Letters to the Editor
midnight04
Published Letters: 213 Editor's Choice: 9
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Kinky fantasies
[Read the article: And Obama's veep is ... a Republican?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have had lots of kinky fantasies in my long life but I have had the good sense to be selective. An Obama Hagel ticket is just that, a kinky fantasy. If Hagel were honest about his views and looked squarely at the mess the neo-con weakened Republican Party had become, he would have defected and become a really good Veep pick but he did not. That makes me question whether he can balance reality against nostalgia for a party that no longer exists.
I could, however, see him in the Cabinet just as Clinton picked Cohen. Cohen was a registered Republican. Granted, he was more liberal than Hagel but I think tapping Hagel's good sense on Iraq and other defense issues would be useful to Obama and the country. I am sure Hagel would be willing to be part of the Obama cabinet.
We need to have four years of good sense.
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Rebound
[Read the article: My failed lesbian romance]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This sounds like a rebound relationship and those don't work.
It also seems as if two essentially heterosexual people were testing out something, which doesn't conduce to good relationships.
It is great that they had a friendship like that, though.
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Snakes on a plane
[Read the article: A McCain-Lieberman ticket?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would be reluctant to see Joe Lieberman as anything more than the junior member of the sub-sub committee on the sex life of the Adelie penguin of Antarctica.
He has gotten into bed with James Hagee and betrayed his party and his country in so doing. He has also betrayed the Judaism he professes to love and value. Hagee wants all Jews slaughtered and Lieberman compared this man with Moses. Good grief.
When the Democrats pick up some more seats in the Senate, which they are sure to do, Lieberman will be relegated to well-deserved obscurity.
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Morons
[Read the article: Barack Obama is a Muslim, and other stories]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only way we can limit morons in American life is to make sure that their mothers take their birth control pills. There is no way to make birth control retroactive -- at least legally. Nor can we prevent them from voting if they are able to hide their illiteracy enough to sign their names.
The fact that some of them can amass just enough brute intellect to think they know something is unfortunate. The fact that a person with the mind of a five-year old can get on the internet and pretend that he or she is a grownup boggles the mind. Nonetheless it happens.
I frankly don't give a hoot about Obama's religion but I do care about his positions. Mike Bloomberg has had some good things to say about Obama and has attempted to quash some of the rumors because they are not about Obama's religion at bottom. They are about his race. The Muslim thing is a code for saying "Psst, he's a n****" and there is nothing anyone can do about that.
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Mugabe and Mobutu
[Read the article: Zimbabwe's descent into electoral terror]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Robert Mugabe is so like his contemporary, Mobutu Sese Sekou.
Both of them emerged from colonial oppression of native peoples and both of them took over a system that was essentially broken. It was broken because the colonial powers thought that blacks could not govern themselves so they never trained a civil service echelon capable of smoothly running a government. Such a contingent was dangerous, in fact.
When they took power, neither of them knew how to do anything but pamper a group of sychophants and clients and destroy whatever white infrastructure was propping up any sign of economic life. The result: Mobutu ran the Portuguese out of Zaire and renamed everything. Mugabe appropriated the very land that was supporting Zimbabwe and throwing the whites out on penalty of a horrible death. So the whites ran instead of taught the Africans how to farm and how to administer land holdings. The result was that Zimbabwe, like Zaire, fell into anarchy of sorts but an anarchy supported and enforced by dictatorship. Mobutu stole eleven billion dollars. It's not clear how much Mugabe has appropriated.
Meanwhile the Zairians and the Zimbabweans starved, got sick and found no medical care available. How sad.
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Stare decisis
[Read the article: Supreme Court strikes down D.C. gun ban]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am sure that there will be further cases coming down the pike asking for clarifying decisions.
I note that even Scalia was careful to make sure that the right to own handguns is not the right to shoot 32 people at a school and that there have to be meaningful curbs on the right.
I don't feel safe in an armed society.
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Krauthammer
[Read the article: Anti-science conservatives must be stopped]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like Hannibal Lecter, Charles Krauthammer is an example of what happens when a psychiatrist goes bad. Krauthammer has turned into a right-wing troglodyte and has lost any touch with the realities of the world. If he were in touch, he would realize that the air he breathes is as threatened by the global warming forces as is mine and he would be running down the street screaming about the issue.
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Surprised?
[Read the article: Bush's top general quashed torture dissent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the positive aspects of the coming electoral disaster for the Republicans is that they can take the next four years out of the White House and in the minority (solidly) in Congress and purge those elements that led up to this debacle of a Presidency. They can kick the neocons out on their collective asses, tell the religious right to engage in solitary pleasures that don't involve influence and ask themselves the questions they need to ask to be fit to govern again.
They need to get back to first principles, to budget sanity, to being an effective force for rather than against the Constitution and to requiring intelligence of their leaders as well as ethics. They need to root out people like Rove and like the lawyer who hired only politically pure Aryans from Regent University, Pat Robertson's law school, where they teach Bible law as eventually replacing the Constitution.
When they have had four years of limbo and self-examination, they may be fit to start trying to govern again but the rest of the country is going to be very skeptical of them for a long, long time.