HAVING PULL
Re: Jim Henley’s Muscle Cars:

Any car has far more muscle than most owners ever use. Here’s a good shot of a milling machine I moved interstate behind a Tercel. That’s about a 1-ton load, mill plus trailer. The car could have pulled a far heavier load but nothing bigger than a Class 1 hitch is commercially available for the Tercel.

This arrangement would not have worked very well if towing in mountains, but things are pretty flat on the East Coast. I have also moved two engine lathes (disassembled) inside that car — lots of very heavy chunks of cast iron.

Both of my sisters have trucks, but so far as I know never use them to carry anything heavier than dogs. The notion of actually using them to transport anything heavy or bulky is just plain scandalous.
— W.F. Whitelaw

PRIME FACTORS
Re: Brandon Crocker’s Level With Us, Please:

While your exposition of the Democrats’ long-standing disinformation campaign is quite accurate, I would argue that the government did contribute, in no small way, to the “tech bubble” or “irrational exuberance” of the late ’90s by “priming the monetary pump” in connection with the Y2K scare. Likewise, it was contributory in the collapse by shrinking the money supply (my thanks to Larry Kudlow et al.) precipitously — irrational exuberance, anyone?
— P.A. Melita
Charlottesville, Virginia

TERMINATED
Re: George Neumayr’s Arnie Flexes His Liberal Muscles:

Two bromides apply here:

If everyone else is driving a car, “He who walks, walks alone” becomes very poignant. The California Republican conservative wing has been too steadfast for way too long. If one rails against everything while engaging in nothing then you are soon marginalized. Better to be in there pitching, taking the small wins, than sit there and pout. If you are in the game there is the chance that given the reality of finances before them, some just might see it the conservative way.

Which begets — “To have something you never had, you must be somebody you have never been.” Considering that Arnie won and that he campaigned on fiscal conservative principles, the Republicans won a small victory. They need to consolidate that win by helping to fix the problem and expand the beachhead. But that takes an attitude change. Fiscal change first. School choice second? To win the cultural/social wars is going to take decades. It took us that long to get to where we are, it will take at least that long to get back to where we should be. As Bush says, “The long slog…”

One last comment, the PI effort is to find those that stated they were groped, not to find if Schwarzenegger groped. He already admitted to that. If anything this is a rather interesting turn of events, for we will find that the effort has legs far more distant than just a few women making false statements (which there is sure to be). For in the discovery, defamation charges and political payback is sure to follow.
— John McGinnis
Arlington, Texas

George Neumayr whines about the state of affairs that he and his fellow cranks caused. He went for broke with McClintock (actually for Davis) and lost big time. Now he wants to hand-pick Arnie’s staff. Only a crank could believe this is possible. Conservatives in California supplied very diluted support for Arnie and should be very angry at the cranks that made sure they will have reduced say in Arnie’s administration. Politics means that you won’t ever get all you want. When you won’t play politics and turn elections into meaningless statements of principle, you won’t get anything you want. In the future when considering some of the good things that will flow out of Arnie’s administration, remember Bill Simon who read the writing on the wall and played a part in representing conservatives ideas in the administration. Also remember the infamous behavior of the egomaniac Tom McClintock who worked for the Democrat party because if he couldn’t have the prize he didn’t want anybody to have the prize.
— Clif Briner

There’s another election in three years. If Arnold turns liberal, the conservatives can vote him out. That’s how our system works.
— unsigned

Remember Jesse Ventura. After him comes the real change.
— Annette Cwik

CHICAGO IS
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s My Kind of Town:

RET’s thoughts during his recent trip to Chicago stand as the most inspiring thing I’ve read in recent memory; this piece certainly outstrips the liberal claptrap that spews from the pulpit every Sunday from my parish in Arlington, Virginia. Too bad today’s Roman Catholic church can’t find a way to embrace American exceptionalism (a failing of diversity only overlooked during capital campaigns).

God bless!
— Mark Stoffel

In spite of the marginalization of the extremists on the left (or right) who have become politicians and use half-truths to gain political power, truth still is truth. No matter how much the extremes try to discolor it with their political schemes, the truth will be discovered or exposed in spite of the efforts of those such as the gurus of the 60’s.

Given long enough to think about our lot in this short life, most people will choose an eternity of hope and promise rather than one of fear and defeat and any place where there is prayer is my kind of town.
— Stu Margrey
Denton, Maryland

I can’t believe that I read that garbage that Reich wrote. I look back and I am ashamed of the stuff I used to read and believe!
— Stephanie

ALL’S HELL THAT ENDS WELLS
Re: Happy Feder’s reply in Reader Mail’s Rigging the Front:

I just had to address Happy’s points in his rebuttal. If you saw a blinking light for a year near your cabin, it sure wasn’t an exploratory “tower.” It’s a called a drilling rig as was pointed out to you before. I can see accuracy is not your strong point. For a drilling rig to be on a location that long it would have to be drilling to near 30,000 feet. Sorry sport, they don’t drill wells that deep in your neck of the woods.

Second point: just because Rand-McNally doesn’t show them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. You can drive all over the west without ever getting on a paved road.

Point number 5: Pipelines are not required to be above ground. That in itself is a bald-faced lie. I challenge you to show me a pipeline from the field to the refinery that is above ground other than the Trans Alaska pipeline.

Number six: I find your Volkswagen van to be visually abhorrent, but I don’t try and stop you from driving it. There are no service roads paralleling the pipelines. There are roads that go to clean out stations and compressor stations. Most pipelines are inspected from the air, so there is no need for a road. I have yet to see a concrete well anywhere on the planet, much less two to three acres of the stuff. As was pointed out to you by a previous letter, there is only a well head, or production tree, that remains after the rig has moved off. I have never been around a noisy well, and I have been in the oil industry for over twenty years. The most you are likely to hear, is a slight hiss as the gas flows through the tree. Having driven truck in the field as well, I can tell you for a fact that most of the roads are barely wide enough for one vehicle, let alone “extra wide.”

I would suggest that Happy leave his cabin when doing an article and actually go to an oilfield instead of getting his information from Greenpeace or the Earth Liberation Front. I think that most liberal writers such as Happy became “journalists,” and I use that term in his case loosely, because they couldn’t get a real job actually producing something of real value to the economy.
— Greg Goff
Location Supervisor
Weatherford Int.
Drilling & Well Services
Casper, Wyoming

Mr. Feder seems to assert a greater right to publicly held lands than I have, because he lives adjacent to some, and I do not.

When Mr. Feder purchased his property, was there some special codecil granting him a right to the view, unchanged, of properties bordering his own, or visible from it? No such right has been granted by any real estate deed which I have purchased or transferred. All his whining about aesthetics grants no special privilege to him which would supersede the rights of the rest of the public to extract maximum value from our property.

Lacking such a legal right, I would suggest that if Mr. Feder wished to preserve his view, he should have bid upon the leases others purchased according to law. If he merely desires that my interests in the public lands be subjugated to his own, he can blow it out his arse.
— Jim Addison
Walterboro, South Carolina