Letters to the Editor
Nita Martin
Published Letters: 260 Editor's Choice: 62
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What I learned in 2005
[Read the article: The year in politics]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush isn't the only one who got a wake up call, this year. Here are some of the lessons -- mostly facetiously sad, that some of us learned.
1. Mel Brooks was right. It’s good to be the king….er, president. At least until there is a revolution.
2. No good deed (like giving jobs to incompetent friends) goes unpunished. On the plus side, the punishment is visited on others.
3. It’s possible for a drunken frat boy to make good, but apparently not to actually do good.
4. It’s a myth that taking lots of vacation keeps you on your toes.
5. It really is better to be rich than poor.
6. Money is the root of all evil. At least in Washington.
7. Sometimes the biggest news is what’s being kept out of the paper.
8. Don’t believe everything you read. You don’t know where it’s been.
9. You really can judge a man by the company he keeps.
10. If a man is smirking, it isn’t a quirky personality. He’s a lying SOB.
11. Mountain biking can be hazardous to brain function in certain individuals
12. “Let them eat cake” was a good slogan then, and apparently it’s a good slogan now…although updated for modern peasants.
13. Anybody – literally, anybody -- can grow up to be President.
14. Richard Nixon was an amateur.
15. If you keep harping about being a Christian and use it to bludgeon others, you are exempt from behaving like one, yourself.
16. It’s uplifting to oppose abortion when you don’t actually have to care what happens to all the little bastards afterwards.
17. If the meek are going to inherit the earth, they’d better grow some balls and take a stand that will win back the government. (Feel free to substitute Democrats for meek)
18. People will believe anything, or its ancillary, there’s a sucker born every minute.
19. The inmates are running the asylum.
20. If it walks like a duck or gives money to a duck…..
21. It’s ok to be unethical, as long as you can prove, more-or-less, in court that you didn’t actually break a law. Just bending doesn’t count.
22. Power means never having to say you’re sorry.
23. Cheaters most certainly do prosper.
24. The (social security) check is in the mail for the moment…but the fox is in the henhouse. Those two things are inexplicably connected.
25. Every vote counts, until Diebold gets ahold of it.
26. We’re all equal in God’s eyes, except for those other people who aren’t.
27. Vegetative people in nursing homes deserve to live, but 20-year old Army Reservists from Tennessee don’t.
28. If God wanted us to worry about hurricanes, he would have sent one to Crawford. “You did a heckuva job keepin’ that hurricane outta Texas, Brownie.”
29. Healthcare? We don’t need no stinkin’ healthcare. The people who count have it. And if anybody else gets sick and dies, well that’s just the will of you-know-who.
30. It’s a new year. Make it count. Or assume that we’re safer and more secure than we’ve ever been and just sit here and watch as a big mushroom cloud emanates over the country while Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and whoever else is still unindicted, hold hands and smirk as they wing off into the sunset on the Enola Gay….uh, I mean Airforce One. As it trails a sign reading “Trust me”. Yes, it may be a little over the top, however, in the immortal words of Pogo, “I have seen the enemy, and he is us.”
Nita Martin
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Give me a break
[Read the article: Food slut]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, I guess we know what your favorite whine is.
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Nimbly and agiley
[Read the article: What the Bush administration wants]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In all the discussion about Bush's usurpation of power that is in conflict with the Constitution, there seems to be this wild assumption (long since proven wrong)that he's a competent, wise, compassionate, intelligent, infallible leader.
This is a man who has led us into an unjustifiable war which has left not only America, but the entire world in worse shape than when he first decided to wage it.
This is a shallow self-absorbed man who says his vacation time is more important than his job, and who boasts that he doesn't keep up with the news. And worse, brags that he partied his way through college and gets to live in the White House anyway.
This is a man who has clearly put money before people, and friends before constituents.
He has ruined the county's economy, its future, its reputation, its pride, its military, its natural resources, its cities, the hope of its poor, its elderly, its youth.
Of all the people in all the world...why would anyone consider it a rational point of discussion to suggest that he should have absolute power?
No president, no one individual has, or was meant to, have supreme power. That's the way the framers wanted it...that's the way Americans want it. And for good reason. The men who hashed it out in Philadelphia so long ago must have seen George W. Bush coming.
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Filibuster Alito
[Read the article: Could there still be a filibuster in Alito's future?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am at a loss to understand the apathy among democrats and the public in general regarding the consequences of Alito's confirmation.
And I don't understand the "what will be will be" reluctant acceptance of this situation, including Tim Grieve's "I'll believe it when I see it" assessment on a filibuster. (Though I'm not saying he's not right).
A man (and a party) who/which has a questionable legitimacy in office, has admittedly subverted, ignored or just plain broken the laws of this country is about to gain a 30-year monopoly on the future of this county. We can't afford to mortgage our majority beliefs, liberties and future on the limited ideology of this power-mad caball.
Please, please, please demand a filibuster. Of all the times to let it pass, this isn't it.
And please contact your senators and representatives NOW. We can't afford to shrug our shoulders and accept Alito as an inevitability.