Letters to the Editor
midnight04
Published Letters: 191 Editor's Choice: 9
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Dementia
[Read the article: Shouldn't my dad be told that he has Alzheimer's?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is a danger that realizing the depth of the faculties lost in dementia can trigger a catastrophic reaction that will send the demented person over the edge into total panic or despair. The demented often need the denial to keep it together. I studied it as a researcher and then saw it with my own mother in the six months before she died. She seemed to have it together but she didn't, as my sister and I discovered after she died. I was closer and I could see it happening but never let on and I'm glad I did that.
There is never an easy answer. The soldier's mother's comfort with the situation is the most crucial aspect of the dilemma right now and she should be the one to decide. She has to manage any results of what happens with his father, not the soldier. He can suggest that his mother talk to the doctor about telling his father about the diagnosis but he should not do anything about it himself.
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Masochism
[Read the article: What the Huck?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Huckabee is having fun running for President, he is one of the most successful masochists on record.
Unless, of course, he is telling himself he can actually win the thing (or that it's worth winning). Maybe he's imitating Jesus as a sacrificial lamb given over to the bad Romans/Democrats in 2008. Maybe he thinks his sacrifice will save the soul of the Republican Party (although the GOP and soul is an oxymoron).
Meanwhile, although voting for him is unthinkable, he's a lot of fun. Maybe he can appear as guest host on SNL or get a late-night talk show.
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What if...?
[Read the article: McCain's risky strategy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What if one of those overstressed and overstretched soldiers in Iraq goes on a massive killing spree, doesn't shoot himself to death and then testifies as to what is really going on in Iraq? What if our own soldiers start dying again in great numbers? What if something happens that uncovers the truth about this awful and unneeded war? Would its champions then back off? Would McCain himself look like a collaborator in mass murder?
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Necessary move
[Read the article: A note about War Room's reader comments]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I moderate a forum elsewhere and I know that it can get ugly. There have been calls for my head for banning people who come in with anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-Muslim slurs. I will not let the discourse fall into the gutter and I am absolutely in favor of moderators taking a rather strong hand until the fools get the idea that they are not welcome.
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Horrible
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had a horrible experience at a Doc in a Box about eight years ago that still leaves me angry and bitter. My brother-in-law almost died when another Doc in a Box misgiagnosed a heart problem. I don't trust the quality of the people they employ and I wouldn't go near one again unless I had an arterial bleed on the highway -- if even then.
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Downer cattle
[Read the article: Would the Democratic candidates make your food safer?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Downer cattle should never be allowed into the food chain.
E coli is not the major danger. CJD, the human variant of BSE (bovine spongioform encephalopathy) sometimes takes years to show up so we can't be sanguine about nobody getting sick yet. When the kids who ate the beef start failing in school, becoming clumsy with objects and show signs of emotional instability, the issue will be decided. The brain biopsies, if they are done, will show the characteristic rosette patterns of damage that cattle do who are dying of BSE.
All downer cattle should be immediately taken out of production and brain biopsies done on them. They can be returned to production if the characteristic damage is not found and they have to be traced back to their feedlots if it is. It is likely that the feed the cattle were raised on included amplification by sheep meat from scrapie-afflicted sheep.
Putting those cattle into the food chain after they couldn't walk is tantamount to murder and I would love to see that company's executives tried in court if any kid dies for their greed.
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Swooning
[Read the article: A new face for American diplomacy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The idea of having a President who can think coherently and isn't Darth Vader's dummy makes me giddy.
Look, it's a complicated and dangerous world out there and we need someone prepared to live in it. We need a POTUS who can speak for us in a way that commands respect. We need a POTUS who can make our country stand for something. We need a POTUS who actually thinks that the world is more than 6,000 years old and that species evolved. We need a POTUS who isn't going to make 1% of us disgustingly rich and leave the rest of us to dangle. We need a POTUS who doesn't leave great American cities under water and who won't drag us into a war by lying through his teeth.
If Barack Obama is the guy, so be it.
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Isn't he dead yet?
[Read the article: What will Nader say on "Meet the Press"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The best thing Nader can do is to announce that he is afflicted with something terrible that prevents him from imposing another Republican disaster on the American people. Nothing fatal, of course. Just a severe case of decency and humility that will keep him sidelined.
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Faith? Or commitment?
[Read the article: Are you going to hell?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think what we need is not faith in God (although it's not a negative) but rather commitment to a faith in something. We need to be tightly yoked to something greater than ourselves. It can be humanism, ethical commitment to our fellows. It can be a movement like equal rights for women, people of color, gays...anything. What we need desperately is something that allows us to transcend ourselves. Otherwise we are nothing but unconnected atoms bumping against eachother in a very chaotic Wilson cloud chamber.