Vote Rod
Integrity, compassion, insight and a strong work ethic are all traits exemplified in Republican Rod Hathaway, candidate for state Senate District 30.
We are fortunate to know Hathaway both personally and professionally and have always been impressed by the love and pride he has for his family, his town and the state of Maine. Hathaway is a devoted husband, father and grandfather who cares deeply about people and someone who
is always seeking to make things better. He brings a hands-on, common-sense approach to his business that will undoubtedly transfer to his work in the Senate.
Please vote for Hathaway in November to ensure a brighter future for Maine.
Owen Oakes
Orono
Vote for reproductive choice
Hardest in this coming election, for some of us, is the probability of, if more social conservatives are elected, our losing much of our reproductive choice in this country.
Do enough of us think about access to contraception, family planning and abortion rights? What it was like before Roe v. Wade in 1973 when it was hard to get contraceptive help, much less have an abortion, if needed. Abortions were dangerous and hidden, whether you were single, had a family already, couldn’t afford it or chose to be childless.
Whatever your reason, you were trapped in a situation that would affect the rest of your life.
Do young people realize how serious this threat is with the far right chipping away at family planning with hostile legislation in many states, succeeding in making it harder to get contraceptives. Many men think it is none of their business or not as important as the other
heavy issues we are dealing with. But contraception and safe abortion, if that fails, are crucial to quality of life for women, children they have, men who care about them, their families and communities. It matters to the whole country in health, savings, education and ability to earn a living.
Don’t let us lose our family planning clinics and access to reproductive choice.
Beedy Parker
Camden
Parental assistance
Did you know that if a person required to pay child support is not working and receives Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, their child-support order is suspended until two weeks after they are off state assistance? The child they are obligated to assist supporting still needs to eat, a place to sleep, child care and clothing.
Why does this child have to suffer while the other parent gets help for other children, which may or may not be their court-ordered, biological responsibility but married into a stepparent role? Wouldn’t it be fair to require them to repay support during this time when they are back on their feet? Or possibly a portion of the state funds they receive go to the child they should be supporting?
Krystal White
Bangor
Love each other
Soon Mainers will be voting, and there’s one vote that my spouse and I find so very important: marriage equality, the right for same-sex couples to love and marry with all the rights that my husband and I have.
We’ve been married 40 years; we feel secure with the knowledge that we are protected by law. We wholeheartedly want for our beloved same-sex friends to have what we have, to be accepted, to be married with full privileges. We see that people who love each other are committed and raising a family whether it’s a same-sex relationship or one man and one woman. It’s all the same. There really is no difference! It is the love that counts.
Karen Dean
Brownville
Huhn vote
I would like to extend my support and confidence on behalf of Ken Huhn for Bangor City Council. Huhn would be an exemplary public servant. I am in awe of his competence and abilities advocating for children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in various communities throughout Maine.
For example, Huhn has helped my family and others better understand and prepare for common challenges. My children, both of whom have autism spectrum sisorder, have benefitted greatly from his voluntary educational advocacy, offering my family support and assistance with several issues that have threatened my children’s education and entitlements to be received under the law.
He is always polite, thorough, timely and conscientious of his duties to meet the needs of his family, the community, children and adults with these special abilities, all the while maintaining full-time employment for the United Cerebral Palsy of Maine. Furthermore, his biggest asset is his ability to exert a high level of organizational skill and remain calm while under extreme
periods of stress and pressure. His skills in business, economics and health-care management are amazing. Huhn displays a talent that will make any public service industry highly influenced having him on board.
I believe Huhn is very accomplished and would be a lauded personality serving on the Bangor City Council. It is with great pleasure that I write this commentary and express highest
recommendations for his run for public office.
De Brown RN, MS
Lewiston
Community leader
I was displeased to receive in the mail recently an attack on the candidacy of Democrat Geoff Gratwick, of Bangor, which alleges that he is controlled by groups as diverse as the Sierra Club and the AFL-CIO.
I have known Gratwick for decades and have marveled at his public service and his independent spirit. He was a devoted member of the Maine Humanities Council and is still working hard on the Bangor City Council.
He is no one’s puppet. We are incredibly lucky to have him as a doctor and a community leader.
Ruth Nadelhaft
Professor Emerita, University of Maine
Bangor
Climate no laughing matter
Missing in the first presidential debate was a question covering the economic toll of global climate change. Had one been asked, Republican Mitt Romney might have had to justify his climate-change laugh line at the GOP convention. Had one been asked, President Barack Obama could have linked climate change to economic downtown and maybe eventual economic catastrophe.
