Letters to the Editor
Alan Lloyd
Published Letters: 294 Editor's Choice: 63
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Opportunities here?
[Read the article: A brushback for Bush: Americans support Democrats' agenda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What are the chances there are some Republican versions of Holy Joe? Peeling off a few cooperative R's wouldn't hurt, now would it? I mean, there have to be a few, even after all this time of the nutcase right being out front.
Who knows, in the House there may even be a party-switcher or two to be coaxed along.
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Paying players - no problem here.
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They're already semi-professional anyway.
At the same time, institute these rules, with 100% compliance required, or that program gets the NCAA "death penalty" forever:
All players live among the regular students, no special athletes' facilities.
All players attend classes and take exams with their classmates. Game schedules will be adjusted to compensate.
If a team's graduation rate differs (in the negative) vs. the graduation rate of the school as a whole, the number of scholarships available in that sport is reduced by an equal percentage for the following year.
No player can be drafted or signed by any professional league in any sport until the graduation year of their nominal graduating class. No signing with agents before that year.
Violations of eligibility or recruiting rules will penalize coaches and athletic directors, not student athletes. (Two or three well-publicized years without employment for a few violators and the rest ought to fall in line pretty fast.)
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The answer is obvious.
[Read the article: Dems to GOP: "I feel your pain"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Work with the R's you can work with, when you can. Marginalize the crazies, since it will not be possible to work with them, while calling them out loud and long for their bizarre beliefs and actions. Try and split their party as a matter of good political principle, and rule them out of order when necessary.
Their feelings? Who gives a rat's ass?
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Holy Joe is wrong.
[Read the article: Escalation vs. withdrawal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Joe Lieberman said today that people who oppose the president's escalation of the war in Iraq 'have an obligation to offer a plan that moves toward the goal of maximizing the chances of success in Iraq.'"
Lieberman is wrong in this assertion. I have no obligation whatsoever towards anything to do with this sorry misadventure. My obligation, as I see it, is to oppose Bush's, Cheney's, and Rumsfeld's severe error in judgment in going into Iraq in the first place.
They are the ones who have driven off the cliff. To turn to me, sitting (in the best case) in abject shock and horror in the back seat, and ask me to offer a plan now is insanity.
The fact is, Sen. Lieberman, the best thing to do now is begin doing the right thing. Bringing American kids home now, before Bush gets more of them killed over there. Stopping the destruction of Iraq's cities, villages, and people. I'd suggest offering reconstruction assistance, except for the infinitesimal possibility that anyone there would even consider having anything further to do with us at all for the foreseeable future. I think at this point just going home and being quiet for a while might be a good idea.
You, though, Sen. Lieberman, are a busybody. Worse, you're a busybody who has friends with guns and bombs. You seem to want to meddle in things where you cannot possibly offer any help, and offer advice which usually only serves to make things worse. You, Sen. Lieberman, have an obligation to stop. It's too bad your bizarre combination of arrogance and willingness to appease the Republicans has made you such an unfit occupant of a Senate seat, but render you unfit it assuredly has. You, Sen. Lieberman, mostly have an obligation to sit down and be quiet. America is tired of you. America would be a better place with you back in private life. America will do just fine without your self-important homilies.
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Yeah, well...
[Read the article: "A sound-bite war"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]More Perino, taken directly from Salon's AP feed:
"Speaker Pelosi was arguing in essence that the president is putting young men and women in harm's way for tactical political reasons. She's questioning his motivations rather than questioning his policies."
The president is most assuredly putting American kids in harm's way for political purposes, and anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows it. Even Bush knows it, although he's never going to admit it. And questioning his motivations is fair game, is it not, when he imputes such silly motives to others as "hating freedom"?
Bush is a pathetic, sniveling little coward, who does nothing at all without considering his political motivation. He deserves all the questioning he gets, and then some, preferably from a prosecutor in The Hague, and that sooner rather than later.
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Did you hear that? A point being missed!
[Read the article: Peace movement at a crossroads]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Arguing about the details of another abandoned memorial, or offering an insulting non-comment like the self-proclaimed "the ghost of fdr" did (The real FDR must be doing about 600 RPM about now at his mere existence!) are completely irrelevant to this matter.
What's important is this: This is a form of protest that provokes thought in the observers. It literally shows the number of American kids who have come home in boxes. Perhaps there is some similarly iconic way to memorialize those who have come home so grievously wounded that they are never going to live a normal life again. Their numbers, in the tens of thousands, would make an even more sobering sight.
Marching and waving signs is only useful if people want that brief adrenalin rush of being "involved" in something. Antiwar marches are very easy to dismiss, and ultimately have no real effect on legislators, the administration, or policy.
Giving rise to serious thought (among Americans, perhaps the true accomplishment) does more. The Vietnam war elicited a lot of marching and protest, yet those never accomplished what a lot of people thought. Middle America, not the antiwar marchers, ended our involvement there, and once the realization that we stood no chance of achieving a political end by military means (sound familiar?) grew in the country.
This protest provokes thought in those who see it, unlike a march, which is too easy to dismiss as simply a rabble.
And to the volunteers in Lafayette - well done.
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It's really quite simple.
[Read the article: Colorblind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ms. Dickerson, the racist here is you.