.Letters to the Editor: March 14, 2012

You Mean They Don’t Eat Babies?

The Bohemian Grove conspiracies are ridiculous (“The Original One Percent,” March 7). Ask anyone who has worked there. They hire in the Press Democrat classifieds and on Craigslist every season. If they’re trying to keep it all a secret, they aren’t doing a very good job. It makes for good intrigue, but it’s a giant Boy Scout camp for big boys. And last I checked, it was $10,000 to go to the camp, after the membership fee of somewhere around $50,000. Most of our student loans are tens of thousands more than that, hardly the “One Percent.” Having money is not a crime. Neither is spending it. I have been losing faith in some of the Bohemian’s research and bias, but I suppose you’ve found your audience.

Santa Rosa

More Love for the Ranger

It was love at first sight according to Ranger Rick, whom I called Richard (“Final Frontier,” Feb. 22). Over time, I felt the same way as I noticed he always brought a smile to my face, even the one night I talked him out of the idea of me holding a ladder while he climbed up on a rooftop. His life ceremony was filled with tears, laughter and wonderful stories that lightened our hearts. Thank you, Frank, for the best salute to this quirky man whom we will all miss.

Online

Little Beers

The bias of beer geeks toward high-alcohol hops bombs is pretty well discussed (“The Quiet Kingmaker,” March 7). But it can be somewhat circumvented, in that you can break out the top 50 beers for each style. That might not favor more widely known beers. Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold gets as far as #2 in the Dortmunder/Helles category, behind the lesser-known L’amère à Boire Montréal Hell, but it gives more beers in lesser-loved styles a fighting chance. And you also have the option to “show only non-retired beers”—that is, those that are still being produced, so you have a chance of finding them.

Chicago, Ill.

Artificial Injection

The claim by Sady Doyle (“A Coming War?” Feb. 29) that “all current Republican presidential candidates have publicly opposed access to contraceptives” was as lame and asinine as it was paranoid and untrue. But this is strictly a false issue in the present campaign since everybody knows, whether they cop to it or not, that “it’s the economy, stupid” (to coin a phrase).

Contraception was deliberately and artificially injected into the campaign by the drive-by media, which continues, as usual, to serve as a cheering section for the party of the Democrats instead of an honorable and objective presenter of the news.

It was ABC co-moderator George Stephanopoulos, chief Democrat spinmeister in ’92, who initially raised the matter eight weeks ago during the Jan. 7 New Hampshire debate. It was totally off-the-wall, contraceptives having never yet been so much as mentioned during this campaign. And Romney, the first candidate addressed with the question that Saturday, properly characterized the asking of it in the present context as a “silly thing.”

And that was putting it gently. What’s more, as Stephanopoulos persisted in pursuing the un-apropos question for several minutes, the audience’s recurrent booing left no secret of its own outrage.

But the decision had been made by Mr. Obama’s handlers to divert attention from the glaring fact that, as confirmed by his ghastly (dis)approval numbers, the president’s record is nothing to run on, as it has been positively putrid, and gas prices have been steadily climbing. So a diversion was needed—et voilà, “Can states bar contraception?”

The truth is that, contrary to Ms. Doyle’s mendacious averment, none of the candidates has opposed “access to contraceptives.” What they have opposed is the bizarre proposition that pregnancy be viewed as some kind of “disease” that should be treated as, effectively, “something to be insured against” by forcing the public at large, irrespective of conscience, to finance it as part of medical insurance.

It’s a crock, and its proponents are full of it.

Cotati

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