Letters to the Editor
jtanneru
Published Letters: 53 Editor's Choice: 1
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"if John McCain was at a Seder this past weekend, he surely would have liked..."
[Read the article: Bill Kristol, great man of sacrifice, on the duties of Passover]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kristol is a blowhard. He's got nothing noteworthy to say, so he spends his words on pointless polemical statements.
Note the disdain in this statement:
Now, there’s truth to Obama’s emphasis on the Seder as a teaching moment for those involved. But he’s not satisfied with that. The whole country has to listen up.
followed by
So if Clinton’s Passover message is liberal, and Obama’s is multicultural, one might call McCain’s Zionist. There’s a clear choice of worldviews here — and not just for Jews, but for all Americans.
So, one might ask, does the whole country need to listen up or not? It really depends on whether Kristol wants you to win the Presidential campaign in November. Why do media organizations like NYT (Salon is not entirely innocent on this one, either) pay columnists whose only purpose seems to be promoting one candidate over another. Assuming we don't already get enough of this at the water cooler, wouldn't we expect the candidates to pay the paper for these advertisements?
Kristol would probably argue that he's not out of ideas at all. He had another idea about Passover and the Revolutionary war. He decided not to write a whole column about it, but he threw it in for free at the end of today's column:
I might add that both Democratic campaigns missed an opportunity last week. They seem not to have noticed that the date of the first Seder, April 19, was also the 233rd anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. So, a few days before Pennsylvanians vote, the candidates could have commemorated not just the Exodus from Egypt but also “the shot heard round the world,” thus identifying themselves all at once with political liberation, religious freedom and — yes! — the right to bear arms.
In case anyone didn't feel that Zionism could be equated with our own national struggle, and in case anyone didn't know that Mr Kristol believes these two could be equated, and in case (of course) anyone thought Mr Kristol was bereft of new ideas, here's a freebie. Not just for rabid neo-con blatherers, for all Americans.
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Does anyone remember 2004?
[Read the article: A man with a triangulation plan?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That election proves that policies matter very little compared with style. Bush campaigned on losing policies then. And he stayed in office. All he had to do was keep repeating the same wrong answers, and they echoed across the news media, and the map was red at the end of election night.
I believe the Democrats can avoid losing this year's election, and I believed it in 2004, and 2000, and even in 1988. But I'm now convinced that it won't be easy. Somehow, the Republicans have a populist streak that draws votes, even from people who don't really agree with their ideas.
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Does this mean Joe Biden won't be VP?
[Read the article: Obama proposes bankruptcy relief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I remember Biden's support of the 2005 bankruptcy law. I wonder if Obama's use of the law to contrast himself with McCain takes Biden out of the running.
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We all understand "Why"
[Read the article: Relieving taxpayers of political consulting fees]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I think "How" is a much more difficult question. If you eliminate the Office of Political Affairs, will that be enough to make sure the next president doesn't hire a political advisor? You can't, it seems to me, legislate integrity into these slimeballs.
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Betting on Democrats to Stand Up To Bush?
[Read the article: Lies, damn lies, correlation and causation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's wrong with this statement?
There's no guarantee that the Democrats will go along with Bush; the Congressional ban expires on September 30th, but it can be renewed. And though Democrats obviously have an uncanny ability to cave on a dime, they still control Congress and their presidential candidate still opposes drilling.
Alex, if I was betting your money, I'd bet against Congress standing up to Bush. Just because they overrode the Medicare veto last night doesn't mean they suddenly have a backbone. After all, Bush said "the ball is squarely in Congress' court," which usually means the Congress will drop the ball soon.
And if the ban is going to expire anyway, Congress would actually have to act to renew it, which means they need a supermajority to override filibusters and a veto. Do you think they can do that?