The Truth about Tara

Re: Sporting Box, “Amazing and Super Stupendous,” May 29.

Tara the Hero Cat? Perhaps. As the video is edited, there is no doubt that the dog went after the child. But wait! Take a peek at the video, which interestingly has no sound. If a person was taping their child, why then is there footage at 11 seconds, and again at 19 seconds, showing an entirely different angle than one has when filming the child. At 30 seconds, another view at a different angle of the cat chasing the dog around the parked car in the driveway.

If this was a child being attacked, wouldn’t you have dropped the camera and rushed to help the child, or at the very least tried to scare away the dog? Why didn’t the female person (mom?) who rushed to the child, then carry the child back to the house, or at least offer some cuddling?

The entire video is questionable to me. Whether Tara’s motive was one of protection remains questionable. Many of us have seen YouTube videos of dogs walking near cats, passing cats on the staircase, and seen the cats in question quickly swipe a bared-claw at the dog, and we’ve seen cats chase dogs. Tara quit chasing the dog after the dog left the area of the driveway. The different angles beg the question as well. What really happened?

• Zen Sonic
• via email

The video footage is from surveillance cameras. — Editor

Deliciously Bad

Thanks to Scott Marks for reviving childhood memories of Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, and then later, Invasion of the Star Creatures and Attack of the Mushroom People — most deliciously some of the worst movies ever. I really enjoyed the article, even though some of these movies weren’t mentioned (Big Screen: “Invasion of the Star Creatures,” May 29). I just wanted to give thanks.

• Name Withheld
• via voicemail

Don’t Know a Damn Thing

This is in regards to the movie review by Scott Marks on May 29 (“Run Toward Danger”). As usual, the facts about the Vietnam War are misconstrued. The reference to General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the chief of police in Saigon, is completely dubious. I wish to read a direct quote from an authority on that subject:

“[T]he most famous executioner was General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, who shot a Viet Cong ‘suspect’ on the Saigon street. The Viet Cong had reportedly just shot an ARVN lieutenant and his family. General Loan was well within his rights of summarily executing an enemy soldier caught in civilian clothing. But the Pulitzer-Prize winning photo that captured the incident became part of the Left’s indictment of the war, even though the photographer himself thought Loan was a hero and apologized to him for the way the photo had been used to ruin the general’s reputation.”

This is from Mr. Phillip Jennings book on the Vietnam War [The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War]. Mr. Jennings was a U.S. Marine during that time.

So, the continual destruction of the true history of the Vietnam War is carried on by Scott Marks, and by people who weren’t there and who don’t know a damn thing about it. I hope that your readers will look into Phillip Jennings’s book and get the true story of Vietnam.

• Name Withheld
• via voicemail

Tea-N-Tea

Re: “Firenado Spotting,” Letters, May 29

DL Turner of Newton, MS is an effin idjit. Evaporated water is steam, which is water in its gaseous state. It helps fight the fire by depriving the fire of oxygen.

If evaporated water was hydrogen and oxygen then we’d be having lots of tea drinkers blowing themselves up making their tasty, tasty beverage.

• Jim
• Santee

God’s Co-Creators

Regarding the ongoing debate on theism (Letters, April 24-May 29). Disclaimer: I believe in God, not religion.

My late father, Dr. Thomas G. Watson D.C., was born in Eupora, Mississippi. He studied the Bible, and when he came to a part that he did not understand, he went to the local heads of the churches until he had an answer to his question(s). He went to the local rabbi and received his answer. My father said, “Tim, we did not create ourselves.” He also said, “Tim, we are to become co-creators with God.”

• Tim Watson
• Barrio Logan

Wanted: Metal Mecca

This is in regard to the cover story, “Music San Diego 2014,” April 17.

It is a complete shame that our great city has such a fractured music scene and the venues operate within the trend of popular music. The majority of these so-called venues listed in the Reader are in fact bars, juke joints, hangouts with live music. The sound systems, sadly enough, can make a good band sound like noise. The stage area is always confined; these places don’t qualify as real music venues, and they come and go with the tide. They showcase live music in terms of what fits their place of business, their location, and patrons.

