Coverage of Pearl Harbor ceremony

Looking at the media coverage of the local Pearl Harbor commemoration ceremony — both print and electronic — it would appear that there were no spectators at the annual event; that only the actual participants were in attendance. In fact, there were about 50 spectators, but they were all behind the several media representatives who were all continuously jockeying for the “best shot” at the same time blocking the view of those spectators who had come to observe and commemorate.

From what I saw, the media personnel displayed no consideration for any of those behind them, huddled against the cold and wind, and trying to catch a glimpse of what was taking place.

Michael P. Gleason

Bangor

Confusion in America

The “regressive left” can only tear down; it does not rebuild. In the literal sense, we must topple the statues of some of the great American men for their sins. Who then can we look to? Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day — a fabricated holiday to which we can pay lip service to flash our virtue.

There is no need for mothers and fathers to stay together. The family is not sacred. But how do we replace the family? Destroy the gender binary. What is left in its place? Only the scattered ruins of all of biological history.

Religion is naive and primitive. Where then do people find meaning and morality? If there is confusion in the United States, it is because we are tempted to overthrow the structures that have defined us for a very long time.

James Rudolph

Scarborough

The ultimate harm

A story in the the Bangor Daily News on Oct. 4 reported that Northern Light Health and its Eastern Maine Medical Center affiliate had not decided on its physician-assisted suicide policy, but was “prohibiting participation in the law for now.”

Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, had insightful thoughts on many current issues including physician-assisted suicide. They are included in his book “ The Point of It All,” containing many of his columns and published after his death in 2018.

Krauthammer wrote: “Consider those cases in which outside values trump the patient’s expressed desire. The first is life. Even if the patient asks you to, you may not kill him. In some advanced precincts — Holland and Oregon for example — this is thought to be a quaint idea, and the state permits physicians to perform ‘assisted suicide.’ That is a terrible mistake, for the state and for the physician … Doctors are healers, not killers. You cannot annihilate the subject you are supposedly serving — it is not just a philosophical absurdity, it constitutes the most fundamental violation of the Hippocratic oath. You are not allowed to do any harm to the patient, let alone the ultimate harm.”

Hopefully, Northern Light Health will not allow “the ultimate harm” of physician-assisted suicide to be performed on its patients.

Gerald Thibodeau

Brewer

Misleading NECEC ad

A recent TV ad from Central Maine Power claims that the New England Clean Energy Connect project will bring clean hydroelectric power from Quebec to Maine. This remark is wrong.

The NECEC is specifically proposed to bring power to Massachusetts, not Maine. Moreover, Dr. Bradford Hager specifically stated at the recent Army Corps of Engineers hearing, citing several peer-reviewed journal articles, that this hydropower is actually dirtier than coal-fired power plants. So much for CMP’s claim about “clean energy” — but the TV station went with the ad regardless.

This ad is irresponsible and rife with false statements. The stations are irresponsible for airing it. It is incumbent on the “news” to provide accurate information from both sides, and right now that is not happening when they air such blatant misinformation in advertisements.

Richard W. Aishton

Farmington