A ’Nam Fantasy

After reading your cover article “Citizen Pot Bust” (February 9), I don’t know who is more dangerous, the people in the forest growing marijuana or a bunch of military wannabes carrying loaded guns playing vigilante. Could this article have been any more self-serving? I hope that the DEA and the authorities discourage this kind of untrained and unskilled macho Rambo behavior. I also found it amusing that in their minds they were in Vietnam chasing Charlie. Unless you are at least 56 years old, which they didn’t appear to be from the picture, you were never in Nam. Please do us all a favor and grow up.

Robert Richardson
Pacific Beach

Pot Story A Big Bust

I’m really surprised about your article “Citizen Pot Bust” (Cover Story, February 9). It’s about the weirdest article I’ve ever seen in your paper. I mean, it’s like you’re advocating people to go out and put on jungle fatigues and hike around in the woods with guns looking for pot growers. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know if you know it, but it’s illegal to hike off the trails in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. These guys, they said they went there a dozen times? Broke the law every time. It’s illegal to hunt in Cuyamaca state park. They’re up there with guns hunting, poaching illegally, breaking laws again. They’re walking around with loaded guns, ready to fire at anybody that happens to step out of the bushes? It’s like you’re advocating these psychos, okay? And what cracks me up is that then you turn to the last page and you’re taking money from pot stores, helping sell pot. It’s ironic.

Bill McCoy
Spring Valley

According to a ranger at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, it is not illegal to hike off the trails, but it is illegal to hunt in the park. — Editor

Co-Authored By The DEA

I so far got off on those pix of charcoal-smear, camo-bros with their climbing gear out in the Cuyamacas hunting down Mex alien pot farms for the DEA (“Citizen Pot Bust,” Cover Story, February 9). Dude, my brother (not my bro’, ’cuz bro’s something different and way superior, dude), he works for the DEA, and he says that article is way authentic because this s* happens all the time!!! People really do help the DEA find pot farms. And the Mex farmer will always try to attack them with automatic weapons, so it really is necessary to lock and load your 9 mm in self-defense.

Listen, there was so much Bull, Shark, and Frick in that article it must have come from the DEA itself. Where’d the pictures come from? They carry no credits. So, I figure they come from the DEA. And…one bud worth $3000? Say a plant has 20 branches with 100 buds on each and your bro-freelancer/DEA public relations bro’ helped harvest 16,000 some-odd plants, give or take, how much was your bro-citizen’s busted pot worth? I actually did the math: 20 x 100 buds = 2000 buds per plant; 16,000 plants x 2000 buds = 32 million buds; $3000 x 32 million buds = $96 billion. That would be enough to fund the budget of the DEA and the SDPD and a few Republican candidates for the presidency. To paraphrase from one of the article’s drop-out heads… So, Editor, heh-heh, what’s your reward for running this article, bro?

Bob Dorn
via email

Mitchell, Li Mandri Too Cozy

Dorian Hargrove’s article (“Good Advice? Don’t Pay Homeowners,” “City Lights,” February 9) raises red flags, not only for those of us who are downtown residents but for anyone concerned about the reputation of the City of San Diego. The $10,000 per month paid Li Mandri, the hastily engaged consultant, is clearly excessive, but even more troubling is the manner in which his contract was rushed through by Kris Michell, the president of the Downtown San Diego Partnership. Can we hope that someone with the Ethics Commission or in the DA’s office will have the courage to risk angering Kris Michell once more and insist on some answers about this seemingly inappropriately cozy relationship?

Name Withheld by Request
via email

We Messed It, You Clean It

The February 9 “City Lights” story “Fed Probes May Help American Engineers” will no doubt provoke howls of racism from a certain segment of your readership. The same folks will also find a racist slant to the cover article about criminals growing weed on public land (which is a good example of why open borders will not work).

It seems to me that only in Europe and North America are the concepts of fairness and morality part of public policy. In the rest of the world, it’s dog-eat-dog and devil take the rest — especially the top dogs. Western nations also practice environmental protection and population control while other countries don’t seem to care at all. “Why bother to improve things here — we can always move someplace else” seems to be the underlying attitude.

These themes are interconnected in ways that affect us all. National self-loathing plus fewer jobs equals despair among our young people, leading to more drug use and alcoholism. And it is not hard to become defeatist and cynical about a country that appears less promising to you than it did to your parents and grandparents.

