Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 394 Editor's Choice: 41
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It's sad
[Read the article: Bush's blank check]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Our friend from Canada asked a great question, and I didn't respond because I had no answer. I know it was seen by many (possibly the letter writer himself) as rhetorical and laden with sarcasm, but that just shows how bad things have gotten.
Its all supposed to be so simple. The House represents the People. The Senate represents the States. They provide checks on each other and the President. The President provides a check on Congress. The Supreme Court guards the Constitution from them both. Simple.
What kind of yahoos does it take to fuck something like that up?
We even passed a law in 1973 to prevent exactly what Bush has managed to do with Iraq and Afghanistan, so even 35 years ago we couldn't imagine that our government would subvert the law the way this administration has, or else there would have been better wording to that law.
We do need a revolution. Not a bloody one, not yet anyway, but a concerted effort to get the people who have been running things (into the ground) for the last 50 years out of power and out of our government. We have to let them know we won't tolerate this behavior any more. We have to let them know we want to once again have a government that belongs to us, makes sense, and that any school child can explain when asked.
And, in response to another poster, there are a lot of people in the south who would take issue with your use of the term "end of reconstruction" :)
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Throwing your vote away?
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's labor problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, you are part of the problem and not part of the solution. If the idea of voting for a third party wasn't instantly met by cries of "You're throwing your vote away!", more people would vote for third parties and the Big 2 would have to get back to representing the citizens if they wanted to stay in power.
Second, the LW made it clear that voting for Clinton would be throwing his/her vote away from their perspective. You don't get to tell people that they have to vote for someone just as bad on the issues that are important to them just because they belong to the right party. Attempting to do so makes you just as bad as the criminals who are running our political system.
You indicate that you want things to change. If so, find a viable third party candidate who embodies your ideals and work like hell to get him elected. Whoever the Republican and Democrat candidates are, what make you think they are going to be significantly different from the Republicans and Democrats we've had for the last 60 years, who are the ones who made the mess we are currently dealing with?
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The real issue here
[Read the article: I know my co-worker's evil secrets -- because I was his therapist!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the letters are made up, who really cares? I know that for myself, I don't see this as an excercise in helping people since none of you are real anyway. It's more like a "what would you do?" kind of thing, where we get to imagine fucked up situations that may or may not be likely to occur in real life (this one seems unlikely to me) and talk about how we would handle them.
No, I think the real issue is that if AfterThat is really Cary, then he gave himself 1 of only 2 red stars on this entire topic! And the letter was about Cary himself, not the subject at hand. So not only was almost all the advice offered substandard in his eyes, but even the speculation on the authenticity of the letters wasn't of high enough quality to merit the vaunted red star until Cary intervened. Either we really didn't put forth our best efforts on this one, or Cary is just a touch vindictive :)
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Posers
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The statement "faith is a disorder" in one of the posts really irritates me. It is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy. Hypocritical because lots of intellectards seem to think Atheism is rational and based on logic, when it is in fact just as faith based as Christianity or cabbage worship. Arrogant because it assumes we know enough to make the determination. We don't, and we may not ever.
The fact that we don't know if there is a God in no way proves that God does not exist, any more than not knowing that your wife is unfaithful proves that she isn't screwing the pool boy. All it proves is that we don't know. Anyone who has even a passing aquaintance with logic and reason, and no agenda, knows this. Logically, something can only be proven true, proven false, or unproven. Most Athiests don't seem to get this.
The only intellectualy honest belief system is Agnosticism, since that is simply an admission that you don't know what to believe, which requires no assumptions since everything remains unproven and we don't have sufficient information to reach a conclusion. Anything else requires faith, and lots of it.
Berk had the audacity to poke fun at Athiests, and they didn't like it. The comic points out that Athiests have just as much chance of being wrong as theists do, that they choose their beliefs for reasons just as personal and self-serving, and that they can be just as annoying and overbearing in those beliefs.
And I think he struck a nerve because Athiests may not know if there really is a God, but deep down they fear that if there is one He might do something more serious than relocate a few constellations to cause them some minor embarrassment if He decides to make Himself known.
And the artwork, as always, was tremendous.
Just as a disclaimer, I do believe in God. And I understand that my beliefs are in fact based on faith and nothing more.