Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 881 Editor's Choice: 1
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DNFTT
[Read the article: Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]About Jake007 and this: second, I would advocate what is COMPLETELY LEGAL then – the President signs another Executive Order to round up every Arab-American and put them in camps with no communication whatsoever – then we won’t have to wire-tap them anymore. So much for trying to compromise with you Democrats
Invoking my plenipotentiary powers of troll detection and recommendation to other readers, I declare him a troll and to be ignored henceforth. Among other things, he is so stoopid he thinks *I* am a Democrat.
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God, Country, Family
[Read the article: Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn wrote today:
The reality of that Pew poll is that, generally and comparatively speaking, it demonstrates just how unremarkable, assimilated, peaceful and consummately American is the American Muslim population.
And yesterday Glenn had pointed out that among those whipping up hysteria about Muslim-Americans is the finding that many Muslims:
(b) think of themselves as "Muslims first," rather than "Americans first";
At a memorial for Iraq/Afghanistan war dead in the Milwaukee, WI area:
The square of granite, 12 inches on each side, was inscribed "God Country Family."
http://www.war-veterans.org/Grieve.htm
This is a standard, routine iteration of the general Xian view that God comes before all else, including country and family. Jehovah's Witnesses will not even say the Pledge of Allegiance because they beleive it is idolatrous. I guess we should be all up in arms (literally) about them as well.
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LBJ/Vietnam Era and Nuclear Weapons
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]According to Robert McNamara in his 1995 book, shortly after LBJ won the '64 election the latter commissioned "The Working Group" to assess how to prevail in the Vietnam war. To McNamara's horror, that group -- which included high officials in the State Dept, the Joint Chiefs and the CIA -- as well the Joint Chiefs independently on more than one occasion, advocated the use of nuclear weapons, including on China, and played down the risks. McNamara and LBJ thought such risks unthinkable, and nearly insane. Say what you will about LBJ, and McNamara's late mea culpas, it seems they did keep us from using nuclear weapons in a manner that could well have led to world annihilation.
The insane we have long had with us, but now they run the WH and whisper in George Bush's ear.
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@IngSoc
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kennedy, for example, bashing Nixon in '60 over the "missile gap."
Which oh-so-conveniently, JFK and his cabinet discovered almost immediately after the election, did not exist. They had just been, er, misreading data -- after terrifying the nation that we were at horrible risk of nuking by the USSR due to this "gap."
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@Sysprog
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, now I see it. Until Golden Boy reminded me, I had somehow forgotten all about how I and the other regulars here had all disagreed with Glenn Greenwald when Glenn Greenwald wrote, "undoubtedly some American Muslims embrace the most reprehensible fringes of Islamic extremism."
Oh, yes, I so vividly recall almost all of us jumping on Glenn like the proverbial pack of ravaging wolves. All opposition to George Bush is rooted in complete denial that there is such a thing as an Islamic extremist, and it was an amazing lapse on Glenn's part to imply otherwise.
And we all want to prohibit the government from monitoring Al Qaeda's telephone calls, too. So many of the GOP election ads in the midterms said so, and it therefore must be true.
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@Sysprog again
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your riff on "Onward Christian Soldiers" reminded me of Mark Twain's bitter rewriting of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" for the occasion of what he regarded as the American imperialism of the Philippine-American War. Twain, you know, was an appeasing, troop-hating defeatocrat before the terms were coined:
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger's wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps—
His night is marching on.
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!"
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others' goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.
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@LWM
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, of late I've had a number of LGF infestations at Highclearing/Unqualified Offerings, and more than once been dismissed as a leftist. One of these sages told Jim Henley (the Hayek devotee and libertarian owner of the blog) his was a "Marxist site."
If opposing torture and unnecessary wars makes one a leftist, then so be it. But people who argue at that stoopid level just are not worth my time to correct: I just tell them I'm off to my CPUSA cell meeting, and will get back to them later. Cuz arguing with people whose daft definition of Marxist = opposing Bush and the neocons, well, would could be more futile?