Letters to the Editor
Rambling Rose 22
Published Letters: 757 Editor's Choice: 6
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Foreign Investment The Solution?
[Read the article: The politics of an economic nightmare]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gee, do we have anything left to sell to the foreigners here in America? They already own us, don't they?
I mean, we don't exactly make anything anymore. The country is getting about as dumbed down as it can get, although I have a feeling it's going to get a whole lot more ignorant before it gets any smarter. We don't value education and we don't value saving and we don't value long-term development of real growth.
No one can get a decent rate on a savings account or a CD so no one bothers to save. I laugh at those credit card commercials that "round up your purchase to the next full dollar" to "help you save." What a joke. We can only save when we are spending?
There's plenty of free money (actually hundreds of millions)from Haley Barbour in Mississippi to give away to rental property owners to build more units and make moren money, and no one thinks there should be even a token 1% interest paid back to the American taxpayer on those funds? Nope. They think the rest of the country owes them and should make them whole again from Katrina.
Well, Ohio and Michigan lost about 500,000 jobs in the last 8 years (between the two of them), and no one declared an emergency and showed up to rebuild those states and help make those half a million families "whole again."
No one running for President will address ANY OF THOSE issues, will they? This just isn't about a real estate bubble and a credit problem with the banks. America is a former shell of itself and THAT'S REALLY WHAT NO ONE WANTS TO SAY OR DO ANYTHING ABOUT!
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How Preposterous!
[Read the article: Obama's historic run heads south]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is absolutely unrealistic for Obama - or anyone else for that matter - to think that race would not, or ever, be a factor in the presidential campaign this year.
Face it, we see Mr. Obama doesn't look like white folks and we see that Mrs. Clinton wears lipstick. We also see that lump in Mr. McCain's cheek no matter how many "good side" camera shots they take. And we see that John Edwards really has a nice head of hair and his wife is probably a few pounds overweight too. And Mitt Romney is so polished that we don't want to touch him because we might leave smudged fingerprints on his veneer.
What I don't get is Obama wanting to keep acting like "it" - the issue of race - doesn't exist in this campaign. Somebody remind Michele Obama that the voters in Illinois, downstate and elsewhere, already elected a black female U.S. Senator, Carol Mosely Braun, before they elected Obama. He wasn't breaking any new ground.
Michele Obama begs the issue when she replies, "We've been through this before." Maybe so, but the country has not EVER been through "this" before with both a female and half black man running neck and neck for President of the United States. So please humor us Ms. Harvard Law Thang as you brush "this" off like annoying little pieces of lint on your designer jacket.
That's the problem with these limousine elitists candidates. They try so hard to make us believe that they are "just like us," when the reality is, no they are not. That's the hypocrisy of the Obama campaign: The charade of trying to be at once both different and the same.
I's the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss: The fact that if Obama starts talking about race, his campaign is over. He knows it and we know it. But, if he really is about change, if he really does have a case for bringing the country together, and if he really thinks he is the right catalyst for that change, then WHY NOT BEGIN THE PROCESS RIGHT NOW AND START TALKING ABOUT IT? Doesn't honest leadership demand more than a simple "we've already been through this before?"
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Will Whites Vote...Period?
[Read the article: Will whites vote for Barack Obama? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here's the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews."
And they ("poorer, less well-educated white people...") tend not to vote either, so what does that say? If they are not voting, then they are probably not influencing outcome by any large measure. Yes, they will be underrepresented in surveys, as are voting adults who don't have land-line phones anymore.
People vote for whom they want to vote. Period. And maybe they've been screwing with the vote alot longer than we originally thought. Maybe the Florida 2000 Chad Festival was NOT the first time the Grand Old Party partied.
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Here's What You Do...
[Read the article: I'm a brilliant scientist and I fear for the world's fate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Get rid of the helpless you are feeling about your and our future. I'm sure as a brilliant scientist you understand theories about "predestined to happen by cause?"
Why not use your intelligence, your experience, etc. to begin to speak up and speak out? Why not give ordinary Americans the benefit of what you have learned, the real skinny on our issues, and help them understand why we need to make the changes? Sometimes these things coming from anyone but a politician is what's needed to wake up people. Hey, give us break, most Americans don't even balance their checkbooks anymore let alone understand "peak oil" arguments. Start telling us what our problems are, and start giving us some solutions.
While you might be accurate with your predictions, you come off as very depressed because of the hopelessness you have attached to it. Your problem isn't all that you've seen, learned, and heard. It's that you've written off the rest of us! And if you ever change your attitude about the rest of us, then you will find your own particular brand of faith.