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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Jim
Published Letters: 1520 Editor's Choice: 65
I guess I just don't get it. Even John Kerry is still apologizing for having "voted for this war." I was there -- not in the Senate, but hunched over my morning LA Times every single day, and I do NOT remember that the Senate voted for war. The vote was to authorize the use of force if all else failed. It was not a vote to start invading Iraq on the next high tide. Which is what happened. So, why the apologizing? Just because we arm our police, doesn't mean they should start shooting anything that moves, right? Can someone fill me in... did I miss something? Do Senate Democrats really HAVE something to apologize for?
It would allow the Interior Department to sell tens of millions of acres....aim is to generate an estimated $158 million in revenue over the next five years to help curb the monstrous federal deficit.
$158M isn't enough to piss one drop on the federal deficit. Over five years? How much an acre are they planning to charge? Are we sure this shouldn't have read $158 BILLION?
Is not what music the boy listened to. What mattered was that he owned a lot of guns. Thus, when confronted with a situation he felt he needed to control, he took his Glock along with him. Had he not had that option... well, you see where I'm going. People don't kill people (would this have happened in Denmark -- same situation, same emotions?), guns kill people.
Ann LaMott, as usual, is trying to make us admire her introspective, menschy nature and to draw soul-sustenance from her little lessons in being a Better Person.
Yuck-o-rama.
I would love to see this movie, but I doubt much in it will surprise me. Governments, including tribal governments ruling small bands of primitive people, have always relied on fear to corral the energies of the masses for one purpose alone: to create a ruling class that doesn't have to work. Fear is the driving force behind all life. Fear of not having enough food, of being cold, of being eaten. Just because we have consciousness doesn't mean we're any freer of fear than a nervous bird at a feeder or a wary coyote or a darting fish. Life loves life and fears anything that threatens it; that's evolution at work.
Thanks, Patrick, for your usual and expected dose of good sense.
When you think about it, Rigoberto Alpizar is Saddam Hussein writ small. A crazy guy who claims to have a weapon or weapons he doesn't have, whom we decide needs removal without further inspection.
Maybe they will, maybe they won't. What WILL happen, though, if these a la carte menus catch on, is that someone -- SOMEONE -- will know more about what you're watching than they do now.
I, for one, appreciate a review that doesn't treat Brokeback as the Second Coming. I respect the fact that a lot of people (especially older gay men who lived in a more repressive time) see themselves in the characters. For them, it's a good movie and that's what makes horseraces. For younger gay men whose idea of a good time is to take some ecstasy, put on cowboy boots and go down to a bath house to make it with strangers through a glory hole, this redblooded fantasy of pure love among the pristine mountain peaks is bound to have a certain redemptive appeal. But for many of us, it's just a very uptight story. Another movie I saw recently that was beautifully realized was "Vera Drake," about the suffering caused by ignorance and cruelty of a time in the not-too-distant past. Sad, yes, but do I need a carefully-crafted reminder that 1950 was a dumber time to live than today? What next? A story about a family in 1939 whose gifted, brilliant child dies for lack of antibiotics? All very depressing but of what value to me today?
What concerns me most about President Bush’s rationale for wiretapping U.S. citizens is that he invokes the so-called “War on Terror,” stating that “during wartime” a president has and must use extra-legal powers to defend the country. But let’s face it, the “War on Terror” isn’t a war in any classical sense of the word. It’s more like the “War on Drugs” or the “War on Cancer” in which the nation commits resources to eradicating a complex, slippery, multi-faceted problem that crosses international borders. So, if there wasn’t a “War on Terror,” would the “War on Drugs” suffice as a “wartime” in conferring presidential power to go outside the law? What if all the president had available was a “War on Littering and Jaywalking” – would that be enough to justify the NSA listening in on citizens' phone calls without a warrant?
Surely the line is drawn somewhere -- I pray.
That's really all I have to say. We are not AT war. We are not at WAR. We are NOT at war. We mustn't let them drum it into our heads. WE ARE NOT AT WAR.
Oh, gee, they published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. Oh, boy, the Jews are going to riot in the streets. They're just BOUND to burn something down. Think of how the violence is going to spread around the world, fron synagogue to synagogue, until the world is in flames!
Come on, Muslims, don't you have any self-confidence? Is your faith so shaky that a cartoon can send you into paroxysms of rage? Apparently so...
Steph, I haven't seen the movie, I'm sure you're right. No one is guaranteed to be funny, it's all about the material... and we do expect someone like SM to vet the material for us in advance. But I just had to say, Peter Sellers' French accent ALSO sounded like a speech impediment. Let's not forget that.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
