Letters to the Editor
Roger64
Published Letters: 75 Editor's Choice: 13
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Re: Let us prey
[Read the article: Let us prey]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When prophets warned the people of Israel of impending doom, it was primarily because they denied the poor justice. Isaiah (10:1-2) says, “Shame on you! You who make unjust laws/ and publish burdensome decrees,/ depriving the poor of justice,/ robbing the weakest of my people their rights, despoiling the widow and plundering the orphan.”
Amos says there would be no reprieve for the crimes of Israel because, “they sell the innocent for silver/ and the destitute for a pair of shoes.” These are not isolated quotes.
In the New Testament, the only person who Jesus explicitly consigned to Hell was the rich man who did not show charity to the poor man.
The Republican Party is an economic class based party that represents maybe one percent of the American people. Their top priority is to take wealth off the tax table and let people use their wealth in an unregulated manner. Republicans intend to make life much more difficult for the poorest and weakest Americans so billionaires won’t have to pay taxes. Legislative breakthroughs after the 2004 election made access to legal redress for the poor more difficult and make it harder to seek protection in the bankruptcy laws. Budget proposals will cut Medicaid funding, housing aid and student loans. Sound much like the behavior described in Isaiah?
Every time I hear pious Republicans, I get a whiff of burning sulfur.
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Bush family tradition
[Read the article: Business as usual]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Bush's have never been ones to allow national interest or national security to get in the way of a business deal.
The President's great grandfather was on the War Production Board that ran the American economy during the First World War. He was accused of directing small arms contracts to Remmington that had been bought by the Rockefellers and Harrimans with whom he had close ties. (In honesty, I've never been able to find a clear confirmation of that charge.)
Prescott Bush, the President's grandfather, played a major role in financing the rearmament of Nazi Germany and was the director of two banks seized after the war started as German agents. Why he was never prosecuted is an interesting question. I suspect he was just too well connected.
George H. W. Bush played a major role in selling arms to Iran during the Regan years, and I personally believe he was involved in a secret deal to keep American hostages locked up in Iran until after the 1980 election. That, of course, was never proven, but was not seriously investigated either.
One of the reasons that George W. Bush has been so successful in pushing through tax cuts for rich Americans and other such stuff is that the American people are not prepared to believe that a President would run the Country to benefit himself, his family and their rich friends. Sadly, that seems to be the situation we are in.
Roger A. Webb
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George Bush's likebility
[Read the article: The sixth-year swoon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That the majority of the American people see George Bush as likable is a remarkable tribute to the success of professional PR and to the poor taste of the American people.
How many voters actually understand what it means that George W. Bush is third generation Skull and Bones? Anybody who knows also understands that they have little or nothing in common with George W. Bush (unless their name is Rockefeller).
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Bush "deserves .. respect"
[Read the article: A Democrat knocks Colbert, says Bush "deserves some respect"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like the respect Republicans showed for Bill Clinton?
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Is Douglas Feith a sick puppy?
[Read the article: A syllabus for the "stupidest guy on the face of the earth"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Years ago when Robert Bork was being considered for a slot on the Supreme Court, I suddenly had an insight. I realized he was nuts. I had read some of his opinions as part of my work in I/O psychology, and then when I heard about some of his other writings and saw him speak the light went off: Asperger's syndrom.
I have come to the strong suspicion that several of the leading lights in the "neocon" movement may be suffering the aftermath of similar conditions. Douglas Feith is one on my leading suspects.
A competent professional (I am a psychologist, but not a clinician) would need records from the early childhoods of these people to see if the diagnosis would stick, but I think it is a serious possiblity.
The basic behaviorial profile is of a very bright person--particularly good analytic skills--and absolutely no empathy or social sense. These are people who are incapable of checking the practical consequences of their "good" ideas. I have some economists on my list of suspects as well.
Maybe it is time to begin a new discipline of public psychiatry: an attempt to spot the serious psychopathology of public figures before they can do more damage. Note: they almost all suffer from narcissisum, so that doesn't count.
I am shocked that Georgetown would hire this guy, particularly, if the article is correct, without factuly input. That raises serious questions about the instituition's status as a univeristy.