The owners and promoters can’t rely on a specific form of music to keep their place of business long term. In other words, hard rock and metal is in the shadows, it’s not a priority. The truth remains, there is not one venue, bar, club, juke joint — call it what you will — that caters to the metal masses of San Diego.

A comment was made in the Reader story that the Brick by Brick was “all things head-banger” and “if the Brick goes, that’s the end of the rock and hard-rock scene in San Diego.” In my opinion, the Brick was once metal mecca, but they lost their focus. The question is, who abandoned who? If and when the Brick reopens we can only hope they serve the metal community. That will be the deciding factor.

There is a great deal of concern and we have to face the fact that the music scene is fractured and it needs to be repaired. We persevere through these times.

• Tony A. Metal
• Spring Valley

Lindbergh v. Roosevelt

Read James P. Duffy’s Lindbergh v. Roosevelt for a more balanced view about Lindbergh than that of Mr. Demsky (Letters, May 22).

On what basis does letter writer Jeffrey Demsky allege that Charles Lindbergh merely “sortied alongside American fighters”?

According to my 93-year-old brother-in-law, a Marine fighter pilot during WWII and winner of two DFCs himself, Lindbergh, acting as a consultant for American aircraft manufacturers, repeatedly flew actual combat missions with both Marine and Army Air Forces in the South Pacific, and had several kills to his credit.

Demsky suggests Roosevelt “pulled his ticket” on Lindbergh’s Army aviation commission but fails to mention that the reason was that Lindbergh was a consultant for the cross-country air mail contractors that Roosevelt, without notice or just cause “nationalized.”

Appearing before Congress, representing his clients, Lindbergh asserted that Army aviation did not have the equipment or skills (not to mention the mission) to deliver air mail. Lindbergh knew of what he spoke as he was a veteran postal pilot himself. And he was a colonel in the Army Air Force and a graduate of the AAF advanced fighter school.

Lindbergh was apparently correct, since 14 U.S. Army pilots crashed and died attempting to carry out Roosevelt’s attempt to demonstrate his sophomoric view of communism.

Thoroughly embarrassed by the deaths of the pilots, Roosevelt blamed his postmaster general (who had opposed the move) and fired him. And he vowed to ruin Lindbergh’s sterling reputation as well — something he apparently accomplished when we read comments like Demsky’s.

As to Lindbergh’s relationship with Germany, Germany, along with every other European country, awarded Lindbergh their top civilian aviation award for his transatlantic flight. Lindbergh accepted the award with the approval of Roosevelt and the Department of Defense because they asked Lindbergh to accept invitations to visit Germany, a country with which we were not at war at the time, to spy out anything he could about Germany’s aviation posture. His reports were accurate: the Germans were simply way ahead of the rest of the world in aviation capability as were the Japanese.

After repeatedly milking Lindbergh’s access for its intelligence value, Roosevelt turned around and cold-bloodedly recharacterized Lindbergh’s DOD-requested amateur spying trips by accusing Lindbergh of being “pro German” for accepting the award, making the trips, and accurately reporting they were ahead in aircraft development and production.

Lindbergh was not only a great pilot but a genius at aircraft engineering and manufacturing, who repeatedly volunteered to help the U.S. war effort catch up with the Germans. Roosevelt refused Lindbergh’s help, thereby needlessly extending the German edge unnecessarily killing many courageous young Americans like Joseph Kennedy Junior, all to suit a personal political snit.

Whatever Lindbergh’s personal animus toward a war against Germany, it was shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans who painfully remembered the killing fields of WWI less than two decades earlier involving the same parties.

Americans remained vehemently against the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor, credibly alleged (read Day of Deceit) to have been engineered by Roosevelt himself to change the tide of American opinion.

Thus, Lindbergh was not an outlier in that regard — Roosevelt was (though he lied about it). Lindbergh was a courageous patriot, a genius in the building and operation of aircraft, and an honest man.

If you don’t believe it, just read up on James Farley, Roosevelt’s scapegoat and the man who was most responsible for Roosevelt’s election and lived to regret it.

• Larry Stirling
• Mission Hills