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Letters to the Editor: May 17, 2008
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Letter of the Day: The frustration, the solution
Editor, Daily News:
Re: Letter from Sandy Fleming on May 9 about problems she had while trying to donate clothes to a resale shop.
I understand the frustration. Not only are you feeling the raw emotions of losing a loved one, but making the decision to donate their belongings is an emotional undertaking, too.
In the midst of these profound feelings, we do not need a clerk’s rude behavior.
When my brother passed away, we bundled most of his clothes and put them in bags and boxes. We called St. Matthew’s House and asked if we could drop the items off. When we arrived, the staff was not only gracious but they provided help carrying the items to the correct room.
Everyone we encountered was friendly and informative. They gave us a tour of the facility while giving us a little history of the organization and how it works.
I was very impressed and humbled at the same time. We were treated as if we had just donated a million dollars.
The thing I remember most is one gentleman asked where the clothes had come from. I told him from my brother who had passed away recently. He not only offered his condolences, but he engaged conversation about my brother and we appreciated so much the opportunity to talk about him.
Should you find yourself with items to donate in the future, I would suggest St. Matthew’s House. They seem to be a very caring organization, and I don’t think they will reprimand you if the clothes are not folded.
- Tara Linn, Naples
A toast to savings
Editor, Daily News:
It is now 35 years after the first oil crisis and our elected officials have done nothing to alleviate the problem.
In 1973 our gasoline prices increased from 49 cents to 94 cents per gallon. You would have thought the world came to an end. Now prices are approaching $4 per gallon with forecasts of up to $6.
When will Congress act? Yes, Congress, not the president, passes the bills.
We cannot immediately invent solutions, but we can take a few simple steps in the right direction.
First, the speed limits should be reduced to 55 mph immediately. While driving along Interstate 75, I tried this and increased my mileage from 20 to 31 miles per gallon. If we did that, we could eliminate the need to buy oil from Arab countries. Let them drink their oil.
Next, we should mandate that automobile companies produce all vehicles capable of 45 mpg within five years.
We should drill for oil now in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge preserve and the Gulf of Mexico outside a 150-mile range from shore.
Lastly, we should be developing alternative energy such as hydrogen. Ethanol has proven to cost more energy than it saves. It also is causing other commodities to increase in price. If Congress insists on this failure, maybe they should use tobacco fields instead. We can save lives from cancer and produce ethanol at the same time without raising commodity prices.
This may be too simple for the powers that be, but it beats anything they have come up with.
- Jim Gerali, Naples
Must have more
Editor, Daily News:
I so enjoy your op-ed page.
Having returned recently after many years in the real world, the insularity of your subscribers constantly amuses me.
Let’s have more articles about our retired "gentlemen" exposing themselves to undercover law enforcement officers (and who else?) in our public restrooms instead.
An informative follow-up article might profile the clientele of this Snappers nightclub.
I’d love to read it!
- Dave Perry, Naples
Please iron this out
Editor, Daily News:
After returning home from vacationing in your city, I feel the need to send you this letter and my feelings.
I spent 10 days visiting your marvelous city. I thoroughly enjoyed your fine dining and the boutiques were fabulous.
I must say how disappointed I was to see the much too large iron pole dancer with the man made of iron wire looking on at an art gallery at Broad Avenue South and Gordon Drive.
I appreciate the "art" of it, but with our society in such a state as it is with the moral standards at a all-time low, this is something your city could definitely do without.
It looks totally out of place in such a fine city as Naples, not only in subject matter, but also in style.
Too modern.
- Linda Burack, Adrian, Mich.
Such generosity
Editor, Daily News:
Once again the residents of Lee County have come through for the community, donating a record total of 371,000 pounds of non-perishable food items for the Letter Carrier Food Drive, Stamp Out Hunger, this past Saturday.
All donated food stays in our community to feed the hungry. Even with the price of gasoline at an all time high, 66 local residents volunteered to help collect food to assist the rural letter carriers who use their private vehicles on their mail routes.
In addition, hundreds of community volunteers worked at post offices sorting food for local food banks.
Many thanks to all the wonderful volunteers and postal employees who helped with this effort!