On the internet, I often read posts disparaging the 1950s. I was in high school then, and, kids, take it from me, America was a paradise compared to what it is now. My generation ruined all that, and it’s up to yours to change things. You have more of a challenge facing you than did the “Greatest Generation” during World War II. Some reflection on love of and service to one’s own country might be a good place to start. Charity begins at home.

Name Withheld By Request
via email

Case Closed

With regard to the shrill, extremist, irrational, and non-sequitur replies I stimulated by my response to the SDSU Repubs (Letters, January 26) — from John Wise (February 2) and follow-up by “Name Withheld by Request, Oceanside” (February 9) — I REST MY CASE !!!

Ted Rodosovich
via email

Need Juicy Scoops

I must add my frustration with the “Stringers” section (“News Ticker”), in agreement with “Name Withheld” who said that they read like press releases now (Letters, February 9). Where once I eagerly hunted down a Reader and turned impatiently to see what was the latest news on couch fires and car crashes, there is now only painfully grim renderings of boring city council meetings and more yacking on Occupy San Diego. Yawn!

My heart yearns for a juicy scoop on a drug deal gone bad or maybe the latest robbery to go down. How are we to learn of skateboard accidents and condoms on the beach if the Reader will not alert us? I cry out to the Reader to reinvigorate the “Stringers” with truly neighborhood news once again. Your stable of usual writers is surely gifted, but bring back true authenticity to the neighborhoods section. I have a dream! That one day our children will be able to enjoy the “Stringers” once again for what it truly should be. About the neighborhoods!

Maiden of Camelot
via email

Love From New York

Re “Dr. Bill and GT Surf Hwy 101” (Cover Story, February 2).

Great story and trip! I felt like I was riding with them, and it made me want to follow their tracks. I visit SD every year for a number of weeks to escape the Northern NY weather. Enjoy the Reader and the NYC transplant, Barbarella.

Hey, Dr. Bill! If you find another deal on a bike, let me know!

Ben Gruda
via email

No Way Better

I’m calling in regard to the Reader article by Barbarella on February 2. The title is “My Ask of You.” She goes on to mention her sister and unnecessary words and phrases, and yet toward the end of the article, in the last column, second paragraph down, I’m quoting, “Then I spend half an hour trying to convince him that the clear explanation he just gave to me verbally is way better than the imbroglio he created in an email containing all those empty phrases.” There is no such phrase as “way better.” Something is either better or not. This is a very detrimental phrase, and I find it ironic that she’s talking about her sister and imperfect phrasing and then she herself uses the phrase “way better.”

So just a little heads-up, dear Diva. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Dennis Travers
Downtown

Where Ya Gone, Matt?

Sometime within the last year, Matthew Alice changed. I don’t know whether there was a change in which legal person was-or-were writing the column or there was an emotional crisis or cerebral catastrophe. But, one way or another, it’s not the same person or persons.

Whoever is now writing “Straight From the Hip” is far more inclined to field questions that ought to be easy rather than questions that are interesting, far more inclined to make boneheaded mistakes, and far more inclined to adopt an unwarranted attitude of superiority.

I used to look forward to “Straight From the Hip”; it was one of the highlights of the Reader. As of the most recent column, I realized that there isn’t reason to read the column anymore, and there is thus less reason to bother with the Reader.

Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
via email

SDQT Makes Up Stories!

About this February 2 “Balboa Park’s House of Iran Implicated in Scheme to Funnel Gold to Ron Paul Presidential Campaign Coffers” (“SD on the QT”). There’s no person that’s quoted here, so it could easily just be made up, and I suppose it is, just kind of a joke to put Ron Paul down. To me, that’s not right — making fun of him and putting him down at the same time.

Harold Greenman
via voice mail

“SD on the QT” is the Reader’s “almost factual news” feature. — Editor

History Vandalized

The Piedras Pintadas Trail is indeed a scenic and archaeologically rich portion of the San Dieguito River Park’s 55-mile “coast to crest” from Del Mar to near Julian (“Roam-O-Rama,” February 2). Embedded within this section is a waterfall and Kumeyaay cultural site that is said to be in stewardship of the City of San Diego. It is heavily vandalized with obscene graffiti and frequently littered with weekend beer cans and broken bottles. Apparently, private persons have taken on the responsibility, however misplaced, to erect auxiliary fencing and signage in a valiant attempt to protect what the government agencies have failed to accomplish.

Steve Scarano
via voice