News & Articles

A call-out to Mr. Bracken

Dear Mr. Bracken:

I will do my best to tell you the truth, as I know it, though I’m not sure it will matter. If you were really interested in the truth, you wouldn’t be a Trump supporter. According to the Washington Post, Trump told more than 30,000 lies during his four years in office. That’s probably more than you and I have told in our entire lives - combined. Biden’s not in the same county.

What I find interesting, to some extent, is your letters are predictable in showing your tendency to be a black-and-white thinker. You’re either “for me or a’gin me.” It’s “my way or the highway.” I’m guessing everything in life for you is either a “blessing or a curse.” If it strokes your ego, it’s a blessing. If it contradicts what you want to believe is true, it’s a curse. In your world, it appears there are no shades of gray.

The situation where the 13 U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan was truly a sad outcome. They weren’t the only ones killed, however. Who set the situation up? Trump had four years to get us out of Afghanistan, and did nothing. Trump then set up a date for withdrawal, in which Biden would end up doing Trump’s dirty work for him. I suspect Trump counted on it being messy. After 21 years, what did you expect?

You want to blame Biden for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? What was Putin’s excuse  for invading Crimea? Did Trump challenge Putin about that? If Trump were still in office, there would be no war, because he would have given Ukraine to Putin. Even now, Trump supports Putin’s treatment of Ukraine.  Joining NATO is nothing more than an excuse Putin will lie about. Apparently he sees himself as the second coming of Peter the Great, and wants to put Russia back together, back to where it was before the USSR fell apart.

Re: Russian oil. Only 3% of the oil we use comes from Russia. Even with that small an amount, the Senate needed to be involved in the decision to boycott Russian oil. With all the bureaucracy involved, two weeks is quick.

As far as climate change is concerned, Joe Biden will champion a clean energy revolution to create jobs, in order to take on the climate crisis. Donald Trump doesn’t believe climate change is real. He can’t think that way because it would cost money he and the GOP don’t want to spend.

I could go on, but it probably won’t matter. Mr. Bracken has a bad case of “selective perception.” He hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. He’s looking for the comfortable lies that stroke his ego, and allow him to assume he knows more than he really does. He’s looking for an “enemy” to blame his hatred and anger on, as this allows him to avoid looking at the issues inside himself that drive him to want to control others more than himself.  Ironically, that’s what Putin is doing.

Gary Burt
Marble, Minnesota

Common sense on abortion, not severe rules

Even though I am not totally for abortion I do not agree with the Supreme Court’s decision to ban it.  There are some cases where it is necessary. I heard of a woman whose baby died invitro and was made to carry it full term. Anyway she died from an infection due to that. Also many of the states that have the strictest abortion laws have no programs to help the women and their children. Also some of their governors seem to think that if a women is raped it’s her fault and that she should be forced to raise it. These same people have also suggested that we ban all forms of birth control. I wonder how many more children will the taxpayers have to support because their Mothers are on AFDC. Also how many more will be abandoned or abused because their mothers didn’t want them or die.

Common sense is needed here, not severe rules that hurt many. Maybe those people who are so radical should pay for all these children’s support. That’s only my opinion.

Cecilia Hill
Duluth, Minnesota

Interesting statistics of world population 

The world population is 7.8 billion, but condensed into 100 and then into various percentages; it is easier to understand:

Out of 100: 11 are in Europe, 5 in North America, 9 in South America, 15 in Africa , 60 in Asia. 49 live in  rural  areas and  51 live in urban areas.

12 speak Chinese, 5 speak Spanish, 5 speak English, 3 speak Arabic, 3 speak Hindi, 3 speak Bengali, 3 speak Portuguese, 2 speak Russian, 2 speak Japanese, 62 speak other languages.

77 have their own dwellings and 23 do not, 21 are overnourished, 63 can eat fully, 15 are undernourished, 1 ate last last meal.

Daily cost of living for 48 is less than $2 US per day, 87 have clean drinking water, 3 do not, 75 have mobile telephones, 25 do not, 30 have internet service and 70 do not, 7 are college educated and 93 are not, 83 can read and 17 are illiterate.

33 are Christians, 22 are Muslims, 14 are Hindus, 7 are Buddhists, 12 have other religions, 12 have no religions. 12 live below 14 years

66 die before ages 15-64, 8 live more than 65 years.

Mike Jaros
Duluth Minnesota

Typical bizarre NRA paranoia

With the ongoing plague of mass shootings in this country, the NRA finds itself under fire yet again, and NRA apologists such as the one from Duluth in the June 16th issue (“In defense of the gun industry”) are forced to defend what cannot be defended, at least not rationally. The NRA’s paranoia is such that, for them, any restriction equals total restriction eventually, and so they resist even the most common sense measures, which the vast majority of people, including most gun owners, support.

One of their most bedrock beliefs, frequently stated, is “the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” Has this ever been justified? A good example of the fallacy of this type of thinking was a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, in 2019. The “good guys with guns,” in this case the Dayton police, were on the scene in less than a minute (one cop estimated it to be closer to 30 seconds), had the shooter on the ground, dead – in less than one minute! – and he still managed to kill 9 people and wound 17 more. And all because he was armed with an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine. So much for the “good guy-bad guy” argument.

In saner times I supported the NRA, until their increasingly bizarre paranoia became too hard to stomach. I still believe in the 2nd Amendment, as REASONABLY interpreted; I’ve been a gun owner and active hunter my whole adult life. I’m also a combat veteran of Vietnam, and I will state categorically that assault weapons with high-capacity magazines, such as the AR-15, apparently the weapons-of-choice for the current crop of mass shooters, are designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time – in other words, they’re meant for the battlefield, pure and simple, and have absolutely no business being in civilian hands. The 10-year ban on such weapons, enacted in 1994, should never have been allowed to expire.

William L. Scott
Soudan, Minnesota