- Anne Murray, Postmaster Fort Myers/Cape Coral
- Chris Johnson, coordinator, Lee food drive
Beware the rut
Editor, Daily News:
To quote the Wall Street Journal, our country is in a "cultural rut of pessimism that is draining our collective energies, blinding us to possibilities and eroding our position in the world."
The news media bias and the election year propaganda is equally detrimental as any problem facing our country. Every dollar that is earned or spent is taxed and counted, providing an accurate statistic, the Gross Domestic Product. (GDP).
The consumer-driven GDP grows on a constant basis. A recession is not a recession without two consecutive slower GDP quarters, and that most likely will not happen. By the time of the election, the credit crunch and housing market will have stabilized. Consumer confidence has actually been driven down by the collective news media supporting "doom and gloom," now promised to be reversed by the Democrats with increased taxes.
Central planning, socialism and communism have never worked in the history of the world with over 200 million deaths trying to make socialism and communism work. Capitalism and the Bush administration tax cuts created more prosperity than the John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan cuts combined, thus increasing federal revenues, erasing annual deficits and paying for the war on terror and Hurricane Katrina, which is always ignored or lied about.
Yet, all we hear about is predicted economic disaster unless we change our direction.
Beware of the constant criticism of our own country. There is a fine line between "fashionable" anti-American politics and self-excoriation.
- L. Terry Rand, Naples
Tired of being stuck behind that cement mixer? Wondering if you need to buy stock in Bob's Barricades? 
Comments
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Laugh of the day:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/...
#1 Posted by er0001 on May 17, 2008 at 2:47 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Jim, Good letter but wrong on a few points. The oil crisis in the 70's did bring us some good conservation efforts. President Carter did have an equal part in the proposals and bills that were pasted including increasing the mileage standards, a reduction in speeds on our highways and real tax incentives to make and purchase cars and trucks that had better mileage. Twelve years of Reagan/Bush as President changed this and Clinton didn't do much either.
But this President and his lock-step congress really turned it around doing everything they could do to drive up the price of oil, maybe the only thing they have been sucessfull at.
This President with his political appointments, lock-step same party congress and insane ideology has proven just how much power the President/VP really can have.
#2 Posted by bossman1 on May 17, 2008 at 6:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
J. & P. Finnegan -
You have said in the past that you are Catholic. I never agree with you on your Catholic positions. Your church is a medieval church, and you folks belive in myth and dogma that unintelligent uneducated peasants believed. Your church has been responsible for telling people lies that have been very offensisive and cruel to gay people. Your beliefs about homosexuality and gay marriage are absurd to any rational and thinking person.
I don't know why you think that two people of the same gender being married can possibly be a threat to anyone. Why do you fight progress? Why do you hate gay people so much? Don't you think two gay people who love each other shouldn't have the same freedoms that heterosexuals enjoy?
You are living in the past. Do you still think that blacks shouldn't have their freedom or that women shouldn't be able to vote? Gay people should have just as much right to live together as a married couple as you do. Marriage isn't just about having children. It is about sharing lives and being happy.
I can'tunderstand why anyone in their right mind would believe in a church that teaches bigotry toward other people.
#3 Posted by rationalman on May 17, 2008 at 7:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
David Capitanio -
I would rather listen to liberal and unbiased Bill Moyers than to conservative and biased Jay Ambrose any day. Moyers is interesting while Ambrose is boring.
#4 Posted by rationalman on May 17, 2008 at 7:18 a.m. (Suggest removal)
L., Have you lived in a plastic bubble for the last 50 years? Where do you get your information from?
Has the bias media held the stock market down? The dollar, the GDP, doubling of Nat. debt, and increased Fed revenues are a joke also.
Bush jr has brought prosperity to who? China a communist country?
Three quarters of our Nat almost 10 Trillion $ debt came under just 3 presidents, reagan/bush/bush.
And by your recession def [which is wrong] we are already in a reccession, Bush jr's second one in less than eight years.
Is Fein your mentor?
#5 Posted by bossman1 on May 17, 2008 at 7:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I knew the boss would chime in on that letter with his infinite economic wisdom.
BTW - The NDN editor got lazy today. The actual paper has a lot more letters.
