New center for seniors needed in city
My heart leaped with joy when I heard that Vice Mayor Jim Gray supports a new senior citizens center for Lexington.
The present center on Nicholasville Road is a wonderful center and offers a wide range of services and activities for all seniors here.
However, it is too small and outdated for the present population. What will it be like in the near future as all the baby boomers become seniors?
At times, it seems like some of our leaders are completely unaware of what is coming as far as our senior population. Our seniors are a great asset to our community, and deserve a center to provide the services they require.
Pat Davis
Lexington
Humans at fault
OK, the way I understand human physiology is that we take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Add to that bit of information that there are approximately 6 billion humans on the planet.
Then answer this question: Exactly why are any expensive studies needed to determine whether or not the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused by human activities?
Even a 3-year-old could figure this one out. Humans, and humans only, are the cause of all damages to the environment. Not nature herself, not corporations, not governments — just the sheer number of humans on the planet damages the environment, even if most of the humans were doing their best not to harm the planet.
Yet while speaking against environmental damage, some governments are bemoaning the decline in birthrates, saying that decline will hurt their economies. Yes, hurt the politicians and government employees' economies — fewer people paying taxes to keep them up.
Get a grip. You can't preach adding more and more environmental policies and regulations, and bemoan declining birthrates, while at the same time ignoring the major cause of environmental damage — humans.
Joyce M. Coomer
Columbia
Liberal bias at work
When you believe there is no real moral truth or Biblical principles, you wind up with the Aug. 25 rebuttal to a column by Cal Thomas, who is a Christian conservative despised by the left. The letter equates homosexuality with an "oppressed minority."
It's a tired page of the liberal playbook: Make a ridiculous comparison between emancipation of slaves and civil rights struggles of two men or two women trying to get a marriage license.
There was no tyranny that California Judge Vaughn Walker needed to correct. It was a fair and equitable voting issue the people of California voiced their opinion on. Unfortunately, liberal activist judges, in their quest to even the score, can throw majority opinion out the window.
Marriage was never meant to be between two men or two women, no matter how passive our local governments become.
On the same editorial page that day, another letter writer simultaneously takes his best shot at Thomas, chastising us moral do-gooders for not seeing marijuana as a legitimate drug of choice.
There you have the liberal mind-set summarized on one page: Do whatever you feel like, label as bigots those who have a different opinion, and insinuate that the average person doesn't have sense enough to vote correctly on the issues.
Jonathan Mackey
Lexington
GOP has facts
During a recent edition of the Kentucky Tonight show on KET, the panelists were representatives of the state's Democratic and Republican parties.
The host did a good job of remaining impartial, unlike the liberally biased Comment on Kentucky, although those panelists are news reporters.
The representatives of the Republican Party gave reasoned, well-supported arguments for their positions on the various issues, while the Democratic Party folks seemed more interested in "gotcha," picking bits here and there from their opponents' recent appearances or sound bites to attack.
They did not appear professional, but rather juvenile.
In a sound, two-party system, there must be compromise from competing ideas. But the ideas need to come from a solid basis first. Just attacking the other side is not holding up one's responsibility for a reasonable opposing opinion.
Perhaps later this fall, the Democratic Party will get some ideas which can legitimately be considered for an honest debate.
If not, it will be bad news for those folks who are trying to make a determination for Nov. 2. It should be an easy task for the Democratic Party to get the word out since the media seems to hang obediently on its every word.
Bill Marshall
Lexington
Execution no deterrent
Kentucky's death penalty is killing us in several ways. Aside from the increased financial expense, we suffer an increased murder rate related to our brutal practice of killing criminals.
The high incidence of mistakes (such as the overturned conviction of Larry Osborne in 2002) and racial inequities are well documented.
Deterrence was a justification advanced in the 1970s based on a study by Isaac Ehrlich which has since been disproved for methodological errors. In fact, Ehrlich's work was also criticized by the National Academy of Sciences, but it is still clung to as the rationale for thinking of capital punishment as deterrence.
Far from reducing crime, data on murder rates suggest capital punishment actually encourages crime.
The South has the greatest number of executions as well as the largest murder rates. In 2007, the average murder rate in states with the death penalty was 5.5 per 100,000 population; the average murder rate of the 14 states without the death penalty was 3. So almost twice as many murders per capita when criminals are executed.
A 1995 survey of police chiefs and county sheriffs found that most ranked the death penalty last in a list of six options that might deter violent crime. Gallup polls show people who know the truth do not support capital punishment.
Only an eye-for-an-eye vengeance is accomplished by killing murderers. Christian beliefs teach this is wrong. Killing for retribution is as cruel and unusual as chopping off a thief's hand. Yet we allow a punishment system serving no other purpose.
Steve Olshewsky
Lexington
See for yourself
In response to the letter admonishing Southland Christian Church for its impending purchase and remodeling of the Lexington Mall property — I doubt very seriously the writer understands where the leaders and members of Southland Christian Church are coming from.
One is certainly welcomed to be "entertained" at a service to get a better idea of the thought process that is involved with the Lexington Mall project.
Better yet, view some of the past services on the Web site where Jon Weece has explained the pros and cons of this endeavor, or purchase a CD of the services.
The argument over property taxes and the elderly people who are going to be evicted because they can't pay their property taxes is a prime example of the "Chicken Little" theory.
Donna Nabors
Nicholasville
