Letters to the Editor
MAV in Florida
Published Letters: 284 Editor's Choice: 22
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I think there might also more inside the United States....
[Read the article: Undisclosed location]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I heard from a nurse at an Army hospital here in the States that they are occasionally called upon to treat patients who are swarthy young men, not speaking English, who are brought to them shackled and accompanied by a half-dozen guards. In other words, it may be that POWs from Iraq and/or Afghanistan are being held at US Army bases without the protcols that were used, say, for German and Japanese POWs who were held in the United States during World War II.
I don't know, of course, what they did or what kind of treatment they are getting. But what is worrisome is that if the government can quietly hold a large number of people from other countries at military bases, well, then, maybe they can also quietly hold G-8 protestors, people who refuse to go to their "free speech zone," or other people. Tiberius and Elephantman should also worry that this precedent could someday extend to members of militia movements, anti-abortion demonstrators, members of the Minutemen, and the occasional televangelist who talks out of the wrong side of his mouth. History shows that precedents often manifest themselves in a manner totally opposite of what was expected.
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When Lieberman says that we should "live with it,"
[Read the article: Lieberman: I could "definitely" support a Republican in 2008]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I guess that means he's going to get his son, Dean Liebermann, to line up and sign up for boots, BDUs and a tour in Iraq.
Uh, he is, isn't he? What? No?
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I'll concur with Stevio
[Read the article: Never mind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe it's my speed reading but I don't see where Schlozman's statement really says anything. It just talks in circles. The impression I get is that he was told to write a craven apology absolving the higher-ups, and he made is as bland as he could.
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Of course there's progress in Iraq!
[Read the article: Stop us if you've heard this one before]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even the Times of London recently cited proof of progress in Iraq! To wit:
"The Times of London, interviewing witnesses in Diyala province in Iraq, described scenes from the hard-core Salafist version of Islam being enforced (similar to what the Taliban imposed in Afghanistan), including breaking the fingers of those who repeatedly smoked cigarettes, prohibiting grocers from displaying bananas (as "obscene"), and requiring them to screen cucumbers from tomatoes (as the latter are "feminine vegetables"). One local man said he assumed that another restriction that farmers modestly cover their goats' "nether regions" was just a rumor, until he saw a goat wearing boxer shorts." [The Times (London), 5-3-07]
Now, compared to the way things were in Iraq in, say, 1990, when women were going to college and going out in public without bags over their heads, when a Christian community still existed in Iraq, and you can see how much better Bush & Friends have made things in Iraq!
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Damn conservatives already claimed all the good ones.....
[Read the article: What, was "Mandy" already taken?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm still miffed about National Review claiming that the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" is the top conservative song.
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What is the right way to change things today?
[Read the article: The NAACP's sad decline]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A few years ago Jeb Bush announced the end of racial quotas in university admissions in Florida, and protestors lined the avenue up to the Capitol. An onlooker said "Maybe that's not the way you change things anymore." I think he was right. OK, so you have a protest. Then what? The Southern civil rights protests worked because the white establishment reacted like jerks while the TV cameras were rolling, and the Northern marcjes worked because people in the North had been thinking "Well, we don't have any discontent here, do we?"
Today, there's a march de jour. The irony to me is that the NAACP resisted the civil rights protests by the SCLC, seeing them as disruptive. The NAACP of the 50s and 60s at first thought they could work quietly, within the system. Now that the doors are opened, maybe that's true now.
So what is the right way to change things? Money, as in the Texas Utilities buyout? Grassroots organizing? (That always sounds mom-and-apple-pie good, but how do you do it?) Blogging? (Nah, get real)
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Well, that's about 9 more than I thought there were!
[Read the article: Number of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really thought this was going to be a two-part statement, with the second statement being something like "Number of Bush campaign contributors appointed to posts in the Arab world: 2,438."
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@ Out There
[Read the article: Yeah, but who among us wouldn't love to have a beer with George W. Bush?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Out There" cuts to the heart of the matter, the stuffy, incestuous, insulated media elites who say things to impress each other, not to inform the public. The people who practice cocktail-party journalism, having drinks with the rich and powerful late into the DC night and then reporting their "sense" of what people are thinking as though it was a demonstrable fact, like the length of the Brooklyn Bridge or the temperature at which lead melts.
It manifests itself as journalism that flatters the right wing, but I don't think it originated in ideology as much as in class snobbery. Journalism seemed a bit more balance when the journalists worked their way up from the newspaper newsrooms of medium-size cities and from midwestern radio stations. Now some twit with an Ivy League degree who writes a novel about Washington intrigue (ranked 43,263rd on Amazon) is feted by the Washington press corps and eventually hired as an expert commentator.
This should be a worry also to conservatives, even if they are enjoying the favorable attention of FOX and the corporate media. An out-of-touch right-wing media isn't going to listen to the everyday concerns of working-stiff conservatives any more than it would for working-stiff liberals.
Michael Moore is a grouchy, unkempt paranoid character who sometimes doesn't let facts stop him from a good story. But in his appearance on NPR the other morning he made one excellent point: Why is it that a high-school graduate from Flint, Michigan can ask questions of the powerful that the Washington press people can't seem to ask? Jon Stewart was asked by high-flown New York journalists how he manages to get those wonderful video clips of politcians contradicting themselevs. His answer was "a clerk and a video machine," meaning of course that anybody could do it if they had the will.
In recent years we've been able to start holding the feet of the media elite to the fire. I hope it isn't too late for our ever-evolving republic.