Letters to the Editor
jebldmm
Published Letters: 933 Editor's Choice: 164
-
I watched this in Sacramento
[Read the article: A terrible mall beauty, about to be born]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Over 10 years, I watched hundreds of acres of beautiful pasture being turned into McMansions and malls. I remember how beautiful it was. Acre after acre of open fields, dotted with the occasional oak. The oaks against the sunset were magnificent. In the spring it was green, and all summer brown with the oaks providing green contrast. Cows grazing - never too many. The land wouldn't support a lot of livestock.
Now, it's row after row of houses. It happened so gradually that I was hardly aware of it, until one night in the late fall when I was driving home a bit late and noticed all of the streetlights. Where there had been nothing but darkness, there were streetlights as far as they eye could see. It was surreal, as if the houses had gone up overnight. Looking at the area now, it's hard to believe that just 10 years ago it was open space.
-
In other words: I'm not going to answer
[Read the article: "A null set"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Basically, he just said "I'm going to rephrase that question into one that I want to answer and ignore the actual question". He'd make a good press secretary.
-
Bush has always been a figurehead
[Read the article: The Republican Party is the party of Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They needed somebody who had enough charisma to win an election, not a brilliant leader. I noticed the first criticisms of Bush from the right immediately after the 2004 elections. Before the election, they carefully controlled the public's access to Bush, limiting press conferences and carefuly filtering all of his contacts with the outside world. People didn't know how foolish he was, because all they ever saw was a man acting "Presidential". After the election, his handlers started setting him up to take the fall for all of the Republican Party problems. They started giving him more press conferences (so that people can see how ridiculous he is) and started letting him make public decisions instead of having all of his rulings filtered through others. Does anybody think that the phrase "I'm the decider" would have been allowed to reach the public in 2003?
The leaders of the Republican party know that they will take a popularity hit as people realize that they've been duped into voting for an incompetent leader, but they're gambling that they can spin people into believing it was all Bush't falut by the next election, so that they can dupe people into voting for false promises once again.
-
By their standards... they're right
[Read the article: The American Life League finally tells the truth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you start from the assumption that a newly formed zygote has the same value as a newborn baby, then it makes sense that killing that zygote is a more serious offense than allowing it to be hungry. It's a matter of perspective. In reality, what doesn't make sense is all of those people who are anti-choice but who seem to think it's okay to "murder babies" if they are the product of conception. People seem to be incapable of holding consistant views on abortion. Well, anti-choice people anyway.
-
Left off a word
[Read the article: The American Life League finally tells the truth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My letter doesn't make sense unless I put the world "involuntary" in front of "conception".
-
Another Perplexing Diatribe
[Read the article: Healthy, my ass]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a little perplexed at the idea of a "progressive" organ allowing a person, who is arguably as racist as Louis Farrakhan or Ernst Zundel, a platform upon which to spout "regressive" dogma.
There are two points here that bear examination: First, and as usual, there is no verifiable scientific data to corroborate Ms. Dickerson's assertions. Her perspectives, clearly falling into the realm of a belief system as opposed to serious human study, define her articles as opinions, and not objective reports. That brings me to the second point which is: If we have standards that allow us to define the suitability of readers' polemics to the public discourse, why don't we have standards that would allow us to define the suitability of writers' contributions to the public discourse. If I, or any other reader, were to send a letter to the editor with the same kind of claptrap bled from the poison pen of Ms. Dickerson, the note would be edited beyond recognition, or ignored altogether. We would be regarded as anti-social radicals or self-serving fools. But she, consistently, is allowed to vent "mental adventures" cloaked in a veneer of hypothesized fact.
I submit that if Salon is going to selectively ignore it's progressive responsibility to present material that is of social value then it should, in all fairness, hire a polemicist from an alternate social perspective to provide counterpoint to Ms. Dickerson's opinions. Ann Coulter would be a nice choice. You could have the two of them going at each other hammer-and-tongs, as an object lesson in what happens when you allow ego and supposition to override the common good and enlightenment. Or were you just happy to see a large number of letters being written in response to her perplexing diatribes?
ejb
-
Another attack will not prove Bush right
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Another attack will only provide further evidence of Bush's incompetence. People will rally around the flag - but the Democratic candidates will have an entirely new platform on which to run, national security. Right now the right can use the fact that there haven't been any new attacks on American soil since 9/11 to cleam that their defensive stratgy has been effective. It means no such thing, of course. There were 8 years between attacks last time, and terrorists are not in a hurry. But if an attack occurred, there would be a lot of people asking how this was allowed to happen.
Sadly, another attack will occur at some point. Probably after a new administration is in office and we are out of Iraq. The terrorists need to keep us afraid. They need to provide us with reasons to attack countries in the middle east so that they can continue recruiting and gaining power. If we hadn't reponded to 9/11 by attacking Iraq, this could have been avoided, but I'm not sure there is any way to put that genie back into the bottle now.