 million, five million members, full-time lobbyists in all 50 state capitols, and an enormous database. The pharisaical ultra-conservative, hard-Right support he receives comes largely from a hard-core of misled, fanatically anti-Communist, fundamentalist, evangelical, bigoted, self-righteous religious minority, as well as from the vast silent majority, of the indifferent, couldn't-care-less, self-indulgent, self-satisfied. That fact is these fanatical religionists also consider themselves above the law and the courts and the freedoms of the people and willing to commit any crime in the name of national, religious or so-called family security!
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: Aug. 15, 2012”
Actually, the Philistines were not what is today. The Palestinians today, Palestinians are Arabs who moved in later. The Philistines were more closely related to what used to be the Lebanese, which were the Phoenicians, the to be the Lebanese, which were the Phoenicians, the ancient Phoenician Empire of traders, and they were actually more closely related to Hiram, King of Tyre, and some of them, although Hiram was more of a friend of Israel at that time, the time of David.
So the Philistines and their five famous cities used to occupy the coastal plain of Israel. Gaza was one of the major cities--the Arabs still live there-- of course Israel has now incorporated the Gaza Strip into Israel. It's now a part of the occupied territories, and they've just stolen away the whole country! It was called Palestine by the Romans, in Latin, & came from "Philistia," which was the name of the country way back under the Philistines. It was the name of the country for thousands of years till the Jews came along.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: Aug. 8, 2012”
Vultures
But a small group of vulture funds have been trying to divert that money into their own pocket. How Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, and others have used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. "It’s just a scheme to take a cash-rich company and move all that cash to a few actors — typically it’s the executives of the target company and the executives in the private equity firm — and then you force everybody else to pay."
Wall Street scandals — including a decade-long Wall Street scandal that drained money from every county and state in the United States — and notes not a single bank executive has faced individual consequences. In Libor, it was 16 banks acting in concert to rig the international interest rates. What this one was was a number of the world’s biggest banks colluding to artificially suppress the amount of money that cities and towns earned on their municipal bond service.
The Libor, scandals trillions of dollars, and not a single person has had to have any individual consequence. So you talk about all those settlements. Those are all paid by the company and by the shareholders. Not a single person since 2008 has gone to—has been indicted, has gone to jail, has spent a day in jail, or has paid any kind of money out of his own pocket. And until there’s any individual consequence, it’s really a license to steal. If you can’t go to jail for rigging an $800 trillion market, what can you go to jail for? This is the result of a selfish, greed-driven society. They've hardened their hearts for so long and are so blinded by greed and hypocrisy that they don't even hear the pitiful pleas of these poor suffering ones.
Ted Rudow III, MA
Re: “Letters to the Editor: July 25, 2012”
Called Libor, which that stands for London Interbank Offered Rate and it involves a group of bankers who set a daily interest rate affecting trillions of dollars of transactions around the world. Your home mortgage, your college debt, your credit card fees - these could have been affected by Libor.
20 other megabanks are now under investigation, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Open collusion with other banks to lowball or highball the rates to profit. "The New York Times" reporting, "As unemployment climbed and tax revenue fell the city of Baltimore laid off employees and cut services in the midst of the financial crisis. Its leaders now say the city's troubles were aggravated by bankers' manipulation of this key interest rate linked to hundreds of millions of dollars the city had borrowed."
What you’ve just seen is a cartel in operation, which -- not maybe -- did distort Libor for the benefits of the largest banks in the cartel. It is the largest rigging of prices in the history of the world, by many orders of magnitude. Libor is one example where we left it to banks to themselves to set important benchmarks. Many in the West are naïve about the real plight of the world. There are many who live a life of ease‚ unaware of the hurt that ravishes the world on a daily basis through man's bad choices.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: July 11, 2012”
Ted Rudow III 1 comment
The Olympics are the worship of man, the worship of his body. But sports are the worship of man's body; war is the ultimate that all of these lead to. The ultimate manifestation of all of these is War.--His physical prowess, his mechanical ingenuity, his tactical genius and his indomitable spirit! The Olympics are the worship of man, the worship of his body. But sports are the worship of man's body; war is the ultimate that all of these lead to. The ultimate manifestation of all of these is War.--His physical prowess, his mechanical ingenuity, his tactical genius and his indomitable spirit!War is the ultimate combination. Man at his best, which is his worst!--WAR! His most destructive worst, his greatest strength, his greatest genius, his greatest inventive power and his greatest spirit, patriotism or whatever you want to call it, is used for war and a competitive spirit against others who are doing the same.
See how this competitive sports thing has been the final stages of every great civilisation and empire!--The worship of the body. It's very sexual too, as you notice, all these things are very sexy. So sex is included as a part, but in some ways a very minor part.Sports glorifies sex, but at the same time belittles it and pretends to dislike it.
