Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 1444 Editor's Choice: 20
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What values?
[Read the article: A mixed message for Rudy from the Christian right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only "values" promoted by these people are those of extreme intolerance and determined self-deceit, the more cruelly intolerant and dishonestly deceitful the better.
'Social conservatism' is largely a euphemism for 'anti-abortion'. No other issue has much political value with the Religious Right, so it is framed and conflated with 'anti-gay-rights' and 'anti-immigration' to maximize its political value as a hot-button issue, framed with gross dishonestly and with studied hypocrisy, all the while promoting social conditions which ensure that the US has as many abortions as possible.
Meanwhile their leaders, religious and political, prey on little boys, consort with prostitutes, and make themselves wealthy on the contributions of brainwashed impoverished rednecks. These people prove they are no 'Christians' every way they can, and all of those ways embrace and endorse mindless hate.
Nobody seems to have noticed that the Constitution explicitly prohibits religious tests for public office, and yet this conference is nothing but one whopping religious test for public office. Yet another reason for right-wing predators to despise the Constitution.
Jesus and Jefferson would never stop throwing up.
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Things you have to believe to be a good Republican.
[Read the article: A mixed message for Rudy from the Christian right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]21) Jesus loves you, and shares your vicious hatred of homosexuals, Hillary Clinton, Mooslims, people who want to reign in corporate excesses, anti-war activists, Nobel Prize winners, non-whites, organizations that track mind-control cults, evolutionary biologists, people who go to the wrong church, and eight other categories of scapegoats to be named later.
Child molesters and mass murderers who vote Republican: still okay.
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Other criminals.
[Read the article: Robert Kennedy speaks out against Retroactive Immunity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The telecoms are guilty, for sure, but the discussion so far overlooks the fact that the Bush administration coerces any company in the media supply chain that doesn't 'cooperate', and that's a lot more than just telecoms: small ISPs, local phone companies, city libraries, colleges, newspapers, journalists, movie producers, and so forth.
Basically anybody who has a hand in providing any information to the public in any way gets leaned on. The same goes for organizations that obtain information from the public in any way. How else would you gear up for a totalitarian dictatorship?
That the media would be useful to the Bush Gestapo in addition to the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine should hardly come as a surprise to anybody. The Bush administration is quite naturally complicit in all of this criminality, and could be named as co-conspirators in any legal action, as could many other politicians, including Democrats. Which is part of the motivation to preclude any legal action.
Anybody who resists this coercion and get smeared, or worse, has very little recourse in the US legal system. The laws against blackmail aren't written to cover this kind of perversion of the legal system. And you can bet that many politicians who might otherwise oppose these practices have been compromised as well by these very practices - and they're on the hook as well.
Nasty tactics against those lacking the necessary pliancy were perfected in their modern form by Mussolini in the 1920s, who managed to use them effectively even in the absence of any definite political agenda.
As usual, it gets worse the more you look at it.
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ROADRUNNER_DEM
[Read the article: A mixed message for Rudy from the Christian right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'M A CHRISTIAN...BUT NOT THAT KIND.
The point is, these 'Values Voters' aren't 'Christians' at all.
Keep in mind that Jesus' pet peeve was religious hypocrisy, and that he much preferred the righteous unbeliever (apparently a Palestinian known then as a Samaritan) to pious hypocrites.
He'd recognize these 'Values Voter Christians' as the modern equivalents of the very people who had him crucified.
What would Jesus say? "I dine with publicans and sinners. It comes with the job. But I will not break bread with Pharisees."
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Ché Pasa
[Read the article: Robert Kennedy speaks out against Retroactive Immunity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Constitution was written to favor an oligarchy of wealthy white males ... the Constitution ... has been used and is being used to suppress and oppress millions upon millions of Americans -- throughout this Nation's entire history, and right now, today.
Misused, you should say. But all too true.
Public officials are sworn to uphold the law, and federal officials are particularly sworn to uphold the Constitution. They don't, and connive to evade their accountability, because they're in a position to do so. Bush swore on a bible, meaning he's not only lied and committed treason but committed blasphemy as well, not that it means anything to him.
It is not the duty of every citizen to uphold the Constitution, but rather, the necessity, to protect us from the government, and from abuses of government power on citizens. The Bill of Rights was written expressly for the purpose of prohibiting exactly the kind of corrupt government abuse of the people that we see now.
Our rights over the government are being dismantled now precisely because we need them now, by a government from which we increasingly need protection. Retroactively or not, they cannot Constitutionally exonerate their own gross and systematic abuse of the Constitution.
We should be more scared of government corporatism than of terrorists.
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Anonymous Tilde
[Read the article: How much is that subprime-linked CDO in the window?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No one . . . Knows what derivatives past the first level of abstraction are worth.
The seller does. The seller wouldn't sell something for less than what it's worth. But the buyer does not.
Which is precisely why they should be prohibited, as they're obviously a device designed to obscure their real value, if any.
This kind of financial instrument could be used to sell worthless items at high prices under the pretext that they actually have some value. Flim-flams are normally illegal.
This has already been done. The buyers just haven't figured that out yet. But they will.
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Apologies
[Read the article: How much is that subprime-linked CDO in the window?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To the illustrious Mr. Leonard for having referred to you as "Andy".
I guess I'm just lucky that you haven't referred to me as "Wally" in retaliation, although it's possible I just missed it.