How about focusing on the issues?
To the editor:
The John McCain and Barack Obama camps have an opportunity to make real and effective history and initiate true and meaningful reforms.
To both camps: Your conventions are over. Allow yourselves 10 more days of vicious personal attacks and mudslinging -- and then stop.
Forget about responding to every little negative squeak about you from the other side and concentrate on what you know to be the real issues that concern and frighten us. Start telling us, in real-world, rational terms, what you intend to do about the those issues; how you intend to resolve those issues and, honestly, how you intend to pay for them.
Leave the rabble-rousing to the fanatics within your own parties and the fourth estate; they seem to think that accusatory rhetoric and attacks still win elections (they don't; it just sells advertising, so distance yourselves from that). The world has changed, and the political parties that control us won't change with it, no matter how much screaming both sides do about change.
Stop mudslinging and concentrate on the issues and what you intend to do. Stop the madness of reactive naysaying and give us real reasons to push the button next to your name. That's all that matters now.
Rich Callen
LAS VEGAS
Who's the socialist?
To the editor:
"Obama is a socialist," angrily cry the "conservative" supporters of the standard bearer of the Republican Party and Bush administration -- the one about to nationalize the two largest U.S. mortgage entities.
Robert Gladd
LAS VEGAS
LOL!
To the editor:
Review-Journal photographer Ralph Fountain took a picture of news trucks parked outside the Clark County Regional Justice Center, pending the start of the O.J. Simpson trial, that was published on Monday's front page.
I had to do a double-take, then I cracked up. Attached to one of the barricades is a printed sign that says, "Special event: no public parking passed this barrier."
Hello? The correct word is "past." Perhaps this was written by someone who only knows "text message" English: "yur" means your, "rofl" means "roll on floor laughing," etc.
What a shame to have our educational shortcomings put out in public for everyone to see.
Barbara Glass
HENDERSON
It's about choice
To the editor:
In his Sunday letter to the editor, Jim Brown perpetuates the tiresome Republican claim that "most proper progressives" would have "just kill(ed) the baby," in reference to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's daughter's exercise of her choice to bear her child and marry the father.
I know of no progressive, proper or otherwise, who advocates killing babies. They advocate and celebrate Miss Palin's decision: choice. Miss Palin had a choice, and she made her choice. We can only hope that her choice was made freely and not in response to political or other demands. Let's celebrate that Miss Palin was able to make her choice legally in the United States. Under her mother's philosophy, however, our daughters and granddaughters would not have this choice.
Aileen Murphy Zsenyuk
LAS VEGAS
Tax-funded desert
To the editor:
I have been anxious for the Clark County Department of Parks and Recreation's Old Spanish Trail Park to open at the corner of Tara Avenue and Cimarron Road. However, as it nears completion, I can only describe the park as a rock quarry with sidewalks.
The landscaping is almost entirely rock and bear ground. Why spend our tax dollars on building more desert? If the decision makers think the community wants more open desert area, rather than shade structures, trees and a place to throw a Frisbee or football, or pleasant surroundings to enjoy your family, there are plenty of already-existing options.
What are the leaders of Parks and Recreation or our county commissioners thinking?
L. Laura Fritz
LAS VEGAS
Out of context
To the editor:
On "The Back Page" of Sunday's Viewpoints section, the Review-Journal quoted me out of context. My statement about being "like any other teacher in Clark County" was in response to the reporter asking me about the length of my contract with the Clark County School District. My contract is the same contract as any other teacher in Clark County.
I did not "step down" this summer as president of the Clark County Education Association. The CCEA bylaws include language regarding term limits, and this summer I completed my third term.
Mary Ella Holloway
HENDERSON
THE WRITER IS PROJECT FACILITATOR OF THE CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT'S TEACHING AND LEARNING CONDITIONS COMMITTEE.
