Today's newspaper stories write tomorrow's history

Today's newspaper stories write tomorrow's history
EDITOR:
A cluster of commentaries in The Vindicator Jan. 26 provided a wealth of insight into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, but there's more to be said. A good place to begin is by contrasting the theatrics and eloquence of his scripted speeches with the bumbles and stumbles that we hear so often in his press conferences and other settings where he must speak without a script. What we heard Jan. 23 came from electronic text projection equipment, a stable of skilled speech writers and presidential adviser Karl Rove.
The president's kind words for Nancy Pelosi, the new Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, had two evident objectives. One was to gain points with the majority of American voters who happen to be female. The other was to present himself as a conciliatory leader who urgently seeks the cooperation from the Democrats in Congress that he will need to get anything done in the next two years. He seems to hope that they will forget how harshly Republicans have acted in recent years when they were in control. Few people who have been watching the national scene will doubt that there is a rock in each of Bush's fluffy snowballs.
As The Vindicator noted in a Jan. 26 editorial, "Congress and the administration have been mortgaging the nation's future, allowing huge budget deficits that have ballooned the national debt to nearly 9 trillion." That's 9,000,000,000,000 -- twelve zeros!
The president now proposes to eliminate the budget deficit (but not the existing massive debt) within five years. He carefully omits details about how that might be accomplished. He also slides over the fact that his time in office ends in two years, leaving the really difficult parts of accomplishing that objective to his successor.
Bush plays the same game with automobile fuel efficiency standards, calling for 20 percent reduction in gasoline use over the next 10 years. Three-fourths of that change would come from using "biofuels," especially corn-based ethanol, a product with many drawbacks. It costs much more to make than gasoline, so its production is heavily subsidized by us taxpayers. A gallon of it contains much less energy than a gallon of gasoline. Taking a significant part of the nation's corn crop to make ethanol is already starting to drive up the price of beef from corn-fed cattle and soft drinks made with corn-derived sweeteners, as reported in The Vindicator on Jan. 28.
Ethanol can't be shipped by pipeline for technical reasons, so it must travel by highway and railroad. The hazards of that method were highlighted by a recent derailment at New Brighton, Pa., (30 miles from Youngstown) in which many tank cars burned and ethanol was dumped into the Beaver River.
The president's disastrous mismanagement of the Iraq situation is so well known that there is no need to revisit it here.
History will not be kind to George W. Bush.
ROBERT D. GILLETTE
Poland
'Euthanize' is a better word
EDITOR:
I was upset when I read your article on Jan. 30 about the death of Barbaro, the champion racehorse. You wrote that he was "put to death" and "destroyed."
I felt as though you were describing a vicious animal that had attacked someone. He had owners who loved him enough to try everything possible to fix his leg, and people all over the world who were hoping he would make it. Only after careful consideration, and all other options were exhausted, did his owners and veterinarian decide that it was the best and most humane thing for them to do for him.
He was euthanized surrounded by people who loved him. So please give more thought to your choice of words. I felt bad enough, without having to read that.
MARYLYNN MAYORAS
Struthers