Letters to the Editor
kovie
Published Letters: 673
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nlacey
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For example: Today, Rahn Emanuel gave a great speech at Brookings on the pattern of corruption as practiced by the Bushies. During the question and answer period, one questioner brought up the old saw as to the firings of the US Attorneys; i.e. Clinton did it too.
There's only one way for Dems and their supporters to react to such rediculous questions, which are either outright biased or a reflection of the questioner's idiocy and/or attempt at cheap sensationalism, which is to challenge and reject the premise on which they're based.
In this instance, this means immediately reminding the questioner that we're not talking about the standard and accepted practice of a new, incoming president replacing his staff, including all USA's, but about a mid-term partial replacement of specific USA's who refused to go along with his attempt to illegally politicize the DoJ.
And if the reporter in question has a reputation for being especially egregious in their bias and/or dishonesty, then an example needs to be made of them (as Bush I did with Rather back in '88) and they should be ridiculed and humiliated in front of their peers and the cameras.
Imus must become the new paradigm for what must happen to any "journalist" who crosses certain ethical and moral lines. This is not censorship--they still have every right to spout their BS on their own time--but rather CENSUREship, which is every citizen's right and duty.
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Yeah, uhuh
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I cannot even imagine what the Angry Left would do if public broadcasting gave as much time to a Rush Limbaugh, a John Stossel, or a Bernard Goldberg.
Um, you mean, like, David Brooks, Rich Lowry, Paul Gigot, Tucker Carlson, Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan, Ken Tomlinson, Fred Kagan, and a vast number of other right-wing shills and trolls--each of whom has had their own PBS show, appeared regularly on PBS shows, or held positions of authority at the CPB.
These people may not foam at the mouth like some of the people you mentioned, but they're just as demonstrably and willfully dishonest as them, consciously pushing a hard-right agenda.
You people are such terrible liars. Especially among folks with working brains.
Troll.
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On pissing in cups and passing loyalty oaths
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did it too, for my first job out of college. I needed the job and since I had nothing to worry about drug use-wise (and the science of DNA testing was far less developed back then), I didn't object--and I'm pretty sure that I would have been denied the job (which I got) had I refused. It was a crappy job but it paid the bills and allowed me to sock away a nice little rainy day fund (which has come in quite handy over the years) and do things with my life that being jobless would have made impossible. This was back in the late Reagan years and most companies (at least the kind college grads tended to apply to) had such mandatory policies.
I do agree though, that unless drug use would likely have very serious consequences for others (e.g. driving a bus, operating dangerous machinery, firing a weapon, etc.), these tests are intrusive and indefensible. If I'm slaving away in a cubicle from 9-5 it's not my company's business what I'm doing from 5-9, period. I don't know about the legality of such tests, but morally, they are clearly wrong in most cases.
However, I did refuse to stand up for and recite the pledge of allegience in high school in the early 80's, when it came back into fashion. This was in a very liberal public school in NYC yet most students went along with it, to my surprise (which perhaps was my first indication of how far the country would go along with the conservative agenda in later years). I simply did not see how anyone could force me to pledge my loyalty to a country which, by simply being a citizen of it, I was already implicitely loyal to. Does citizenship expire at midnight every night and have to be renewed each morning? I think not.
One of the big problems with today's Repubs is that, whether knowingly or not, they confuse form with substance. Burning an American flag does not make one any more unpatriotic and un-American than, say, waving one make one more patriotic and American than those who don't--let alone sending others to kill and die for a cause that is patently absurd and dishonest and which one might well not truly believe in (and probably doesn't, if lack of willingness to kill and die for it oneself is any indication).
If there was a "drug" test for honesty and principle, I suspect that most Repubs these days would fail it. Actually, there is one--i.e. still supporting BushCo.
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"Not a single instance of corruption."
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to agree with him on that one. Not a SINGLE instance, but literally THOUSANDS of them.
That we currently know of, that is. The actual count may well be in the millions, if we're to take "instance" literally, given that the administration employs millions of people through its various departments and agencies, and that they all report to Cheney and Rove one way or another.
It will be quite satisfying to watch these monstrous criminals and their kooky cultist worshippers go down in flames. It might even do some of them some good.
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@JTS in Philadelphia
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've read both books and listened to talks by Fussell and think highly of his work. They each read like a companion to Graves' Goodbye to All That and Heller's Catch-22 (among many other great works on these wars, and all wars, really). The overriding theme of both being how language is used and abused to glorify and misrepresent war by government and the media, and how it is subsequently (and consequently) used by skilled and earnest writers to deconstruct this propaganda, to show us all how war is vastly uglier and less tidy than we're taught to believe it is by the powers that be. All entirely applicable to the present war and power structure.