As The New York Times reported this week, scorching heat and drought in the United States, Russia and Europe constricted agricultural production and pushed up prices of corn and soybeans to record highs.
It’s happening in the U.S. as well. How is proven climate change science not an economic issue? It’s no laughing matter, and it’s time the GOP recognizes its reality and its seriousness.
Beverly Teach
Belfast
B. Parker, K. White, K. Dean, B. Teach: good letters.
Beverly Teach- This is about money, not the environment. The environment will be our grand children’s problem. Nothing that should stop us from conducting business as usual. Whenever someone raises an environmental issue, just stick your fingers in your ears and sing La,La,La until they shut their tree hugging pie holes. Hey, it works for Mitt.
hahahahahahahhahaahhhhahhhaaaaa global warming hahahahahahahahahhhhhaaaa thank you for the laugh I needed that.Tell Al I said high over your next koolaid brunch.
If Business men worried about the environment, 1/2 as much they do the debt, we’d all be better off. one side is to hard, the other to soft, maybe something in the middle would work?
Yes I do have to agree with you to a point,but only because unlike most you would be willing to meet in the middle.
Next thing you know Ms Teach will be telling us that the Earth is round and that living species are evolving! She need only look at the climate change denialists to know that some members of the human species are devolving.
Bahahahahahahhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa 100,000,000 million thats how much big Al has made off his big hoax .Baaahahahahahha,thats him laughing all the way to the bank in his private jet and and new 150′ yacht.
The sign that one is losing an argument is that he attacks the messenger, not the message.
If the legions of scientists who accept the evidence of climate change is not enough to convince you, then I suggest that you read the studies and conclusions of Dr. Richard Muller, a leading climate change skeptic who carefully led his own exhaustive study of the scientific evidence and had the intellectual honesty to admit that he was wrong.
Get back to me once you have read Muller’s opinion pieces and very careful analysis of earth surface temperatures over time. As he wrote his summer in the NY Times, global warming is real and almost entirely man-made.
If you respond with a refusal to take a hard look at the evidence, then I know that you prefer a fact-free world.
Yet those same people who tell us global warming is real and dangerous tell us we should rely on fairy dust and unicorn farts to generate electricity instead of clean, reliable, economical hydro power. How can you take them seriously?
Could you provide a reference about the fairy dust and unicorn farts as a source of energy?
I most surely do not, nor do the principal advocates for aggressive action. I support both hydro and nuclear. If “fairy dust and unicorn farts” are your terms for wind and solar, you are sadly mistaken. Look at Denmark’s success with wind and Germany’s success with solar.
You have set up a strawman opponent and failed to acknowledge that those who deny global warming are the central problem here. Until we conclude as a society that the threat is real, the question of how to combat it is secondary. Those who deny the reality are funded or propagandized by the oil and coal industries who are focused only on short term profit.
first show me where I attacked you
lol, that’s one lazy dodge.
You attacked Al Gore, one of the principal messengers of the danger of climate change.
Naturally by attacking Al Gore they hope to divert attention from the million dollar bonuses and raises the oil company executives receive each year. For the same reason they keep bringing up the bankruptcy of Solyndra to divert attention from the hundreds of succesful alternate energy undertakings. When they complain about the $527 million loan guarantee, they of course exagerate it to billions, all the while refusing to discus the amount of money, in the billions, which have been given to the oil companies over the last 100+ years.
Agreed.
You know, despising the messenger doesn’t change the message. I’m sure your great-grandchildren won’t be laughing Bahahaha.
Where am I despising the messenger.
Your implication of ‘conspiracy’ that Mr. Gore is only concerned about making money is rather slanderous to a person’s reputation. Mr. Gore at least has tried to raise a consciousness about global climate change and that’s more than 99.99999% of the rest of the ‘leaders’ of the world.
We’re past the tipping point, actually. It’s all pretty much moot. No one’s coming forward to make the huge change that must happen. Over-population and dwindling resources, especially water, rising sea levels and the dying of the oceans will all take their toll on we poor, stupid humans with our grand technologies.
Sounds to me like you are making assumptions about what I am implying.
Perhaps the evil laugh led me astray.
Well, you have to admit having multiple residences that use enough power to run a small towns and a Private Jet that tears up the Ozone at a pretty good clip lends itself to a caricature of a hypocrite.
Yes, the world is full of hypocrites. At least that hypocrite raised awareness of a problem. And please don’t deny the problem because it exists. I do think that if that hypocrite had been appointed president by the Supremes instead of the hypocrite (compassionate conservative that he claimed to be) America would not have gone to war with Iraq, which substantially changed America. First pre-emptive war doncha know.
