Letters to the Editor
Frank Smith, Bluff City, KS
Published Letters: 131 Editor's Choice: 15
-
Earth to Richard, earth to Richard.
[Read the article: Republican senators call for a new Iraq war authorization]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Many of the conditions and motivations that were claimed to have existed when you authorized force almost five years ago never did exist. They are not "irrelevant to our current situation," however.
Bush needed to obscure the fact that had he and his not been sleeping at the wheel, 9/11 never would have happened in the first place.
He still needs to maintain the fiction that by invading Iraq, he was dealing with actual terrorism, rather than just stealing another country's oil.
And speaking of actual terrorists, a Bush-appointed judge just dismissed all charges against admitted and covicted narco-terrorist Luis Posada Carriles without so much as a slap on the wrist, after his arrest for illegal immigration. One of Posada's crime partners in an airline bombing, Dr. Orlando Bosch, was commuted, then pardoned by Bush's dad 17 years ago. Salon hasn't seen fit to address the subject in many years, but perhaps now's the time:
http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/01/11/reich/index2.html
-
Innumeracy and the cost of war
[Read the article: Cost of the "war on terror" keeps rising]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Observers from C. Northcote Parkinson (of the famous "Parkinson's Law") to comedian Steve Allen, who tried unsucessfully to get the term "innumeracy" into common parlance, have commented on the inability of people to understand big numbers.
A billion is a big number. A trillion, a thousand times a billion, is beyond the capacity of most human brains to grasp.
Why doesn't anyone break down the cost of the war? If it costs $12 billion a week, and there are 300 million Americans, it is costing each, on average, $40 a week. This is for current costs only, not debt service or the cost of supporting the horribly maimed for life, the cost of supporting the widows and their minor children.
How many numb nuts conservatives, Bush supporters, watchers of Fox News, Wall Street Journal readers even, would support this deranged war if they got a bill for $40 a week for themselves and every single member of their families? How many realize that the cost is being put on the national credit card and their grandchildren will be expected to pay it off?
It's time for pundits and politicians to break down the costs to levels the public can actually understand.
-
Blogs hell: What about what they say on O'Reilly and in books?
[Read the article: Michelle Malkin's hate sites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I didn't have time to read any but the first and 15th pages.
A Salon site search using the terms "Greenwald" "Malkin's" and "Coulter" yielded zero results, however.
How can Coulter advocate violence and be paid for it! on Fox, in books, in speeches, yet Hillary's attack puppy (and Salon's posters and Greenwald) ignores those far more vile and dangerous incitements?
When she advocated violence at a $25,000 "lecture" here in Kansas at KU, there was hardly a mention, save for a few posters on Kos, on 3/30/05.
"I think there are some people in the audience who meant to be at the sexual reorientation class down the hall," Coulter said, in response to the heckling.
Moments later Coulter stopped and called for assistance from students when hecklers started in again and no one of authority was seen trying to stop them.
"Could 10 of the largest College Republicans start walking up and down the aisles and start removing anyone shouting?" Coulter asked. "Otherwise, this lecture is over."
When she advocated blowing up the NY Times the Gray Lady just sat there and treated her as something less than a fascist or Christian Reconstructionist.
I feel like I've just put down "Alice" and picked up "Through the Looking Glass."
-
Long history of deliberate Republican discrimination
[Read the article: Bush civil rights nominee under fire]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In early 1981, a few months after Reagan took office, I visited with a former employee who was then working as a Title VII attorney for EEOC. She told me a rather disturbing story about her boss, an African-American Republican who had received numerous sexual harassment complaints about a career African American Republican supervising attorney in the office. She said her boss, instead of responding appropriately to those complaints, merely transferred the accused harasser to Maryland to save his job and pension. She also told me about the Commission's lack of support for a case she had brought against a major U.S. employer. She eventually settled the case immediately prior to trial for a record amount for Title VII cases, despite her employer's disdain for the case. She left soon afterward.
It wasn't until Clarence Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court eight years later that I realized whom she was complaining about. I called her and she told me that reporters had contacted her after allegations by Anita Hill were publicized. Based on her impression of Thomas's style displayed soon after his 1981 appointment, she felt that Hill's story might well be credible.
A previous poster of comments seems surprised by the depths to which the Bush Administration has wallowed. It shouldn't surprise anyone that we should have regulators of irresponsible and dangerous industries installed who are coming from those very industries. It shouldn't surprise anyone that we are getting Federal judges whose loyalty is to the Federalist Society, rather than the Constitution. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the Bush Administration and its hacks and lackeys are constitutionally incapable of acting fairly or telling the truth. They are determined to wreck the checks and balances in our system of government.
The situation with the prospective appointment of Bush's chosen EEOC Commissioner is entirely consistent with his agenda to place corporations and reactionary entities and individuals in every possible position of power. That the current nominee is hostile to the very purpose of Title VII is not at all surprising, nor is should it raise eyebrows that a deal has been offered that will keep the controversy out of the press.
It will take decades to undo this Administration's maliciousness, if it is at all possible in any of our lifetimes.