Letters to the Editor
jebldmm
Published Letters: 933 Editor's Choice: 164
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After ?
[Read the article: Is there life after Bush?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A cornered animal will fight for it's life and take out, or take a good part of, it's antagonist before it leaves this stage. It's arguably correct to say that Bush's antagonists are free speech, honesty, equal representation for all, courage, responsibility, common sense, maturity, and accountability. I fear what this cornered animal will do in the next 23 months. I fear it far more than when the Republicans held control of all three branches of government instead of the "mere" two that they hold now. I fear it because of something that I was taught when I was a kid: When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Bush has no more integrity. He has no accountability. He has no maturity, common sense, responsibility, courage, or sense of decency. He lost the respect of the rest of the world when he squandered the support of the world after 9/11. And he is losing whatever respect he had in this country. I fear what this cornered animal will do and I think that the only thing that will stop him from pulling the trigger on Iran or Syria or any other country he can use as propaganda fodder, is to have the general staff refuse to obey his orders. I doubt that they could muster the collective courage not to pull the trigger if he tells them to do so, and God love us, I don't want to see us turn into a South American military dictatorship if they do.
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As someone who sat on a plane for 3 hours
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This time I have to disagree. If the system demands immediate take-off without warning, then change the system. Airlines don't control the system, but if they raise enough of a stink I'm betting things will change. At least a law could require that any plane on the ground for more than an hour provide food and beverages to the passengers.
When we were stranded, they gave out one small drink, but no food, and there were kids behind us who were hungry. It was especially frustrating, since the plane was having some kind of mechanical problem and we never left the gate - it would have been simple to let us off while they investigated the problem, determined it was serious, and found another plane, but it wasn't convenient, so they didn't. And we weren't told anything about our connections except that they were automatically canceled because we were going to be late. The flight attendants told us there would be somebody at the destination to help us. When we finally landed, there was nobody to meet us to even tell us where to go to find out about how to arrange another flight home. Fortunately (for us, anyway), our connecting plane had also been held up, due to a mechanical problem (is that common in snowstorms?). We were allowed on the flight, although our luggage got home a day late. The airline: Air Canada, which is not known for bad service.
If airlines can't get people where they need to go because fares are too low, then raise the fares. We aren't given a choice to pay a bit more and get better service. Everybody is competing for the dollars, and it's a race to the bottom in terms of service. Maybe airlines should stop cutting fares and then using cheap fares as an excuse to provide lower and lower quality service. I'd happily pay a bit more for a few more inches of leg room and assurance that I would be treated like a human being. Just because I can't afford first class doesn't mean I want to fly steerage.
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Newspapers can save a lot of money
[Read the article: The "fantastic job" Newsweek's Richard Wolffe claims he is doing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm betting that Wolffe makes a lot of money. All the papers have to do is fire him and his ilk and replace them with stenographers. They can keep a pool going, and send them out whenever the white house has a press conference. All they have to do is ask questions and write things down. A stenographer can do that.
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I wish the would - but he won't
[Read the article: The Lieberman switch?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Lieberman gets too much milage out of being ambivalent. In his current role, he gets all kinds of attention from the media and can pretty much dictate his terms to the Democrats in terms of committee assignments. The Republicans gain by having Lieberman as a nominal Democrat/Independent. They get the credibility of having bipartisan participation without having to make the compromises necessary to win over real Democrats. The only losers in this game are the Democrats and the voter's who would be better served by a Senator who cared more about them than power, and I don't see any evidence that Liberman gives a damn about either of those groups.