God bless Roosevelt

Reading the letters to the editor is always enjoyable to me. I am always amazed that Republicans continue attempting to rewrite the history of the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt [Letters, June 14].

Roosevelt was a hero to my family. He still is. Republicans have been trying at least since Reagan to blacken Roosevelt’s name.

Republicans, however, are paying for Reagan’s foolishness today. When he first went to Philadelphia, Miss., to begin his election campaign and started talking the code talk about states rights, the inevitable end of the Republican Party was set in stone.

Lee Atwater knew how to motivate the Southern racists and evangelicals by making racism respectable with code words. It worked. For a while, that is.

The funny part is how white, working-class Southerners failed to see through the lies and voted themselves into decades of poverty and declining income.

Those days are in the past, however, and the Republican Ice Age is beginning. For that, I thank Ronald Reagan. For the rest, not so much.

God bless the memory of Franklin Roosevelt.

William Trantham,

Denton

American health care

To Mr. Horrell [Letters, June 13]: From your description of your medical procedure and the expertise of your neurosurgeon, it is obvious that you are blessed to have extremely good insurance.

All is right in your medical world. What about the medical word of millions of Americans who are not so fortunate and have no insurance?

There are working men and women who live in constant fear of catastrophic illness because the insurance industry has priced its services far from their reach.

Is that a cause of concern for you? Are you like most conservatives who have insurance, they’ve got it and it protects them and that is all they care about?

Tell both me and our readers: If socialized medicine is the horror you paint it, why do most countries, excepting the Third World ones, have some form of socialized medicine?

They have had it for years and with the exception of China, have the right and ability to rid themselves of such a system if it is not working for the majority of the people. They haven’t, and show no indication of doing so.

There are hundreds of people in the United States who fly to India to have hip surgery because it is too expensive here. Isn’t that an indication that something is wrong with the system?

Marie Antoinette sweetly exclaimed, “Let them eat cake,” when told the masses in France had no bread.

What will you cry out to those who suffer from medical inequality? “Take another aspirin?”

John Nance Garner,

Denton

Teleprompters and torture

Mr. Stodola [Letters, June 9]: Ever see the footage recently when President Obama’s teleprompter failed? He couldn’t resume talking until bystanders got the thing working again.

When the same thing happened to Sara Palin, she didn’t miss a beat while finishing her GOP acceptance speech.

Recent elections in England, France and Germany resulted in a political right ricochet from Obama.

Recall Obama’s first trip over to Europe when he asked for help: He came away with virtually nothing. Later in Cairo, selling out Israel: So much for “improving our reputation,” especially with our allies.

Mr. Stodola, furnish us with other countries’ statements condemning torture during their time of hostilities.

Further: Place your hands together be-hind your back while joining the elbows together.

Impossible?

Another rope wrapped around the forearms will suffice, with the other end of the rope over a pulley. Pulling on the rope raises the forearms resulting in more excruciating pain.

Further pulling results in lifting the prisoner off the ground. Loss of bladder and bowel control follows. Screams are so loud shoulders popping out of their sockets can’t be heard.

Welcome to the Hanoi Hilton, Mr. Stodola, not your limp-lame idea of “water torture” as being torture.

Being the “global warming” dupe: The same people 40 years ago warned us the Boeing 2707 and other SST’s were going to plunge the earth into another ice age. Your present stance in cadence with these same idiots says much.

Roger T. Horrell,

Denton

The insurance scam

It would be the best financial news to hit middle-class Americans if Obama can successfully put a reasonably priced government health care insurance plan into effect and finally give the profit-driven health insurance companies much-needed competition.

The health insurance company we have charges about $500 a month in premiums and has a $2,000 yearly deductible. We would have to spend about $8,000 in any given year before we ever saw the first benefit, unless you count the co-pay it covers if we agree to use some generic drug manufactured for pennies in a filthy, Third World country.

If I use my insurance card at my doctor’s office toward my deductible, I have to pay $78 for the basic visit. If I go in as an uninsured patient, my cost is $60. These insurance companies know that we have to pay their outrageous costs just in case we have a catastrophic illness.

It’s a no-win situation for us. At this point, we avoid preventive health care and routine tests because after paying health care insurance premiums, who has any money left for actual health care?

This is what is known in the health care industry as death by spreadsheet, whereby sinister corporations work full time figuring out how to scam, cheat and rip off the public in order to produce big profits and multi-million-dollar bonuses to the fiends who head their greedy companies.

Debbie McPherson,

Aubrey