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Hog farm near soldier’s home
What kind of people would take advantage of a neighbor, let alone a deployed soldier? (4/28, A-1, “Hog farm puts soldier at war on two fronts”)
That the Penn family would pursue building a hog farm near their neighbor Randell Hettinger in Knox County, Mo., without considering his home is bad enough. That they would try to take advantage of a soldier serving in Iraq is worse than unneighborly. It’s downright unpatriotic. They should be ashamed of themselves. I hope someone will stop them.
Cheri Wright
Kansas City
Long-range weather forecastingThanks to J.D. Eggleston and his daughter for a great analysis of man’s inability to predict weather reliably (4/26, A-1, “Weather trackers put TV in KC to the test”). The analysis highlights the extreme difficulty and inherent uncertainty in making these predictions, which result in cascading errors beyond a couple of days. It’s no discredit to the meteorologists, as they are trained scientists using the most advanced tools available.
But Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. says “we don’t have enough computing power and understanding of the atmosphere to be infallible.” And Andy Bailey of the National Weather Service states that for seven-day forecasts, “we’ll look at three to five or more different computer models,” which “have wildly different solutions (predictions) for what will happen on day seven.”
Yet the general public has swallowed detailed catastrophic global weather predictions for 10, 20 and 50 years into the future by Al Gore, a politician. All global warming predictions are mere speculations of extrapolated assumptions produced by computer models that contain as much certainty as Bryan Busby predicting the exact weather conditions for April 28, 2018.
Larry Seitter
Olathe
Get with it, TV station program directors. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and the weather in Kansas City is affected a couple of weeks later.What is wrong with our forecasters? Nothing. Just don’t waste 10 or 15 minutes of TV time having them babble on about something they really can’t predict.
Steve Bailey
Fairway
War in IraqWhat took you so long, Congress? Why does it take our elected officials more than five years to decide that Baghdad has the resources available to pay for reconstruction, fuel used by American troops and payments to Sunni fighters? (4/15, A-8, “Push is on for Iraq to assume rebuilding costs.”)
Why not go one step further and reimburse our government for the billions of dollars this effort has cost our country? While we’re at it, tack on a program requiring Iraq to fund an initiative that financially takes care of our injured troops and our deceased troop survivors. Iraq has the assets and should be required to pay a price for freedom, just as our troops have paid the ultimate price liberating that country from a dictator.
John Reilly
Blue Springs
I would say that President Bush is keeping “single-minded focus” on the troops in Iraq. The American government is trying to find the best way to help this country, and it is taking longer than anyone expected.It is not that Iraq is ungrateful for America’s help. It is simply difficult for a country to change its system of government. One cannot snap his fingers and say, “It is mended.” People need time to change and to adopt new ways into their cultures.
Please realize that a thriving country, the U.S., is trying to mend a surviving country. President Bush does seem to know how to handle Iraq and its situation. However, we as the American people don’t know how to accept a country that is not united.
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