Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 344 Editor's Choice: 70
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"Culture of Corruption"... Good Idea.. (Koff, Koff)
[Read the article: Tom DeLay, the sequel?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"DeLay could single-handedly breathe new life into the Democrats' "culture of corruption" theme if he gets back into the race"
Oh, yeah. That "culture of corruption" theme worked so well in California, where it was used in the race for the corrupt Duke Cunningham's seat.
Look, Americans EXPECT Congress to be corrupt. It's a little agreement they have. "I'll keep returning you to office where you can net infinite caches of money and influence, and all you have to do in return is tell me how swell I am. I'm better than anyone else, because I'm American. I'm great because I live in Texas ---or Alabama, or New York, or wherever. Just make sure you refer to me and my neighbors as 'the good people of the state of (fill in the blank)'. You throw some pork our way; maybe you can cut our taxes by one trillionth of one percent.. that would be a huge coup enabling you to claim that you cut taxes while 'the other guy' wants to tax and spend us to death. We'll fall for it, no problem. You do all those things, and say bad things about the Mexicans and Muslims while still allowing them into this country to help out your Big Business buddies by providing cheap labor, and you keep outsourcing our jobs to Guam and the Marianas and China and India....and we're ok with you. Just deliver those miniscule tax breaks to us while delivering billions in taxes to the rich - because the rich really are better-- and you're good."
Americans don't really care about corruption, as most Americans are hoping they can come up with a money-grabbing scheme themselves and become rich; and they hope that if their scheme is illegal, there's a loophole somewhere that will help them get away with it.
We're a corrupt culture these days. Americans hope Rudy Giuliani, a man so steeped in corruption, arrogance and blinding egotism that it almost hurts, will become our president, because he's "tough". Americans want tough guys to represent us, because we're such chickens we get hysterical every time someone mentions the word "plot" (unless it's Republicans responding to dissent, labeling their critics "crazy conspiracy theorists who see plots everywhere". Then Americans scoff). Let's face it, tough guys aren't nice guys. If they use strongarm tactics, that's ok. America wants the tactics of the mafia used to "protect" us. They want tough guys who break heads to look out for us, and if we have to pay the tough guys off by letting them wet their beaks here and there, well that's ok to the majority of Americans.
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Ummmm....
[Read the article: Cool Jews]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"(disclaimer: Jewish is defined here as having at least one Jewish parent)"
Did you ask any of the people you identified as Jews, past and present, if they consider themselves Jewish because they have one Jewish parent? I know quite a few people with one Jewish parent who don't consider themselves Jewish. Even a few of them with Jewish mothers don't consider themselves Jewish. A friend who is half Jewish and half African-American does not consider herself Jewish because her Jewish mother did not bring her up to be religious in any way while she was growing up. "Nobody looked at me and saw a Jew and I never though of myself as 'Jewish' in the projects," she says. She'd be surprised to know that a writer for Salon considers her Jewish.
My spouse has Jewish parents and identifies culturally as a Jew, but our son has not been bought up in any religion and my spouse does not identify him as Jewish, anymore than I consider our son an Anglo-American Catholic.
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I Disagree, Rose
[Read the article: Cool Jews]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I agree with those who say this is by far the worst article ever written in Salon.
-- Rose"
Sorry Rose, I disagree. Have you read the Ayelet Waldman article which breathlessly informed Salon readers that she, Ayelet Waldeman, was fooled by someone named JT Leroy, without ever informing Salon readers who JT Leroy is? And not only was she fooled by JT Leroy, but after she decided JT Leroy was a fake, she STILL got sucked in!
That was by far the worst Salon article ever.
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It's Not Mindless
[Read the article: The terrorist in the cornfield]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a very deliberate attempt to make DHS look like a bunch of chumps.
DHS has been staffed with chumps for a reason.
Bush didn't want DHS, remember?
He was forced to accept DHS by Congress. So he staffed it full of chumps and he and his pals have been making DHS look like a poster child for "How Gov'mint Screws Things Up." They don't want DHS, they don't want any kind of government-supported regulating agency; they don't want government looking into private businesses. They foresee a problem if, say in 5 years down the line, a Democrat is in charge of DHS and that Democrat decides to look into... oh, say Halliburton's security contracts or contracts awarded to the crew of that other great 9/11 profiteer, Rudy Giuliani.
No, no, no. They don't want that.
And besides, they want to shrink government, remember? So they can get it down to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub. Discrediting DHS, FEMA, the EPA and other government regulatory and emergency aid agencies is the kool-kids thing to do. Staff with idiots, make them look like dopes, get their wingnut media noise machine to demand the defunding and/or abolition of these agencies and voila-- more private contracts for corporate profiteers!