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Show Page The Ogden Valley news Volume XVIII Issue XI November 15, 010 The Ogden Valley news Staff: Shanna Francis Tel: 801-745- 688 Fax: 801-745-006 Cell: 801-791-4387 E-Mail: slfrancis@digis.net Jeannie Wendell Tel: 801-745- 879 Fax: 801-745- 879 E-Mail: crwendell@digis.net crwendell@msn.com Opinions expressed by advertisers, columnists or letters to the editor are not necessarily the opinions of the owners and staff of The Ogden Valley news. guidelines for Letters to the Editor Letters should be 300 words or less. Letters must be signed and the address of the writer submitted. The Ogden Valley news reserves the right to edit or decline printing of any submissions. Announcements Sought As a community service, The Ogden V alley n ews will print local birth, wedding, obituary, anniversary and missionary farewell & homecoming and Eagle Scout announcements free of charge. 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Note: The contents of The Ogden Valley News are copyrighted. To protect this publication and its contributors from unlawful copying, written permission is required before any individual or company engages in the reproduction or distribution of its contents, by any means, without first obtaining written permission from the owners of this publication. The deadline for the OVN December 1 issue is November 10. Letters to the Editor Radio Station Spews Bigot-Meth I pride myself in knowing what’s going on around me politically, but I was caught unawares the other day while visiting a local business. A radio was belching political talk from behind the counter and I asked the clerk what station he was listening to. He told me and I said “Don’t you get kind of tired of that political stuff all day long?” He said, “Well, I hate Obama, so this is my station cause that’s all it is.” As usual, I let it go, paid for my stuff, and when I got into my car I tuned into the station to see what was up. Boy, was he right. It was a non-stop, Ihate-President-Obama call-in program. I was tempted to call in posing as one of them to get on the air, but eventually realized that they apparently don’t put callers on the air with an IQ over 60, and I’m pretty sure mine’s, at least, 95. Just in the few minutes I was listening, the host used a teaser, before about four commercial interruptions, that a new report claims that President Obama will not complete his first term. Wow, that gets people’s attention, because what could create that situation? He can’t get impeached and thrown out while there’s a majority of Dems in the Senate. He seems healthy . . . . Oh, I get it! Through the radio you could almost hear the racists chambering a round. Well, it turns out that the report was from an over-seas organization and was submitted to and aired on IRAN TV! And the Right Wing picked it up for air in the U.S.? Real patriots those wingers are. The report did not hint or suggest anything other than impeachment on “mental competency” grounds, yet the radio host dishonestly and repeatedly implied that President Obama would not complete his first term because of some event. In doing so, he was knowingly injecting a huge hit of bigot-meth into his listener’s veins. Luckily, I lost the signal in the canyon before I got picked up for DWA (driving while angry). I shouldn’t let those guys get to me. I should feel sorry for them because to be them is like the sound a straw makes when the cup is empty. Larry Bennington, Eden Washington is Broken, but Driving the Republicans Farther to the Right Won’t Fix It According to John Reynolds, President Obama’s struggle with an extemporaneous quote from the Declaration of Independence is proof positive that he is a godless Marxist . . . or a Muslim, in which case he would have a god—just not the right one. Mr. Reynolds wants us to forget the eight-year bastion of buffoonery that was George W. Bush. Now there was a man who couldn’t string two sentences together without one of them being grammatically incorrect and the other being a lie. Mr. Reynolds invokes the founding fathers and insists that God was driving their decision-making process. The founding fathers were indeed wise men. Just what each one of them believed when it came to God is unclear, but one thing is certain, they deeply mistrusted organized religion. The First Amendment was very carefully crafted to keep religion and government separate. The founding fathers recognized intuitively that when religion takes over Government, you get the Taliban. The struggle I’m having with the good Christian movement that is trying to “take back” the Government, presumably from inferior citizens like me, is why do they hate Obama’s Healthcare program so much? Lessons I learned growing up in LDS Sunday school included stories about