Let us turn to the mailbag: “No, our money is just fine, Vin,” writes in one correspondent, answering my column of Nov. 21. “In spite of what the gold bugs would have you believe; the value of the dollar is still, historically and relatively speaking, at the place it was a century ago.” It’s hard […]
Since few of us can actually wade through and comprehend a federal budget (or even a 2,000-page “health care law,” as written), most political decisions are based on “narratives” — histories of how we got here, reduced to a few easy-to-remember sentences. The problem is, if we get the “narrative” wrong, bad outcomes grow far […]
“Vin, sometimes you run excerpts from letters that arrive at your desk, but you rarely run an entire letter, much less an uninterrupted series of letters from the same writer, which would give us a better idea of the thought process of a typical reader.” Yes, and there’s a reason for that. But since such […]
What ever happened to Mark OToole? No, not the Mark O’Toole with the apostrophe before the “T,” bass player for the rock band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. We’re talking about the vocalist Mark OToole who won Ed McMahon’s Star Search competition back in 1994, came to Vegas, put together a band, and has played almost […]
Every time I make some passing reference in print to the tyrant Lincoln, as I did a few weeks ago, a fair number of readers insist on proving the dangers of letting unionized government functionaries “educate” our children. I believe we can confidently presume most who rail “Such a bizarre and outlandish statement proves what […]
In my Jan. 3 column, I projected that Barack Obama would probably NOT wake up one morning this year, slap his forehead and exclaim that allowing welfare recipients to vote is a blatant conflict of interest which is quickly turning this nation into a collectivist slave state (or that, if he does realize it, being […]
Aiming for brevity, trying to avoid long strings of documentation already presented many times, I posted on Nov. 11 at www.lvrj.com/blogs/vin/ a response to a letter-writing government schoolmarm who contends she should not be held responsible for the failure of her young charges to learn anything, since it’s all their parents’ fault. I answered, in […]
How gratifying to hear from so many veterans in response to my Oct. 25 column on Mitchell Paige and Guadalcanal. I heard from Clayton Fisher, 87, of Henderson, who served under Chesty Puller in the 1st of the 7th Marines, receiving his first purple heart at Guadalcanal (the night before the action I described in […]
Dozens of times a day now, we at the Review-Journal receive e-mailed letters very similar to the following, which arrived at the newspaper on Sept. 16, signed by one Mary White of Russell Road, Las Vegas: “I am disappointed in the media and the RJ for not reporting on all the undercover journal reporting done […]
The mailbag being nearly full, and your loyal correspondent thanks to a sinus headache having been shuffling around this past week like the archetypal Vulcan in the old “Spock’s Brain” Star Trek episode (third season, original series), herewith some recent missives of interest: Brian writes in: