ABORTION

Help where it counts

To abort or not. It would be nice to support the woman, no matter what side you are on. Use that money spent on ads and other means to project your beliefs to instead help the woman. If you are pro-life are you willing to help financially to support the mother in raising that child? If you are pro-choice are you willing to support the mother in counseling and other needs she will have for her grief of her decision?

I think what is left out in this decision of abort or not is the woman who has to make this decision and the financial difficulty no matter what her decision is. I think it is time to put your money where your mouth is.

JACK HARLAN, Boise

Today’s sting with horror

I listened to a review of “The Hunger Games” by David Edelstein on National Public Radio. I quote:

“The murders on screen are fast and largely pain-free — you can hardly see who’s killing who. So despite the high body count, the rating is PG-13. Think about it: You make killing vivid and upsetting and get an R. You take the sting out of it, and kids are allowed into the theater. The ratings board has it backward.”

I agreed and made the connection to abortion.

Call abortion “women’s rights,” and the sting is taken out from what we would normally recoil in horror from: killing babies.

In the show “Star Trek,” the episode “A Taste of Armageddon,” a war is fought with computers, people in areas the computers have virtually destroyed report to disintegration chambers and are killed, no horrors of war, no sting. It ends with Captain Kirk destroying the disintegration chamber and war computers. The sting is back and it is hoped that with the horror of war, people will now talk peace.

Abortion kills babies. That is today’s sting with horror.

MARGARET J. HART, Boise

GEORGE MCGOVERN

Senator’s guidelines produce change in diets

On Oct. 21, we lost former U.S. Sen. George McGovern. Although many will recall his disastrous 1972 loss to Richard Nixon and his subsequent leadership in getting us out of Vietnam, his truly lasting legacy will be his war on hunger and malnutrition.

In 1977, following extensive public hearings, McGovern’s Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs published Dietary Goals for the United States, a precursor to today’s dietary guidelines. It marked the first time that a U.S. government document recommended reduced meat consumption.

The meat industry forced the committee to destroy all copies of the report and to remove the offending recommendation from a new edition. It then abolished the committee, voted McGovern out of office, and warned government bureaucrats never to challenge meat consumption again. (Food Politics by Marion Nestle, 2007.)

Yet, after 35 years of studies linking meat consumption with elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other killer diseases, the MyPlate icon, representing USDA’s current Dietary Guidelines for Americans, recommends vegetables, fruits, and grains, but never mentions meat, and shunts dairy off to one side (www.choosemyplate.gov).

And it all started with one brave senator from South Dakota.

IKE SCHNEIDER, Boise

Mountain Home is part of McGovern history

If you haven’t read Stephen Ambrose’s book “The Wild Blue” you probably aren’t aware of the fact that George McGovern trained for overseas duty at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in 1944 as a pilot of a B-24 bomber crew. I had to read the book to find out.

I read the book because I was also in the Air Force during World War II and also trained at Mountain Home for the same reason. McGovern left for Italy and the 15th Air Force shortly after my arrival at the base.

As the navigator of our crew, I was also sent to Italy. Though our paths never knowingly crossed, we both ended our war by flying the last 15th Air Force Mission of the war in April 1945. He in the lead of his group, I in the lead ship of our group. This was revealed to me in the book. There was one difference in that last mission. According to the book, McGovern’s plane was severely damaged by flak while our plane saw more smoke than flak. For World War II buffs, the book does a good job of explaining the air war experience. I’m sure my three sons would loan their copies.

BOB BARBOUR, Boise

STATESMAN

They don’t write news

Please put Rocky Barker and Dan Popkey’s articles in the Opinion section, where they belong. Their articles are well written, but are not news. The effect of putting their writings, in which their opinions and agendas scream out to the reader, in the news sections makes your paper appear bush-league.

BOB WOLF, Boise

IDAHO 16

‘Road to Nowhere’ doesn’t serve Idaho

Unknown to thousands of Idahoans is Idaho Transportation Department’s Idaho 16 extension project cutting across the Boise River in a path of environmental and aesthetic disaster and destruction.

Hidden from public view, this project is marching its way across the river, farmlands, homes and beautiful river wildlife habitat. It’s time you came out Chinden Boulevard, U.S. 20-26 to North Pollard Lane (between Star Road and Black Cat Road) and ventured north to the edge of the bluff and personally viewed this disaster. You will be shocked at what you find, how ITD has pulled the rug over your eyes without you even knowing about it and the negative environmental impact.

Make sure that you realize that this “Road to Nowhere for No One” empties out onto Chinden in yet another stoplight intersection at McDermott to further worsen the already horrible traffic congestion on Chinden. When all is said and done, rest assured, Idahoans will owe the federal government millions and millions of dollars in GARVEE loans, and get ready for the millions in cost overruns. This project is already a financial disaster. You owe it to Idaho’s future to see it now!

ROBIN HAYES, Meridian

KARDASHIANS

Reality TV leading to American downfall

We are in global competition with other countries and they are clobbering us on world affairs. Recently, the European Journal of Commerce asked citizens of the U.S. and other countries to answer questions on international affairs. I’m sorry to report that we came out like a deflated balloon; 29 percent of Americans couldn’t name our vice president. It doesn’t help that the U.S. has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world, with the top 400 households raking in more money than the bottom 60 percent combined. We have a lot of parents where education is not a valued commodity: too busy scraping by making a living.

Ask our young people the name of a Kardashian and I’m sure there would be a quick reply. Our television programming has been “hijacked” by these so-called reality shows or “human zoos” where celebrities display the worst of us and become rich doing so. I am sick of seeing the Kardashian name on everything from clothes to nail polish. What’s next? A line of caskets on sale with each sisters’ favorite color satin lining? This is just one example of untalented celebrities exploiting us and shame on us for “flunking” world affairs.

VICTORIA CLARK, Boise