Letters to the editor: Nov. 26, 2003

Letter of the Day -- Oh, to be in Naples

Editor, Naples Daily News:

We're back! And with nary an incorrigible mattressback to be seen on the way down Interstate 75.

Running madly around the malls in preparation for the snowbirds' Thanksgiving onslaught, we decided to take a well-deserved break Sunday afternoon. With lawn chairs and picnic basket in firm grip, we plopped ourselves down at the edge of Eighth Street South and quickly slipped into a delightful musical reverie provided by the Naples Philharmonic.

For almost two hours, our auditory senses were delivered from honking horns, crying infants, rumbling earth movers and the like as we were borne aloft to the strains of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Scott Joplin and John Williams. Those Neapolitans on the other side of the world should be so fortunate to live here in their namesake and enjoy such a sun-drenched, melody-filled afternoon.

Invasion of the media

Editor, Naples Daily News:

It is interesting to note the immunity that media "professionals" receive to invade privacy and breech security. This phenomenon was recently highlighted in London, when a tabloid reporter obtained a job serving breakfast to President Bush during his visit to Buckingham Palace. The reporter lied about previous work experience and, voila!, he infiltrated British security.

The purpose of the ruse seems to have been gaining the opportunity to say "Raspberries!" to the president. After all, that's as funny as a greased pig in the White House, isn't it? These undercover shenanigans are devoutly wished for entertainment. What more ought we expect?

Back in America, paparazzi hide under the First Amendment. It's all about free speech so it must be good! People are badgered and we watch it on the news. Cameras take over the courtrooms, suggesting a legal sanction of law as entertainment. Video cops write traffic tickets. And today's government surveillance makes Richard Nixon look like Helen Keller.

Meanwhile, as network reality TV celebrates the opportunity of making Joe Schmoe look like a fool, advertised products encourage us all to get in on the action. Camera-phones and video recorders are marketed with commercials showing how to catch friends and family in awkward, compromised positions. It's fun to eavesdrop, expose intimacy and take a picture of that guy with mustard on his face!

You might not have a great relationship, but heck -- you got your neighbor on tape (and maybe even qualify for free long distance).

The foresight to spend

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I fully support the purchase of the Glon property because it represents our last opportunity to significantly enhance the future of our beloved island and positively affect our present and future citizenry. Clearly, the Glon purchase will enable our community to attain those missing amenities that increase property values and quality of life.

Unfortunately, it appears that many (not all) of those who are against this project have a severe case of foresight-deficiency syndrome (FDS), which means that their vision ends when their wallet or purse is affected. Specifically, those afflicted with FDS are so shortsighted that they attempt to defeat all projects, no matter how beneficial, if such projects may result in a monetary expenditure.

In summary, if you want to do the right thing for Marco Island and do not suffer from FDS, please vote for the Glon project and thereby enable the visionaries to lead the shortsighted, once again.

Slow down, smile

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Stop bashing the out-of-state, senior-citizen drivers! No wonder they are confused.

Driving north on U.S. 41 (to volunteer at the hospital), I'm seeing it all. Seven in the morning is like being on a race track, what with local company trucks veering in and out at a speed easily 10 to 20 mph over the speed limit. It is a bit scary. Where are they going? To coffee, maybe?

Aren't we supposed to have a bit of compassion for those with early-morning doctor appointments?

Give them a break and your day will, maybe, be less of an aggravation.

Smile, as you will be there one day yourself. Here's to safe driving to all.

Food for thought

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Our medical and nutritional system is based on SAD (standard American diet) which is against the laws of nature. A healthy diet would be a vegan (nothing from an animal) diet which eliminates all processed (factory) foods, salt, sugar, spices, condiments, wheat, pastries, etc.

We should eat only natural foods (fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts). Eating mostly raw food is best. Everything else is unnatural. (Example: Raw apples are healthful. Apple pie is unhealthful.) Food should be raised organically instead of with chemicals.

If everyone ate a natural vegan diet we could almost empty our hospitals and doctors' offices. If everyone lived the natural way, most people could throw away their prescription drugs which are unnatural and unhealthy.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said, "Food should be our medicine and medicine should be our food."

Some diets, such as Atkins, claim that a high-protein diet is best for losing weight. I disagree. There is evidence that meat and dairy products actually leach calcium from bones instead of strengthening them. Fish is not a health food either.

