Letters to the Editor
Buffalonian
Published Letters: 371 Editor's Choice: 74
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Calmer
[Read the article: Gun control or "hopes and prayers"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Were you also disgusted yesterday when the White house tried to make political hay out of this tragedy with it's pro-gun statement in response to the tradegy?
I don't know what to say. I despise Bush and what he has done to this country, but the fact of the matter is that the spokesperson was asked a direct question as to whether this tragedy changed his opinion and she said that it didn't.
What possible answer would have been acceptable? It seems to me other than a mea culpa and an about face on a fundamentally held principle, nothing would have been acceptable to the gun control people.
RE: flags
I agree this has always annoyed me immensely. Flags lowered for Reagan or Ford, but not for the soldiers. I agree completely that it is despicable.
It strikes me that taking the action of one deranged person and tarring millions of others is wrong. This is like when racist message boards post a link to a news story about a crime committed by black person and use this as evidence that black people are prone to crime. Glenn Greenwald pointed out the logical fallacy of idiots pointing to a cold stretch of weather as evidence that global warming wasn't real, which is as dumb as pointing to obituaries to debunk the notion that the population is growing. By the same token, pointing out that someone committed a horrible, horrific, senseless, indefensible crime with a gun doesn't make every gun owner in this country a nut, nor a mentally deranged person, nor whatever else these comments try to make us out to be.
As I said yesterday, the left does nothing but shoot itself in the foot (if you'll pardon the phrase) by demonizing gun owners collectively as insane. That's literally writing off 40-50% of the population by household (not that every member of a gun owning household owns a gun personally or votes on the issue, but it is still a big number.) The Mountain West will not be won by lumping all gun owners into the 'crazy as a shithouse rat' category anymore than the south will be retaken by dismissing everyone there as a redneck confederate racist.
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Jedimaster
[Read the article: Gun control or "hopes and prayers"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am a registered libertarian. The last five candidates to whom I have donated money are:
Obama
Edwards
Kerry
Dean
Gore
So, please don't speak to me of my side of the aisle. I am not trying to be disingenuous. I am trying to point out that we all have blind spots including Democrats/left/anti-gun folks (who I admittedly lazily conflated). So, while many Dems can clearly see that although in a fanatsy world it would be great if the Middle East were all happy go lucky liberal democracies which respected human rights, our current plans for the area have no hope of achieving that end.
Likewise, most proposals for gun control have absolutely no chance whatsoever of solving the problem they are meant to solve. Gun control people can never figure out what gun owners don't trust them and that is in part because of the frequency which all gun owners are lumped together as deranged (as evidenced by many of the comments here).
Personally, I understand that all rights are limited to some degree and would be willing to support a wide range of limitations: background checks, waiting periods, etc. What is frustrating is that it is almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation because the middle has eroded so much and neither extreme is willing to negotiate in good faith.
Those on the antigun side who say that it is some nutjob fantasy to say small arms can held by a population could hold off a government intent on imposing its will haven't been paying attention to Iraq clearly.
Finally, I didn't suggest that Democrats could never win with an antigun platform. But I am suggesting that it is starting itself off with a huge disadvantage because of an unwillingness to even engage on the issue.
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Journalism School
[Read the article: Compassionate conservatism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The AP reports the comment as such: "'People who have never met you are praying for you,' Bush said."
So, kids, can you spot the difference between journalists do and what Tim Grieve does?
See if you don't like someone, even if they're the President, then instead of following normal journalistic protocol, you write his comments as if they're in dialect. You write "prayin'" and not "praying." That way, everyone can know you think the President is a yokel and an idiot.
Now, the key thing is to only do this to politicians you dislike. If someone wrote Al Sharpton's words out in dialect, it would be a horrible affront and probably racist.
To avoid this, we generally standardize people's speech. So, for example, despite being well educated myself, I still retain something of a NJ/NY accent and have been noun to ask for a cup of 'cawfee' in the morning and to enjoy taking my 'dawg' out for a walk. Yet, a reporter quoting me would undoubtedly render my words as 'coffee' and 'dog'. I have colleagues from all over: Europe, Israel, India, the south, the midwest. We all pronounce things differently including sometimes dropping the 'g' the end of a word or pronouncing t's as d's in the middle of words, yet we all have the common courtesy to standardize the spelling.
You know, the sad thing is that since W. is clearly the worst president of the last century or so, it shouldn't be hard to attack him for substantial issues without resorting to pandering to northern prejudices by writing his words in dialect. Either do it for everyone, or do it for no one.
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known not noun
[Read the article: Compassionate conservatism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]sorry for not proofreading before posting