Erosia (Letters to the Editor)

LEO welcomes letters that are brief (250 words max) and thoughtful. Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to EROSIA, 640 S. Fourth St., Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or e-mail to [email protected]. We may edit for length, grammar and clarity.

Off the Wagon
The election for 2006 is over. And the outcomes, who cares? I am just glad the political ads on TV are over. After a while I just turned off the local channels altogether and watched cable/dish or just did something else.
Now an open letter to the candidates:
No more political ads in my mailbox; hell, you probably used up half a rainforest getting them printed. I am sure the postal service is tired of them also. I suggest that unsolicited mail should be charged double postage. Further, a bonus should be given to all postal workers who can prove they directly took them to recycling. Then again, aren’t all elections recycled, just the names occasionally change?
No more calls from the RNC or DNC. Your constant calls made the elections more of an irritation. You will be receiving a bill from my doctor for stress from your calls. By the way, my caller ID shows you as 000-0000 — does that mean you are all zeros or just don’t have an idea?
No “time for healing” speeches. If you had to do it again, you would certainly call your opponents more of an SOB.
Were there any candidates with a vision? A dream? A way America should be? OK, maybe I am asking too much.
To the news media: Next time I hear “the country has never been more divided,” may I remind you we had a Civil War not that long ago in our history. Further, please get rid of the barrage of “experts.” If those guys had a job, they wouldn’t mess with media time. To print media: I don’t expect The C-J to ever endorse a Republican, but at one time the LEO had Bill Stone, Republican, as good reading and a differing opinion.
Last but not least, as was said in the “Airplane” movies, I picked a bad time to quit drinking.
Tim Buckman

Message Approved
He did it. Yes, it’s Wednesday, Nov. 8, as I’m writing this, and I’m sure my feelings of weariness and triumph are nothing compared to those experienced by
John Yarmuth.
I’ll be honest. I was among the doubters. John is too new. He is too outspoken in his columns. He doesn’t have the respect of the party apparatus. The editor of a Bohemian newspaper with adult ads will turn off church-going suburban Jefferson County.
But I sit today across the river from U.S. Representative-elect John Yarmuth and I congratulate him for not only his personal victory, but for his role in an historic change of direction chosen by the nation’s people.
Also pleasing is the knowledge that John did it by trumpeting basic Democratic values, even at the risk of hinting at those verboten themes of economic equality and a role for the federal government in achieving it. There’s little time to savor this or Baron Hill’s victory in my district because, unfortunately, in about 18 more months, we will again hear them say “and I approve this message” — the most hated five words in America.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi must unite the liberals and moderates in her party or we could be in trouble. I hope the new Democratic majority in the House and the Senate (doesn’t that sound sweet?) will reach out to moderate Republicans who realize the Bush agenda and the Bush-Rove style of win-at-all-costs partisanship are dead.
For the moment, a modest Democratic agenda with bipartisan support is a better thing from a progressive perspective than a hard-charging agenda that would only galvanize the other side.
I’m George Morrison and I approve this message.
George Morrison

Voting for Change
I read a column in the Oct. 25 LEO by Ricky L. Jones, “Don’t just vote, demand better!” and it really hit home with me. Hell, I want to see him on a ballot, he seems to “get it.”
I went to the polls for the first time in my life (at 36 years old) for two reasons: First and most important, I went for my children. It’s up to us to do everything within our power to secure a better world for our children, to get this country back on track. I want them to experience the pride of living in the America that I know we can become again, not this mess of special-interest greed and shameful scandal.
The second reason that brought me to the polls: “YARMUTH,” finally someone I believed in, someone I trusted to carry my voice to Washington, someone who would deny special-interests their hold on this great country of ours, and I vow from this day forward I will not sit out another election — it’s the only voice that some of us may get, MAKE IT COUNT!
Something else, as I sat at my local polling station, proudly filling out my first ballot, I overheard a woman next to me in conversation. I would guess her to have been in her early to mid-70s, and a single comment I heard her say has stuck with me. She said she was happy to see so many young people show up to vote, in a tone that implied she was both happy and surprised. Where have we been?
As I watched the election results that night on CNN, I began to see a pattern — elections being won by extremely small margins. I saw a NATION STILL DIVIDED. Now we got the Democrats’ foot in the door and perhaps to many it was simply a choice of the lesser of two evils. Now the tools for change are in play, to those we elected, regardless of party, show us something, show us the America we can be proud of, the America we know we can be. All of us first-time voters are counting on you.
Before I get off my soapbox, I’d like to leave you with a simple thought from the most inspirational author I have ever read. “One thing which cannot be doubted, the Possibility of a Quality is within us. We can deny everything except that we have the possibility of being better ...” —His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.
Jayson Hornback

Muddy Waters
John Yarmuth’s victory last Tuesday was partly the public’s reaction to the quagmire in Iraq. But, I suspect there are more profound thoughts and feelings running through the public’s mind this year. We want more respect from our public officials!
Yarmuth’s campaign was cleaner and more honest. It was a breath of fresh air in a political climate that is dominated by bald official lies and idiotic campaign attack ads that insult our intelligence. Congresswoman Anne Northup’s attack ads have been some of the most revolting ever aired, and we’ve endured them for 10 years. She doesn’t just sling mud. Many times there are rocks and glass shards in her mud.
My hunch is that a considerable number of Metro Louisville voters finally got sick and tired of these insults. They lost confidence in Northup, and Yarmuth seemed more truthful.
Torn Louderback

Speak Easy
Now that John Yarmuth has been elected, I have a question for him and his supporters. He pledged to never vote on a bill that would affect a company in which he had an interest — an admirable aim that all politicians should follow. He specifically mentioned a health care company operated by one of his brothers. My question is, given his interest in another brother’s restaurant company, how can he vote to raise the minimum wage as he promised, since that will most assuredly affect that business and likely his income from it given the usual nature of restaurant franchise agreements? I would like to hear him explain how he can keep his two pledges. It makes one think that he has already become a typical politician, talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Kent O. Sublett

Where’s the Fraud?
Where are the allegations of hanging chads, voter intimidation, suppression, water hoses and snarling police dogs? What happened to the million black voters John Kerry said were disenfranchised last time around; or Kerry’s 6-8 “SWAT Teams” staffed with lawyers standing ready with fueled-up jets on tarmacs strategically located throughout the country awaiting his orders to begin litigation?
Oh, I see the Democrats won this election, so everything must have been done on the up and up, because we all know a Democrat could never legitimately lose an election. Happy days are here again.
It would certainly be in the best interest of the country if perhaps one day the Democrats would learn to be as gracious in defeat as they are pompous in victory.
Dale Rhoades