Michael Ryan's Imaginary Additions to the Bill of Rights

My phone line was out of order for over a week, but I'm back.

Re: "Rights worth fighting for," from the December 13th edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Michael Ryan thinks the Bill of Rights has some amendments that don't exist. There's nothing in the Bill of Rights that says we can't have government run health care. I'd like to ask Mr. Ryan which part of the Bill of Rights declares that the "Government can not run health care."

This column also contains some other misconceptions he has about the Bill of Rights. He writes "Liberals have long wanted to squelch freedom of speech by clamping down on talk radio." This is such an obvious lie. Liberals have never wanted to clamp down on talk radio. Forcing radio stations to give equal time to opposing viewpoints doesn't squelch free speech. In reality, it's commercial radio that squelches free speech because liberal points of view are usually not commercially successful and therefore not heard.

He's wrong about the Second amendment too. The Second amendment is poorly written and ambigous so that it's impossible to tell whether the founding fathers meant the people had the right to bear firearms as individuals or as a group. Thus the continuing argument.

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Re: "Get healthy attitude toward reform," from the December 19th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan is still not clear on who won the election. The democrats did. When the republicans won office, they didn't exactly reach across the aisle for bipartisan agreement.

We know what the republicans goal is in this health care debate. Their leader, Rush Limbaugh, said he wants Obama to fail. If this health care legislation passes, it will be a political victory for Obama. That's what Mr. Ryan and all of the conservative jerks out there are afraid of.

Oh and btw, the Congressional Budget Office determined that the republican plan put forth would not reduce the deficit but it would leave even more people without insurance. The republican plan was a worthless, heartless piece of garbage.

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Re: "It's a health care disgrace," from the December 22nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

This column was a typical, hysterical knee jerk reaction. Mr. Ryan criticizes Senators for voting for a bill they haven't read. Yet, Mr. Ryan hasn't read it either. How can he be so against it, if he doesn't know what's in it either.

He begins the column off by crying about the debt. Just a month ago he wrote a column suggesting we should have a moratorium on all income taxes. His credibility on this point, therefore, is nil.

Then he whines about how Bill Nelson got a special deal. Well, if Georgia's stupid republican senators would have thought of it, they could have sat on the fence too, and gotten a special deal for Georgia. But no, they had to stick with the republican party line--they want to see Obama fail.

Mr. Ryan tells an outright lie when he states cap and trade will lead to "job killing." Likely, there will be little loss of jobs because old, industrial positions will be almost equally replaced with green jobs according to www.factcheck.org.

Mr. Ryan states, "The federal government is now being run by people with alarmingly scant private sector experience..."

Under Bush, we had the government being run by people with lots of private sector experience. How did that work out?

For his final lie he states, "Remarkably, polls show most Americans doen't even want this reform."On the front page of his own paper in this same addition it says, "Overall, 82% (of Americans) say an overhaul of the nation's health care system is important for recharging the economy,according to an averageof monthly polls conducted since April by the nonpartisan Robert Woods Foundation."

Once again, Mr. Ryan fails to read his own newspaper.

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More evidence that conservatives have a serious problem with math and science comes from Kathleen Parker's column that appeared in the December 20th edition of the Augusta Chronicle. The article was entitled "Merely mortal: Health-care fight teaching Obama a powerful lesson."

In this editorial Ms. Parker states, "that (according to a Rasmussen poll) only 28 % of the nation's voters strongly approve of Obama's performance, while 42% strongly disapprove. Overall, 44% 'somewhat approve' of the president's performance."

28 + 42 + 44 = 114

Ms. Parker doesn't understand percentages. That's greater than 100.

What a dumb-dumb.

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There've been too many stupid letters published on Mr. Ryan's editorial page over the last week for me to comment on them all but I can't resist this one. John Gasko of Martinez wrote an ugly bigoted letter critical of Islam. Mr. Ryan shouldn't run stuff like this, but he's bigoted too so he probably agrees with it. Mr. Gasko doesn't say what religion he is, but I assume he's Christian. He wrote, "My religion does not advocate killing people as I do. Does his (referring to a muslim)?

I found this quote from the Christian new testament. Luke 19: 27 says, "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

So Mr. Gasko's wrong. His religion does say anyone who doesn't believe as he does should be killed.