Tuesday’s Letters to the Editor

High-performance cars

EDITOR: Gustavo Arellano includes himself but furthers the classist ideology of Hillary Clinton’s deplorables speech by suggesting that a love of high-performance cars is a working-class problem that coastal elites must deal with so we can have electric cars (“What we’ll lose as gas-powered cars exit,” Sept. 1).

I am a surgeon with 25 years of education and love high-performance cars. I have taken two racing courses and can get out of a four-wheel slide or an icy road in the mountains. My high-performance car uses a tank of gas every eight weeks because I drive a four-cylinder car most of the time.

The American V-8 is a wonderful thing, and electric car elitists don’t understand that electricity is mostly generated with fossil fuels. Our electric grid is inadequate, and manufacturing electric cars and batteries emits more greenhouse gases than manufacturing gas-powered cars.

Mining lithium and other metals for batteries requires fossil fuels and shipment to China, where the batteries are manufactured using coal and then shipped back here on ships burning fossil fuel. That all adds up to more greenhouse gas than a regular car.

Maybe the working-class deplorables got it right and are having some fun driving.

ROGER DELGADO

Sebastopol

Biden owes apology

EDITOR: Actions speak louder than words, and I’d like to comment on the Democratic president’s words of Sept. 1. Joe Biden said conservatives (about half the country) are “semi-fascist.” What? Wait a minute.

Biden mandated COVID-19 shots be pumped into our arms using substances not proven by the test of time to be safe. Noncompliance could result in losing your job, your livelihood and college kids denied access to classes. That sounds fascist to me.

The other day, the president decided to forgive student loans. Congress? What Congress? What about the conscientious people who worked hard to pay their student loans off? This means they will now be required to pay for other student’s loans as well. That sounds fascist but will buy some votes for Biden.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has decided that California will not be allowed to sell new gas-powered cars effective 2035, even though California is not anywhere near ready to pursue such a gargantuan endeavor. That sounds fascist.

I think Biden should exercise some major introspection and apologize for his totally off-base remark. Biden and the left’s actions are speaking volumes.

BOBBI REESER

Santa Rosa

Cause and effect

EDITOR: Therese Mughannam-Walrath and I agree that Arabs living in the territories ruled by Hamas, Islamic Jihad of Palestine and Fatah undergo needless suffering (“Needless suffering,” Letters, Aug. 29). She and I disagree on its cause and the path to peace.

Let us not confuse cause and effect. For example, recently, Islamic Jihad launched over a thousand missiles and rockets from civilian areas in Gaza into Israel. Many Arabs died from misfires that landed on them. And when Israel took out the missile launchers, both terrorists and civilians near them perished. Arabs suffered because their leaders chose war over peace.

Indeed, Palestinian suffering is caused by its rulers choosing conquest over peace with Israel. Both Israelis and Palestinians want peace. Israel offered a two-state solution 10 times in the past, and each time the rulers of the Palestinian territories said no. For Palestinians to end the suffering on both sides, they must call upon their rulers to sign the Abraham Accords and live peacefully alongside the Jewish state.

ELI COHEN

Santa Rosa

A home for Rasta Charlie

EDITOR: The Sonoma Plaza is a wonderful place for Charlie Brown to live (“Rasta Charlie forced to find a new home,” Sept. 1). Somewhere near the children’s playground would be nice. He is certainly welcome to live at my home in Boyes Hot Springs.

DAVID PETRI

Boyes Hot Springs

Elections at risk

EDITOR: My beloved country may actually lose the right to free and fair elections (“Alleged election system breach on tape,” Sept. 7). I saw this tape on TV as well, when a Republican official “entrusted with the security of elections” allowed computer experts to spend hours at the office copying software from voting systems. Voting systems have been compromised in three other states as well. Will they stop at nothing? The bogus claim of a stolen election in 2020 may well become true, perpetrated by the very people who made the false claim in the first place. As Joseph Welch asked of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954, “Have you no sense of decency?”

DIANNE BOALS

Santa Rosa

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.