Letters to the Editor
James Levy
Published Letters: 135 Editor's Choice: 18
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Dear Obama Voters
[Read the article: Hillary's time of troubles]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wasted my vote here in NY on Edwards, so don't automatically assume I'm a Hillary voter and ignore what I say. I need something from you folks. What, precisely, is Senator Obama going to change in a way Hillary will not? I'm not talking touchy-feely, I'm talking solid, clear, policies. As I am unhappy with both these candidates, I find it hard to get all emotional about this stuff. I'm electing a Chief Executive, not a motivational speaker. I know that Obama is better at making people feel good. That's just not what I'm looking for here. So is he pulling out of Iraq? Scrapping the Patriot Act? Instituting national helath insurance for everyone? Throw me a bone, people.
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Thanks for the help
[Read the article: Hillary's time of troubles]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For those who took the time to post, especially to Little Lord Baltimore, for some excellent material and good points. I have one overriding worry about Senator Obama. I saw the Republicans take basically decent men like Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry, and rip them a new one while they stood ineffectually by, expecting the press to do their job and rebut the worst and most stupid of the charges against them The press did nothing. I will not contest the basic premiss that Senator Obama is a good man. On the contrary, that's what worries me. Because no matter what the facts are, his background, religion, and immersion in Chicago politics will be used against him. If Hillary is the candidate, when the Republicans start this crap she will come out swining; McCain is neither used to such tactics nor particularly likely to weather them well. My fear is that Obama will "do a Kerry" and let the smear campaign gain so much traction that it buries him. I may be wrong, but I fear it.
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Could Glenn or someone else explain...
[Read the article: Amnesty Day for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]why this does not qualify as an ex post facto law, which are banned under the Constitution?
As for why this is happening, I can only posit two theories: 1) the belief of every politician that none of their careers could survive another terrorist attack, thus giving their opponent the club of an odious "allowed this to happen" charge to beat them over the head with; 2) a fair number of people, and not just politicians, no longer believe in freedom, at least not at the cost of possible injuries to life and property. Land of the brave, indeed.
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A strange man
[Read the article: William F. Buckley Jr. is dead at 82 ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Buckley was an odd duck--a devout Catholic who rejected much of what Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II had to say. A fanatical defender of liberty who had little time for freedom of expression or the rights of the accused. He said one thing that always impressed me. When asked why so many well educated people like scientists and academics were liberal, he said that it was not in spite of their intelligence, but because of it. As smart people, they thought that problems were solvable. The genius of conservatives, however, he thought, was that they understood that most people were not that bright and all suffered from Original Sin, and therefore all those brilliant people with their clever ideas for social betterment were flying in the face of human nature and bound to fail. I don't necessarily agree, but it provides food for thought.
He also wrote two of the most disgusting columns I've ever read. One called for the forcible branding or tattooing of people with AIDS. The other was a dance of the grave of assassinated Swedish Prime Minister Palme, a man whose deep commitment to socialism and opposition to the Vietnam War earned Buckley's savage contempt--he was positively gleeful when he got murdered.
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Economists are like Super-String theorists
[Read the article: Economists surprised consumers aren't superhuman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Economists have become the social scientific equivalent of Super String theorists in Physics. They have no proof of what they are talking about, they can't seem to ever test their theories or offer up an experiment that would falsify their claims, but they do have some awesome, wonderful mathematical gobbledy-gook that only other initiates can fathom. Both groups' mathematical abstractions are presented as facts, and anyone who wants a big-time job in the field better knee down and worship the established wisdom; in the case of Economics, Rational Choice, Profit Maximization, and Free Markets. I'm no enemy of science, but if your claims can't be proven or disproven, and your predictions don't mirror the data, you had better not lay claim to any knowledge better than a hunch. At least Physicists still have the Standard Model, which works. Economists have a lot of pretension mathematical claptrap, half-baked ideas, and crude ideological bias.
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The Angry Bees may be joking...
[Read the article: Nightmare on Wall Street]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]but you will be hard pressed visiting Wall Street today and finding anyone who's not a Socialist. They are going to collectivley scream for government bailouts, massive infusions of governmental and quasi-governmental (i.e. Fed) money and all kinds of government tinkering with rules and regulations. If you say to them, "we should just let the market deal with fuck-ups like BSC" they'll look at you like you have three heads! As the old Left-Wing saying goes, what all those good Wall Street free marketeers really believe is "privatize profits, socialize losses." Our glorious Fed Chair will oblige them as best he can.