Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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Someone shut Podhoretz, Lieberman, Cheney, Krauthammer et al up before the US loses its last few allies
[Read the article: Face of a psychopath]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It really is astonishing that Podhoretz and his buddies can continue to sling this sort of freaky bomb Iraq stuff around. Things are so bad that the US' allies are ready to run screaming from the room.
To give an example, the Times (of London) is the ultimate establishment newspaper, owned incidentally by a meddlesome Rupert Murdoch. One of its more conservative columnists is Anatole Kaletsky, who last Friday addressed the growing US clamour for bombing Iran with a column entitled:
WHY WE MUST BREAK WITH THE AMERICAN CRAZIES
see it at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article1934770.ece
In that article he essentially calls for the UK to withdraw from its alliance with the United States.
What people are talking about in America is not whether the invasion of Iraq was legally or morally justified but why it went so disastrously wrong and whether the same blundering fanatics will launch another catastrophic military adventure, most likely a bombing campaign against Iran, to distract attention from failure in Iraq. After all, the neoconservative ideologues who still run the Bush Administration have nothing left to lose politically – and in their fevered imaginations they still think they could inflict military defeat on the “Islamofascists” in what they now see as an even greater historical confrontation than the Cold War.
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The list of misjudgments and mistakes could go on and on, but my point should by now be obvious. The question Mr Brown must now ask himself is whether he can still allow himself to remain publicly allied to a US Administration that is so recklessly belligerent in its diplomatic conduct, so demonstrably incompetent in warfare and so irresponsibly dangerous to the peace of the world.
So get this, Podhoretz, Lieberman, Cheney, Krauthammer, etc. are close to achieving one goal of Al Quaeda with all this bomb Iran crap, losing the US its most important remaining ally -- and people are saying that anyone who opposes Podhoretz does not care about US interests.
What do they think having no allies left will do for the US.
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Competence
[Read the article: Bloomberg's ambitions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everything I have heard about Bloomberg from his business partners indicate that he is fair and very very smart. More to the point, he is level headed, has extremely good judgment and picks good people to run his organizations (Bloomberg and NYC.) He also has a lot of experience of the world outside the US (Bloomberg has long been well established in other financial capitals) and does not regard foreigners as quaint or dumb, or people you should just speak to loudly and slowly in Engerlish (while garbling that langawidge.) Compare him with Dubya just for a second . . . (ahhhhhhhh)
Bottom line, more than anything else the US needs a sane, pragmatic and competent administration. All the current Republican front runners on their face would not by a long shot give the US that, just listen to them on the subject of Iran.
I am not endorsing him, but frankly, the US could do worse.
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The Problem with Competence
[Read the article: Bloomberg's ambitions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amending my "Competence" posting.
It makes Bloomberg the un-scary conservative candidate -- just when "conservative" leaning voters (as in genuinely conservative, not radicals calling themselves conservative) are waaaaay to frightened, or way to enlightened, to vote Republican.
The trouble is that these voters are now voting Democratic -- given a Bloomberg alternative, might they vote for him, in enough numbers to to give the lunatics another four years in the White House, by leading the Democrat to lose, along with Bloomberg. That has after all been the history with centrist independents in the US, e.g. Andersen, not to emntion that vainglorious leftist candidate who put Dubya in, but denies it today.
So to my last point, the US could do worse, the problem with a Bloomberg candidacy is that it may mean that the US, in fact, does . . .
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About Nader
[Read the article: Bloomberg's ambitions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The thing is . . .
I know people who worked (as employees) for Nader (and for that matter Larry Klayman.) At least Nader's paychecks are less elastic. Otherwise, well, Nader's commitment to workers rights is theoretical, in the same way that I describe my father as one of the great theoretical feminists -- in principle yes, but not at home . . .
And I have heard enough stories to decide that both guys are crazed narcisists and and primo assholes . . . and Nader's presidential campaign was pure narcisistic self indulgence.
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Answering Goedel
[Read the article: Bloomberg's ambitions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Would that low pay was the issue, or that the stories go only to his Presidential campaigns. No these people worked for Nader long before that.
Put it this way, a lot of the things that one would not like a boss to be, and a lot of the ways people should not be treated, beyond pay ...