Vaccinations also are unhealthy. I've never had a flu shot and rarely have so much as a cold. Eat and live healthfully and you won't need shots and medications.

Between Halloween and New Year's Day there is an orgy of unhealthful living as misguided humans binge on unhealthful food and drinks. The holiday season causes a lot of stress and unnecessary sickness.

The wisdom to not spend

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Marco residents beware of the $10 million giveaway under the pretense of needed green space and a cultural center.

Drive around all of our present green spaces and there are plenty. Now count the people enjoying them. Your two hands would be plenty to arrive at a correct count, barring Mackle Park.

Beware of the pedantic and cultural segment of Marco's population. One thing they love to do is spend OPM (other people's money) to further their quest. They had the local paper (The Eagle) make front-page news a story that should have been in the letters to the editor page from the cultural center of Islamorada.

If this bill passes, the next item for the OPMs will be another $5 million to $10 million dollars to build a cultural center. Who maintains this building? That is the tip of the iceberg.

We have plenty of green space and if you want culture go to the Naples Philharmonic. Vote a resounding "No." Your tax dollars are at stake.

Love my neighbor

Editor, Naples Daily News:

There were two letters to the editor attacking my dedicated, hard-working and thoughtful neighbor, Kathleen Curatolo, a member of the Collier County School Board.

Perhaps the churches at this time of Thanksgiving should remind us about tolerance, respect and kindness to the people who try to better the educational system in Naples.

It is sad when someone in the military feels the letters to the editor in Naples are scarier than the enemy in Iraq. Do the people who write these letters have children in public schools?

Standing by

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Re: Regis Reynolds' letter of Nov. 19

While you think my letter regarding the fact that Bush haters are not good for the morale of our servicemen in Iraq was "absurd," I ask you to read the letter of the day written by Capt. Keith Shepherd, which is on the same page as your letter. One of the things he said was, "Intended or not, attacks directed at the commander in chief and secretary of Defense are attacks against us too."

I stand by my statement that if a Democrat is elected president, we will turn Iraq over to the United Nations, which will be a joke, and our service people who have died there will have done so in vain.

As for the events of 9-11 and Iraq not being related, do you remember that we first went into Afghanistan, which was the breeding ground for the terrorists who were responsible for the attack on our country? There were definite terrorist links between Iraq and Afghanistan. (Not even to mention what a horrible subhuman Saddam Hussein was and is!) Have you noticed that this country hasn't been attacked since 9-11? Considering all the freedoms our wonderful country gives to bad guys, I think this is miraculous.

I have tried hard not to write vitriolic hyperbole.

Tax cuts are working

Editor, Naples Daily News:

All the Democratic candidates for the presidency have either hinted or promised to raise your taxes, even though it's been proven that President Bush's tax cuts have boosted the economy. Ask any economist if this is not the case. And unless Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan raises the interest rates again, like he did in the past, and caused millions of Americans to lose their investments, the economy should continue to flourish and the unemployment rate will continue to go down.

But still your liberal Democrats won't believe the good signs of recovery, and prefer to bash Bush. I don't know where all their pent-up hatred for the man comes from, when they had a real loser in the White House before Bush, but they make it obvious.

The Democrats are still playing the class-warfare game when it comes to tax cuts. They think the rich they speak of are those who make $50,000 a year or a little over. I would like to know who they would consider the middle class? They say they would like to give tax cuts to the middle class on one hand and then say they want to raise their taxes on the other hand. But we all know they will never control their love of spending the taxpayers' money for their social welfare programs.

The Democratic candidates are going the way of their previous loser, in the past, who promised to raise your taxes. As I remember, he lost 49 states in the election.

I predict that these candidates will self-destruct in the end. Thank God!

Opposition inevitable

Editor, Naples Daily News:

If Dale Carnegie were alive today, he'd tell George Bush, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat that they'll never win friends and influence people by dropping bombs on their homes, killing their kids and destroying their industry.

What little success Bush has had in Iraq has been accomplished by rebuilding the structures he knocked down, feeding the people who escaped the explosions and promising them a bright future. Will he be able to establish a democratic government in Iraq?

He'll find the answer by researching the editorial pages of the Naples Daily News. Bush will come across a well-crafted letter by Eddie Filer, explaining the great health advantages in being a vegetarian. But when he puts the paper down, drives around Naples in search of a restaurant, he'll see many steak houses, with patrons clamoring to get in. The people of Naples are ignoring Eddie's sound advice.

