Letters to the Editor
Majorajam
Published Letters: 308 Editor's Choice: 12
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That's rich
[Read the article: Jamie Kirchick's fantasies of the grave Muslim threat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Accusations of cherry picking as you steadfastly refuse to answer the question I just put to you. No kidding.
So what Golden Boy? Taken everything you've just said as bible- all the loopy and contorted misinterpretations and insinuations- what does it mean? What's the significance? I think you'll find that GG's purpose is quite rightly to point to a) how hysterical and out of whack relative to what any informed person would expect of any ethnic or religious group are conservatives opinions of Muslims, and how dangerous that can be juxtaposed against their oft-stated advocacy of things like torture, internment by ethnicity, racial profiling and bombing and invading Muslim countries. If you want to be willfully obtuse, you can ignore the overwhelming validity of this point, as you do, and somehow reinterpret it as being 'apologists for Islam' which while probably sounding bad to you means very little to us here in the reality based community.
As to your attempt at substance, 1 and 4, which I've tried no doubt in vain to explain the relevance of above, only contradict 2 and 3 to those with the inability or unwillingness to understand 2 and 3. Neither 2 nor 3, by the way, claim that there does not exist a single Muslim in the United States that is sympathetic to Al Qaeda. This would be required to make them contradict fyi. The truth is there certainly are such people, just as there certainly are at least some non-Muslims who are sympathetic to Al Qaeda, just as there are those who despise Al Qaeda so much they're eager for the next terrorist attack just to show how "right" they are, a la some of the more nutty of the nuttier than a fruitcake nutjobs that would tend to agree with you on this subject.
I would furthermore take it a step further and concede that the proportion of Muslims that are sympathetic to Al Qaeda is higher than the proportion of non-Muslims sympathetic to Al Qaeda, even though there is no proof for that, (as stated, it is impute any level of sympathy in the Muslim community given that the tiny proportion of the population answering in the affirmative- 1% strongly favorable, 4% mildly favorable- is swamped by the margin of error). The only reason I would make that leap of faith is that there is much precedent to there being a higher proportion of people who support an extremist movement amongst the population from which the extremists came forth. What I cannot concede because there is absolutely no basis for it whatsoever is that a higher proportion of Muslims in this country- including the foreign born and just off the boat variety- support anything like criminal violence toward American society than can be found in other ethnic or religious groups. By contrast, you ignore the fact that we can find such support among any group we choose to survey and thus so much as state that Muslims should be held to a special no-tolerance level.
In closing, I should add that am increasingly impressed by your ability to attribute "no comment" responses to what the responders would have said had they responded in earnest. In this poll I read that 10% of respondents refused to answer how many Muslims were in their household. Being as it's obvious they can't not know how many Muslims are in their household, I was wondering if you could use your gift for gleaning information from thin air would tell us about this surprising number. Or you could ignore that question, as with the other. Either way, you're going to have to do better than this.
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Limitless nothingness in anonymous brains
[Read the article: Limitless wrongness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The US is a superpower huh? I guess that means that spending more on our military then the next highest spending 14 nations combined- before accounting for deployment costs in the hundreds of billions per annum, and accrual based costs in terms of veterans benefits again in the hundreds of billions- is insufficient. We should be spending double what the entire world is spending- neigh triple. We are a SUPERPOWER! Saaaweeeet! That word just rolls off the tongue doesn't it? And what's in it for us? Well, we get to kiss our entitlements goodbye in a decade or so. Old people will just have to tough it out and forgo retirement and medical treatment. The latter should ease the retiree burden anyway.
Oh yea, but there are terrorists and we had to invade. Get this through that plank of wood you call a skull: there was NO terrorist threat in Iraq before we invaded, to go with the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction. That fact is indisputable. It is furthermore the case that our invasion was not a mistake of intelligence but a case of trying to fit the intelligence around the policy. Oh yes, I believe I read that somewhere once.
Do you people have two synapses to rub together? I would be willing to bet that you know people that are going to have to depend on Social Security in your own family, but that doesn't register do it. Do you know why we have entitlements? Because people didn't like the site of their elders unable to produce for themselves dying in destitution and abject poverty. Honestly, this is embarrassing- you sir, whoever the hell you are- are an embarrassment.
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Clean out your headgear new guy
[Read the article: Limitless wrongness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anon, you think we waste GIs, Marines and Iraqis for freedom? This is a slaughter. If I'm going to send my citizens over to kill and maim as they're killed and maimed, my word is Halliburton.