Letters to the Editor
C.A.B.
Published Letters: 12 Editor's Choice: 1
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Some Free Advice for Obama
[Read the article: Some free advice for Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Excellent points. I have watched carefully the issues raised by Sen. Clinton. They are substantive and typical matters any politician running for office, especially the presidency, should address.
If all Obama can try to go after is her tax returns, forget it. He strikes me as being full of rhetoric and not much else.
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The "Rezko" game
[Read the article: The "Rezko" game]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to question the writer on this one. There are a number of tax-credit, low-income housing grants available through the Commerce Department that developers are cashing in on. Most of those are "helped" to be awarded by support from federal congressmen and senators. The programs were started by Reagan to replace public housing grants made directly to local governments.
My question, that doesn't seem to have been researched yet, is whether Obama has "helped" Rezko and/or other developer/contributors get any of these for his low-income housing projects.
Obama was a "community organizer" in Chicago. Rezko even tried to hire him for his development company after he left law school (as reported today by the Washington Post). It is likely that Obama is familiar with these and other such typical federal funding mechanisms for affordable housing projects.
So. All you reporters out there, what connections does Obama have or not have in helping Rezko and others get such grants? Are any of them contributors to his campaign? There may be nothing at all problematic about it, but let's see the smell test applied to this angle.
Obama has set the bar high for himself. Since he's tried to be so much above the fray, these are legitimate questions.
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Amen and Thank You, Mr. Greenwald
[Read the article: Tucker Carlson unintentionally reveals the role of the American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]FINALLY, do you think there is hope for the U.S. Fourth Estate to really start doing what they are supposed to do and investigate and report facts and, as close as they can assess, the truth, and not pander to politicians of any stripe here in the U.S.?
All this business about "access" really got going after 9/11 with Rove, Cheney and Bush who absolutely shut down the press and made them beg for access. Instead of working hard to get the info when access was denied, the lazy mainstream talking heads made deals. That's one of the most blatant dangers with corporate owned media.
Kudos to the British press and Ms. Peev in particular. I read her article and found nothing inappropriate about it. If Sen. Obama has neophyte advisers who are unused to being interviewed, that would be one thing, but this adviser is an internationally published (and sexily photographed) writer herself.
The key here what it says about Sen. Obama's stump speech to the public: is it a snow job or is it great eloquence? The most damning part of this adviser's comments to me was the admission that it seems to be the former. The "monster" comment is great headline fodder, but it's the latter quote that, taken with the NAFTA/Canadian memo should give all voters pause: Obama is telling us one thing in public and promising internationational governments he doesn't mean what he says. He just has to say it to get votes here.
Keep up the thoughtful commentary!
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Now Wait A Minute
[Read the article: Reexamining the Ferraro fracas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A recent Atlantic monthly article made exactly the same point as Ferraro, if a bit more eruditely, that Obama benefits from who he is because of the impact of his being African-american because of so-called soft diplomacy. That means, as the Atlantic Monthly article points out, a young Pakastani seeing the image of a brown-faced American president named Barack Hussein Obama whose father is Kenyan, mother white American, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, is going to think there has been a change in American politics simply because of his face. Image alone carries a wallop. What is wrong with The Atlantic making the point that Obama's face counts when Ferraro can't make the same argument, if less adroitly? Aren't both "racist" comments? Aren't both actually correct, even if not exactly PC?
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No She Doesn't Have to Apologize!
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What she said, unartfully, is exactly what was said in a current Atlantic Monthly article on Obama: his "brown face" (that's a quote) would show a young man in Pakistan that something was very different now in American politics. Are you going to ask for an apology from The Atlantic Monthly? Get real and get over discussions of race unless you only want Obama to have dibs on it.
That's especially the case now that his church's minister is being seen and heard. Could it be that Obama doesn't vote with his feet like most of us do and leave a church if he disagrees with what is coming from the pulpit? Rather, his church is "code" to his black constituency that, regardless of what he says on the stump, he's "black enough?" No one stays at a church for 20 years, gets married there, and has his children baptized there unless he agrees with what is being said. There are many fine African-American churches in Chicago whose pastors don't spew this kind of venom. What would Martin Luther King say?
This also gives context to Michelle Obama's otherwise puzzling comments about not having been proud of being an American until her husband's candidacy.
Remember Bush's oblique reference to the Dred Scott decision in a debate with Kerry in 2004? Most of didn't get it. But Bush's religious base did: "Dred Scott" was code for Roe v. Wade and Bush was saying he would appoint Supreme Court judges to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Obama's church may be code for his true feelings about being black in America. He has a lot of real explaining to do and not just dodging around his mentor, Rev. Wright.