Did you know that the Nicaragua-El Salvador War, in which 20,000 people were killed, started over a football game? In fact, Ernest Hemingway, the world famous writer, who spent so much of his time in Latin America and Spain, said you could eliminate most Latin American wars and their causes by simply banning football or soccer! Those games get them so worked up into a frenzy against each other that nothing but a total all-out war can truly satisfy the spirit of it! The whole thing is a worship of the flesh and the worship of man with a competitive spirit of war, the very essence of contention and competition and struggle: warfare, and the perfect preparation for it! Sports is war in disguise, and the Olympics disguised all this under the totally false and contrary theme song of "Peace"! That's their theme!--Isn't that something. So they speak peace while war is in their hearts, and they talk peace while they prepare for war--prepare their bodies for war!
Re: “Letters to the Editor: June 27, 2012”
To equate the Fourth of July with Christianity is absurd! I do not like the spreading of American-style democracy at the hands of the bloodthirsty and warlike Americans themselves. This does not lead to more Christianity, but to a nation drifting further.
Has America brought more Christianity and Christian values to Iraq or Afghanistan, or other nations it has attacked in one way or another in recent years? No, the opposite is true. America cannot impose righteousness on others. That is a personal affair, not something that can be imposed in a national crusade.
Materialism, "the devotion to material wealth and possessions at the expense of spiritual or intellectual values," is virtually synonymous with capitalism, the profit-driven system that dominates the economies and nations of today.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: June 20, 2012”
Too many Americans are still out of work to justify cuts to the food stamp program. Democrats and Republicans banded together in the Senate to defeat an amendment by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to slash spending on the program nearly in half.
Still, a version of the 2012 Farm Bill passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee and being debated by the Senate floor contains a $4.5 billion reduction over the next decade to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program budget. The cuts aren’t as steep as Paul’s proposal and they represent a fraction of the federal program’s $80 billion a year spending. But it would nonetheless be a devastating blow to poor families. An amendment restoring cuts, offered by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is the best solution. Her amendment would not add to the deficit. Restoring cuts to the food stamp program would be paid for by capping subsidies to the highly profitable crop insurance companies
They even made the poor people fight these wars for them, when all the poor really wanted was peace and enough to eat and wear and a place to sleep.They refuse to fight these wars and rebelled against letting the rich rob them.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: May 30, 2012”
I bet you could ask almost any American today why the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam and they couldn't give you a good reason. You know the reasons that Johnson and Kennedy gave?--"We're fighting for freedom for the Vietnamese. We're fighting to protect free South Vietnam Well, whether they wanted to be or not they wound up not being free, the U.S. lost the war and North Vietnam took over!
Really now, how many Americans really cared about the Vietnamese being free or not? How many American boys would have been happy to go over there and give their lives to free the Vietnamese? How many had such idealistic ideals? They don't know what they fought the Korean war for either, which they lost. They also don't know why they fought the Grenadian war or why they fought the Panamanian war. They don't know what they fought these wars for.--And they know just as little about why they're now going to be made to fight and die. I don't even think most of them would be willing to go there and die for the oil.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: May 23, 2012”
I like trains. Lagunitas, Forest Knolls, Woodacre, Fairfax, Pt.Reyes Station were all villages founded along a train that could get you to school, work and shoping all the way to San Francisco. All the houses were built within walking distance (1 mile) of the stations , which in the Valley were often just a mile apart.
You just can't set a couple stations miles apart on top of sprawl and expect the ridership to support a train to nowhere. I like trains, I just don't like profiteering at taxpayers expense.
Thanks for acknowledging my Pacific Sun endorsement.
Alex Easton-Brown, Candidate for Assembly, Lagunitas Alexeastonbrown.com
Re: “Rhapsodies & Rants: 12-14-2011”
Happy to meet with you at your convenience, and actually show you the films. -- Kelly Amis
This Week's Issue
Re: “Letters to the Editor: January 23, 2013”
The Pentagon has officially removed the longstanding military ban on women in combat. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta formally announced the move on Thursday in Washington
"It’s clear to all of us that women are contributing in unprecedented ways to the military’s mission of defending the nation. Women represent 15 percent of the force: over 200,000. They’re serving in a growing number of critical roles on and off the battlefield. The fact is that they have become an integral part of our ability to perform our mission."
In being officially allowed to serve in combat roles, women will be afforded opportunities for medals of recognition as well as for advancement to positions they have been unable to pursue.
It illustrate the blatantly hypocritical policies of the U.S. and its allies. I don't believe in war. I don't believe in killing my fellowman. Violence breeds violence, and he or she that lives by the sword shall die by the sword. The true God is a good God who is kind and loving, concerned. God hates war and its rich perpetrators. In some ways, I'm a pacifist, because I believe that God can settle all wars.
Ted Rudow III