An offensive comparison

The Spokesman-Review reported (Jan. 31) that Idaho Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, compared private insurance companies to “Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps.” She then defended this comment by saying, “they didn’t know what was going on. The insurance companies are not realizing what’s going to end up is their demise.”

Poor use of the English language notwithstanding, this comment is utterly ridiculous and offensive. I’m not surprised it came from a senator from Idaho, the same great state that gave us America’s first fatal nuclear accident, the Mud Lake Bunny Bash (look it up); Randy Weaver; and, let’s not forget the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate.

Now, having visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination complex in Poland last summer, I can say that anyone who compares the plight of insurance companies to the plight of poor, helpless people being crammed into overcrowded boxcars in freezing temperatures, forced to go to the bathroom in the corners of the boxcar as they are shipped sometimes for days to their inevitable, agonizing deaths in gas chambers, should not be a state senator.

Idaho pride, baby!

Jackson Colby

Spokane