Letters to the Editor
rtf100
Published Letters: 181 Editor's Choice: 8
-
Hillary Can Be Very Monotonous (i.e. boring)
[Read the article: Live and let live]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I heard Hillary say the other day in NH that if she is elected president, she will end the war immediately (why not before???). This kind of double-talk was heard once before in a tight presidential campaign, namely, Richard Nixon's 1968 run where he said he had "a secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. The following year the US went into Cambodia. So much for a secret plan to end the war. Hillary has a problem and it is not her vote on Iraq: she can be dull.
Hillary has issues other than her high negative ratings: she is too scripted, too risk-averse, too much the product of focus groups, she has too much money in the bank for her own good, etc. She must must must improve her speaking skills or she will fail over the next 18 months. One reason why John Edwards is back is because public speaking is his thing. Howard Dean was a good speaker. Obama is a good speaker. When Bush gets wound up, he is a better than average speaker. Hillary is not a better than average speaker. She has a very tiring voice to listen to. She speaks with well-tested platitudes and rarely, rarely offers anything original. Listeners pay very close attention to what she is saying hoping to get a glimpse of what she is thinking about and, unfortunately, they are usually denied because she is determined to stay on message. Al Gore also stayed on message, was boring, was overly scripted and managed to lose to an idiot.
-
This is an easy one
[Read the article: Edwards blogger resigns after all]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The comments by Marcotte were not just "offensive" as Edwards said. They were disgusting and designed to outrage and personally attack 50-70% of the public and Edwards had no choice but to do the obvious. Marcotte can go back to "where ever" she came from and hopefully Edwards can move on. If the Broad Sheet editors are upset, too bad.
Too many people (on the left) think that bashing Catholics is good sport and then bitch when somebody (Donahue) stands up and fights back and gets results.
Some topics are taboo in a "progressive secular" society like ours and this is one of them.
-
Marcotte did not do any of us any favor
[Read the article: Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amanda Marcotte is not the victim that she wants us all to think she is, and despite her version of events, she did not serve us well. Her stuff on the blog was intensely offensive to people who are trying to separate politics and religious beliefs. Her caricature of the "Lord ......." is so vile and utterly without redeeming value that she had to go, at least from a national political campaign perspective. What she said is the equivalent to using the "N" word in a rant in a crowded night club or a famous actor getting loaded and spewing anti-semitic venom. The irony is that HAD she attacked one of these priveleged groups, would Salon have given her page one space to do a post-mortem? The obvious answer is that Salon does not consider Catholics as one of their core constituencies nor does Salon feel the urge to pay very close attention to anti-Catholic vitriol in its many forms. In her piece, Marcotte gleefully repeats the offensive blog that started all this fuss and Joan Walsh (nominally Catholic) did not feel compelled to edit it out. Instead, Joan Walsh carries the water for Marcotte by prefacing this sorry affair with a three page "explanation" for why the liberal media is so incompetant in these matters.
Marcotte's stated objective was to bring the blog into the mainstream of political thought and possibly influence events, but I do not think she has the slightest idea what she would do if that were to happen.
-
Greenwald is not being honest
[Read the article: The "antiwar left" takes over America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Greenwald is heavy with criticism of those media members who are passing government "propaganda" and not having the good sense to filter any of it in light of recent polls and the mid-term election. Instead, what Greenwald is trying to do is coerce the media into adopting the views of the "anti-war left" in their entirety, which, by the way, are not the views mainstream America. What the hard left wants, and even the NYT rejects, is the rise of foreign alliances centered around oil supplies that will squeeze the life out of the US economy, and, as a result, put the brakes on globalization and ultimately the spread of capitalism and liberal democratic values. If this means that the fringe left gets reunited with Russia and crawls into bed with Iran, Venezuela and al-Qaeda, then so be it. Thus, the left wants the U.S. to lose in Iraq, in particular and swiftly, and to lose in the Middle East, generally. Remember, the anti-war left has its roots in the historical "revolutionary left", which despises American progress and values above all.
-
Greenwald is "short-selling" US interests
[Read the article: The "antiwar left" takes over America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]re: baldie
I am more concerned with what the far left wants than what I want. I see lame thinking on the left as evidenced by statements such as "if the US pulls out of Iraq, the war ends". Which "war" are they referring to? In Greenwald's piece, was there any mention of polls taken indicating whether the American people are willing to exchange failure in Middle East for unilateral withdrawal? To discuss such options openly would widen the debate to include likely consequences to a US withdrawal. A full and open debate is not something the lefties want because it jepardizes their recent gains at the expense of Bush's incompetence. If anything, the war will spread because nobody has the political will or the desire to end it. The consequences to US interests in the region are unimaginable. No one on the left has defined "redeployment" so I have to assume this means a few hundred troops in Kuwait and the rest come home. The left is "shorting" US interests by betting that US failure in the region will equal political gains at home. This cynical strategy will probably succeed notwithstanding the fact that people also hate short-sellers.