Thanks for clarifying
Thank you, Mr. Bracken, for your gracious letter and for making it clearer to me that you do not hold the frighteningly distorted views of Mr. MacKay. I should have probably read your first letter more carefully as I was still angry and disturbed by that of Mr. MacKay.
I appreciate your courtesy.
Shirley Hunter Clearlake
Obama and Islam or Freedom of Religion
Islam is not a religion it is a world-wide social/political/religionist movement disguised as a religion. To think of Islam as only a religion is the think of the Disney Enterprises as only Mickey Mouse. We cannot protect as a religion a worldwide movement that seeks to be religion, civil code, government, cultural judge, grantor of basic freedoms and pilot of all things in society (See government of Iran).
Leaders like our President who state we are not a war with Islam do not acknowledge the traditional savage precepts of Islam (including World domination) and the major changes needed for Islam to be a pure religion. Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Iman of Cairo’s al-Azhar’s University (Islam’s center of learning) has been asked by political leaders to revolutionize Islam, but little has happened other than to issue a condemnation of the killings. In fact the leader of a large American mosque, Dar al Hijrah, Falls Church, VA.—(www.hijrah.org) has said that the call to reform Islam is an alien call.
All other religions should be weary of Islam because of the barbaric and cunning nature of Islamic Extremist. Sure, there are moderate or secular Muslims, but until moderate or secular Muslims control and suppress BOTH governmental and militant extreme factions of Islam, then we should not grant them the privilege of freedom of religion and its advantages (tax free status) under our constitution.
What is needed is an army of imans (religious teachers) to invade the lands of the Islamic State and (at the risk of their lives) correct the education of youth.
John Daniels, Lakeport
Common sense — really?
The Board of Supervisors talks about reorganizing county departments have some people, like Ron Rose, spouting simplistic ideas about how to fix big problems, like our lake. Mr. Rose seems to thing it is common sense to keep doing the same thing over and over, but history shows this approach hasn’t worked.
I have to say it’s hard to follow what the supervisors did when the idea of bringing in a lake expert directly answerable to the board came up. Maybe Mr. Rose had trouble with that, too. At first it seemed Chairman Brown wanted to pull three departments under one leader reporting to the board. After some staff reaction, I think he backed off. Then it seemed Supervisor Steele’s idea, to hire a qualified lake expert answerable to the board ,got sidelined. That was disappointing. What kind of sense does it make to expect so much of the same people, who, after years of trying, haven’t been able to fix the lake?
Living on the north shore, close enough to smell the rotting algae and see the ugly hard mats clogging lake access points gives me a certain perspective on Clear Lake. A drive to the Keys when the lake is at its worst is a picture worth a thousand words. This stuff is alarming, to say the least, and the reason I’d like to see our county leaders unite around a different approach to managing our lake. Instead it seems they’re content to expect the unlikely from the same people who are now, especially with the fires, juggling more than seems fair or possible.
Mr. Rose’s latest “common sense” idea is to “make” a current employee the scientist in charge of the lake. It’s a real head scratcher. Guess he missed DeLeon already did that when he hired Will Evens.
Maybe Rose also missed that the employee he believes should run the lake thinks more research is the answer. Is more research needed? Is this part of a “plan” to fix the lake, and if so, where and how does it fit into the overall picture of managing the lake? Something tells me there’s no plan — one of the reasons I think some people voted no on the last save the lake measure.
I know Supervisor Steele has a science background and is passionate about the lake. As our supervisor, he’s in the catbird seat, seeing what has and hasn’t bee done. I think he’s saying it is time to care enough about the lake to invest in its proper management. One thing we can probably agree on is that a stinking, hazardous to our health lake will not help in our economic recovery.
To Mr. Rose I would say, “if you had a heart problem wouldn’t you want to see a heart specialist?” Well, Lake County has a lake problem. We should demand a lake expert.
Robert Kiser, Clearlake Oaks
