READER LETTERS

Compiled by Kelly Ryan

Thanks San Clemente

A belated thank you to the good citizens of San Clemente, on behalf of all of your southern neighbors evacuated because of October’s San Diego fires.

On Oct. 22, when we joined the mass exit of cars going northbound on Interstate 5, we knew little of what the next few days would hold in store. We were lucky to have a tent trailer, but we saw hundreds of other cars coming over from Fallbrook through Camp Pendleton, with only what they could fit in their vehicles. We followed instructions on a news radio station and went to San Clemente State Park.

There, park rangers and volunteers treated hundreds of us with compassion. The state park let us stay for free, and San Clemente locals had food and water waiting. By the next day, with many evacuees sleeping only in their cars, local churches brought more food, along with clothing, blankets, water and supplies. That night, another church came to feed everyone.

By Oct. 23, many of us from along the coast were able to return home. But the Fallbrook evacuees could not. A local church made sure that everyone remaining had a bed to sleep in, food to eat and fellowship and camaraderie at their facility. All were welcomed and invited.

What an adventure and great show of support and friendship my family and I will always remember! Way to go San Clemente.

Ken Harrison

Cardiff-by-the-Sea

St. Joseph

Thank you for the interesting and informative article regarding Orange County hospitals (“Despite Slowing Economy, Hospital Projects Deliver,” Dec. 3).

However, it was troubling to read the comment regarding St. Joseph’s $203 million patient care center, “designed with the area’s Hispanic population in mind.”

It was not stated specifically, but I don’t believe that this was referring to any new evidence that Hispanics have different maladies and diseases than other races.

What then? I think I can safely surmise that it was referring to the continued and misguided effort that many in the U.S. have been embarking upon for the past several years, which is to cater to the communication issues applicable to Hispanics.

Where is this going to stop? Have we graduated from “press one for English” to multimillion dollar healthcare facilities with “Hispanics in mind”? Obviously if it was “with white English-speaking Americans in mind,” there would be an uproar.

For the ill-informed at St. Joseph’s, a Rasmussen poll shows that about 85% of Americans believe English should be the official language in the U.S. Close to 70% even believe it should be the law of the land. Ironically, even among Hispanics, 75% agree.

Thank you St. Joseph Hospital for spending our patient-care dollars (obviously along with other income sources), to support the scant few politicians and cultural miscreants who believe we need to ignore the polls above and instead to change the culture and be the “enablers” for those who simply refuse to learn the language spoken in the U.S. There is no doubt in my mind that those hundreds of millions of dollars could have been better spent. I will make sure that we seriously consider your philosophies when it comes time to select our next group health insurance carrier that has your facility on its list of providers.

Dave Mulnard

Vice president, human resources

KBS Realty Advisors

Newport Beach

Editor’s note: In an Aug. 27 story about St. Joseph’s tower, hospital officials didn’t bring up language as part of their effort to target Hispanics, who make up about 55% of patients. They cited larger patient rooms for visiting families, day beds for relatives, larger waiting areas, brightly colored decor and reflection rooms for prayer.

Another Kind of Restless Syndrome

It took a hefty TV campaign to convince Americans that they needed medical treatment to conquer restless leg syndrome.

But where is the drug and medical community now when it’s clearly time to fight another condition that afflicts millions who stick a foot or two in their mouths,a disease most noticeable in the leaders and would-be leaders of our country?

Yes. It’s an epidemic. And there’s not a thing that can be done for politicians and lesser others with restless mouth syndrome.

All you have to do is turn on the TV and there it is. At the recent Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, presidential hopeful John Edwards challenged Sen. Hillary Clinton regarding a disturbing example of the syndrome: “She says she will end the Iraqi war. She also says she will continue to keep the combat troops in Iraq and continue combat missions in Iraq!”

And Sen. Joe Biden was really showing off his restless mouth syndrome when he blurted: “The American people don’t really give a darn about any of this stuff that’s going on up here!”

Right on, Joe. Where can we send our contributions?

In the recent Philadelphia debate, Dennis Kucinich guaranteed himself the vote in Roswell, N.M. His answer to Tim Russert’s question about Kucinich sighting of a UFO at Shirley MacLaine’s house was unadulterated restless mouth syndrome: “It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It’s like, it’s unidentified. I saw something.”