the good shepherd who left the 99 sheep to find the one that was lost and the Good Samaritan who helped a stranger when no one else would. Indeed, isn’t helping the poor a central Christian theme? National Healthcare, at the end of the day, is about finding the Samaritan within us. Unfortunately, concern for society as a whole nowadays appar- ently makes you a Socialist. Heaven forbid we should actually take care of each other. The willingness to blame Obama for the Republican policies that dug us into this hole is astonishing. We are in this hole because of Ronald Reagan’s Deregulation Nation and his insistence that Wall Street could police itself. How has that worked out? The Tea Partiers decry the tax and spend Democrats, but seem to have amnesia when it comes to the spend and not tax Republicans. One thing Mr. Reynolds and I can agree on—Washington is broken. But driving the Republican Party farther to the right will not fix it. The question is whether we can continue to play this game the way we have. There seems no choice but to fight the good fight. It is also wise to ask whether “high tech” warfare will win the day. Our drones and missiles can effectively disrupt the enemy but often it’s only temporarily. And as in the case of terrorist attacks, the costs disadvantage is against us. We are placed at a significant disadvantage fighting an enemy halfway around the globe, and lasting success is at best doubtful. The foe seems to have an endless supply of willing martyrs who do not value life as we do. Americans are accused of being Islam phobic because we are uneasy about Muslims in the USA, a country that many Muslims chose to come to but now want to live by their own rules, customs, and laws. One can’t help but believe that our freedoms and rule of law were what attracted them initially, and their actions have the appearance, at best, of ingratitude and, at worst, subversion. While most Muslims in the USA may be peace-loving and unsympathetic to radical Islam causes, we are only too aware that in the case of terrorism it only takes a few, and it doesn’t matter whether they are “homegrown” or “imported,” to inflict major damage. It can’t be enough to say you are against radical Islam; you must actively defend your country otherwise you may be in the wrong country. There are opportunities for American Muslims to step up and help in the fight against a common foe. It comes down to a case of being for us or against us. If we lose the ability, either through complacency or by design, such as politically correct self-imposed restraints, to determine who in this country would destroy us, we lose—period. First Runner-Up. Democrats have repeatedly used the analogy of Republicans driving the economy into the ditch during this political season. A more accurate analogy would be that of a hook-and-ladder fire truck with rear steering with Republicans driving and Democrats steering. Moral of story, it takes teamwork to be successful. Second Runner-Up. Passing legislation in Congress, specifically the 2000 page Health Care reform bill, has been compared to “sausage making”; it’s messy work. It was even suggested that we had to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” We should be asking whether we are electing lawmakers or hiring butchers. Finally, V.P. Joe Biden’s “Recovery Summer” will surface as the “Winter of Our Discontent” on November 2. Gary Anderson, Huntsville First Things First The number of “first things” we should pay attention to in America are numerous. One of great importance is “terrorism.” Ironically terrorism is a word that Franco Frattini, Justice and Security Commissioner of the European Union, has banned. He also called for allowing 20 million more Muslims to immigrate to the EU, basically surrendering to illegal immigration. It’s suggested that he may be a distant relative of Harry Reid. Terrorism is a subject that has been beat to death and it may seem that we have a handle on it. Though we’ve had no major attacks since September 11, still it deserves another look. Not that Homeland Security isn’t looking, but maybe we need some perspective on terrorist attacks in the overall scheme of things. Take for instance the cost to wage war—conventional versus terrorism. There is no comparison. A dozen terrorist who manage to work under the radar, such as in the 9-11 attack, can wreck havoc, kill and injure thousands of people, and inflict billions of dollars worth of property damage—to say nothing of the ensuing cost to respond and take measures to safeguard against future attacks. Since 9-11 we’ve spent well over a trillion dollars on keeping America safe. The cost to terrorist is a few lives of martyrs and a few thousand dollars to train and supply them. The bad guys win by a huge margin. John W. Reynolds, Pleasant View |