The Readers’ Forum: Saturday Letters

I have been a subscriber to the Journal for 42 years. When my current one expires, I’m not sure if I can renew it, which will result in lost revenue for the Journal and my wonderful career.

After reading through the local and international gloom and doom (Scott Sexton is the exception), I enjoyed clearing things up and laughing through comics in the comics section. The recent changes to this section are a problem – apparently not just for me, but also for others, according to letters from the Readers’ Forum. Where are “Hagar the Horrible”, “Curtis”, “Beetle Bailey”, “Blondie”, etc. ? Have you asked readers if they like the tapes you’ve now replaced? Apparently you have to get an e-edition (too bad for those who buy the paper daily) to have the extra page of comics, but even on this page your old format lacks a lot.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was Sunday comics. Many of us enjoyed the final page, which provided word search (and the educational information that prompted those words), Slylock Fox, and “Spot six differences between these signs.”

The September 28 article “Church OK with getting Southern Baptist boot” is interesting enough – not because a religious congregation is not allowed to do what it wants, but when it declares that it is a Christian congregation and ignores the word of God.

Yes, God is love! But, God is just. No person, no formal gathering or anything can stop a person from loving another, regardless of gender. But that’s where God draws the line with sex — the marriage bed. He defined it as a covenant relationship with Him between a “man and a woman” (that would be a man and a woman defined by Him and the majority of people). And that’s where sex is acceptable… to God. He made it very clear in revealing to the man that fornication (sex outside of marriage), adultery (married people having sex with others outside of marriage) and homosexuality (any type of sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex) are sins.

College Park Baptist in Greensboro made the decision many years ago to accept everyone (which every church should do), but obviously ignored preaching the whole gospel. If the open homosexual lifestyle is accepted, then I can only assume that they have no problem with open adultery being practiced within their congregation and their youth program promoting fornication. But, I bet they don’t. It would make this church and anyone like it both unscriptural and hypocritical.

The author of the Aug. 14 “Nitpicky Critique” letter wrote, “President Biden has worked hard for the American people and I am proud of him.”

• High gas prices affect all Americans.
• High food prices affect all Americans.
• High electricity and natural gas prices affect all Americans.
• Inflation and possible recession affect all Americans.
• High interest rates affect Americans. They have doubled and continue to increase.
• Student loans are forgiven at a cost of $1 trillion.
• The open border has been a disaster since Biden became president. Two million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the southern border so far this year.
• Biden continues to spend, spend and spend while our national debt is $30 trillion. Is America’s Future Bankrupt?
• Biden ignores discussions of immigration, crime, drugs, inflation, the stock market, high gas prices, high food prices, high energy costs and high interest rates.
• Biden tells Americans that Trump MAGA is fascist and will destroy democracy. If Trump wanted to destroy democracy, why didn’t he do it while he was president? It is wrong and heinous that the president calls Americans fascists.

Ron Kirkpatrick Kernersville

Millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes when President George W. Bush’s administration brought down the US economy in 2008.

More than a million Americans lost their lives when former President Trump let COVID ravage the country. Millions of businesses have closed because of his incompetence. It was only thanks to the late Senator John McCain that Trump failed to wrest access to health care from millions of Americans.

The current financial distress is a direct result of Trump’s incompetent handling of COVID, hence the economy. Anyone who thinks this king of bankruptcy is a genius is living with their head in the sand.

You have to be very privileged, very biased or very brainwashed to imagine that President Biden is the “worst thing ever” that has happened to the country.

Like many other subscribers, I am upset about the reduction in Journal content after seeing my subscription fees nearly double. You deleted a full page of comics, one of the most enjoyable parts of the journal. What other product would you pay to have this product then discounted?

I will now consider other options for my daily news.

Electric sparks are useful for igniting gasoline in our cars, but can trigger disasters in other settings. Explosively flammable materials can have catastrophic potential for disasters, as we fortunately avoided in a fertilizer plant.

Static electricity is known to be a starter for combustion. As the amounts of water vapor in the air decrease, static electricity is more easily discharged and increases the likelihood of an unintended explosion.

An industrial fire can occur at any time of the year and have many types of triggers. Very dry air only “charges the dice” for a better chance of a really bad chemical reaction.

Journalist John Deem’s series on the Winston Weaver fire is likely to be a winner. He rightly made us aware of the potential dangers that can affect the quality of life in Winston-Salem.

Although the fertilizer factory fire made sensational headlines about the dire effects in inner city neighborhoods, smaller scale explosive situations are present in every ZIP code. Hazardous materials stored in garages, basements, and other inappropriate locations require an enhanced means of disposal other than transporting the materials to the EnviroStation 3RC. Many residents are unaware of this service, have no way to get help online, have no way to transport sometimes large quantities of materials, and are afraid to transport hazardous materials. Our city’s utilities need to expand the bulky item program to include items that now need to be brought to 3RC. It could not only keep our environment cleaner, but also save lives.

It’s amusing to hear the well-meaning harangue about President Biden’s proposal to cancel some student loans. “These irresponsible millennials knew what they were getting into,” they say. “Why should the government bail them out?” I’m sure these plaintiffs responsibly returned their post-pandemic stimulus checks. After all, if “knowing what you’re getting into” is the criteria for loan cancellation, don’t we all know, when we take on jobs and mortgages, finance cars, etc., that there are unforeseen risks that can derail our plans?

Likewise, I have no doubt that they also refused the increased child tax deduction because they knew what the credit was when they decided to conceive. Not to mention these GOP lawmakers and their bogus pontificating about how people “who take out loans should pay them back,” as they rush, palms up, for the government document pardoning their own PPP loans. . So spare us the moralizing routine of John Galt.

Speaking of fiction, do you remember when Hillary Clinton called former President Trump “temperamentally unfit” to be president? While not wrong, the description has to be the most “under” of all understatements. Compared to who Trump really is, that’s a flattering compliment. A possible second place is his “basket of deplorables” comment. “Deplorable” doesn’t quite capture the armed insurgents and trolls who torment parents of murdered children.

And another, albeit less amusing thing: is there a deep enough ring in the stinking sewage of Dante’s Inferno for the likes of Alex Jones?