Letters to the Editor: June 30, 2006

Daily dose of comment and insight from our readers.

The Naples Daily News welcomes letters of up to 250 words. We reserve the right to reject letters or edit for clarity, brevity, good taste and accuracy, and to prevent libel. No poetry, attacks on private individuals, or letter-writing campaigns, please. Writers should limit submissions to one letter every two weeks. Include a phone number and make certain you have signed your letter.

- - -

Wake up, America

Editor, Daily News:

What do you know, I woke up this morning to be told I have become a bigot, a religious zealot, intolerant and a homophobe. The radical homosexual community has told me this, while hypocritically showing their special brand of tolerance that stops at the end of their nose.

They want to redefine marriage after 2,000 years of success from a sacrament to a sacrilege, while history has taught us the strength of any society is the traditional family. Their agenda includes the indoctrination of our youth into a lifestyle that many find deviant and dangerous. This through a willing media and school system. There have been 519,418 deaths from AIDS within the United States through 2004. The medical community refers to the physical and emotional problems within the homosexual community as “lavender diseases.” They include oral gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis A and B, increased suicide rates and shorter life spans.

Activist judges ignore the will of the people to decide what is best for our children and country. The religious teachings we have given our children are ignored, while all studies show children are better served by the different talents of father and mother.

With the radical homosexual, traditional tolerance is not enough. Anyone expressing views that homosexuality is immoral wouldn’t fit. The democratic way is shunned (see the 70 percent average plurality of states affirming marriage to be between a man and a woman) while government is asked not only to tolerate but to advocate this lifestyle.

Wake up, America. Your children and the very soul of America depend upon it.

Jim Finnegan/Naples

Get it right

Editor, Daily News:

Good grief! Anyone would think we were knee-deep in cigarette butts the way people keep banging on about drivers throwing them out of their windows. The things are bio-degradable, so get over it. In last Sunday’s letter of the day on the subject, the writer says she “could care less who smokes and where.” I’m sure she meant couldn’t, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense. If you could care less about something, it means you do, in fact, care to some extent.

Another letter included this phrase: “the U.S. reputation as a moral nation worthy of supper power leadership.”

Yet another told us that we “lack for nothing.” The letters page is getting to be funnier than the comics.

On Saturday, a letter made reference to Mao Zedung (aaargh!), but I know that was your fault, because you’ve made the same mistake before. Doesn’t anyone proof-read anymore? If not, why not? Typos like this make a serious letter writer look silly. I’ve tried hard to ignore such mistakes, I’ve even tried repeating to myself “I couldn’t care less, I couldn’t care less,” but nothing works, so could you please try a little harder to get it right?

Nina Mold/Naples

You can’t spell nuts without U.N.

Editor, Daily News:

The United Nations allows me to vent my anger not only at its nutty proposals to get headlines, but at Americans who agree with them.

The proposed treaty to ban the sale of arms between nations sounds good but is not enforceable. It could be the first step to destroying our Second Amendment right, prohibiting law-abiding U.S. citizens from owning guns for target, sports competition, hunting and collectors of old arms. We have over 1,000 gun laws, and some prevent a crime before it happens.

Most, if not all, of our laws are to punish lawbreakers, but it is after the law has been broken. Most guns used in a crime were secured by theft or bought from other criminals. Honest gun dealers will not sell to felons and people who have domestic violations or other charges. This can mean a crime was stopped before it happens.

The U.N. and our Congress should not allow them to go beyond national transactions that could lead to amendments to our Constitution. There will always be unscrupulous people who will sell arms, and until arms are taken away from insurgents, such a treaty is nuts — but it sounds good.

It’s not just guns, but I am against any attempt by the U.N. to interfere with our sovereignty in any area, and it should be opposed.

Joe Fanelli/Naples

Howdy, neighbor

Editor, Daily News:

I am writing this to ask Pipers Grove neighbors to open their gates to The Orchards until the construction on Vanderbilt Beach Road between Airport-Pulling and Livingston roads is done.

The Orchards residents take their lives in their hands every time they attempt to go onto Vanderbilt Beach Road. It would be a very neighborly gesture by residents of Pipers Grove to their neighbors in The Orchards, don’t you think?

