Letters to the Editor for September 23, 2020

Gathered together
So sorry, but I am sorry about hearing and reading all that our nation is going through now.
Yes, our nation is in trouble. What can we do? We need God’s help.
On Sept. 26, busloads and thousands of people will gather to pray with other Christians to turn our nation back to him. We need God’s help.
Those that wish to meet in Washington, D.C., at the Lincoln Memorial can so do.
So many of us will not be able to attend, but you and your family can gather to-gether on Sept. 26 and pray.
This is the most critical time for America that we have seen in our lifetime; take a moment on Sept. 26 and pray. “Yes, prayer is powerful.”
“The Lord was moved by prayer for the land. 2 Samuel 24:25, NIV Bible
God’s blessings to all.
For more info, go to prayermarch2020.com.
Betty Hundrieser
Carson City

Guess who I’m voting for
I ask myself why I would want to waste my time responding to Mr. Frinks letter? Because its essence screams “Respond.” So typical of a Trump enthusiast; shallow, accusatory, limited in scope and nonsensical.
So, our choices are to vote for the “Village Idiot” or the MAGA man. OK, I will waste a few moments.
So typical of a Trumper to put down someone rather than using facts and logic to explain their critique. Let us examine one meaning of village idiot. The sudden prominence of Nostradamus was undoubtedly triggered by a widely circulated message asserting that in the year 1555 the prophet had foreseen the results of the presidential election: Come the millennium, month 12 (in this case month 11), in the home of the greatest power, the village idiot will come forth to be acclaimed the leader.
I can live with that definition, can you Mr. Frink? Biden graduated from the Uni-versity of Delaware with a degree in history and political science and received his law degree from Syracuse University Law School, not to mention being Vice President for eight years.
Now we have the MAGA man, who claims “…Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” He “attended” two colleges. His graduation is suspect. As of this writing Trump has made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims.
Care to guess who I am voting for?
Joel Flamenbaum
Carson City

Show of hands
OK everyone. Listen up. By a show of hands (I’ve got mine up), how many out there have personally known someone from Trump’s ‘losers camp?’ Someone who gave their life in serving their country. Someone who may have been post-humously awarded medals for valor or bravery. Someone who simply gave the ultimate sacrifice in serving and defending their nation, because they felt it was the honorable thing to do.
Once more a show of hands please (I’ve got mine up), how many out there per-sonally know someone from Trump’s suckers camp? Someone who is in active military duty, retired from the military, or survived tragedy and lives with a per-manent disability. Someone who is alive, presently serving or did serve and made it back … not always whole but made it back.
“Losers and suckers: That’s what our president thinks of his fellow Americans in the military. This ain’t fake news people. He said it. He’s on video. Way too many sources to deny. Even Fox verified his reprehensible remarks. The man, who spends every breathing moment thinking only of himself will not be able to lie his way out of this one. Maybe it’s the last one that will finally sink in to the heads of a few million followers.
If you can look the other way on this, and still support this sub-human cretin, then you really have lost your collective minds. All I can ask is please, do the rest of a favor and stay away from the polls.
Rick Van Alfen
Carson City

No foothold for BLM
Regarding the Appeal’s Sept. 9 guest editorial “God and Country” by Midge Breeden, it’s shocking how simply being white and economically well off allows gullible adults to back violent anarchist BLM to cleanse themselves of endemic racism. Jason Riley, a black Wall Street Journal editorialist, points out that BLM doesn’t represent the greater black community any more than white nationalists represent the white community.
The black community wants more policing in high crime neighborhoods even as BLM turns criminals into martyrs and leads the call to defund the police. Anti-police rhetoric has no basis in any empirical reality. It’s my hope that perhaps one or more of these local BLM sycophants would move to Portland and send back news bulletins on who does what downtown after dark.
As to the Aug. 8 Back the Blue rally in Douglas County to support Douglas Coun-ty Sheriff Coverley, most of the participants actually own TVs and see for them-selves every night the BLM rioting, arson and looting of businesses whose owners’ only sin was to provide goods and services for the communities they live in. Douglas citizens stand with our law enforcement professionals; we won’t allow them to be attacked without consequences. BLM will not be permitted to get a foothold in Douglas County.
Lynn Muzzy
Minden

