I think it is time that we realize that Congressman Brian Baird deceived us when he said he was a Democrat. He showed recently that he is really a Republican when he voted with them on the health care bill.
It’s time to look for a real Democrat to run for his position in 2010.
DAVE JOHNSON, Tumwater
Don’t blame Muslims for shooting
I write regarding Islam and the Fort Hood shootings.
The shooter seriously injured my cousin. As I write this, she’s in surgery. A Gulf War veteran and later a Veterans Administration social worker, she re-enlisted to do combat stress work with soldiers. She was at Fort Hood preparing for deployment.
I spoke with my cousin about a week ago. She would be the last person to pin this assault on Islam or Muslims in general. She’s a realist.
Even if it’s found that the shooter motivated himself with Islam-related thinking, she would not call it a Muslim crime. People doing harm do their best to convince themselves they’re really doing good.
If you encounter anyone blaming Islam for this, please remember my cousin and speak up. A brief, firm, respectful challenge to this kind of talk often has a powerful effect.
DAVID BELLEFEUILLE-RICE, Olympia
Exchange student fits in well here
Last summer I came to Olympia as an exchange student from Germany. I stayed for 11 months and attended North Thurston High School.
My host family was awesome and people in school welcomed me and were so open. I had never seen anything like that before. All the fears and worries were gone as fast as they appeared when I thought of the first day at my new school. It was unbelievable.
I already knew a couple people at the school from my volleyball team and they introduced me to even more people. And not just the students. The teachers were friendly and open and offered me help if I needed any. The relationship with teachers is more like you are friends — something you can only dream of in Germany.
I experienced that school is fun and spirited and the involvement in your free time, like sports, game nights and dances bring the students closer and make you enjoy the time. I just loved it and so for me it was no problem to become a part of the school and all the typical habits of an American high school.
All in all, the year gave me a great insight to the American life. I made life-long friends and I can just recommend it to everyone.
HEIKE HACKBUSCH, Meerbusch, Germany and Olympia
Government playing God with vaccine
The government is playing God with the swine flu vaccine.
Denying the vaccine to folks older than 65 is sentencing them to death. Older people that get the swine flu are dying at twice the rate of any other age group. This must be the government’s way of thinning out the population and creating cheaper health care.
WILLIAM R. HATFIELD, Lacey
Making case for health care reform
Wall Street gets H1N1 vaccine doses, our local high-risk population has to wait for who knows how long.
How about some health care reform folks. Whatever happened to the common good?
MIKE BEEHLER, Olympia
False claims aimed at Catholic church
As Catholics, we would like to address the concerns brought forth recently by letter writer David Milne.
He is correct in stating that the Catholic church does not condone birth control, but he drifts into fallacy with the claim that the church is “foremost among all of the forces that are unraveling the biosphere and destroying human living standards.”
First, most humans do not enjoy living standards. Two-thirds of the world struggles to live.
Secondly, though developed nations consume the most resources (bearing the most responsibility for environmental hurt) in our pursuit of these living standards, we are not reproducing at a rate adequate to replace our populations.
Therefore, when one speaks of controlling population, one necessarily speaks of controlling the poor’s population: the population that uses the least resources.
People are their cheapest and best resource, particularly since the corporations we support have taken control of all their others. We should not affect compassion by suggesting the poor allow us to control their breeding. To do so is to deny their dignity.
The Catholic church is against birth control because it is false.
It pretends to make us gods over life (and death, as most pills are abortifacients), and denies God’s great mercy and understanding toward our circumstances.
Unfortunately, the same percentage of Catholics use contraception as the general population.
For all of these reasons, we find that the church’s stance on contraception is not responsible for overpopulation, and overpopulation is not responsible for our environmental crisis.
MARY AND SAMANTHA ORDOS, Olympia