The president may also read another letter by Robbins Winslow, who disagrees with the ban on partial-birth abortion, thinking mothers should have control over their own bodies. Richard Green reminds him the issue is not the mother's body. It's the baby's body.

Other letters deal with the logic of going to war with Iraq. Respondents are opposed to the war. Regardless of what topic is selected by a letter writer, there is opposition. There will be opposition to democracy in Iraq. It won't come in the form of a letter. It'll come in the form of a bomb.

America First made things worse

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I see editorial letters opposing the Iraq war, demanding immediate withdrawal, requesting that money be spent on our citizens, etc.

Alas, I see a resurgence of the America First movement from the 1930s. With members including Charles Lindbergh, it wanted us out of foreign involvement. It mobilized public opinion into a genuine force that scared politicians, including President Roosevelt, who tried, surreptitiously, to help England.

Unfortunately, while the America Firsters were circling our wagons, Hitler's Germany was raping Europe and the Japanese were raping China. Adolf Hitler and company were emboldened by their initial success and our seeming indifference. Since we were still staggering from the Depression, we projected the image of an inviting target which eventually led to Pearl Harbor.

Had we intervened, early on, in Europe, as Roosevelt wanted to do, World War II might have been prevented. The adage states that evil prospers when good people do nothing.

I laud President Bush for taking a stand for principle. If he did nothing, our present-day enemies, too, would be emboldened. If terrorists see that terror goes unchallenged, you can imagine that war is inevitable or, more likely, nuclear and biological attacks in this country.

You have but to read the history of the last 2,000 years to see that war is the only thing that brings peace, albeit short-lived. The ash can of history is full of treaties and Leagues of Nations that were the problem rather than the solution.

In no rush for Rush

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I have never listened to the Rush Limbaugh show, so I have no opinion about him or his politics.

However, reading his statement in last week's paper about his return from rehabilitation, about the sky being brighter, the air cleaner and the water purer because he's back, I'm very relieved and happy I've never listened to him.

Maybe he should loosen the knot and let the other half of his brain run rampant.

I'm staying

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I moved out to Golden Gate Estates about 20 years ago. At that time, my neighbors were snakes, opossum, deer, quail, rabbits and other animals which did not bother me or steal anything. Mine was the only house on this dead-end street.

Well, there are lots of houses here now, which was to be expected, but one thing I was not expecting was having my patio chairs stolen, my lawnmower tires punctured, my steel clothesline cut, dents in the top of my car and hood, BB guns being shot at my house every morning to wake me up, someone knocking on the side of my house at all hours of the night, and other items in the yard disturbed just to let me know someone was in my yard.

This is a frame house, so I hear the knocking on the walls very plainly. I only have a house on one side of me, the other side is an empty lot.

I am a disabled, senior citizen in my 80s and I need my rest.

Someone is trying to get me so disgusted I will move, but that is not going to happen.

My mistake

Editor, Naples Daily News:

I think it was mean-spirited of the Naples Daily News to print a picture of the late actress Joan Crawford on the front page of the Nov. 21 issue of the paper, taken when she obviously was not looking her best. Also, I was unaware that she had dyed her hair black and ...

Whoops! Sorry! I just read the caption under the picture and discovered that it is a current photo of Michael Jackson.

Different place, same lies

Editor, Naples Daily News:

In his letter of Nov. 24, Robert Laughlin is right, I don't remember World War II but I do remember Vietnam, where my father and many friends fought.

It was a quagmire of lies and death. The place has changed, but the lies remain the same. "We are here because the people want us" and "this isn't a war." Remember it was a "police action" in Vietnam.

I have just gotten off the phone with my son who will be going to Iraq in February. We talked about the news of the two young GIs being pulled from their vehicle and stabbed and stoned to death; two others had their throats slit. Yes we certainly are wanted there. We will do the same thing in Iraq that we did in Vietnam if leadership does not take hold of the reins.

We will be there in a war of attrition and we will be the worse for it.

Playing with hornets

Editor, Naples Daily News:

George W. Bush and his advisors remind me of a bunch of 10-year-old boys in a cow pasture. They see a hornet nest and decide to hit it with a stick to see what will happen. The Bush administration did that with Iraq and to their dismay they found out that thoughtless action can have grave consequences.

I was that 10-year-old boy once, but I grew up. Too bad for all of us that Dubya didn't.