LETTERS: Thursday, August 18, 2016
Forest partnerships are hoaxes
This is a commentary on the June 5 guest opinion “Trees are growing every day; so are forest partnerships” by Paul McKenzie of F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Company.
My disclosure is McKenzie and I do not like each other. While he sees his role in life as cutting down trees for corporate profit and personal salary and bonuses, my life’s mission is to save trees for wildlife habitat for no personal financial gain. It is a contest of who gets to use the trees: Humans for building their homes out of cut lumber; or wildlife for living their lives using the tree forest ecosystem for their bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, and kitchens.
McKenzie enlisted the aid of Amy Robinson of the pretentious pseudo-environmental group called Montana Wilderness Association, as well as a select list of some other individuals and organizations, to pretend he did his due diligence of considering the plight of wildlife, but he used the by-invitation-only Whitefish Range Partnership Plan concocted by Joe Krueger of Flathead National Forest to trick the general public into believing everyone not invited was in concert and collaborated on the private plan. Needless to say, the year-and-a-half-long secret meetings to create this plan did not include me or the other real individual environmentalists and organizations in the area. Those private, secret meetings are hardly a demonstration of collaboration, but the general public is easily tricked by such collaborative falsehoods.
For those of us who are true environmentalists, NOT Stoltze or MWA, we must suffer being called names by those who want to cut down the trees and who want to have motorized and mechanized recreational vehicle access into the forest where the wildlife have their homes. Frankly, we could care less about McKenzie’s personal income and future job promotions. The animals deserve equal opportunities to live safely on planet Earth.
Forest management is not that difficult if left to Mother Nature to manage. It is when cruel, arrogant, greedy humans believe that they can do a better job, at personal profit, that our wonderful wildlife suffers. Ordinary people seem to be too busy living their everyday lives to empathize with the plight of wildlife, so those who would betray them can proliferate and get away with “murder.” But not if I can help it!
I call on all who believe wildlife deserve and need our help to fight back against the throes of Stoltze and MWA. Please write letters to the editor defending wildlife. Amen. —Bill Baum, Martin City
Why would evangelicals vote for Trump?
A recent Pew Research Center national poll revealed that almost 80 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Donald Trump. Somewhat puzzling, because Trump is not known as a church-goer, and, to my knowledge, has never declared Jesus Christ as his personal savior.
His “Trinity” seems to consist of power, money and his reflection in the mirror. Trump lacks, to say the least, evangelical core values — in fact, values of primary importance to the ethos preached by Christ: humility, kindness, generosity to the poor, and tolerance, to name a few. In Trump, one would be hard-pressed to find a more unholy man in America.
His bigotry, misogyny, narcissism, xenophobia, alleged business fraud, and hateful comments have been well documented by the media, including comments he made about Fox New’s own Megyn Kelly, after she asked him a tough question in an early GOP debate. Family values? He is working on his third marriage, belittles men who go home to “unattractive wives,” and once spitefully cancelled the medical benefits of his nephew’s infant son, who had cerebral palsy, during a family dispute over Trump’s father’s will.
All of which begs the question: Why do such an overwhelming majority of evangelicals support Trump? If all politics is identity politics, and a voter needs to identify with the candidate he is voting for, are 80 percent of evangelicals saying they identify with the values of Donald Trump?
The answer is clearly no: Trump does not share their values. At best, he is the lesser of two evils. But perhaps the best way of choosing between two evils, is to choose neither. —George McLean, Kalispell
Pro-abortion Catholics and other oxymorons
Democratic VP pick, Tim Kaine (“Cain?”) has made the claim that he is Catholic. I wonder by what definition he comes to this self-professed conclusion. This modern day “K(Cain)e,” like the one in Genesis, approves of murder of the innocent (abortion); he also approves of same-sex marriage, gay adoptions and the ordination of women.
As Bishop Thomas Tobin announced, “All of these positions are clearly contrary to well-established Catholic teachings, all of them have been opposed by Pope Francis as well.”
Many members of the Democratic Party justify their stand by claiming that they are “personally opposed to abortion, but that they would not impose their opinion on someone else.”
If you heard someone claim that they were personally opposed to sexually abusing a child, but that they would not impose their opinion on someone else, knowing that they could possibly assume this ridiculous reasoning, would you elect them to an office where they would be responsible for governing?
Democrats like K(Cain)e say that they want abortion “safe and rare.” Rare? Abortion is THE MOST FREQUENTLY PERFORMED SURGICAL PROCEDURE IN THE WORLD. According to the World Wide Abortion counter there have been approximately 60 million reported abortions in the U.S. since 1973.
At the highest reported number of abortions in the year 1990, 1.6 million babies in the womb were slaughtered by their mothers. That’s more than this year’s record numbers for C -section: 1.3 million; knee and hip replacement: 1.3 million; circumcision:1 million; broken bone repair: 670,000; hysterectomy: 500,00; angioplasty: 500,000; gall-bladder removal: 460,000; stent procedure: 454,000; and heart bypass: 395,000.
“Rare abortion” is when the baby is aborted during a procedure where it was a secondary effect of the procedure, abortion not being the intent. Allowing the abortion of over 60 million babies is not “rare” (and these numbers do not include those caused by chemical abortifacients estimated to be 250 million since 1973).
Worldwide, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reports that in 2003 approximately 41.6 million abortions were committed. At 40 million per year for 30 years, that’s over a billion abortions (Lifesitenews). That’s more than one abortion for each second of the year. Even the Nazi death camps’ deaths don’t match these gruesome numbers.
So, K(Cain)e, Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius, Kerry and Collins, listen to what Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput said, “If they don’t believe what the church teaches, they’re not really Catholic.” —Terry Mimnaugh, Lakeside