Letters to the editor for Sunday, April 22, 2018

What’s great about Nevada?

I am writing as part of a class project for the novel “The Watsons Go to Birmingham.” My classmates and I are contacting newspapers across the country in a state we chose to learn more about. I want to learn more about Nevada because me and my dad might go there when the Raiders move to see them play. My dad has been a lifelong Raiders fan so we want to experience one game.

I am writing to ask your readers to please write back and tell me why they like Nevada, interesting facts about the state and what visitors can do there.

They can write to my school’s address, Queen of Peace Catholic School, 4508 Vistula Road, Mishawaka, IN 46654. If they could also include a copy of the newspaper where they saw my letter, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Jack Brennan

Mishawaka, Ind.

Worthless politicians are found in both major parties

In response to the March 13th letter by Phyllis Skamel, she indicated I stepped over the line in the assessment of Democrats in a letter I wrote in March.

I’m 78 years old and was a registered Democrat since I was 22 years old. My mother was an active member of the Nevada State Democratic Party until she moved in 1960. I was a supportive member of the Democratic Party and supported its efforts until Harry Reid became the majority leader in the Senate. He became the biggest obtrusion to the country and it was his way or no way. You supported Democrats or you would get nothing, a total communist party policy in my opinion. And I do not feel it has changed.

I had to laugh when Harry Reid and John Kerry made a presentation at the University of Nevada, Reno and talked about politics. I bet it was nothing more than an Abbott and Costello routine from two people who were useless as politicians.

I changed my party affiliation several years ago and went from Democrat to Republican and I will be changing to Independent because I feel the Republicans at the United States level and the State of Nevada level are a totally worthless lot of people. I’m not impressed by any of them.

I will admit, I do support Trump because he is the only president who has done anything in this country to help the working person.

Make America great again.

Bill Pyatt

Dayton

Easy to be wrong, harder to be right

An easy way to start a conversation with someone is to comment on the weather. This usually leads to a negative comment of weather forecasters and how wrong they can be.

Way back when I was in college, I took a meteorology class. The instructor was a meteorologist who had worked mostly in Texas. He said that a simple way to think of how weather works was to think of the atmosphere as a large stream or river. These moving bodies of water interact with obstacles in the water to create whirlpools and eddies, much the way the atmosphere interacts with land masses, mountains, valleys, etc. Throw in the polar and tropical jet streams as the steering mechanisms and you get whirlpools and eddies as well.

The next time you are sitting by a stream or river, try to predict where the next eddy will appear. In some places it will be easy and other times they will appear unexpectedly.

Of course this is a simplistic way to view weather, but it is a very effective way to visualize the difficulty in predicting what will happen with the atmosphere and the weather created. It is easy to be wrong and harder to be right.

Not many people criticize you when you are right forecasting the weather, but be wrong just once and “whoa, Nellie!” As we are want to say: If you don’t like the weather, just wait a bit. Try predicting it now and then.

David Knighton

Carson City

McConnell asking for constitutional crisis

When Mitch McConnell declared he would ensure Barack Obama would be a one-term president, I was annoyed at his determination to do what he wanted and forget what the country wanted.

When President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court 10 months before the Obama administration was to end, I was furious when Mitch McConnell refused to uphold his constitutional duty to hold hearings on the nomination. When President Obama advised Mitch McConnell that there were concerns about Russian interference in the run-up to the election and McConnell threatened to politicize the intelligence if administration officials shared that information with the American people, I was alarmed.

And now, yet one more McConnellism. He has refused to allow bipartisan legislation to be introduced in the Senate that would protect the Mueller investigation and is inviting a constitutional crisis.

Does the Constitution mean anything to you? If so, call Dean Heller’s office and tell him to insist that McConnell must prevent a constitutional crisis.

Bruce Thompson Federal Building, 400 S. Virginia Street, Suite 738, Reno, 89501. Phone: 775-686-5770. Fax: 775-686-5729.

Linda Deacy

Carson City