Reader responds to campaign, Obama critics

Editor, The Recorder,

Everyone's piling on (Recorder writer) Jim Jacenich lately. Frank from Corning says he writes fiction. David from Blue Grass is sickened. When Frank from Corning states that The Recorder ought to give an opposing view, he may have missed Jim's colleague Mike Bollinger's column where he said that Bugs Bunny would be more qualified than Obama. Had Bugs been president of the Harvard Law Review, earned a graduate degree, taught Constitutional law at one of America's better law schools, and been elected to the U.S. Senate, then I might agree. Would Mike have made that assertion if Obama were white? What if Obama had marched his family onto the stage and one his teenage daughters was pregnant out of wedlock? Now Bugs looks even better.

Frank frets that Obama's association with Bill Ayers wasn't vetted. Good grief, Frank, if you think two years isn't enough time for Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and all the conservative columnists to dig at that relationship, how long do you want? Sen. McCain confronted him with that on national TV in front of 34 million viewers and Obama answered him. Where does it end?

I don't recall the Obama campaign saying that someone from Alaska who enjoys hunting is ignorant, but what do you call someone who shoots wolves from a helicopter? If this is part of Palin's "dreams and passions," she needs help. No, Frank, this is not what we do in the Highlands. Hunters up here are sportsmen.

Frank pleads for Jim to give him an example of one veiled threat by the McCain campaign. Well, here ya' go Frank, you betcha then: When Palin said that Obama pals around with terrorists her supporters chanted, "Kill him!" She didn't try to stop it, and it became a regular part of her enlightening stump speech. If inciting mob mentality isn't a veiled threat, we need to define our terms.

Frank further agonizes that the Obama campaign implied that Sen. McCain acted dishonorably in Vietnam. Sorry to say, that was Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove during the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary battle. Would it surprise me if Frank voted twice for Bush anyway? It should surprise a lot of people that McCain hired the exact same Rove media people for his 2008 attack campaign on Obama.

To David in Blue Grass: Every time a Democrat gets elected, sportsmen think, There goes our guns. It didn't happen under Clinton and Obama said it won't happen under him. I'll take you up on your prediction — next November I'll give you a dollar for every gun that Obama took away and you give me a dollar for every gun you still have. Deal?
Lee Taplinger
Mustoe, Va.