Letters

Letters may be edited for clarity and length. E-mail to 20*******@oc******.com">le*****@oc******.com, or send to Letters to the Editor, c/oOC Weekly, 1666 N. Main St., Ste. 500, Santa Ana, CA 92701. Or fax to (714) 550-5908.

REAGAN? GOD

You people are unbelievable. Taking cheap shots at Ronald Reagan right after his death [Tom Carson's “Death of a Salesman,” June 11]. Why don't you move your liberal B.S. to San Francisco, where it will be welcomed? The only reason I read your tripe is to keep up with what the real enemies of America are thinking. It's quite evident you people would be happier in France.

Duane W. Robinson
Huntington Beach

REAGAN? NOT GOD

Tom Carson, you nailed it, thanks!

Lorraine Carpinelli
via e-mail

What's this hullabaloo about Ronald Reagan? He was a terrible president. The canonization of this smiling do-nothing of a president is proof this country is in control of a reactionary congress and right-wing media.

Jack Gilman, M.D.
via e-mail

While enduring sacrifices in education, health care, homeland security, etc., the already-overburdened taxpayer is being asked by Representative Dana Rohrabacher to fund yet another sycophantic paean to his former boss, Ronald Reagan [Steve Lowery's “Diary of a Mad County,” June 11]. This to fund yet a third redesign of the $20 bill. This honor would add to the taxpayers' funding of a Reagan library, national airport, federal courthouse, freeway, aircraft carrier, and who knows what else? I suggest Rohrabacher stop tampering with our beleaguered currency. Anyway, treasury bills and notes—our nation's IOUs—would be a more fitting location for the mug of a president who showed all succeeding presidents and Republican legislators the way to talk a happy conservative line to the voters while really voting the deficit into the stratosphere.

J. Kirsch
via e-mail

NAZIS

In the article titled “The NASCAR Nazi” [Lost in OC, May 28], Jim Washburn sounds no different than the Bill Clinton-haters. Before accusing Bush of being Nazi, maybe Washburn should do a little research about Nazism. It was a collectivist/leftist movement that supported many policies that Democrats support in the U.S. today: gun control, disdain for “profits,” cradle-to-grave government care. . . .

Rick Bash
via e-mail

Jim Washburn responds:No, I sound substantially different from the Clinton-haters. For starts, I wish Bush well; I just wish him well gone from the White House. Why? Because his administration abuses power and flouts our Constitution in ways that threaten our republic and blacken our moral standing in the world. And unlike Clinton, whose errant dick was daily front-page news for a year in the “liberal” press, the media monopoly has barely touched on the Bush gang's perfidies. Consider the revelation that the Justice Department drafted a legal brief claiming Bush has the authority to order torture and John Ashcroft's illegally stonewalling Congress' investigation into that. You know, that torture stuff that shamed America, that the administration claimed was the work of a “few bad apples”? But even though anLA Times piece noted that the Justice Department's position “turned the Constitution on its head,” they buried the piece on A-16, and it was missing entirely from network and cable news. That is scary, if you're a Constitution right-side-up kinda guy. And I know plenty about the Nazis, thanks. If they were so darned leftist, why'd the OSS recruit so many of them to fight communism? Behind the socialist rubric, they were so pro-business that Ford, Standard Oil and other U.S. firms—including those connected with G.W.'s granddad Prescott Bush—did a robust business with the Nazis, some even after the war started. And top this for free enterprise: the design and construction of the gas chambers was put out to competitive bid! The Nazis also pretty much originated the military-industrial complex. Meanwhile, the points I raised about the “Nazi precursors” at play now in the White House—the lying, the secrecy, the disregard for human life, the way their ideology runs roughshod over reality—are still waiting for someone to refute them. And please shut the hell up about gun control. We've heard it claimed for decades that “gun control is the first step to totalitarianism.” Folks don't get much more totalitarian than Saddam Hussein, and in case you haven't noticed, every last Iraqi and his son has a gun.

NO BABIES

If I ever gave birth to a child in the likes of the three involved in the Haidl case, I hope I'd be put out of my misery. I have serious hope that these useless beings will go to prison where they will get theirs. I doubt Snapple is given out to inmates, but I encourage them to find something comparable. As for the parents of these creatures, you make my decision not to have children the right one. Let the videotape play on repeat in your heads for the rest of your pathetic lives.

Chelsea M.
Huntington Beach

Not only did Gustavo go apoplectic without real cause, but also when chastised by another reader, your editor piles on the reader with an inane, out-of-context “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” slam. OC Weekly is more than happy to embrace its right to print criticism about Orange County events and people. Yet your writers' lips tremble and eyes well up before launching into a tantrum should any reader chance to find some fault with their stories.

Stephanie Wong
Santa Ana

“As for you, Todd, likening Gustavo's response to some grade-school putdown, I won't even dignify that with a response since you clearly have cooties. Still, I have a question for you: Why do you keep hitting yourself? Huh? Why do you keep hitting yourself, Todd?” Thanks for the laugh on a Friday!

Todd Hansen
via e-mail