I wanted to comment on the anti-gay marriage letter that starts out "I was privileged to be one of the three speakers..." about the Marriage Protection Amendment.
Then it was signed by the guy and his wife.
#6 Posted by GoneFishin on May 17, 2008 at 8:45 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Eddie defiler is a joke and maybe the biggest hypocrite I have ever seen. He professes to support the natural order of things but supports homosexuals. He wants living creatures killed because they are not native and disrupt the native environment yet refuses to admit that his own presence here is not native and disrupts the native environment. He claims to be a vegetarian but the natural order is for man to be omnivorous. Just another hypocritical liberal liar.
#7 Posted by umleed on May 17, 2008 at 8:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Obama supports extending the assault weapons ban, limits on gun sales, and a national law against carrying concealed weapons, with exceptions for retired police and military personnel.
And for those of you who support Huckabee, he is all done now:
During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.
“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”
#8 Posted by GoneFishin on May 17, 2008 at 9:03 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Huckabee is about as successful of a comedian as he is Presidential contender. Keep the day job.
#9 Posted by boulderbilly on May 17, 2008 at 9:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
If ya want a chuckle, read McCains vision of the world in 2013 if he is elected. Troops will no longer be in Iraq (curious how its 1 year past his role as potential Pres. Next guys problem. lol.) Democracy will be flourishing in the mideast with a Palestinian state living peacefully next to Israel. And Osama will be killed or captured. (These Texas and Arizona guys are tough.)
Ya really can't pick on grandpa for talking while he was napping during a press conference. I'm surprised his dream didn't include a Mercedes 600 SL in the garage of every Americans new dream mansion. Oh, and he's gonna eliminate income tax to help balance the budget.
#10 Posted by boulderbilly on May 17, 2008 at 9:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
When I commented on Finnegan's letter in post #3 I din't realize it was not included in the above letters. I was commenting on the letter that is the newspaper.
#11 Posted by rationalman on May 17, 2008 at 12:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
umleed #7 -
You've already submitted that same blog several times. Haven't you anything new to say? I'd love to hear your opinion about the economy, gay marriage, health care or any of the other problems facing our country. You seem to be a broken record.
#12 Posted by rationalman on May 17, 2008 at 1 p.m. (Suggest removal)
re post #13..
"you seem to be a broken record"
a prime example of:
THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK!!
#13 Posted by Canuck on May 17, 2008 at 1:09 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Wow! Is it yesterday already.
#14 Posted by cupcake on May 17, 2008 at 1:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)
defiler,
When you grow a pair and man up enough to respond to your hypocritical lying behavior then maybe I will stop posting it.
#15 Posted by umleed on May 17, 2008 at 1:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Nah, evolution doesn't exist.
http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/res...
#16 Posted by GoneFishin on May 17, 2008 at 2:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Does anyone know a really good back doctor and/or chiropractor? (in Naples)
Thanks.
#17 Posted by sheenabella on May 17, 2008 at 3:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Dr. Lipsie at Widom Chiropractic is very good.
#18 Posted by cupcake on May 17, 2008 at 4:18 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Thanks!
#19 Posted by sheenabella on May 17, 2008 at 5:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Sheena,
Mike has been going to Dr. Moon for yrs. They are on 41 just north of Park Shore Plaza on the right. I think Firestone Tires is next door. He likes them.
I can only pass along his experiences, which have all been good. He comes home feeling better.
Good luck.
#20 Posted by mikesgirl on May 17, 2008 at 5:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)
RationalMan, you're all right. Who needs the approval of people who are bigots. What if they were the minority with some trait that denied them equal rights?
All of us are different in some way. Our differences are good. We add more creativity and spice to the pot.
For those who believe in God, they must know that God created you and loves you just as much as them, probably loves you more because you're not a bigot. You mean no one any harm. And, you deserve all the rights that heterosexuals have.
Some people are vegetarians because they find red meat hard to digest. Criticizing someone for healthy eating or what they eat is really scraping the bottom for criticisms.
As far as that segment on Chris Matthews, erOOO1, I saw that and it was hilarious. That Right Wing talk show host didn't know anything. He was just repeating a word, appeasement, and knew nothing of the word's back ground. It was a sight watching him squirm.