Umm, Panama, Granada come to mind. Spanish American War, suspect excuse.
Although I agree that we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. We should have concentrated on Afghanistan with carpet bombing unti they turned bin Laden over.
Iraq was not the first “Pre-emptive” war. As for Gores loss…. blame the ego of a Green Party Candidate. As for the Supreme Court decision it sounds like you wanted to a do a recount until you got the answer you wanted. A group of newspapers did a re-count after the election and found that Florida did vote for Bush.
Attacking the messenger and ignoring the message is a sure sign that you are losing the argument.
So now I’m evil.
Well, you tell me what Bwahhhhhahahahah means.
I am fluent in 3 languages, English, sarcasm, and profanity, so I will translate it for you. Bwahhhhhahahah means “I don’t have any valid argument against what you are saying and I am too lazy to do any research to find out more information. My only response that I can think of is to ridicule whatever you say.”
Thank you for your apt translation.
No problem. It is an often heard but little understood dialect known as pidgin idjit, a variation of Duh?.
I went back and read the prior comments and I did not see how in any way I entered into any kind of argument to begin with.With all of your vast wisdom maybe you could show me where your comment has any validity to the prior posts .Thanks for your input .
Its funny to me that you think laughing is evil.
Here’ s what’s stupid about the entire climate change debate. While everybody is having a good time pointing fingers and playing the blame game the sea levels are rising and nobody is planning on how to deal with the land, sea, political, economic and social changes that are happening now.
Nice, Beverly.
Wiki says Maine had the most wind power in New England in 2011, (watch green map progress) in part thanks to twelve grants for wind projects in Maine from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The Energy Information Agency says in 2011 Maine had the lowest bundled and unbundled average retail price for electricity in New England.
“Electric”
We’re hearing the same tired arguments from the “pro-choice” crowd. “Whatever your reason, you were trapped in a situation that would affect the rest of your life.” What these hypocrites refuse to acknowledge is that this is reality for a 25 year old man in America today. And then they have the audacity to say that if you don’t want to support a child, you shouldn’t have sex. I guess in this case, what’s good for the gander is not good for the goose. Pro-choice means supporting the “rights” of a woman at the expense of a man. Maybe if a woman doesn’t want to support a child she shouldn’t have sex. That sounds like the kind of equality that feminists everywhere should embrace.
Maybe if Men don’t want women to have abortions, they should listen to them when they say NO!
Maybe if women want the right to terminate their responsibilities, men should enjoy that same right.
As soon as men can get pregnant, they will enjoy the same rights.
Perhaps all men, rich and poor alike, should be legally required to pay into a publicly recorded child-support account the moment the child is born. Like escrow…and you pay into it until the child is 18 or adopted by someone else.
Some insist on them being born. Fine…but it is a shared responsibility for both of the people who created the child.
You’re right. I don’t understand why some are so comfortable trying to make choices for others but then refusing to deal with the ramifications of that choice they forced.
Not buying it. Most women don’t get abortions because of the inconvenience of a pregnancy, but rather the inconvenience of raising/caring for/supporting a child. Men have an equal interest in those concerns, so give them the same freedom to terminate their responsibilities. You can’t call yourselves pro-choice when you’re forcing a man to support a child against his will.
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/women_who.html
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2005/09/06/index.html
If men could get pregnant, abortions would be legal in all cases.
First of all that’s nothing except liberal BS. Nobody has any plans to get rid of abortion, but the liberals would like people to think so to influence people’s vote. Do you think that conservatives want more of someone’s unwanted children to pay for? Not hardly.
Why is it that some people have personal responsibility, and some don’t? Why shouldn’t “everyone” pay for their own mistakes, instead of only some of us? Some people have to pay for their own mistakes, and the mistakes of people that they could not care less about.
If people were a little more selective about who they breed with it would help. Is it really that difficult to know a loser when you see one? What do some women see attractive about some unemployed, high school drop out, stoner, that already is not paying for the brats he made with someone else? Are they so desperate for attention that they will lay down for anyone? Is character and responsibility no longer anything people look for when choosing a partner?
We don’t care if people want to get divorced, or have illegitimate children, or abortions, just don’t burden the rest of us with your baggage.
Look, I’ve known 6 women who’ve had abortions, 4 of them are married women, and they where married when they had the abortion. I have no children, though at one time in my life I would very much like to have. I’m not a high school drop out, or someone who would ever lay down with just any one. I don’t have baggage that you have to pay for, and I NEVER have!
Rmoney has stated he wants to appoint Supreme Court Judges who would reverse Roe vs Wade. Could you explain the difference between that and “Nobody has any plans to get rid of abortion…”?