The campaign trail is lush with examples of restless mouth syndrome. It is apparent that no candidate is immune from the condition. It seems that if pols talk long enough, eventually the condition displays itself. Take Rudy Guiliani who has been accused of believing that he can play his Sept. 11, 2001, card into the White House.

“I was exposed to exactly the same things the ground-zero workers were exposed to,” he repeats. “So in that sense, I am one of them.”

Restless mouth syndrome can be very, very delusional.

When it comes time to gather information for restless mouth syndrome’s clinical trials, the archives will be rich with examples from President Bush. No politician has contributed so much to the condition.

Here’s just one from 2004:”Our enemies are innovative and resourceful,and so are we. They never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we.”

Of course, restless mouth syndrome is bipartisan condition. Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate, started his political career with his mouth in fine working order. But the more he used it, the more it ran away from him. Eventually, his mouth took on a life of its own, until it erupted into the infamous Dean scream, an example of how short and deadly an episode of restless mouth syndrome can be.

That’s the sad truth about restless mouth syndrome. Sooner or later it catches up with you. You’re just going to have to wait until the drug researchers realize that the treatment of restless mouth syndrome can be a most profitable business. Then, think of all the big mouths, fallen from grace, who could star in some really twitchy TV commercials.

Suzanne Hawley

Anaheim Hills

Global Warming Rx

Ideas have consequences. They also move around.

Such is the situation with global warming.

Not so many decades ago, conservatives could dismiss such concerns as the politically and culturally motivated alarmism of ecology-freaks, granola heads and the “one more Chardonnay then we march” crowd. Even today, some still dismiss the problem because, well, even if Al Gore did cop himself a Nobel Prize, he’s still Al Gore.

But for most of us, the verdict is in. Something is happening. The climate is changing because the climate is always changing. How much of this is due to unprecedented levels of human activity these past two centuries may be legitimately argued and debated. All we know for certain is that, in a system as complex as the planetary ecology, small changes can have large impacts.

So global warming may now be taken seriously, certainly insofar as the matter of what, if anything to do in response. Liberals naturally argue for their favorite fixes: treaties, taxes and major changes in American lifestyle. Conservatives prefer to keep on amassing wealth and developing technology as the best defense, especially if the process is already irreversible.

The liberal approach is fatally flawed. Treaties without adequate enforcement are worthless. Scraps of paper such as the Kyoto Protocol exempt developing nations (such as China) where future growth in hydrocarbon consumption is most intense.

Energy taxes, especially taxes on gasoline, are arguably regressive; they hurt the poor far more than the rich and raise the price of everything. As for lifestyle changes, while many are worthwhile in many sensible ways, they’re fundamentally onetime fixes and can’t solve the basic problems of energy-intensive societies.

The conservative approach has more to recommend, but also may be at odds with reality. An ugly de facto alliance of environmentalists and big oil makes it impossible to develop domestic or offshore sources or build new refineries. The argument that business can’t do these things until the price of oil reaches a certain level is true, but that level is rapidly arriving, due to increased global demand, especially from China.

So what to do? Seattle-based historian and writer Philip Gold offers a novel idea. He believes that the solution is to rush off wildly in all directions: everything from clean coal to nuclear to renewable energy, while developing affordable protective technologies that we can sell to the rest of the world.

For the next couple decades, however, oil will remain central and it’s vital to ramp up domestic production. This requires breaking the political deadlock.

Gold explains by way of analogy:

“When the Cold War ended, it became possible to close or downsize a lot of homeland military bases. But since every base is in somebody’s district, Congress couldn’t gird up its loins sufficiently to close anything. So they created the (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission. This was a group of military and outside experts who, in consultation with local communities, would compile lists of bases to be closed. Congress had to vote the entire list up or down, no amendments or deletions. It worked. Not perfectly, far from it, but we’ve been through several BRAC rounds and we have results.”

Congress should “BRAC” the oil problem. Let the experts and those concerned develop lists of areas to be opened, based upon the best mix of ecological sensitivity and recoverable prospects. Let Congress vote it up or down. Then let’s go to work.

Something for the presidential candidates to think about.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is still the world’s biggest polluter, if you factor in all the pollution the Chinese generate while manufacturing the junk they sell us. Want to do something for the environment now? Buy American this Christmas.

Michael Arnold Glueck

Newport Beach