Letters to the editor – 1/7/15

No homeless vets

I enjoyed the cover story “Home For Vets,” focusing on one company that can provide VA home loans with no down payment. Which raises the question: With programs such as this, why are we reading about homeless vets, which is a national disgrace?

Kudos to MidWeek for getting the word out about this important program.

Kurt Medeiros
Honolulu

A brat grows up

This has got to be only the second or third time I have ever written to a newspaper. I was here at home, just perusing my MidWeek, when I read Jerry Coffee’s column about Christmas Eve at the Hanoi Hilton. I have to say that there are many times I wholeheartedly disagree with some of his opinions, but I always look forward to his column. This time, I sat here with tears running down my cheeks, thinking about how Mr. Coffee and others have suffered. I was just 15 in 1968 — a military brat moving from Leilehua High School to Kubasaki High School in Okinawa — at the time a U.S. trust territory. Many soldiers came to Okinawa for R&R. We “round-eyed” military “brats” were aptly named — we were brats in every sense of the word. We walked around military installations with our noses in the air, thinking that we were better than those handsome young men and women serving our country. I’m ashamed thinking that while we smoked our joints, partied

while listening to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and surfed at White Sands beach, many of our countrymen were prisoners in foreign countries or R&Ring in Okinawa being treated as second-class citizens by some of us who were only a couple of years younger than they were. Oh, how arrogant we were! And there Mr. Coffee and others were, celebrating Christmas in a cold cell. Just typing it brings tears to my eyes. Thank you for reminding me that there are many in our midst who deserve our gratitude and respect.

Marlene Blackwell
Mililani Mauka

Sad liberal ending

What a perfect end for 2014: an interview with Bill Maher and Bob Jones’ musings on Cuba. Maher has waged continuous war on

Republican women, especially Sarah Palin. He thinks she’s “an idiot” and that excuses him for using the “c-word” to describe her. He must be particularly jealous of Dennis Miller, who has steady work appearing in casinos and on tour with Bill O’Reilly.

Bob Jones thinks Cuba “has great health care, high literacy and low infant mortality.” Such great health care that its citizens cannot even get aspirin unless their relatives bring it into the country. “Great health care” is for visitors and the governing elite. Children cannot get milk rations after reaching 6 years of age. A high basic literacy rate means little if there is no freedom of the press or expression.

Carol R. White
Honolulu