Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 380 Editor's Choice: 40
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Can't Buy It
[Read the article: This is your subprime brain on drugs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Regulation is rarely the answer to anything except in cases where you're trying to maintain a level playing field. And, no, I don't believe in laws and/or regulation designed to protect me from myself. What the borrowers who borrowed in the hopes of being able to resell their house and buy another before major rate hikes hit them were doing is well known to the poker playing community. It's called trying to fill an inside straight. Ask any poker player about the wisdom of doing that.
You make the statement: "...if individual homeowners had been a bit more rigorously defending from the depredations of the "system."" [I believe you meant defended, not defending]. The individual homeowner has an excellent defense system. It's called a trash can. That's where all the too-good-to-be-true offers I get end up. It is the individual's responsibility to assess their ability to shoulder what is probably their largest debt obligation, not the state. Of course, you have to have truth in lending laws because you can't make an intelligent decision without adequate knowledge. If you allow yourself to make decisions based on some dopamine soaked portion of your brain instead of that portion of your brain that makes rational, analytical decisions, you're likely to take a shot in the ass.
If you take away the ability to make stupid decisions, you also take away the ability to make smart decisions. It's all part of that freedom thing that vanishes quickly with the onslaught of regulations.
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Keep pounding away at them Glenn
[Read the article: The rigid pro-war ideology of the foreign policy community]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The mere fact that the "national discourse" is unable to say anti-war without also saying left wing tells you that the arbiters of foreign policy are saturated in politics.
A decade ago or more I realized that Washington figured that someone died and made us god. When Slick Willie shot a couple of cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan after the bombings of American embassies in Africa, I thought to myself, Gee, it must be nice to be able to go around kicking countries who can't kick back. Translation: We committed an act of war; who's going to call our hand on it? Not the country in question, they don't even have the capacity to mount an attack on the United States. Not the UN which is incapable of sanctioning any of the permanent members of the security council.
The more that we ignore the "rules" of civilized behavior, the more we will destabilize the world and bring the very thing we claim to want to stop - terrorism - to the fore as people who can't fight back "fairly" will fight back by any means possible.
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Bumper Stickers
[Read the article: War Room contest: Pick the Democrats' bumper sticker]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Democrats:
We're just like the Republicans... only different.
Republicans:
We'll do better in '08.
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But of course, it's OK
[Read the article: How our seedy, corrupt Washington establishment operates]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]for us to decide to change a foreign government. One would have thought that someone, somewhere in Washington would remember what happened when Kennedy decided that the Diem brothers weren't doing what he thought they should be doing in Vietnam.
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Glenn, you need to read today's Tom Tomorrow
[Read the article: The Democrats' responsibility in the wake of Gonzales' resignation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The part where the cartoonist falls out of bed.
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Yes, and I have a complaint of my own
[Read the article: Dentists and laundry and air-conditioning repairmen, oh my!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why is it that "The Women's Movement" demeans stay at home moms?
I've known since I was 17 when my parents took off for a week leaving me in charge of my three brothers and sisters and the household (I got a week off school but in the end it seemed like a bad trade) plus a temporary stint as a single father that running a household is time consuming, detail oriented, hard work (Mom, where does all this laundry come from?). Not to mention knowing who to call when something breaks, the impact on the family finances of a variety of choices plus the negotiation skills required to deal with repair people, school officials, doctors, dentists, etc, etc, etc. Running a household is most distinctly a non-trivial job.
And, yet, "The Women's Movement" would have you believe that a paying job that requires a much narrower set of tasks and a much smaller skill set makes you superior to a woman who has a much broader job description and vastly more responsibilities.
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I'd love to believe you
[Read the article: The waning power of the War Myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I don't. Until 2004 you could blame Shrub for Shrub's war. In 2004 the American people not only kept that jerk in office, they also returned the coterie of imperialist minded enablers to Congress to continue his anti-American agenda of civil liberties violations and war. At that point, the people of the United States of America lost all credibility.
When the American people sent a slightly different crew to Washington in 2006, they did so not because they suddenly woke up one day and realized that doing things that cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is wrong (and making the 9/11 fanatics look like the amateurs they were) but because they were tired of the war. Oh, the poor dears, they got bored. Their mindset hasn't changed; they're just put off by the dreary reality and mundane cruelty of an occupation. Occupation isn't the dopamine induced high of War.
And they're about to get it again. All this talk of Vietnam is the beginning of the buildup to the attack on Iran. When that happens, the dopamine rush will kick in and everybody will be in favor of the authoritarian crazies in Washington who are abetting the destruction of my country. So that's why the War Myth will work again. He just needs another war.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
- Pogo