Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 816 Editor's Choice: 48
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not quite
[Read the article: Accidental babies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You say "both sides" don't want more teen pregnancies.
I'm not sure that's right at all. No pun intended.
I think the crazy right-wing is fine with more teen pregnancies. They just *say* they're not fine with it. What's a little more hypocrisy on the Right? Nothing at all, hardly. And it'd be bad politics to say otherwise, yes?
Nope, those pregnancies are either *punishment* for *bad behavior* (I'm talking now about what these wing-nuts really think, in their secret thoughts), or they're new life, brought to the hapless teen by God, and must be protected.
In short, I really do question the premise that the right-wing wack-jobs who deny teens both birth control and effective sex-education, want fewer teen pregnancies. On the evidence, these idiots want MORE teen pregancies, not fewer.
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ya gotta hand it to 'em...
[Read the article: The truth really is inconvenient]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think that what has most impressed me about the Bush Administration is the seemingly superhuman way in which its members can tell the most brazen lies, and then, later, when those lies are tossed back at them, they simply say "I didn't say that." And...this is the best part...they actually figure no-one will bother to confirm that, yup, they've lied again. And, even if both lies are shown to be exactly that, nobody who matters (the Base, MSM), will care.
Indeed, as Gary Kamiya has said elsewhere, the Base, in particular, regards regular lying about matters of life and death as mere policy.
I can't help thinking the mockery Bush and Cheney and their minions have made of the truth, and of the press, will be haunting us for a LONG time.
(Nice job RichEmery, on the quote. That's about as clear as it can be..you'd think)
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electoral reality
[Read the article: Playing chicken]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's keep things straight here folks.
Hillary Clinton's consultant, and former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe put it best when he said recently, on Terry Gross's Fresh Air, that the electorate of the United States is divided almost equally between Republicans and Democrats. Some of those are soft, but most are not. There is a tiny segment of swing voters in key states who are so woefully ignorant, and so lacking in critical thinking skills, that they can't decide who to vote for until almost the day of the election.
As McAuliffe put it, these tend to be exurban 25-49-year-old-women who barely understand our politics at all, and vote mostly on their "feelings" on the day of the election.
These are the people the Dems are trying to woo come election day 2008. The calculation is that putting Bush to the wall over war-funding will alienate these pathetically ignorant voters... who lean GOP, but can go the other way.
The Dem calculation, naturally, is that all dems will vote for them, no matter how hard we have to hold our noses in the process (and I've been holding my nose for awhile now), so anything the Dems' natural constituency says that does not accord with 2008 electoral calculations can be ignored, since those voters will vote blue anyway.
Nope, you want someone to blame for Dem cowardice, besides the Dems themselves (who I have trouble blaming because of the aforementioned political realities), blame these badly educated, intellectually lazy, blithely ignorant exurban women who will decide the next election. I'm sure you know one. I know a few. The fact that they will decide the next election is something that fills me with genuine despair for our political process, such as it is.
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jeez, Glenn, where have you been living...
[Read the article: The Islamic enemy within]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...no offense, I love your work..but you act so surprised.
Rulers have used the ignorant religion of their subjects to control those subjects for millenia. There is absolutely nothing new here whatever.
I think maybe we had a chance, once, briefly, in the 1960s and early 70s, to become a truly secular nation. We blew it. Now, our leaders routinely manipulate the ignorant beliefs of the ruled for their own benefit. No different from Renaissance Popes, medieval French kings, and Michelle Malkin, who is about as contemptible a human being as walks the earth these days..with a few notable exceptions, of course.
From our vantage, it is quite amazing, this race to the bottom among politicians and pundits, to see who is the more contemptibly loutish, the most eager to trample on our Constitution.
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used bicycles
[Read the article: A bicycle built for a better world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I should point out that there is a burgeoning market in fine used bicycles in the United States. You can find it on Ebay.
Ebay has become the biggest bicycle store in the world. Every day you can find things there you'd never find otherwise, bicycle-related.
It turns out that the trade in bicycles on ebay is one of their biggest revenue streams.
In particular, you can find hundreds of excellent used bikes from the era before click-shifting on ebay, for a couple hundred bucks, in most cases. Or less. Bikes with beautifully made japanese components, nicely made frames, that will ride perfectly for a lifetime.
Used bikes are the way to go. If you must have new, ok. But if you don't mind mint, used, ebay is the place to look.
As for infrastructure...if the bikepath along the Los Angeles River was not blocked too much of the time because of construction, or poor maintainence, I'd use it to get to work...although it does run through some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city.
This is another problem for erstwhile urban bicycle commuters. If you live in a high-quality urban neighborhood, but you have to get to the city center to work, almost invariably you have to travel through some dangerous ground.
Just another example of how our dependence on car-culture has screwed us royally. See James Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation on the web for a fine explication of that problem.