Letters to the Editor
Serai1
Published Letters: 502 Editor's Choice: 32
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The thing I keep asking myself is
[Read the article: Supreme Court switches gears on Guantánamo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why does this surprise anybody?
The events of the last six years have been ugly, saddening and disgusting. But surprising? Not a bit. From the moment these thugs took office, I for one (and many others) have been predicting the way things would go: they would find some excuse to start attacking other countries, they would ruin our environmental and social agencies, they would pack the Supreme Court, and give preference to power-mad fundamentalists, and trample on the citizens' rights, and, and, and...
From the beginning, I've heard people say, "Why be such a pessimist? They may be Republicans, but they're patriots! Didn't you see how mad they got when 9/11 happened?" (That last one I actually got from a co-worker who used it as an excuse to exonerate Bush of his gung-ho war crap.) So after a while I stopped saying things like that, mainly because I got tired of having to crawl under my desk to retrieve my eyes after they'd rolled so far back they popped out.
These guys were always power-hungry thugs. Bush 43 was always a hypocritical, lazy, self-absorbed idiot. Cheney and Rumsfeld have been pulling this kind of crap for thirty years, for gods' sakes, in and out of the White House.
We're simply on the same road we've been on for the last couple of decades. We've been on it since Reagan was elected. (Having grown up in California, I always knew what a right-wing, duplicitous asshole that guy was, and really, I thought his presidential campaign was a joke at first. I mean, who in their right minds would even consider putting him in the White House?) This is just the logical extension of where we started out.
The time to stop all this was way back in the 80's, when these political thugs and crazy fundies started getting serious power. You don't just let an invasive weed grow and grow and grow and then try to whack it down once it's completely covered your house. You don't just let an infection get worse and worse and worse until it's taken over the whole body and the patient is raging with delirium. You nip those problems in the bud. If we as a nation have been so lackadaisacal, so gullible, and so hypnotized by our mass media's messages of paranoia and disinformation that we let our country get taken over by the worst sort of banana republic dictators, then...what the hell did anybody expect would happen?
This is what they've been planning for at least 30 years. If we were too wrapped up in ourselves to notice, we deserve what we're getting.
(Not that I think we should stop trying to rectify things, mind you. As the Norse well knew, just because you have no hope of winning does not mean the battle is not worth fighting. We may be "fighting the long defeat", but at least those of us doing so can go down knowing we tried. There's nobility in that, even if it's the sad kind.)
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The Duchess and the Queen! The Duchess and the Queen!
[Read the article: Free speech for the rich and powerful]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, to paraphrase the riddle:
How many Supreme Court Justices does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Nine. And it's NOT FUNNY.
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Golden gift
[Read the article: Ah, yes, but he's still got 570 days to go]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But some of those gifts yesterday from the Supreme Court had to make him feel good.
And he's got another doozy coming up: today the Supreme Court went bank on their earlier pronouncement and decided to hear the case of the Guantanamo detainees who are suing to have their day in court.
Tell me, considering the decisions the Court made this week, how many people here are in any doubt as to which way that case will go?
Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?
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*snorfle*
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Berk presents in this strip a sublimely snarky commentary on the recent Apple fanboy silliness - as exemplified by a certain other columnist on Salon.
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argh
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not surprising that the MSM ignores bloggers. After all, the internet news phenomenon threatens their livelihood. I certainly don't pay any attention to them anymore. Why should I, when all they do is spew propaganda at us?
On another note: Glenn, you're an excellent columnist, and I find your work to be refreshingly intelligent and erudite. But I had to suppress a strangled yell when I came across the horrendous pseudo-word "incentivized" in this column. What's wrong with "There are many incentives that might compel the established media to ignore..."? I hope you're not giving way to the awkward and silly conflations of language that are the hallmark of the sloppy writer. It would be disheartening to see such ersatz English cropping up in your otherwise sterling analyses.