Thanks for supporting luau
Dear Carson City/Carson Valley Boys & Girls Clubs of Western Nevada Support-ers:
Once again, in the midst of a pandemic, a crippling shutdown, and ongoing chal-lenges of every shape and stripe, you have floored us. YOU, the community, have stepped up to make the 27th Annual Luau, but our first ever Virtual Luau, a huge success.
Thank you so much to our donors, our luau committee, our Board and Advisory Committee, our staff – YOU all kept your chins up during this crazy endeavor. We won’t know our final numbers for a few weeks but it looks like Virtual Luau was the success we needed it to be. We would normally raise about $300,000, which is 20% of the clubs’ annual income. This year we will be at about half that, which is nothing short of amazing in light of the challenges we faced. Over half of our normal attendees attended virtually. Almost all of our big sponsors imme-diately stepped up at their normal commitment levels. We had about 75% of the items we would normally have had in the auction, and many of them went for crazy amounts, far exceeding their stated value. THIS is what community looks like. THIS is what success looks like for our kids!
Thank you to each of you who all got busy and helped in 1,000 different ways that may seem big or small, but every single piece of the puzzle is important. Once again, this committee and this community make us so grateful to live here in (as Mayor Bob would say) the Greatest City in the World.
Andie Wilson and Jill Head, Co-chairs of the Auction Committee
Katie Leao, CPO, BGCWN

Thanks for fixing leak
For Tom Grundy and his team at Public Works.
We want to thank you all for being so quick and expert at helping us with our wa-ter issues. You quickly responded to our call about a water leak at the street. And it is fixed. Even in this horrible smoke, the technicians who helped us knew what they
needed to do and did it efficiently and quickly.
Many thanks! All those I spoke with reporting the problem or working the prob-lem or following up on our satisfaction have been easy to work with, prompt and effective.
Carol Edmund
Carson City

Open letter to Gov. Sisolak
Hopefully you will not punish Minden and Douglas County for welcoming Presi-dent Trump to Nevada after your pressure would not let him hold the rally at the Reno airport as originally planned. By allowing our president to rally in Minden he was able to fulfill his commitment to hold a rally in Northern Nevada. Please stop listening to your wealthy Democrat backers and start listening to what Neva-da people want as you’re their governor.
Betty Ann Estes
Carson City

Voting for Ackerman
As previous letters have stated, Mark Amodei was absent on the roll call for the bill to support the Postal Service (HR 8015). Looking at his voting record from September 2011 to August 2020, Mark’s absentee record is much worse than the median of representatives currently serving. Twice as bad, actually. (ref: govtrack.us)
It seems that after four terms Mark may be getting tired of the job and not willing to put the time in. I have supported Mark in the past back when Republicans were fiscal conservatives and promoted a balanced budget. I supported him when his main concern was the people of Nevada and he was not beholden to the presi-dent. The Republican Party has changed and so has Mark. His values no longer correspond with mine and it is time for a change.
Patricia Ackerman’s values are more in-line with mine than Mark’s and she is more than ready to take over the position as our congressional representative. Patricia will get my vote.
Dennis Pederson
Carson City

Voting!
Election time again. Decisions… decisions… decisions!
Some will just run right down to the voting booth and without any real thought cast their votes; or remember whose ads they saw and vote accordingly; and some will vote on facts they have researched.
Seems to me there are two choices: 1 - “Yea Team” or 2 - “Best Qualified for the job!”
The Yea Teamers don’t really care who they choose to run the most powerful country in the world, just so the contender is a member of their team. Problem is, the winner will be managing the most powerful nation; not just running between goal posts. Yea team is great in sports, but it doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans in a management pick for running a country. Pick a person with crazy ideas and you get a crazy country to live in!
The Best Qualified for the job bunch look at a contender based on his/her real background; accomplishments; years of experience; education; integrity; moral at-titude and ability to exercise control over his emotions one way or the other. This is why one must look at the qualifications rather than elaborate promises and nice smiles.
Personally, using this approach, I will vote for Donald Trump because he delivers on his promises (proven). If he were a Democrat, I would still vote for him be-cause I am voting for the Best Qualified as I see it, but what do I know? I’m only 83 with a few elections under my belt!
Robert M. Hellen, Sr.
Carson City

Who are they?
“What do they want? asked the headline on a recent perspective on Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Perhaps, just as importantly, we need to ask, “Who are they?” Antifa, according to an article in the right-center Columbus Dispatch, is the name for loosely-affiliated groups that are left-leaning, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, and largely anti-capitalist (against the amassing of wealth by corpo-rations and by those they deem “elites”). Their goal, as stated in a Washington Post Fact Checker article, is to stop neo-Nazis and white supremacists from gain-ing a platform, showing up at demonstrations to counter the presence of such far-right extremist groups as the “boogaloo” movement.
Black Lives Matter, another decentralized movement, has, according to an article at the politically-right-center Fee.org site, grown from the Marxist roots of its founders into the much larger, “more benevolent” movement it now is, encom-passing people who are probably not even aware of its founders’ political views.
Jackie Field
Carson City

