Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 234 Editor's Choice: 42
-
Praise Michael
[Read the article: "Sicko"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...for-profit healthcare and the other instruments of the corporate state, like student loans and bottomless credit-card debt, perform a crucial function for that state. They undermine democracy by creating a docile and hardworking population that is addicted to constant debt and an essentially unsustainable lifestyle, that literally cannot afford to quit jobs or take time off, that is more interested in maintaining high incomes than in social or political change
This is so Fucking True. And it is at the bottom of all of the inequities and idiocies of our country. We are merely fodder for the drug industry, the medical industry, the fast food industry, and on and on. God Forbid that we should ever wake up from our Matrix-like slumber and realize we've been had and poorly used in every way possible. Capitalism could fall! So Pass the vasoline and keep working, shopping and eating crap, you sheep!
Yes, I watched them manhandle and mistreat my dear fragile mom through chemo and they BRAGGED about how efficient they were at pushing people through the system like cows. (NEVER go to the Mayo Clinic for cancer treatment!) And all it cost her was her home. And her life.
I constantly rant long and hard on the sorry state of the healthcare system, and usually at and frequently with, healthcare professionals. But it seems that Michael Moore is there already, once again, the vanguard of the Truth we need to hear, deperately. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
-
Two words
[Read the article: A bicycle built for a better world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Golf carts.
Some designs are street legal in some towns. Most neighborhoods don't need highway access to schools and stores, and golf carts could share bike lanes as well. They are protected from weather, where bikes are not. Many are assembled in the US, if not all components made here. You can get one on Craigs List for as little as $1000.
Seems like a town council could handle bike lane widening and regulations.
Just an idea.
-
Just Say Bullshit
[Read the article: The complete myth driving our Iraq "debate"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We have watched Bush administration and right-wing opinion leaders, spout absolute trash as though it were the truth, continually, for 6 years. At the same time, the media has repeated this trash as reinforcement, continually, with all the outlets staying "on message" and it has had the Pavlovian effect on all, educated, uneducated, skeptics and believers.
Having been programmed to believe, the American public buys each new idea immediately, and there is no one significantly credible person to snap their fingers and say, "wake up now." Carter, Clinton, Edwards and even Obama have tacitly agreed to play by the Beltway rules and refuse to take the highly risky move of saying "Bullshit" in the face of their lies and smears. Feingold is the only one who has been consistent legislatively, but he has ducked the responsibility to be the public face of dissent.
Even Al Gore, who is arguably the most credible Dem out there, now pushing his new book (haven't read it, though), is missing the point. It isn't that reason has been abandoned, or that America's addiction to television is at fault. Democrats keep trying to apply reason to the right-wing noise machine vomit, but it just doesn't work, which is why liberals seem to be caught in logic traps publicly. You just can't apply logic to bullshit.
No, we just need a continuous stream of Democrats and liberal commentators to say (and vote) "Bullshit" over and over again, til that safe word, acting as the finger-snap of the hypnotist, wakes the country up from this artificially - induced coma.
-
Crawling out of the woodwork
[Read the article: Memorial Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My, but there are a lot of Iraq war apologists and belligerants showing up on this thread. I checked and most have only posted to Salon in the last two weeks, including Mr. PoliticalRealityOnline, who just showed up to push his bs two days ago.
Methinks some conservative blogger has pointed out that it's good fun to drop propaganda on the liberals, and boy the thing to do is push war on Memorial Day. Yes, let's add to the death rolls for the glory of these idiots who mistake video games for real life. Forget that it's the poor and lower middle class who are taking the brunt of the losses, because the military is one of the few real career choices they have that don't involve pimps, gangs and drugs. Hey, in a video game, you never see the face of the first-person shooter, right, just the bad guys (those ragheads).
And forget that the generals themselves, even the ones that are well-behaved, in the neo-cons' view, consistently say that there is no strategy for Iraq outlined by the administration, only tactics, and there is no clear mission for the soldiers to carry out. This is not a war, but an occupation against indigenous insurgents. If these trolls want to fight the "Enemy," let them go to Afghanistan, where bin-Laden is hiding and the Taliban is re-emerging. Or just be the couch-potatoes that they are and play another round of your first person shooter game.
Because you don't admit mistakes in a video game, and you get more lives to lose. Always more lives to lose.