Since the early 1950s I have enjoyed reading the Sunday “funny papers” (comics). I have often been disappointed — not funny, but otherwise fine. However, the comic strip “Macanudo” in July 23’s Sunday Valley News was for me a new low. Panel 1 shows two witches discussing the night’s activities. Panel two shows them professing love for each other and watching TV. Panel three shows them cuddling and watching TV. And it is what is on the screen that is disgraceful. It mocks Christianity. The TV screen shows a person being levitated from a bed accompanied by the balloon saying, “The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you.”

First of all, this says nothing about the witches’ interests. Second, it is offensive to me as a Christian and I am sure many other Christians to have an essentially irrelevant screenshot invoke Christ’s name. This is senseless, egregious and gratuitous mocking of Christianity. I can cope with the lesbian witches in the Sunday “funny papers,” the screen, however, is truly offensive. It is not even funny.

A few months ago Scott Adams’ strip, “Dilbert” was dropped from a very large number of papers because of racist comments made in an entirely different venue. I’ve read them. Repulsive. But even though there was nothing to do with his comic strip — he was dropped. In contrast here, we have the offense in the strip itself. Time to fire “Macanudo”?

Dennis Logue

Enfield

Humanity has a record of making big changes with little forethought. Maybe back in the Garden, we forgot to ask permission to renovate Eden. The question posed in the Forum on July 17 — “Climate change: Is the solution worse than the problem?” — challenged the Bible’s “meek ... will inherit the Earth.” given the sorry state of this planet, its trade-in value seems more a deficit than an asset: nothing but Venus Jr., a hellhole, and getting worse.

On Monday, Jul 11, as flooding hit the state, I called my daughter in Montpelier to see how she was faring. She and her beau decided to move their cars up the hill as far as possible away from the river. They noticed stones rolling down the hill as they went up; apparently, the ground was so saturated it flowed (their good sense prompted them to park as is, and seek shelter).

On Wednesday of the same week, live.berniesanders.com presented “Climate Change: What Kind of Future Can We Expect?” with Bill McKibben, David Wallace-Wells, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse as panelists, along with moderator Bernie. The discussion has since been removed, so I’ve asked for the link to be restored. Since then I’ve seen only vestiges amd responses, but one takeaway I can offer is Bernie had said (not in so many words) that the attorney general should investigate Big Oil’s war on climate.

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In case you missed the news, the Washington Post recently reported the heat index reached 152 degrees in the Middle East. When will we act on this peril? Any consensus Congress can manage in mediating the chaotic weather we’re experiencing will come too late in averting the climate singularity. We must take this matter under our own control, and destabilize the oil industry’s end run to planetary ruin.

Bidenomics provides breathing room relegating the economy a backseat to climate remediation, since clean renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. While replacing mineral and radiologically fueled generators with clean ones, we’ll also need to sequester pollutants. We have the technology to detour Venusian runaway greenhouse results.

Kevin Leveret

White River Junction

Magic’s biggest secrets finally revealed

I’m writing to thank Philip Eller for his Forum letter Sunday, July 23, “Key word omitted from Eisenhower’s speech”. In it, he writes about Eisenhower’s farewell speech involving the military-industrial complex, pointing out that an earlier draft of the speech named the U.S. Congress in that complex.

Mr. Eller is correct in implicating the politicians who disburse the funding. It’s necessary to recognize their crucial role in the insidious problem. However, he stops short. It’s not just the distribution of money, but the money itself — its source and its actual nature. It’s the Fed, of course, that is the enabler and true perpetrator. Their banknotes are a counterfeit, a masquerade of the U.S. dollar.

Little of this illusory world exists without their false, fiat form of money. Trillions are magically conjured into existence. There is no such thing as a trillion dollars really. There’s no military-congressional-industrial complex, this America, this military empire, this welfare-warfare D.C. behemoth, or this world order, without this fraudulent central bank dollar. It’s a puff of smoke, a worldwide currency weaponized. It’s nothing more than a magic act, a sleight-of-hand trick, a confidence game, and a monetary fairyland empire. The world that we know is its invention.

As long as there is this centralization of money, the bankers are the untouchables, the true masters of the Earth; the three branches of government are just their puppet show. And scarcely one in a million even gives that fact so much as a passing thought.

Neil Meliment

Hartland