Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 211 Editor's Choice: 44
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Thanks, MikeBoyScout and AJCalhoun
[Read the article: The rubes and the elites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You expressed a number of good thoughts well.
I would only add this: the "elite" is not just liberal anymore. There is no more elitist person in this country than the Vice President. Yale dropout, gun enthusiast, virulent opponent of gay freedom unless you're descended from his own loins. The man whose reaction to public opinion is, literally, "So?"
See, the Republicans have gone so far beyond pandering, and into a sort of meta-pandering, where they set in motion years in advance "issues" that their cloud chamber of a noise machine turns from whisper to cacophony every other November, just in time to fool another bunch of disaffected Americans who have never heard any other message other than that those issues are the ones they should worry about.
Barack Obama comes with the possibility of another message. A message that says, "I understand what you're about, and I won't pander to you."
What stands in the way? Hillary Clinton, so wrapped up in her own self that she doesn't see that she's doing the work of Dick Cheney, the work of John McCain. Does she think she's going to out-gun Mr. I-Shot-A-Man-While-The-Secret-Service-Looked-On? That she's going to out-tough a guy whose arms were broken by the North Vietnamese?
Obama had a different idea: he was going to show Mr. Straight-Talk-Express what straight talk really is. Some of us think that's good for the country.
You cannot out-pander the Republicans. You cannot out-distract them. But what letters like MikeBoyScout's say is that you can get through to the people they've been telling to look at the hand, if you have enough respect for them to show you really understand what they face.
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Preemptive War Versus Humanitarian War
[Read the article: Iraq: The ten commandments]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it's not that hard to make a distinction between international organizations authorizing military force to stop genocidal activities and the invasion of Iraq. An invasion of Iraq at the time Saddam was actually gassing the Kurds, for the purpose of stopping the gassing of the Kurds, would have been very different from "regime change." Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor, Somalia, you can run down a lot of the characteristics of that military action and see how different it was; our embassy in East Timor isn't the size of a small county.
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They're not really the jocks
[Read the article: Media hypocrites love personality politics]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dick Cheney was as nerdish as could be. George W. Bush isn't a jock, at best he was a class clown. His father is one of the most standoffish individuals you could ever meet; if he was pouring a beer in the same anecdote to the same people, it would have been Belgian and required a bottle opener. Richard Nixon was pure jock wanna be. Reagan wasn't the ballplayer, he was the announcer--that's sort of AV Club. Jerry Ford (like Bush) played college ball, but he never won a national election so we'll forget, him, just like Dole (whose losing running mate was a real jock).
It's amazing how these myths just grow up when they don't have any substance to them. I've seen John McCain, shared an elevator ride with him. He seemed all right.
For a hobbit.
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Flag Pins (without Pharisees, please)
[Read the article: The harmony between the Right and the media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The proper answer on flag pins is simply, "My patriotism is shown by my love and concern for my country; I don't need a trinket to prove it."
Please leave the Pharisees out of it. We don't have religious tests for office in this country, thank you very much.
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Kudos to you, Glenn
[Read the article: Mukasey dishonesty update]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At least in the Senate (if not in the MSM), the idea that this Attorney General of the United States has become another shill for this Administration's relentless campaign of deceit (see Powell, Colin) is now common knowledge.
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Another otherwise good article marred by the Bosnia reference
[Read the article: Obama, get ready for the "Clinton rules"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I totally agree that there were "Clinton rules" and that Obama is suddenly finding himself subject to them. You might call them the "ohmigod, a Democrat might be elected President/might be an effective President" rules.
But, just like the old adage, "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm not being followed", just because there are Clinton rules doesn't mean Hillary should get a pass on her Bosnia lie. The boast was entirely germane to her campaign theme about experience. It was used in conjunction with her alleged anecdote from the White House about sending the First Lady where it was too dangerous to send the President. And it was just dead wrong.
But it is absolutely the case that McCain deserves exactly as much scrutiny about his mistakes about, for instance, Iranian aid to al-Qaeda, given that he too is running on his alleged experience. The serious question is whether he can keep the facts straight if he was President. No one wants to talk about that, either, though we lived through eight years of Reagan and over seven of Bush (and a couple of years of a post-stroke Woodrow Wilson, but in a far different world) when no one had real confidence they could do so.