Letters to the Editor
djmagaro
Published Letters: 86 Editor's Choice: 2
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kd6rxl raises two an excellent points...
[Read the article: CNN, the Pentagon's "military analyst program" and Gitmo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Which I will reiterate for the benefit of those who may have missed it:
FIRST EXCELLENT POINT: No one is allowed to talk about American war crimes unless they first denounce every war crime committed by everyone else throughout all of time, starting with the Cro-Magnon genocide against Homo neandertalensis...
SECOND EXCELLENT POINT: Since other people have perpetrated war crimes against us, it's not only morally acceptable, but morally required to to do the same. Every six-year-old knows this rule. Constitutional lawyers refer to it as the He-Started-It Clause (which appears in the Constitution right after the President-Is-God-King-Clause). This clause, in turn was inspired by our Judeo-Christian heritage. In the Gospels we may recall that Jesus enjoined us to "Turn the other cheek ... so that when the chinks, slopes, and darkies go in for the second slap, you can joint-lock that mo-fo and put some ladies panties on his head."
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RobMac's Comments Were Ironic
[Read the article: Tom Friedman's latest declaration of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Though, admittedly, it can be hard to tell the difference between satire and actual NeoCon arguments these days since the latter have become so outlandish and extreme that it's hard to write in a genre reliant on outlandishness and extremity to deliver its message.
Even worse, conservatives are notorious for not understanding irony (a study published. These days, a satirist runs the risk of having his ideas co-opted by conservatives who took them literally, so don't be surprised to see the "Persian Empire Argument" start coming up to defend action against Iran, complete with facile comparisons of the U.S. to the Macedonians/Greeks, the spreading of Hellenic civilization as spreading democracy, and John McCain as the new Alexander (albeit much older and less gay-gay-gay), the only man with the guts to cut the Gordian Knot of the Middle East with a few thousand tons of cluster bombs and a bunker-buster nuke or two.
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Bad Edit In My First Sentence
[Read the article: Tom Friedman's latest declaration of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was going to refer to an article I saw in The Week a few years back about how the regions of brain that process irony are less active in conservatives than liberals, but I couldn't find the article online.
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May Issue of Harper's...
[Read the article: John McCain's lobbyist problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Had a spread detailing how McCain's so-called Reform Institute, staffed with lobbyists, does and end-run around the very campaign finance laws on which McCain championed and on which his "maverick" reputation rests.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/05/page/0050
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/05/page/0051
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Re: Been There, Done That
[Read the article: The right-wing Politico cesspool]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To build on something Paul Dirks said, the Been-There-Done-That line is so common at this point as to be an actual tactic for suppressing/ignoring inconvenient (read: correct, accurate, or prescient) opinions.
It's a brilliant tactic, actually, which turns the accuracy of a critic's predictions against him. Critic says, "Bad-thing-X will happen if you do Stupid-thing-Y." The Wizened Wise-men of Conventional Wisdom say, "Nonsense! Wonderful-magical-thing-Z will happen, and you better get down on your knees, kiss my toe, and apologize forever when it does - and I'll quit my job, eat my hat, and get me to a nunnery if it doesn't!"
When X happens, the Critic says, "See! Iraq is a cluster-f*ck!" or "The government is spying on us!" or "We're torturing people!" or "We making terrorism worse!" To which the Wizened Wise-men say, "You're still on about that? Old news! Now let's talk about Iran..."
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
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@ Electro Robot
[Read the article: Frist: "Democrats win landslide victory"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just what exactly is your malfunction?
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bearpaw1 beat me to it
[Read the article: Mr. Soros goes to Washington]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Advocates of "Capitalism with a Human Face" like Soros are regarded as class traitors by the Wall Street crowd, forgetting that the only thing the kept the U.S. from having a socialist revolution in the 1930's was FDR and the New Deal.
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Uh...
[Read the article: Why is Walters talking about Hillary Clinton's backside?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because she's a vapid infotainment talking head and always has been?
Do I win the prize?
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@Wedgewood
[Read the article: Rep. Kucinich introduces articles of impeachment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Be sure to turn off the auto-renew option on your accounthat Salon.com oh-so-nicely turns on as a default so you don't experience the traumatic "interruption of service."