Don’t fool us twice
In Lincoln’s second inaugural address during the Civil War he pleaded to a divid-ed, struggling nation to act “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” Amer-ica today is similarly divided and struggling with COVID pandemic, climate change and flagging economy. We’re also at the point of electing a president.
In 2016 we elected Donald Trump; under whose leadership our country and econ-omy has declined nearly catastrophically. At that time, we had some valid excuses (didn’t know Trump well, Clinton uninspiring, smart businessman would be good, Clinton’s Benghazi bungle…).
Worst jobs record of any president since 1945 (first and only one to have negative jobs growth). All the markings of a grifter. No wonder he’s hiding tax returns.
He’s a draft dodger, calling our brave soldiers “suckers” and “losers,” cheated on all his wives, had extramarital affairs then paid hush money. Now with nearly 200,000 (mostly avoidable) COVID deaths, it’s like 50,000 Benghazis. In addi-tion, he acts like an authoritarian cozying up to other authoritarians especially his best buddy Putin.
Voting for Trump this year is not only to endorse malicious policies, accept in-competence and buy into an anti-democratic outlook, but to embrace his character as being worthy to represent us, the American people. Our allies are aghast. He twists Lincoln’s words into more like “malice for many, charity for none.”
As Hillary Clinton once expressed, it makes one just as “deplorable” as Trump himself. And don’t forget the adage, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
Vin Agamenone
Carson City

Vote for Ackerman
You should be receiving your ballot in the mail soon. When you get it, mark it up and return by mail or to the appropriate office.
When you vote, mark your ballot for Patricia Ackerman for Congressional Dis-trict 2. Her love for Nevada, its open spaces, wild horses, the elderly and our in-digenous peoples is evident. She has worked to preserve all of them including ar-ranging a food drive for a reservation. She has the compassion, energy, vision and strength to serve us well in Congress. She will listen and cooperate and actually be present to vote on bills and the issues facing us. Please vote for Ms. Ackerman and vote early.
Terry Rankin
Carson City

Responsibility to the community
No masks or social distancing at the Minden rally. Thousands of people together to support the president. Those who chose to attend are now out among us.
We will see if the reckless choices they made will increase our COVID-19 num-bers in the next few weeks.
This has nothing to do with a political choice, it has everything to do with respon-sibility to the people in our community. Let’s not forget Sturgis, South Dakota. They had very low COVID numbers and within a week, cases soared. I hope we dodge an increase, time will tell.
Linda Cronin
Carson City

Rants, insults, and fiction
I took the time to listen to President Trump’s remarks at the Minden rally last night. I cannot call it a speech, because it was 90 minutes of disconnected rants, insults, complaints, and fiction. Because he feels insulted by TV ads questioning his regard for fallen military heroes, he exclaimed with glee, “now I can be really vicious.”
This is leadership? No. This is taking responsibility? No. This is compassion for those suffering from COVID and wildfires? No.
On the same day that we learned of the loss of our beloved Carson City Mayor and lifetime public servant Bob Crowell, Trump could only claim he has accom-plished more in his few years in office than Joe Biden has in a lifetime of service.
Trump has accomplished making the rich much richer and very little for anyone else; of course, we don’t know if he’s truly among the rich because he won’t re-lease his tax returns. The man is an arrogant hypocrite and I am confident Ne-vadans will vote him on to a better place – Trump Tower.
Sarah Mersereau-Adler
Carson City

Go ask them
LaSor’s claim of bewilderment as to why “Trump’s offer of federal troops” was declined by the mayor of Portland is yet another example of cherry-picking the facts. Troops previously sent to Portland without coordinating with local authori-ties exacerbated the situation, inciting violence and illegally forcing U.S. citizens into unmarked vehicles and detaining them without cause. The subsequent agree-ment to remove these Trump-supported antagonists was followed by a decline in violence.
Then, self-appointed right-wing militiamen, whose origins link back to domestic terrorism, decide to motor-parade into the middle of downtown Portland to stir things up again. Nothing but crickets from LaSor on that.
Then he asks of BLM protesters, “What do they want?” Instead of posing this question in a rhetorical bid to swat at with fear mongering about Marxism, LaSor should go to the next local BLM event and just ask them what they want. That would mean that he’s actually interested in learning something.
Laura Hale
Carson City