Letters to the Editor
Alkaline
Published Letters: 854 Editor's Choice: 30
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Of course there's no plan
[Read the article: Bush's missing bin Laden plan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush doesn't want to catch Osama because Osama is too useful as the Republican boogeyman. That's why we bungled the job at Tora Bora and then diverted attention to Iraq without finishing the job in Afghanistan.
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@rupert_c
[Read the article: The evil future is now: Semen detection kits]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why can't they make a Bullshit detector?
The big problem is picking the desired signal out of the intense background noise.
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It is NOT just an academic issue
[Read the article: John McCain's "academic argument"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We still don't know why we are in Iraq. We have the alleged reasons that Bush gave for the invasion, but we also know those reasons were a crock of BS.
The neocons who wanted the invasion were involved in cooking the "intelligence data" to create the appearance that it was a good idea. They knew the results were BS, so they also knew that any arguments based on the bogus data were also BS. This suggests that they didn't want to tell us the real reasons for the invasion.
We're not going to find a way out until we figure out why we're there in the first place and what the definition of "success" is. We'll be stuck there at least until we get to the bottom of these questions. This is why the issue is not merely academic.
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It's not just McCain
[Read the article: Gas taxes and head games]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Our government has let things get so screwed up that nobody knows how to fix it. The U.S. doesn't create enough real wealth, and it gushes money out of multiple severed arteries.
We had one false boom during the dotcom era and another during the housing bubble. People have been thinking things were OK when we were really going down the tubes. For at least ten years now, our imagined prosperity has just been an illusion created by financial hanky-panky.
Politicians are looking desperately for another quick fix but there isn't one. Anything they do to provide quick relief is just going to make the problem worse. Using low interest rates to pump money into the economy is like pouring water into a leaky bucket: They can pour all they want, but in a little while the new money will be gone and we'll be even deeper in debt.
We're going to have to face the music soon, and it will be ugly. The longer we put it off, the uglier it will be. The first step is for our politicians to admit the problem exists. So far, I haven't seen any that seem willing to admit this.
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@Buffalonian
[Read the article: Gas taxes and head games]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Republicans had the white house and both houses of congress. How is abortion not outlawed?
That's an easy one: The Republicans would lose their biggest hold on the "family values" voters if they actually delivered.
It's like the old farmer's trick of dangling a carrot in front of a mule to make it pull a plow: The mule will stop pulling if it gets the carrot, so the carrot must be kept out of the mule's reach.
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The tradeoff
[Read the article: McCain's gassy tax relief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We will have to chose a strategy that falls somewhere between these extremes:
1) Curb oil consumption as much as reasonably possible. This would encourage the development of alternatives and would also extend the life of our oil resources. It would also soften the impact of switching from oil by spreading it out over a longer time.
2) Do everything possible to exploit oil resources to try to keep prices down despite growing demand. This would reduce the immediate incentive to develop alternatives and would reduce the lifetime of our oil resources. It might also lead to catastrophic problems when we actually run out of oil.
(1) sucks right away, but (2) could REALLY suck (as in, end of civilization) when the oil runs out.
My question to those who support continuing as we have been is this: When will it be time to confront the problem that oil supplies are not infinite?
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As I make up my mind?
[Read the article: So far, Pennsylvania exit polls provide little insight ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't have any decision to make here. The voters in Pennsylvania are doing all the deciding today. The rest of us are just spectators.
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@W.E.S.
[Read the article: So, what's next?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We Have To Link
Obama with San Fransisco on a daily basis.
Who's this "we" you are talking about? And do you really think this is the way we should select a President?
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@Electro Robot
[Read the article: Japan's unwanted low-fat diet]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And in today's Doompocalypse News...
Perhaps you could cheer us up by pointing out the good news that is somehow being overlooked?
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Bush's all-purpose solution to all problems
[Read the article: Bush rewards Petraeus with Central Command]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Replace everyone who dares to disagree with him.
No wonder we've been in Iraq for five years and there's still no end in sight: Everyone who dares suggest that we should try something different gets fired.
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I have a question...
[Read the article: Nationalize the rating agencies!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What incentive do these agencies have to encourage them to be accurate?
Mr. Leonard's article explains an apparent incentive for them to bend the truth. We should expect the ratings to be garbage if there is no compensating incentive toward accuracy.
Perhaps it would help if these agencies had some skin in the game. There was a time when I would have accepted an argument that the agencies have reputations to protect, but IMO recent events make this argument implausible.
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@cdunlea
[Read the article: Nationalize the rating agencies!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Heads will roll at Moody's if they haven't already. The Big Three will have to work twice as hard as before to re-establish credibility on the Street.
So far I haven't heard any news about shakeups at the rating agencies. Maybe I'm just not reading the right news sources, but I'd expect the news to be getting around if anything was really happening. Loss of investor confidence is a big part of Wall Street's current difficulties, so highly visible efforts to try to restore confidence would seem to be in order. I'm surprised that I haven't seen any.
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@ChillyDogg
[Read the article: Turn down that thermostat, permanently]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The US should be generating 100% of it's electricity needs from nuclear power.
It takes a long time to build nuclear power plants and bring them online. It would have been nice if we started the work years ago, but we didn't. What do you suggest we do in the interim?
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An offer from me to Dick Cheney
[Read the article: Give it up, Dick]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Go ahead and look from the missing WMD's - in person. I'll pay for your airfare to Syria (one way) out of my own pocket.