GOP putting partisan gamesmanship above lives
When Republicans in Congress undermined President Obama’s efforts to jumpstart our economic recovery from the Great Recession to try to make him a one-term president, I thought they couldn’t go any lower. I was wrong.
Now national and state GOP politicians are sabotaging the Biden Administration’s efforts to end the COVID pandemic to hurt Biden politically. By undercutting common-sense public health measures like vaccinations and masks, these politicians are exploiting an epidemic that should have unified Americans and using it to polarize us further. Their cynical actions are contributing to thousands of needless deaths.
Republican politicians claim that they are simply standing up for “freedom” and “local control.” But this rhetoric is hard to square with their efforts to micromanage women’s reproductive decisions and prevent local governments from protecting residents’ health, running elections and removing monuments to white supremacy.
Anti-vaxxers are so self-absorbed that they have no qualms about endangering others. In placing partisan gamesmanship above our lives, Republican politicians are displaying a similar lethal selfishness.
STEVE BABB, LAWRENCEVILLE
Equating Jan. 6 rioters to Al-Qaida terrorists is wrong
Mike Luckovich, in his Sept. 14 editorial cartoon, asks, “What’s the difference” between Al-Qaida and a guy carrying a confederate flag? He answers that the flag carrier got to the Capitol. My answer is that Al-Qaida got to the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania using hijacked commercial planes, killing nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11, in addition to committing numerous other terror attacks around the world at different times. In the wake of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Luckovich’s apparent effort to describe Capitol rioters as similar to, or even worse than, mass-murdering Al-Qaida terrorists is both repugnant and ridiculous. I do not support the January 6th rioters, but to equate them with terrorists who killed thousands is beyond the pale.
DANA R. HERMANSON, MARIETTA