But, he was indicative of too many others who also don't know what the word appeasement comes from and think it means the same as talking to someone. That's why we have an electorate that can be lead around by the nose.
#21 Posted by truthmatters on May 17, 2008 at 5:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
mikesgirl,
Dr. Moon moved the office. They are on the south side of Pine Ridge just east of 41 now.
#22 Posted by umleed on May 17, 2008 at 5:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)
truthmatters,
You obviously have a reading comprehension problem. I am not criticizing the defiler for being a vegetarian, I am criticizing him for being a hypocrite. He writes letters to the editor and posts on this site constantly touting the natural environment and how people should live naturally and how important nature is. Being a vegetarian goes against nature and the natural state of man. Man is naturally omnivorous and the defiler should be also if he truly believes in living naturally. He doesn't claim to be a veggie because of digestive problems, he says he does it to be healthier. That is BS because man is designed to be omnivorous and therefore the human body needs meat to function naturally.
#23 Posted by umleed on May 17, 2008 at 5:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Be careful with chiropractors. See a neurologist first.
#24 Posted by GoneFishin on May 17, 2008 at 5:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)
mikesgirl:
You are the third one to recommend him, I am making an appointment.
The neurologist that I went to, I was not happy with. He did an MRI, never discussed the results with me, when I asked he just kind of brushed me off, and just wanted to do a series of epidural shots. He never even examined me, and was in and out of the exam room in less than 5 minutes.
GoneFishin,
I will check with my new doctor before I start chiropractic care again.
Thanks all.
#25 Posted by sheenabella on May 17, 2008 at 6:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Umleed & Enigma: Your personal attacks on Eddie Filer really indicate the level you occupy in our society. You and the others who reside in that remote, out of touch fringe of society are the root cause of the backward slide toward third world status that this country is experiencing. You and your kind are the last thing this desparate country needs. Please keep your simple personal attacks to those loved ones who know you best. It may be hard, but try to stick to intellectual facts when you respond to somebody else's opinion. Wait, hard ?, it's probably impossible, but you can try.
#26 Posted by Colorado on May 17, 2008 at 6:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)
In the education section there is a great story about a GGHS senior who had brain surgery 2 weeks before his intense AP exams.It's very inspiring !
It would probably do YOU ALL here on this blog alot of good if you actually read some positive news and gave positive blogs for a change.
How come I don't see any of you regulars (Eddie)blogging anywhere on a positive story ?
#27 Posted by givemeabreak on May 17, 2008 at 6:58 p.m. (Suggest removal)
givemeabreak, I read that story. I really applaud that boys courage and positive outlook. Also I applaud the skill of the doctor and the invention that made the discovery of the tumor possible.
There are good stories out there. As I said on my one blog, we are capable of doing wonderful things for this world, but we are also capable of doing autrocities. It seems we run the gamut from the heart warming and loving offerings to this world to those that arouse our disgust, pity and revulsion.
If we made more of an effort to do good and speak of good, I think we would see a better world, but we divide ourselves out of fear or a sense of superiority, or even greed and covetousness.
I know we can't control the whims of nature, but we can control our own natures and be the best that we can be.
#28 Posted by truthmatters on May 17, 2008 at 7:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Good to know umleed. Thanks
#29 Posted by mikesgirl on May 17, 2008 at 9:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Sheena,
Check out moonfamilyhealth.com to find out more info.
Umleed says they've moved, but on the website they are still listed on 41. Just ask if you call, for directions to the new office.
Mike never mentioned the move, but THEN he wouldn't think of it...Gotta love 'em. haha
#30 Posted by mikesgirl on May 17, 2008 at 10:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Colorado and truthmatters -
It's gratifying to know that there are people like you. you have the ability to be able to see that there are some people who just like to ridicule other people and not give anything worthwhile to this forum. It's sad but true, there are some people who don't have any worthwhile ideas and not be able to reason about anything, so they lash out at others who might have something worthwhile to offer.
Small minds write small comments. I pity people who can't be rational and look at the world with reason.
I hope that in the end reason will prevail, and bigotry and hatred will finally bite the dust, and all people can learn the truth and live in peace and find happiness.
#31 Posted by rationalman on May 17, 2008 at 11:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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