Letters to the Editor
bignose
Published Letters: 435 Editor's Choice: 22
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Conrad Y - I never tried Crack, either,
[Read the article: Slave to the boob tube]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But that doesn't mean I am unqualified to rail against it.
We have two young kids, no reception and no channels, but we do have a TV and DVD player.
My biggest gripe about TV is the commercials, and the easy availability of crappy programming. There is so much great stuff available online, and from netflix etc. that regular and even cable TV is rapidly becoming irrelevant. This will only become more and more true.
I will repeat - There is great programming out there. But young kids DO NOT need to see any of it until they are 2 years old.
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Conrad Y
[Read the article: Slave to the boob tube]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, I think you were missing my point, but I may not have been clear enough.
I was respnding to your assertion that just because someone doesn't have (commercial or cable) TV, they don't have standing to comment on this issue - I think that is dead wrong. Hence my crack analogy. It was a little hyperbolic, but I think that there is some addictive (and passive) nature to TV (and the computer, too) that makes it relevent.
The rest of my post was not directed specifically at you, but you raise some valid points:
"One, I never said it was ok for kids <= 2 to watch TV. I actually think this is a good thing (to keep infants off the TV)."
We agree on this.
"Two, your crack analogy is false and hyperbolic - there is of course no redeeming value in crack, but you yourself admit to the existence of worthwhile TV programming."
Patially hyperbolic, per above
"If you don't like commercials, get a DVR (e.g. Tivo) and skip 'em. (That's what I have.) If you don't like crappy programming, then don't watch it! How easy is that!
So, what are you doing about all the "crappy" stuff online? Or is it TV = bad and Internet = good? Your knee jerk reaction against TV but not against all the dreck on the internet shows your bias."
Fortunetly, I have not had to cross the full span of this bridge yet - My kids are still young. ANd I never denied that there was a lot of crap on the internet - THere is probably more. By the time I really have to address this, in a couple of years, we will probably have to have some sort of parental controls over computer access, which is much easier on the computer that on a TV, and doen't require the reactive TIVO-ing, but rather the more proactive pre-editing out of shows to download. Would it be true to say that computers carry more options, more ability to control, and more risks? Maybe.
No, It's not gonna be perfect in this pervasively digital age - I'm gonna have to, y'know, be a parent! I think that is the upshot here.
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I hate it ...
[Read the article: No revote in Florida]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...When they count all the votes
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A quick survey of War Room
[Read the article: War? What war?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]will reflect this lack of coverage, also. No surprise, though, because the occasional article that does address Iraq gets few letters, unless it's obvious pandering to Salon's base (See Cheney's recent comments), where the response is predictable and uniform.
Too busy emphasizing those things that drive us on the left apart, I guess.
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Regarding the polls
[Read the article: "You don't care what the American people think?"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A couple of commenters (and Cheney) have pointed out that the President should not subject to the whims, or fluctuations, of the polls. I think that is correct. In principal.
However, what we have, over the course of 5 years, are not mere "fluctuations", but a clear trend of anti-war sentiment based on ever-increasing evidence of half-truths and outright lies by this administration.
Go fluctuate yourself, Dick.
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I can't speak for the rest of the country
[Read the article: Architecture of a recession. ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But the signs here in VT are ominous. I work in commercial and residential construction, and not only is it slow now, but when I speak to various players (Architect and engineers, and the people who review plans for the state) there is very little coming down the road for the summer. The bigger contracting firms that normally go after the $1 mil plus jobs are going after $50k jobs. Just today, I heard that the Bear Sterns fiasco has caused the local branch of a national company to cancel tens of millions worth of work.
To say it looks bleak would be an understatement.
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No two ways about it?
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I see some back and forth in these letters about military intervention or not, as if that were the only choice.
Times were that our economic might would bend anothers ear.
Those days are over, thanks to myopic thinking. And now that our only tool is a hammer, everything does look like a nail.
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FIA?
[Read the article: Clinton's passport file breached as well]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The State Department has refused to release the names of the companies that employed the contractors who looked at Obama's file. "
What? We can pay them, but we can't know who they are?
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Outmanuvered
[Read the article: Hillary's bridge back to the 20th century]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Many posters here (And in other threads) insist on blaming the democrats losses in Congress in the nineties on WJC dalliences, or incompetance of one kind or another, and now on HRC "failed" attempt at health care reform.
Bull.
While putting HRC in charge of this initiative might have been ill-timed, it was not ill-considered. The Clintons were prescient enough to forsee this issue, but the rest of the country could not through the rose colored glasses of economic prosperity.
Instead, the right chose to laugh at the CLintons, and turn this issue against them, in a manner that is consistent with a longer strategy that goes back 20, even 30 years, to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats.
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When is an endorsement not an endorsement?
[Read the article: Al Gore, Cabinet minister for climate issues?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When you use softball, probably planted questions, to intimate that a popular, but uncommited, Nobel Prize winner is on your side.
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Information vs. Intelligence
[Read the article: The DOJ comments on the Mukasey controversy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Way back when in college, I had a teacher who was fond of saying that ideas and facts are no good without each other. "We need ideas about facts", he would say.
We have in America an "intelligence community", not an "information ministry". Information is the thirst for knowledge run amok.
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Bucky1...
[Read the article: The DOJ comments on the Mukasey controversy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Our constitution is not overrated...It's underused, in my opinion.
I was traveling through a couple of major airport hubs recently. I don't travel much, so this won't be news to many of you, but while waiting for my flights, or bags, I was constantly reminded, by a soothing womans voice, that our current security terrorist threat, or whatever it's called, is orange. The message would repeat every ten minutes or so.
I couldn't remember what that meant I was supposed to do (Be watchful? Buy duct tape?), and the voice didn't tell me. So I just glazed over after awile.
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Survey says...
[Read the article: Public opinion on Iraq ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That everyone knows what they want right now. Back in the beginning, 2002, the polls said (I think) that people wanted the war - Did that make it right then?
Let's have a discussion about what's right, not what's popular.
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LWM
[Read the article: Public opinion on Iraq ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You refuted your own statement "There is no fixing Iraq at this point" when you started talking about diplomacy. ANd this is my point.
I mean, I really have very little idea of how to proceed from here. I know it ain't the current course, but I feel that We (America) broke it, and so we bought it. My point is that it is not a simple as "withdraw or stay", which is how it seems presented in the media, and in Glenns article. This either-or view hurts the Democrats.
It will take a proactive and analytical (And presumeably, Democratic) administration to get beyond the simple minded US Vs. Them view we have propogated now, and through some stratagy of carrots and sticks and hard negotiation, achieve peace.