Conservatives do not care what happens to a person after they are born. They have expressed that attitude in uncountable ways.
Romney will not get rid of abortion. You may have to find some personal responsibility, and pay for it yourself instead of expecting your neighbors to provide it for you, but it will always be here. Birth control is free for those who can’t afford it, so there is no excuse.
Romneysia said he wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. No more health benefits for women and no more contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
In other words Romney wants to return to pre Roe v Wade days when the wealthy and well connected women didn’t have unwanted pregnancies. They had ‘female problems’ that required a D&C in a nice sterile hospital.
The poor were left to take care of it the best they could.
The poor? So the poor aren’t required to have any personal responsibility? They do whatever irresponsible thing they wish and demand that a successful or responsible person take care of them?
Sounds like having a pet.
It is the wealthy that don’t want to take responsibility for closing down factories all across this nation that is putting more people into the lower income brackets. In the mean time they wish to hold their heads up high and point their finger at those not as fortunate as they are, putting the blame on those who have to deal with poverty. The hypocracy of the wealthy is mind boggling.
So who are the poor in your mind? What % of the population are you saying have taken no responsibility for their station in life? 47%, 33%, 10%. The elderly? Maybe the elderly who have worked hard all their lives and are no longer able to work. Should they do the right thing and just commit suicide? That would ease your tax burden a little wouldn’t it? How about the mother of 6 that knows that if she has one more baby the whole family will be out on the street? Oh that’s right she was irresponsible because her husband refuses to wear a condom and she doesn’t have enough money left over to buy birth control pills.
Come on Ranger, you are so free with your labels? Who exactly doesn’t deserve to breath the same air as you???
So are you accusing Rmoney of lying (again)?
Yes, yes, let’s find a way to make the sun to stop its sunspot eruption patterns! We highly-advanced, post-modern, rationalistic humans must have the technological ability to do it somehow. I know, we can tax the rich conservatives at 99% of their income (we have to leave them at least a little something to live on, don’t we?), and I’m sure the government will be able to come up with a solution to save us all! Isn’t Amerika wonderful?
Beverly, good luck trying to convince today’s TeaPublican Radicals that there is such a thing as global warming and that human activity has contributed to it. First, the rational GOP of Lincoln, TR, Ike, and Rockefeller is DEAD AND BURIED. You will never, ever see it again. It has become the party of ultra right wing radicals like Karl Rove, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Allen West, and yes, our very own Paul LeBUFFOON. These radical extremists deny science, deny reason, and deny sanity. They live on a place called DELUSION MOUNTAIN. They are lost in the dark ages not only on global warming but also on womens’ rights, fair pay rights, voting rights, rights around orientation, domestic policy, foreign policy, you name it. They are right off the beam and they aren’t coming home anytime soon. And they will never acknowledge the incontrovertable science around global warming because, heaven forbid, that would be threat to their corporate masters’ ability to buy more mansions. Don’t waste you time trying to reason with the GOP Neanderthals. Just VOTE THEM OUT and vote IN people who value reason and science.
Removing the tea party stooges is the single most important issue in this election. Until that is done , nothing else will be accomplished.
Beedy Parker–There has always been a saying “the only guarantees in life are death and taxes”, well there has been an addition, if a Republican is elected for Pres. and he has controlof congress, they will outlaw abortion and it will be a major crime for preforming an abortion.
If climate change is so real and dangerous then why aren’t you clamoring for the only reliable, economical, proven energy source – hydropower? Could it be because you don’t really want economical, reliable power?
Ruth Nadelhaft, it’s ironic that Gratwicks opponent Nichi Franham is signed on as one of Grover Norquists puppets.
That’s the price she paid to get the outside money that runs the dirty campaign.
Karen Dean
No difference? Huh?
No difference in the things that matter.
One would assume that mean “things that latter” legally, not morally or spiritually. Because, that would mean your playing it both ways. Can’t have a secular law and ascribe spiritual reasoning, according to the SSM mantra. And, using that mantra to claim “love” as out of bounds for our government, eliminates the point you are apparently trying to make.
You’re trying to ascribe an argument to a group that they’re not making and it’s nonsense. No one is arguing what you’re saying they are. This is about freedom and equality. Mere moral disapproval alone has never been a “rational basis” for laws. And since we’re talking about a group of people who have been historically discriminated against, the standard is higher than “rational basis” — there has to be a “legitimate government interest”.
First, I’m assuming that “latter” is supposed to be “matter”. And no, I was talking about things like “love”, “commitment” and “understanding” as being things that are not different between same sex relationships and opposite sex relationships. But you are right, there is also no difference legally.