Letters to the Editor Policy

You Can Make The Difference

So the allurements of Technology are hastening us toward the end of time. It is good for some, bad for others. For those who believe in God, there is the message of Fatima and the image of God, Jesus by whom we are created and saved.

The Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the means by which Heaven had given us to learn to pray unceasingly - on Earth as in Heaven.

According to the Book of Revelation, the appearance of God’s mother at Fatima, Portugal are for the final preparations of the church for the reign of Christ when he returns to Earth in great glory.

Yet now Satan is working overtime to destroy the truth from within our midst and hundreds of millions of souls are being condemned.

The primary cause of this is our tolerance of abortion, the desolating sacrilege, the diabolical disorientation of the faith as sister Lucy of Fatima stated. With abortion has come every form of immorality and sin. What can we do?! Simple, just say no to it under every and all circumstances. No exceptions! If we believe in God, we must live by his every word. My fellow Americans: let us in the name of God rid ourselves of this curse. That we may be saved and billions more under the  sentence of death.

Sincerely,

John Mann

Susquehanna, PA

Taking It On The Chin

Once again, we the consumers of America are taking it on the chin. Other places too!

Beef price and cull cow prices are at another all time low to the farmers, yet beef prices stay up in the stores. (All meat products.)

Just like the high cost of milk and dairy products those prices have stayed incredibly high to consumers, yet the prices the dairy farmers receive are at a thirty year low. Their industry became monopolized!

Where are our legislators. Are they sleeping again? Last year the high price for heating fuel oil compared to diesel fuel. That high price was set and the monopoly's slipped it to us. This year the price of fuel oil came down but the prices of most everything else stayed high and is hurting our economy. Once again hurting America!

Health care is a hot topic this year and our law makers are, for the first time that I can remember, hearing from all their constituents and getting an ear full. The monopoly system is not supposed to work in our country or is socialism. If some companies have a monopoly on a product, it is high time to bring in competition. If the competition is the federal government, so be it. If that’s what it takes to wake America up and help America get competition back into the economy then, I am all for it.

The thing that I don't understand is why the tax payer has to foot the bill and still allow the health care lobbyist drive the thinking of our government! Hello! Why do we have to support the health care industry when they are hurting all Americans. The rich folks should be mad, but not at our government! (Remember the checks and balances?)

Our food is nothing to laugh about - when a few companies control the price that we have to pay, then again they need to be stopped! Let’s take back the control of our country and break the monopolies. Let small businesses flourish and put friendly competition back into our economy. Any economy starts with the farmers. Remember them at the next town hall meeting.

Sincerely,

Peter A. Seman

Thompson, PA

Nerve Of A Burglar

To apply directly for a Nobel Prize would take the nerve of a burglar. And yet, here I am doing so with this reader's letter. The most illustrious recipient of that award had to have several articles published in prestigious scientific journals.

True enough, I'm hardly a match for Albert Einstein. I would be at a loss to explain relativity. It gets worse. As for that "ph.d" I sometimes append after my name, it's bogus. It is absolutely self-awarded. Whenever I check up on my colloidal silver book that www.amazon.com sells for $45.69 plus shipping and handling, I chuckle. There it is bold as life: "A Alexander Stella ph.d."

Here's another "And yet" ... all the expertise I have as the "launching pad" for my Nobel Prize foray resonates within that book. Professor Einstein was awarded his Nobel Prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Wood'jah buh-leave?! It is so simple the average eight-year-old can grasp it.

My explanation for how an electrical impulse can travel from, say, a stubbed toe all the way up to the brain is nearly as simple, if not more so. Sometimes, it pays to be a "hardware" tech. According to the physiology textbooks, the nerves that conduct those electrical impulses are compared, by way of casual metaphor, to fine copper wires.

A jolt of electricity is applied at one end, and then pops up at the other end. Well, that's close, but no cigar. I claim the path for the electrical impulse is much more like amplifiers in series. One may imagine a string of pearls, with each amplifier viewed as a pearl in that string.

Physics agrees with me in this. As an electrical signal travels, whether through the air or by wire, from point of origin to point of destination, it weakens. Maybe, it weakens only the slightest bit. Nonetheless, it weakens. Sometimes, it weakens so much as to become lost in noise.

To prevent that getting lost, the signal must be amplified. I surmise that amplification of a single impulse takes place thousands of times along its bodily path. I think that explains the amount of time that elapses between the doctor's striking below the knee cap and the jerk.

As a final note, some people might like a comparable example of an ordinary everyday amplifier. Just so happens, I'm willing to accommodate. Just about everybody is familiar with those supposedly hidden hearing aids. Such devices receive the dulcet tones of somebody's voice, and then boosts them.

Sincerely,

A Alexander Stella

Susquehanna, PA

How Joshua Bernard Died

It was a typical convoy. A bulldozer led the way to clear the IEDs, followed by an armored personnel carrier transporting the Marines of Golf Company, and a truck carrying ten ANAs (Afghan National Army) there to carry their rifles. They headed to a village that no one heard about or cared about. It was there that Joshua Bernard spent his last day.

That day was hot, 115 degrees hot. The Marines wore a 24-pound flak jacket. Add that to a 9-pound M16 rifle, plus ten pounds of assorted equipment, ammunition, and water. The destination was Dahaneh, population about 2,000, somewhere in northern Afghanistan. It was controlled by the Taliban and thought by the military to be vitally important not to be controlled by the Taliban.

But the Muslim guerrillas were tipped off and ready. The distinctive pop-pop-pop of AK-47s and exploding mortars greeted the Marines. They answered with the roar of 50 cal. machine guns. More mortars landed near the Marines. Two Apathy choppers fired Hellfire missiles at the positions. Other insurgents fired RPGs. One hit dead on. The air was thick with sand and smoke.

Someone screamed, “I can't breath. I can't breath.” It was Lance Cpl. Bernard. They were his last words. An RPG had blown off his right leg, the other hung by a shred of skin. Two Marines ran to his aid. “Bernard, you're doing fine, you're doing fine. You're gonna make it. Stay with me Bernard!” One Marine cradled Bernard's head in his hands. Then he went limp.

Julie Jacobson, an AP reporter, photographed the scene. She, like other embedded reporters, signed an agreement to photograph causalities only from a “respectable” distance, a rule that didn't apply to Afghanistan civilians or to coalition forces. Jacobson decided to even out the rules. She submitted the photo to the NY desk.

The AP ran it and ignited a firestorm of controversy. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired off a blistering letter to the president of AP, Thomas Curley: “Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image....on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling.”

Bernard's father agreed: “By distributing this photograph, we would be dishonoring the memory of [my] son.”

Yet when members of the fallen Marine's squad were shown the photo, not one of them complained or grew angry. They understood that it was the reality of the way things were on that August 14.

Tom Curley and Julia Jacobson stand guilty of putting a face on number 808 (09/04). It was Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, 21, from Portland, Maine. It wasn't a pretty face. Most of the other 807 unsanitized American faces are as gruesome.

The 2,351 seriously wounded have an equally disturbing face. Walter Reed Medical Center added a $10-million expansion unit to the wing for amputees. The flak jackets protect the torso but not the limbs. Others are housed in overcrowded wards for burns, the brain injured, and the psychiatric section. But these faces we won't see.

The next day the Afghanistan flag was raised over Dahaneh. Whether it flies there today is not known. Whether it matters is also not known.

Joshua Bernard was buried August 24. Rest in peace, Bernie. Rest in peace.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA

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