Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 392 Editor's Choice: 40
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It's sad but true
[Read the article: The president's escalating war rhetoric on Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The American people put the bozos who believe in a new 100 year war in office and, in general, they support making war on innocent people as long as not too many Americans get killed, and they don't have to give up anything (they wouldn't put up with the kind of privations exacted during WW II for Iraq), and as long as it's not being fought in the US with our homes and businesses and infrastructure being destroyed by people using high explosives and as long as it's not American widows and orphans crying piteously for succor. If you've never read Mark Twain's "War Prayer", you should.
The American people have clearly bought into the Imperium and will continue to do so as long as they don't get hurt by it. They really don't care about the misery they're inflicting half a world away. They really don't care about principles governing behavior. They'll only listen if our nose has been pushed in first.
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Fair enough, but...
[Read the article: Forcing Larry Craig's resignation while embracing David Vitter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. Men aren't the only dumpers of spousal units. Women dump men as well.
2. Divorce is not ipso facto bad or the wrong answer (although it can be). Adultery, weather the paid (and illegal) variety or the unpaid (and perfectly legal) variety, is not a necessary adjunct to divorce.
And finally,
3. This is a perfect example of why the government has no business attempting to create and enforce "social norms" outside of the obvious ones like the prohibition on murder, theft, etc. The constitution enjoins the government to promote the common good but the common good is not a social norm. The concept of having the government create and enforce social norms is a very liberal idea - i.e. the big government should be telling us what to do. Having the government behave thusly will only fracture society since not all of society agrees with the norms of the mostly hypocritical "Family Values" movement.
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See things first hand, my ass
[Read the article: The president's surprise trip to Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So Shrub shows up at a relatively remote military base, surrounded by men armed to the teeth, sees essentially only Americans who he could talk to by merely picking up the phone and this qualifies as seeing things first hand? Hell, he didn't see a damned thing other than the military base. If this security surge has been so successful, why didn't he really see things first hand and go to Bagdad and/or the provinces to see for himself how successful it was?
Answer: The man's a coward. He doesn't have the balls to do something like that.
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I hate to be the one to break the news to you but....
[Read the article: How to win in Iraq: Arm everybody!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Iraq is a tribal society. Tribes are families. And, yes, Middle Eastern tribes police and control their own turf (this is not limited to Iraq). That is why almost all Middle Eastern countries are authoritarian - the tribes aren't going to listen to much of anything unless there's overwhelming force available to the speaker (read: central government).
Nobody's said this... but wait! Coming soon to a news broadcast near you... Supporting one side over the other in a civil war is like stepping into the middle of a "domestic disturbance". Ask any cop you know what they think of that....
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It's nice but
[Read the article: Bush on Iraq: "We're kicking ass"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kicking ass isn't the objective. A stable Iraq is.
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Um, well, no
[Read the article: What do you call a female cuckold?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A number of years ago somebody at my work asked me what the female equivalent of cuckold was mainly because I know a lot of words. I ran across a fair number of pretty interesting websites before I asked Merriam Webster who gave me cuckquean and gave me the citation from some famous author whose name I don't remember from the early 20th century.
However comma I would not call Suzanne Craig a cuckquean any more than I would call a guy whose woman is having it off with some other female a cuckold. Cuckold has nothing to do with homosexual behavior. It has everything to do with the fact that when a child is born, you know for sure who the mother is but the father may be a dicier thing. The word comes, of course, from the behavior of the cuckoo bird where the female lays her eggs in another bird's nest which is purely heterosexual. I always found the inversion amusing. The female bird doesn't know whose eggs she's sitting on but the male doesn't know whose child his woman has. But presumably the woman does.
I would say that any woman who's been cheated on by her man with another female is a cuckquean.