Mary Lou Fisher/Naples

Movie critic

Editor, Daily News:

How much longer will people go out to the movies? Considering the out-of-touch, money-grubbing policies of theater management, maybe not much longer.

We stand in painfully long lines due to the theater shrewdly skimping on ticket-booth personnel. Hand over your stubs, then the mother-of-all-lines — the food concession line — again, excruciatingly slow and understaffed. I always get behind someone buying for everybody else on the bus.

Finally I get a quart of colored sugar-water, a couple of boxes of candy and a barrel of stale popcorn, and requisite mystery oil, for merely 30 bucks — plus stratospheric ticket prices. Who are they trying to compete with, Busch Gardens?

Finally, head to your seat. What the? The movie’s been out for a week, and it’s being shown on a screen the size of a garage door. Are you kidding me? I paid the same for my ticket and soon-to-be-stomach-pump food as the people did at the sprawling big screen next door.

OK, try to make the best of it. The lights dim finally — TV commercials. Yep, that’s right. TV commercials. The only reason I left the house was to get away from them. Half an hour of these, then time to see the coming attractions for 2008.

Charge more for tickets and over-priced junk food, hire less staff, show avalanches of advertisements and wonder why more and more people stay at home with pay-per-view, big screens, surround sound and packed refrigerators.

Larry Meholick/Naples

Man about town

Editor, Daily News

One can only observe with awe the wondrous thought processes by which our Marco Island City Council approved the purchase of “Marco Man,” as shown on the front page of last Saturday’s Daily News.

Suggestions as to its placement must provide suitable exposure and proper reverence to this wonderful piece of art, which all of us can only applaud. I would suggest:

l. Erect a Senior Citizens building and parking garage on the Glon property with “Marco Man” greeting all visitors.

2. Purchase the car condo on Bald Eagle Drive. Place “Marco Man” on the roof where he will be visible for miles and include an elevator so he can be lowered inside for safety during hurricanes.

3. Create an island and pedestal in the middle of the pond at Mackle Park for the admiration of the joggers and seagulls and pigeons.

Ned Wright/Marco Island

Disgusted

Editor, Daily News:

I find your series on unwed mothers totally disgusting. I don’t have health insurance. I wonder if I could get a room at Gulf Coast Hospital for a couple days.

Rose LaChapelle/Naples

An unlikely peace

Editor, Daily News:

There will never be peace in the Middle East, and we know it. A few of the Iraqis want our type of peace, and the rest don’t. Stop trying to force it on them. When one of our boys gets killed, they cheer, then turn around to accept a handout from us.

When our troops accidentally kill civilians, they complain. When insurgents kill civilians on purpose, they say nothing. They don’t help in informing on the terrorist. Let them straighten out their own country.

All our borders need to be closed and we need to screen everyone who wants to come in. We were lucky with the incident in Miami, and that’s because the neighbors spoke up, unlike the Iraqis.

Do what’s best for our country, not what’s best for the immigrants. Do your job. Forget votes for a change.

Joe Volturno/Naples

Times change

Editor, Daily News:

The New York Times needs to change its motto from “All the news that’s fit to print” to “All the news that’s fit to print most of the time.”

Robert W. Navarre/Naples

Road impacts wildlife

Editor, Daily News:

Regarding Arthur Lee’s letter to the editor on Tuesday, headlined “Magic moments:” Mr. Lee, I’m glad to see that you are enjoying the magic nature can bring.

Picture the prospect of seeing what you detailed in your letter, and then the rabbit getting spooked and running into four lanes of traffic behind your house. And then, wham! — buzzard food. You see, that is what we along the Vanderbilt Beach Road extension will soon be facing. The abundance of wildlife along this proposed corridor is overwhelming. Soon we will have very little wildlife to enjoy.

When the Collier County Commission voted to move forward with the project, the environmental consultant stated that there will be very limited impact to the environment. I don’t know how much time the consultant spent out in the area, but I beg to differ. I know he is a professional, but it doesn’t take a professional to see the impact on the wildlife this road will cause.

So we have about two more years to enjoy the wildlife you speak of, and then it will be like living in town with an occasional glimpse of wildlife. It’s a shame — all at the expense of people who aren’t even here yet and with no guarantee they are coming.

