Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 964 Editor's Choice: 127
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Oh No! It's the Evil NSA! Run!
[Read the article: Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Jesus, guys! Ever since the days of "The Black Chamber" (the NSA's original, private sector name from waaaay back in the day) they've operated outside the law. OK, I suspect I can safely surmise we all detest the sitting President. The guy, however retarded, brilliant, evil or otherwise screwed up (or maybe it's all of the above) did not invent, create, nor even really empower the NSA to do anything, and trust me on this, he is every bit as much, and probably a lot more, at risk of being caught with his hand in his pants than any of us (and has anyone as yet? I don't recall hearing about it). Wouldn't it be interesting to learn some day that the NSA was the only intelligence agency working FOR US interests that actually did something good? You are discussing, with zero information, one of the most massive secret societies on the face of the earth, and all you can think of is to cue up the "Twilight Zone" theme and start flogging the Bush some more? Sure, it sucks that we now actually know we're being eavesdropped upon, but so far I think the NSA is a lot more interested in Big Ugly Plots against US than anything remotely ABOUT us. Then again, what do I know? Yeah...what? Sorry, I can't talk about it. HAAHAHAHAHaahhaaaa!!!
But just in case, Bush sucks! Got that? OK, good. Testing, testing....
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"Happy-go-lucky" Redefined
[Read the article: My brother is lying to his pregnant fiancée]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]By Krishna this is one stupid LW! Probably hereditary, since the whole clan seems to be perplexed over what to do about this no-brainer (I mean the "happy-go-lucky" lying sack of shit brother, as well as his little "prollum"). Makes me proud to be a hillbilly from Merlin, where we may marry our cousins, at age 13 if the dowry looks right, look the other way at age 40/16 sexual liasons, yet still remain a Blue State. Can we just give Texas back now in exchange for a promise that Mexico will release any claim to California while I'm still in it? Shee-IT!
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The Death of Critical Thinking
[Read the article: The 9/11 deniers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And nobody even knew it was sick. Then I read the letters about this very objective article and realize not only people don't know stuff, don't wanna know stuff, but can't figure out what's what about stuff even when the desired knowlege is lying around like 3 month old magazines in the doctor's office. For instance, we know the 9/11 commission was partially hamstrung in its investigation, yet still broke down a lot of bullshit circulated by the administration. The commission undoubtedly was as "transparent" as possible - unlike the god damned Warren Commission, which produced a work of fiction that makes "The DaVinci Code" look like a product of years of collective scholarly research and undisputed truth. The 9/11 commission did fairly well by comparison. The questions remain, however. Some are more easily answered than others. For instance, when I watched the first WTC tower go down it went exactly as I would have expected, as did the second. There was nothing, according to my education, training and 30-some years of experience with fire science and building construction that would have caused any of that to happen in a markedly different way than it did. Could there have been explosives planted in there? Sure, but if they were they mimicked correct physics of buildings that size and proportion doing what they'd have done anyway, given what had just happened to them. And spilled jet fuel and jet fuel vapors would have been falling downward, creating quite logical and reasonable explosions downstream from the sites of impact.
But all that is moot. What remains true above all the speculation about how this was pulled off, (and it is rather remarkable that 19 fairly stupid guys pulled it off - except that no one was remotely expecting anything like that, which made it statistically fairly easy for one remarkable moment) but how it was followed up by our oh-so-strange and unquestionably evil administration. Somehow we managed to make an appropriate, if slow, first reaction. All the hosannahs to Bush were wasted air, because who would have done less? To have blown the living shit out of Afghanistan made sense, and since a grand and terrible gesture was required, it was accomplished fairly smoothly considering it was done by The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Then everything screeched to a halt. "We're gonna get the folks that did this" became "Osama Bin Laden has been marginalized" became "Saddam is going to kill us all in our sleep if we don't invade his messed up country and dump the joint." After having been subjected to hours of relentlessly repetitive showings of the same horrendous images of the WTC strikes and collapses we were ready to bitch-slap anyone, attack anything, just DO something!
Whether it was allowed to happen, was pulled off against huge odds, or was carefully planned by our own government, the outcome is the same: a floundering group of foul malfactors about as competent as the 9/11 conspirators themselves, and about as appealing, either received or maybe gave themselves a gift that allowed them about 2 years in which to undermine all things American in the name of Freedom, and now can float in their own filth til the coreolis effect takes them on down the drain of history. What is important is not how all this came together for bad, but that it is bad and We, The People, have yet to pull ourselves together and put the store back in order. It's our fault, whatever happens next. It's our game to win or lose. When did we become so god damned complacent? The President we (on balance) hired to run the day to day business of this country wipes his ass with the Constitution and we respond by arguing over whether or not that was a real airliner that struck the Pentagon that morning (I was there. It was).