Letters to the Editor
Margalis
Published Letters: 614 Editor's Choice: 16
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This was absolutely terrible
[Read the article: Requiem for a poker game]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are so many logical errors and false assertions here that I don't know where to start. I don't think I'll bother. Sadly this piece is almost unrelated to actual poker in any form.
All the WSOP shows is that when you have a field of 90%+ amateurs an amateur is likely to win. That's it. There is no greater meaning.
Talk of a well-defined mathematical strategy is just foolishness. The whole article is just plain awful and nothing more than a technophobic "back in my day" extravaganza.
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Sunglasses etc.
[Read the article: Requiem for a poker game]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How can professional poker tournaments allow players to wear sunglasses? Surely reading a player's face, especially the eyes, is key to the game?
The face is not a good place to pick up tells anyway. First and foremost, you want to examine how the player has played previous hands in relation to this one. Past behavior is the biggest tell.
After that, there are a lot of other tells - how they play with their chips, how they look at their cards, how they move their hands. If you want to get a physical tell it's better to look at the neck or feet/legs (if you can) than the face. The idea that you can look at someone's eyes and get a good read is really overblown.
Whenever I'm in a pot I hold one hand over my mouth and the bottom part of my face. Is that cheating? Players could also simply close their eyes if they wanted to hide tells.
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Poker is very healthy. The same players cash again and again and again. Once more, the main event of the WSOP just shows that in a field of mostly amateurs an amateur will probably win - totally expected.
Also the idea that playing with someone else's money makes things easier is horribly misguided. No good poker player worries about the money. It's just chips.
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Most of the country is left-wing extremists
[Read the article: What Beltway media stars mean by "centrism" and "extremism"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Funny how that works. The fringe anti-war left is the majority of people in the US. Makes you wonder how applicable "fringe" really is.
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The most damning thing in the piece
[Read the article: The really smart, serious, credible Iraq experts O'Hanlon and Pollack]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is his formula that showed we were about to win.
There are 3000-5000 insurgents, we kill 50 a day. That means in 100 days they'll all be dead and we'll have won!
Anyone who engages in that logic above is a fool, a complete fool. It's evidence that O'Hanlon is monumentally stupid. And monumentally stupid people are not experts.
If there were only 5000 insurgents and we killed 50 a day then what happened? Oopsy.
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More on body counts
[Read the article: The really smart, serious, credible Iraq experts O'Hanlon and Pollack]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As I mentioned before, his formula for winning the war was beyond ludicrous. But you also have to wonder why he didn't learn from it.
1. The total number of insurgents given by the military was far too low.
2. The number of insurgents killed per day given to him by the military was vastly inflated.
3. Military sources neglected to mention anything about the creation of new insurgents.
Given those, skepticism of military sources might be in order. Why then put stock into a carefully managed trip to Iraq care of the US Military?
These guys seem to think that being "on the ground" makes you more of an expert, when it actually makes you less of one. Being "on the ground" is merely a way to experience intense propaganda first-hand.
Spend six months travelling the Iraq countryside by yourself, that will impress me.
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Going to Iraq makes one less informed
[Read the article: A new low of mindlessness for our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At least if you go care of a US military dog and pony show.
These people "on the ground" are not living in Iraq, they are being given a carefully staged tour specifically designed to make things look rosy.
It's no different than people who go to special marketing events for games or movies or consumer electronics - they come away with a positive outlook because that is the entire fucking point.
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It's all very predictable
[Read the article: A new low of mindlessness for our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. An administration source feeds info to a NYT reporter.
2. Reporter writes a report parroting that info.
3. Cheney says "hey, don't take my word for it, look at what the NYT wrote!"
So the question is, are the people at the NYT idiots, co-conspirators or just morally bankrupt?
You'd think that being so obviously used would become tiresome after a while.
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Mistakes were made - but now progress!!!
[Read the article: Joe Lieberman, from his indie perch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Same old same old. Joe knew who was in charge of the war, he knew what the strategy was, he knew what the troop numbers would be, he knew there was no plan for anything past the first few weeks of war. This game has gotten old - "oh well I supported the war, just not *this* war." There wasn't any magical third choice between no war and Bush's war.
As far as progress is concerned, there has been none on any front. This July was more violent than last July, and any reduction in sectarian violence will eventually come about only because of the effects of ethnic cleansing essentially partitioning the country.
Joe says progress is being made, whereas it wasn't before. But he said the same last year, and the year before that. Boy who cried wolf?
What as sad sack of shit. His comments on the AG were equally inane.
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You aren't getting it
[Read the article: The MSM vs. the blogosphere]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We reporters are professionals, always struggling to soar higher.
Was this a serious comment or a joke?
As the panel at YearlyKos showed today, reporters across the board are being forced to look inward and question how we do our job.
Which must be why your next-to-last paragraph was a roundabout attack on those questions being posed to you. You clearly have *not* taken the message to heart - instead you mock it.
Like other reporters, I don't always agree with the criticisms, but I take them seriously.
Lying is unbecoming. The entire tone of your piece was dismissive; a perfect example of merely paying lip-service to something. Your examples and phrasing were chosen to make complaints against you look silly and trivial.
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"Well, I certainly don't think Michael Scherer sucks at all"
[Read the article: The MSM vs. the blogosphere]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think so either, but this particular piece is rotten and strikes a needlessly defensive and dismissive posture under a thin guise of contriteness.