I was glad to see an unusual attempt, in the letters of Oct. 16, to provide some positive reason to vote for Sen. Kerry. Peg Hoffman believes the his “policies will better lead us in the direction of Christ’s vision.” Unfortunately, she provides no information on what she imagines those policies to be, but falls back into the usual generalities about President Bush’s iniquitous policies, which she also fails to describe.

Bill Berlinghoff follows the more common pattern of promoting Kerry by denouncing the president, but in a manner which is exceptionally confused, contradictory and violent.

On the one hand, he offers Senators McCain and Snowe (both Bush supporters) as honorable Republicans in the tradition of Eisenhower and Smith, while on the other announcing that he will never vote for any Republican until the leadership changes.

He condemns Bush and Cheney for calling “anyone who questions their dirty little war unpatriotic” (never happened, by the way) while accusing them of “pocketbook patriotism.”

He worries about a campaign of “fear and smear” while declaring that Bush and Cheney started a war to distract us while “they drain away the country’s wealth” and scheme to acquire “enough oil to make the Bush bunch even richer.”

Drain away the country’s wealth? Am I alone in finding such flapdoodle a little demented?

John N. Frary, Farmington