Better Look Both Ways

(Re: "Set Up to Fail," August 2-8, Vol. 22, No. 5)

Dear UTW:

"State Sen. Brian Crain, R-Tulsa, offered a common sense suggestion: Take the $25 million in revenue that would have been lost to tax cuts and earmark it for education." The trouble with that statement is that Crain is playing both sides of the street. He says that he is for more school funding but he voted FOR the tax cuts.

--Karl Sniderman

The South Rose Again

Dear UTW:

Recently in China, where virtually no one is allowed to own a gun, a teenager killed eight or nine people with a knife. There have been increasing incidents of mass school killings with knives in China, By May 12th, 2012, there had been five violent school attacks in the previous two months. In 2008 in Japan, where they have a thing about swords, a man plowed into a crowd with a rental truck and started killing pedestrians with a knife. In December 2010, a man boarded a bus in Toride, Japan, and stabbed four people.

With evil intent, most things can be used to kill or maim. Decades ago, in one of the first Bic commercials, they loaded one into a rifle in front of a blank cartridge, shot it partway through a pine board, and demonstrated that it could still write. With or without guns, with or without knives, where there is a violent will, there's a way. Just ask the House of Borgia.

President Obama, for example, seems to be utterly immune to a sense of irony. He personally orders the deaths of terrorists and "collaterally" kills innocents in the attacks. He sends young Americans overseas to do the same thing, and a portion of them either die or come back maimed in body or mind. But let some nut start shooting people in a theatre, and for President Obama, that buck stops with people who never had any participation or intent in the awful tragedy. He knows to and what to blame, the NRA and anyone with a mental illness.

Like a white woman fearing that every black man who winks at her might rape her, President Obama joins in with the calls to crack down on people with mental illnesses so that, in so many words, "this will not happen again." Like many a bigot who once feared people just like him, he acts as if most in the minority of people with mental illnesses are devoid of human empathy or compassion, conscience, character or restraint. That such people are sub-human and do not deserve the same rights and consideration as him. Even while he, himself, adds to that minority by sending young men and women to fight overseas. For whom he has attempted to reduce their civil rights.

It's like he forgot how the blues were born. And now with Black Man on Top, he's going to make some better ones. Irony -- the South rose again and it's a Black President.

--Don Baker

Raise Your Voice

Dear UTW:

The decisions we make steer our life. And our decisions have placed us in a position where government no longer works for the people -- they're focused on their own interests and growing an empire funded by the taxpayer. This is not what America is about. Our ancestors fought for limited government and free markets. Our country was built on hard work and personal responsibility.

Do you want individual liberty or do you want to be told what kind of car you can drive, what you can eat or what kind of medical care you can have? Elections are on the horizon. Educate yourself and vote carefully. When we all raise our voices together, we are heard.

--Cecilia Rice

Christmas in August (and November)

Dear UTW:

"You're fired!" said Gov. Mary Fallin.

"You're fired!" said State Senator Kim David.

"You're fired!" said State Rep. Wade Rousselot.

And, the Wagoner Public Schools' board of education passed out the pink slips to the treasurer, two administrators and 37 support personnel.

The governor, the state senator and the state representative could have adjusted the state budget to cover Wagoner's loss of $800,000 in federal stimulus money.

But these "Chicken Littles" chose to make our school kids and teachers suffer so they can brag about limiting government.

May they get a lump of coal in their Christmas stockings.

--Virginia "Blue Jeans" Jenner