Forum, Jan. 30: Take your shots

This is to all the people who refuse to take the COVID-19 shots because of their religion or political party. When you get to the pearly gates, will St. Peter greet you and thank you for holding your ground (and also for coming early)? Will the Republican party and Trump thank your family for your commitment? Believe what you want; it’s your life. But you don’t have the right to take someone with you who wants to live as long as they can.

I am 80 years old, and I have had my COVID-19 shots, booster shot, flu shot, polio shot and a shot of whiskey, and I feel great. Thank you to President Joe Biden and Democrats for thinking of me as a person, not a dollar bill.

We are still in the middle of the most deadly pandemic of our lifetime and must come together. Almost 870,000 good Americans have died. And 150,000-200,000 would probably still be alive if they weren’t lied to by Trump. This is what liars and lowlife rats do. They don’t care about you or your family. God bless you, Joe Biden, for attempting to help bring this pandemic to an end with no help from Fox News or the Republican party.

Robert Pollard

Enfield

It has been stated by Randall Balmer in his op-ed piece on Jan. 2 that Donald Trump allegedly told 30,573 lies during his 1,461 days as president. Let’s see, 30,573 divided by 1,461 equals nearly 21 per day, or about one every 72 minutes. Now, it’s been said that Trump got very little sleep during his four years as president, so assuming he slept four hours a night, that’s one alleged lie for every hour he was awake. I fully believe that the Biden administration, aided by Dr. Anthony Fauci with his assertions about COVID-19, is on track to eclipse that. So many lies have been told about the exit of Afghanistan, climate change, Hunter Biden, “free and fair elections,” etc., and the media has given them a pass. Worse than that, it seems the “fact-checkers” who were so zealous during Trump’s four years have now taken a four-year leave of absence. If they were doing their job with their “pants on fire” assessments, Biden and Harris would have no trousers left in their wardrobes. The problem is that the lies told by the Biden administration are multiplied and leveraged through legions of complicit media outlets. Few would dispute that Donald Trump is a deeply flawed human being (as are we all) who brought moral and ethical baggage with him to the White House, but as someone wise recently said, even a deeply flawed person can do many good things for America, and 74 million of us thought Trump had done enough good that he deserved a second term to finish what he’d started.

The political careers of Biden and Harris are established on a foundation of immorality, lies and deception, including possible extramarital affairs and plagiarism. It’s one thing to tell lies and a very similar thing to live a lie every day you wake up over decades of less-than-stellar performance. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a different result. Each time Biden’s initiatives are stymied, he doubles down. The story is told of carpet-layers who found a bulge in new carpet and finally pounded it flat, only to be asked by the homeowner, “Has anyone seen my canary?”

William A. Wittik

Hartford

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has a Domestic Violence Task Force that is reviewing the training of court judges and the legal support systems provided to domestic violence survivors. This task force was organized after Lindsay Smith requested a New Hampshire family court to extend her restraining order against her ex-partner; she was denied and shot in the head two days later. Over a span of 11 months, 19 children have been killed by a parent in New Hampshire. Nationally, over 800 children have been purposefully killed by a parent. Over 100 of those children’s “safe parents” begged a court for help and were denied.

Domestic violence in all its forms, whether or not it is in your immediate family, affects all of our children, schools, workplaces and communities. I hope that the results of the New Hampshire Domestic Violence Task Force set the bar, pun intended, for other states across the country to make these important improvements to New Hampshire’s family and criminal court systems and other services to protect our citizens at their most vulnerable moments.

I implore you through this call to action: Please contact the New Hampshire Supreme Court Domestic Violence Task Force. If you did not attend the public hearing on Jan. 21, you still have time — until the end of the day Monday. They need to hear your experiences and recommendations to effect real change, particularly from survivors who have weathered New Hampshire’s “systems.”

Christine Monigle

Etna