Teresa LeCrone/Golden Gate Estates

Invasion helped terrorists

Editor, Daily News:

For Osama bin Laden, the Iraq invasion was a gift from Allah. Recruiting suicide bombers has never been easier.

The stories of United States atrocities are an added bonus. If some people in our government believe our Marines are guilty, you know that most people in the Middle East believe it. They’re lining up by the thousands to get their chance to kill Americans.

The last thing bin Laden wants is for the Americans to leave Iraq. If they wanted us to leave, they would just stop the bombing and wait a year. Bin Laden wants us there. That’s why he supported President Bush’s re-election, and that’s why the bombing continues.

Iraq has become the biggest terrorist training camp on the planet. They get to practice on heavily armed American soldiers and civilian targets that are being protected by them. If you train your young bombers against American armor, imagine how good they’ll be against civilian targets. If they can blow up a mosque with an armored patrol of U.S. Marines out in the street, imagine what they’ll be able to do to a stadium with a few cops in the street.

The people who make the munitions are also honing their skills. Charges with sophisticated shapes are destroying tanks that were impervious to Iraqi anti-tank artillery during the invasion. A bomb that destroys tanks would be devastating on the streets of a Western city. Bin Laden will not allow the training to stop. The violence will continue as long as we’re there.

William R. Foster/Naples

Deja vu

Editor, Daily News:

Regarding the letter by Georges Pardo, “No men at work,” in Tuesday’s paper, was this a short-term memory test?

I remember reading the same letter very recently. If unpublished it certainly would have left room for another complaint letter about advertising stickers on the front page, or the size of trash cans, or another letter from one of the “regulars,” or about Manny Touron. On second thought I enjoyed it in lieu of the aforementioned!

Marcia Falk/Naples

Condo calamity

Editor, Naples Daily News:

Naples condominium residents will be shocked when their renewed insurance coverage/premium arrives. With only limited triple-A rated companies offering insurance coverage to Naples condominiums, you can bet this will drive out the current homeowner “working-class” folks to other locations. In addition, there will be no affordable housing available for new essential employees as a result of these horrendous premium increases, in most cases doubling the current operating budgets in 2007, and in some condos, a special assessment in 2006.

Our governor and state legislators do nothing to alleviate this insanity, and our esteemed local newspaper never addresses this calamity in its editorial remarks nor features an article about this issue. The newspaper must serve as a conduit to county and state officials by focusing on this issue in print about this huge burden to homeowners.

Gov. Bush, state legislators, wake up and help the state of Florida overcome this insurance debacle.

Tony Monico/Naples

Punishment misplaced

Editor, Daily News:

I do not know Manny Touron and in fact had never heard the name until the over-aged athletes scandal involving Immokalee High School.

How could Touron, the principal at Immokalee High, not have had any inkling of the athletes’ ages when he had been notified in writing of the possibility by the school security officer? Did he not have a duty to at least initiate some type of investigation into that possibility?

The punishment handed down to Touron was a joke. No pay raise this year! This for a man who is making over $100,000 per year. The saddest thing about the entire situation is that the students suffered a much harsher penalty. Many will miss a chance to enjoy excelling in their athletic endeavors, as their punishment includes not being allowed to participate in postseason play.

These kids did nothing wrong and yet are paying the price for the misdeeds of their mentors. It seems to me that high schools here in Florida are espousing the same sports agenda as colleges across the country: Winning is everything. It’s quite evident that these high schools are vigorously recruiting athletes with little regard for academics.

What really got to me were all the letters supporting Touron, calling him a great mentor and friend to his students.

Yes, Touron had a fine athletic program, but his academic agenda was apparently lacking. Immokalee High School was the only high school in Lee and Collier counties to score an F on the FCATs.

Cathy Whiffen/Naples

Must-see movie

Editor, Daily News:

We saw the film “An Inconvenient Truth” at Hollywood 20 recently, among a thronging mass of perhaps two dozen people. Those who were there will probably never forget this carefully wrought documentary about global warming.

See the movie. Even if you hate Al Gore and think the whole idea is a creation of the political left. See it anyway. Don’t let lack of interest in the future of the planet keep you away.

Frank and Doris Way/Naples