More voted against Clinton than Bush

A common spin put to President Bush's record 59 million votes for re-election is that Bush also scored a record amount (56 million) votes cast "against" him. This is incorrect. Almost 59 million votes were cast against Bill Clinton in 1992, split two-to-one between incumbent George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot. Clinton "won" the presidency in 1992 with fewer than 45 million votes, but also posted a still-standing record number of votes cast against a presidential candidate.

We must all work together for U.S.

I've read letters to the editor from people astonished at the way people voted on the mainland. Folks, 30 of 50 states voted red.

P. Diddy and Michael Moore had a stated goal of getting out younger voters, with the ulterior motive of beating Bush. They stirred interest, with little effect on the outcome. Ohio, which lost many jobs since 9/11, still could not be put in the blue column by the unions. Locally, the results of the "Kids Vote Hawaii" campaign, young minds uninfluenced by the unions and special interest groups, correlated with the votes nationally.

Voters across the nation have spoken. While results please some and displease others, we must come together and accept the results. The president publicly reached out to everyone who did not vote for him. Locally, incumbents and newly elected officials have stated they want to move forward for Hawaii.

Now is the time for everyone to drop the vitriolic verbiage and work together in the best interest of the people of Hawaii and the United States. We must hold those elected officials accountable for doing just that.

Bush tax plan is just smoke and mirrors

I remember well tax reform of 1986 under President Reagan. Tax reform of 1981 had already cut taxes and Reagan was spending heavily to battle the Soviet Union and to contain the Iran-Iraq war; many people were living on welfare, which cost the taxpayers money; the deficit went through the ceiling.

What does President Bush intend to do? More smoke and mirrors, like tax reform of 1986, where the effective maximum tax on capital gains went from 20 percent to 28 percent? So, the Republicans do not like it when President Clinton lied about the intern, but the Republicans seem more tolerant when it's one of their own.

'Negative reporting' keeps us connected

Regarding Julie Holland's Nov. 13 letter to the editor, "War photos give comfort to enemy": Yes, support our troops, but we are doing them a disservice by not reporting the truth of what they are experiencing. We cannot send our family members overseas to just turn a blind eye to their struggles, good or bad. It is not negative reporting, it is just reporting, that is their job.

I hope that Holland watched the documentary "Last Letters Home" that HBO was meant to air on Veterans Day. It was about families reading the last letters they received from their fallen family members in this war. Is this considered negative and divisive? One of the reasons why the filmmaker made it was because the families he talked to said they thought America was disconnected from their pain.

We need to be connected to this war, through the good and bad. Blame is being misplaced if you put it on the news outlets for the stories and pictures coming out of Iraq.

Who is protecting our 'normal lives'?

As a former wife of a soldier stationed at Schofield Barracks, it made me sad when I read the article "Island GI's dad says Bush must go" in the Oct. 18 edition. Sad for Spc. Kyle Ka'eo Fernandez' untimely death and angry about the comment that Maj. Gen. Robert Lee made in reference to our troops in Afghanistan: "We need to provide security for the country so that they can go on with their normal lives."

I think sacrificing the lives of our troops so another country can "go on with their normal lives" is crazy. Why should our fathers, husbands, brothers die protecting people in Iraq and Afghanistan so that they can go on with their normal lives, when they don't even want us there? What about our normal lives?

I too would like to extend my deepest sympathies to Fernandez' family and pray that someday his wife and children will be able to "go on with their normal lives."