Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 964 Editor's Choice: 127
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Thank G-d For this Enlightenment
[Read the article: Did Lieberman violate Jewish law?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now it's an issue whether Joe Lieberman has been properly observant as a Jew? Eight years ago? Not to mention the hypocrisy implicit in the writer's words published here. For the love of god, can't we start to wean politics off its religion habit and get back to business? Render unto Caesar or whatever? This is embarrassing in the extreme. The more firmly people root themselves be the tendrils of their various religions the nearer the planet comes to turning into a perfect - yet somehow shoddy and pathetic - hell.
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And We Know this "Plot" Was Solid Because....
[Read the article: Was this meant as another 9/11?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK, I'm waiting.
Only plot I can see here the looks even a little solid is the one to save Joe Lieberman's skinny ass. Thanks, ya'll. Life wasn't complicated enough after the first "gift" to the Bush Presidency.
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Suskind Creeps Me Out
[Read the article: The U.S. is "indefensible"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with his strangely calm analysis of what we should fear, how much we should fear it, how vague it is, this fearful "thing", and how very concrete not only this most recent aborted "plot" is. Then there's the really loud clank in the middle of it all:
"The fact of the matter is, it may mean absolutely nothing that they haven't attacked us in the past five years."
It also may mean nothing because just how likely would it be for 19 guys to take down four airliners and the World Trade Center (or then trans-Atlantic airliners)at the same time, armed only with boxcutters and some cursory flying lessons (or some as-yet-to-be-explained mysterious liquid explosives)? Oh, I'm not saying it didn't go down that way - only that the law of averages finally caught up with us on that particular day. The chances of that or anything like it ever being pulled off again (or even the first time) are infinitesimally small (You do the math - I did the thinking already). Suskind seems to want to make us believe there is a well-organized and disciplined sociopolitical group of sociopaths out there who have made it their sole business to bring death doom destruction down on our heads. We are so inured to critical thinking, owing the the combination of nothing but distorted news reporting and the White House helping with the distortion, that we cannot hope to see that life is a dangerous proposition at best and that our governement can only react to disasters, whether they be idiot's luck or acts of God. The fact that this administration reacts more slowly than any other in history just compounds our dread.
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Three Feet High and Rising
[Read the article: The next New Orleans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's on the way. Some of us know it and some are oblivious, but notice has been served, thanks to Tidwell and others, and if our own government will not respond positively to the threat from global warming, there may well not be much populated land that corresponds to the maps terrorists might use to target civilian centers. All those former residents will either have fled inland or washed away. Is that the solution this administration is persuing?
First will probably be Miami, which, as Tidwell points out, doesn't have the necessary three feet to break even. Next will be the tidewater areas of Virginia and southern Maryland - all the way up to Annapolis; then Baltimore. The last great disaster, the last great and improbably migration inland would be New York, and if we permit things to go that far there's no reason to expect we will not see an insane scene of unparalelled horror formerly available only in the movies.
Washington, DC, sits upon the lip of its Tidal Basin, a product of the DelMarVa tidewater area to which I refer above. This and this alone could be the saving grace in the scenario Tidwell has proposed, as indigenous peoples rarely recognize the shadow of catastrophe that overreaches them (as in New Orleans). But in D.C. there are enough out-of-towners who spend a good deal of time there just screwing us and the rest of the planet, that they might be moved to do something
constructive, if only in the name of breaking the oil habit, if not by bowing to Godless Science
which has shown us the future in time to prevent the next New Orleans catastrophe. If not, we'll all be singing the Delta blues.