Letters to the Editor
Ken Erfourth
Published Letters: 132 Editor's Choice: 11
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I feel strange about this article
[Read the article: It's OK to vote for Obama because he's black]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gary Kamiya has written with honesty and sensitivity about his feelings regarding Obama and race.
Yet, I think the whole race angle is overblown.
Obama truly transcends race. He's not a clean and articulate black man. He a man who is so damn clean and articulate that he makes me jealous. He's obviously an extremely talented, serious, charismatic and capable person.
That he is also a person of color makes that even cooler, because most of us have grown up exposed to prejudice that tries to teach us the opposite of the truth that Obama makes unavoidable.
So he gets a degree of added coolness, like Jesse Owens sticking it to Der Fuhrer in the 1938 Berlin Olympics. But that doesn't mean Jesse Owens wasn't an amazing athlete, without considering his race. That was just the icing on the cake.
Barack Hussein Obama is an amazing man. He knows what has gone wrong with our country. He knows how to organize us so we can start fixing it.
He could be purple and I'd vote for him.
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So this is the big Clinton Oppo dump for this Primary
[Read the article: The chronicles of Austan Goolsbee]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Shades of accusing Obama of being anti-choice in New Hampshire (later exposed as a deliberate Clinton lie).
Now, we are supposed to be excited about an Obama advisor who repeated the Obama position on NAFTA (that it needs to be fixed, not scrapped entirely), and got reported as Obama saying one thing in public and another in private.
So Goolsbee denies ever saying the Obama campaign plans to keep NAFTA as is (true) and denies going to a meeting where he said that Obama has a public position as a trade protectionist (also true).
Now that is being spun as a denial that he ever went to any meetings where trade was ever talked about (ridiculous).
And the oppo dump comes 24 hours before the Ohio primary (predictable, and stinks MarK Penn and Clinton negative campainging).
What a surprise. The picture of Obama wearing a turban on a trip to Africa was more interesting.
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Joe, wanna buy back my copy of "The Hunting of the President"?
[Read the article: Some free advice for Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If that book, which I paid good money for during the Clinton years, is as two-faced and dishonest as this latest piece of swill you regurgitated on the pages of Salon, then I think you owe me a full refund of the purchase price.
In other words, I am very, very, disappointed in your blind hostility to anything non-Clintonian.
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That's "Fanboi", troll
[Read the article: "True Enough": More on truthiness and Apple fanboys]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Somebody needs attention. Somebody bashes Apple and the people who like their products.
Yawn....
Pretty sad to base your whole book on such a thin reeds.
The Apple phenomena is far more complex than simple Internet "truthiness". It has to do with the transformative nature of the personal computer created by Apple (My gradepoint average from high school to college went up by 1.5--a difference I largely credit to my Apple IIc computer).
And Apple fans went through a long period of extremely biased and stupid reporting. It gave us an attitude (pugnacious) and a resolve not to let cheap slight go unanswered. It was self-preservation against a bland bottom-line corporate accountant attack.
So we go overboard sometimes these days. It isn't the Internet's fault. We were crazy long before Al Gore created the Internet on his PowerBook in between destroying an invasion of alien spacecraft and inspiring "Love Story."
What? You never heard about that? It's a conspiracy, Man!
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Polls and stocks--don't watch them day by day
[Read the article: Will Wright hurt Obama's chances?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Never bother with polls a couple of days after an event or a controversy. Same way you don't sell or buy stocks based on day-by-day fluctuations.
Both are sure loser strategies, for the same reasons--random fluctuations based on short-term events don't tell you squat about long-term trends in prices or electoral support.
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A nice, edgy little Opus this time
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Make folks a bit uncomfortable? Questioning Authority?
Good by me!
"The US contributes nearly 25% of the world's carbon emission, yet the US accounts for less than 5% of thw world's population."
True, but the US also provides something like 30% of the world's GNP. Whole lotta stuff going on here, besides people standing around breathing, eating and breeding.
The questions and answers aren't simple. We need to talk about the whole range of issues (I'd be the last to deny that the US doesn't waste Megajoules like a herd of pigs).
But it isn't this, or that, or that other one thing. We need to start thinking about an interdependent planet and a whole range of givebacks, tradeoffs and compromises.
And Berk's cartoon was pretty cool this time.
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Duh!
[Read the article: The sun blotted out from the sky]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been saying this for years now.
We know what happens when something like Pinatubo blows. It cooled of global temperatures by almost a half degree Centrigrade, and delayed the crisis of global warming by almost 20 years (some of us remember the heat and drought of the late 1970's and early 1980's).
It got colder, mostly. Really cold that first winter (Madison, Wisconsin had 90 straight days of below-zero weather that year). But no catastrophe, and nothing as extreme as "Blotting out the sun". The only noticable effect are some really colorful sunsets. Humans eyes can't even detect the slightly lowered amount of sunlight hitting the ground.
Regular, smaller explosions which eject dirt (or cheap, inert, highly reflective aluminum oxide) into the atmosphere would give a much less traumatic result than Pinatubo.
It isn't a question of will we do it, it is a question of when. Whole nations are set to disappear! Who is going to stop Seychelles or Bangladesh, or the Netherlands from saving themselves?
Better to start early so we don't have to do anything too dramatic to prevent catastrophe.
Fossil fuel use is being taken care of already by Peak Oil. We just need to stop the Climate Change roller coaster before it gets too much momentum.
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This shows some class, Joan
[Read the article: Elizabeth Edwards: "Obama was charming"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I didn't like the original article when I read it, but posting such a forthcoming and uncompromising update is very classy.
Nice job.
Shoutout to Phoenix Woman