Get Out Of Town!: The Readers Rant!

A selection of our readers' choices, in varying degrees of length and sanity

Brad Nelson

My suggestion for the 2012 GOOT un-award goes to Brad Nelson, head of the Pima County Elections Department. While working under Chuck Huckelberry, who works under/over the Board of Supervisors, Nelson has reigned over poorly run county elections for almost an eternity. Going back to 1996, when precincts were split up (without voters knowing), to the 2012 elections, when precincts were combined into voting areas, Nelson has been a major part of botched elections time and again. This year, multiple jurisdictions, congressional districts and legislative districts were smashed together into fewer polling places. This forced some voters who actually went to the polls to check to make sure they had the correct ballot in hand (out of three or more possibilities) before voting. If making sure elections run smoothly isn't Nelson's job, whose job is it? Definitely time for Brad Nelson to get out of town!

—John Holden


Frank Antenori

A no-brainer (like him). Here's a man who proudly expressed contempt for the needs of Tucson during his entire time in the Legislature, and who bragged about balancing the budget by the most draconian means possible. When a thoughtful Republican (my City Council member, Steve Kozachik) dared to criticize such destructive stupidity, Antenori proceeded, in a brilliant non-sequitur, to attack midtown Tucson residents as bums who live off the government. Then he had the incredible nerve to ask for our vote.

Frank, take your tarnished Bronze Star, your silly pseudo-machismo and your cheesy degree from some "Christian" university, and find some place where you can actually respect your neighbors. If that means Antarctica, so much the better—just stay away from the science stations.

—Shane Dyer


Get Out of Town!

As a loyal fan of the Tucson Weekly, your wonderful staff and all of your efforts, I must say I read with real pleasure that you are going to get rid of the "Get Out of Town!" issue. It was, more often than not, too insulting, demeaning and unnecessarily (potentially) incendiary, and it was always something I never looked forward to. Plus, it didn't ever accomplish anything! In this age when we're supposed to be thinking about the new "civility," I applaud you for letting this "journalistic episode" go.

—Jefferson J. Stensrud


Jon Kyl

A few weeks ago, Jon Kyl, retiring U.S. senator of Arizona, came by to drop off his papers he donated to the University of Arizona.

Why is he wasting the University of Arizona's time and money? Jon Kyl's voting record has always been anti-minority, anti-working person, anti-99 percent, anti-Arizona and anti-human civilization. His record is pro-1 percent, pro-authoritarianism, pro-obstructionist, pro-Republican tribal hatred and pro-ignorance. His remarks that Planned Parenthood spends almost all of its budget on abortions was awkwardly defended by his staff, even though the vast majority of Planned Parenthood's budget goes toward providing educational instruction to all, and medical services to women. Kyl's latest bill at "helping" minorities is a joke. It shows his denial that 332 of the electoral votes went to a re-elected president he wanted to force to become a one-term president. Finally, his holds on Obama-nominated federal judges show his disdain of the advise-and-consent role of the U.S. Senate and the judicial system of the United States. Kyl's legislative record shows he has done nothing to lift the human spirit nor provided hope for the downtrodden.

No forest in the world can provide the amount of paper needed to defend the Jon Kyl political career. Kyl's papers should be reprocessed into rolls of 250 double-soft sheets and put in the university's restrooms. Their only worth is to wipe human private body parts.

So, Jon Kyl, take your papers, and GET OUT OF TOWN!

—Matt Somers


Junk in the Bike Lane

Here I am, doing what a good denizen does—reducing my carbon output in one of T-town's many miles of dedicated bike lanes. What's this ahead? A shattered Bud Light bottle! Whoa, shards from a windshield! Swerve to avoid this chunk of ... Cessna wreckage?! I've seen it all, avoided most, hit some—and been rewarded with flat tires and broken collarbones. Alas, it's time to tell all this junk: Get out of town, or at least get out of the bike lane, where we don't have steel-belted radials!

—Ari Shapiro


Lingering Contrails!

There is much confusion over the (not until recently) lingering contrails given off by aircraft in our beautiful Tucson skies and alike throughout the world. Not too long ago, contrails would disappear within minutes, but you can now view these contrails carved in our sky for hours at a time, almost every day. Governments and scientists alike have briefly addressed experiments involving geo-engineering and different ways to "combat" global warming. One of them is to create artificial cloudlike contrails that sit in our atmosphere and prevent as much sunlight from reaching down to earth. Now, there is much debate involving who says what, if this is taking place here and now, and if these experiments give off harmful chemicals. And while I do believe that there is scary evidence just a Google search away, the larger picture that must be painted involves our putting-makeup-on-a-pig social fabric of how we address problems: Are you feeling depressed about your life? Take some happiness pills. Is your country running out of legitimate money? Well ... print some more. Until we address the root of our problems instead of coating them with other problems, our societal issues will continue to layer and deepen. The concentrated point being: Get out of town, chemtrails. I kind of like our gorgeous desert sky!

—Griffin Cook


Rosemont Mine/ Augusta Resource Corp.

Hey, Rosemont/Augusta. You still haven't figured out that what we value most here are clean air, clean water, majestic mountains and the incomparable Sonoran Desert. We don't need a noisy, dirty, polluting mine that will bring a few jobs (less than one-tenth of 1 percent of Pima County's workforce) for a mere 20 years and then leave us with a huge, gaping hole near the ridgeline of the Santa Ritas, while burying oak-studded hills, several beautiful valleys, dozens of significant archaeological sites and 4,000 acres of wildlife habitat under 70-plus stories of tailings and waste mountains. Not to mention bringing light pollution to our night sky near Mount Hopkins observatory. Just go away. We've had enough of you. GET OUT OF OUR TOWN.

—Gayle Hartmann


Suzanne Miles and Ray Flores

These bozos took a neat community college and turned it into a joke. We don't need them in Tucson.

—Judy Hubbard


Tea Party Republicans

Let's vanquish anyone who's brave enough to say they're a Tea Party Republican. As they all sit there, licking each other's wounds and possibly downing a few shots to ease their pain, I'd like to remind everyone that after spending millions/billions of dollars to defeat President Barack Hussein Obama, they lost! They weren't satisfied with practically destroying America in their quest for vengeance due to Obama's first win in 2008. I witnessed a party so bent on denying our president any type of "win" that they eventually "reaped what they sowed." How ironic—they were willing to say NO to just about every Democratic proposal put forth attempting to better the nation, and then expected to receive the votes from the same electorate they were hurting with their obstructionism. The "talking heads" on Fox News this time around reminded me of the demon in The Exorcist with its head spinning 360 degrees. Here in Arizona, a gun shop is refusing to do business with anyone who voted for Obama! Talk about sore losers. And I can see that House Speaker John Boehner still hasn't learned his lesson. This loss has left such a bad taste in their mouths. My advice for them is to get out of town, since Tucson is a progressive city. Someday, we'll be able to say that about Arizona in its entirety. The sooner, the better for all Arizonans.

—Edwin De Jesus Sr.