Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 236 Editor's Choice: 42
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Federal Emergency Manipulation Agency
[Read the article: FEMA covered up cancer risks to Katrina victims]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We should all be skeptical about what information is released by the government, since they protect business at the expense of the populace. The EPA should now be renamed the Environmental Pollution Agency, since that is their underlying goal now that the corporations control the government.
While Anonymous seems to have experience in the matter, (though if he gave his credentials, it might be more convincing - he could be an industry lobbyist, after all) the main point I got from his letter is that US citizens are exposed to carcinogens in every setting, not because it is normal or relatively free from health risks, but because of governmental and institutional support for exploitative capitalism. You are right, Anonymous, we are all at risk.
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Our last best hope...
[Read the article: Edwards bows out, but stays on message on the way]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...to have the 2008 election about issues rather than celebrity. To have a champion for the struggling working class rather than someone who's paid off by the corporations, to have someone with integrity rather than someone obsessed with appearances and ready to capitulate to the lowest common denominator.
Damn, Americans are shallow, shallow, shallow.
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Thanks, I couldn't have said it better myself
[Read the article: Conservative crackup over McCain continues]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]" When did it become the Republican Party's top priority to 'get things done?'"
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Sweet
[Read the article: Tug of Dole]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is SO gratifying to see Republicans at each others' throats, proving that infighting is not an exclusively Democrat Party pastime.
When they folded in the religious right and the arm-chair hawks into the rich white guys' Greedy Old People party, they created the fault lines that will weaken and split what used to be a monolith into a bunch of quarreling interest groups.
Democrats can benefit, if they can stop their own infighting and start piling on. Here's hoping.
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Yawn, more immigrant fear-mongering
[Read the article: Memo from U.S. Christian conservatives to Europeans: Have more babies!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The point that almost all immigration alarmists forget is that the second generation - the children of the first immigrants - will be integrated more fully into the new culture than the parents, and their children will be virtually indistinguishable culturally. Language, work ethic, civil rights, etc. , all will be adopted wholeheartedly.
Even Islam can't hold children in an tribal culture when the temptations of the West surround them. Just like in the US, where mixed race children are inheriting and succeeding without much fuss - just look at Obama, Bill Richardson, and all the movie and music stars with mixed parentage - Europe's Muslims will slowly shift into full citizens. There will be growth pains and how Europe deals with those pains is significant. But there is no holding back the tide.
The Right, as usual, is using fear to achieve hatred for political means. They have no concept of historical fact (as Karnak so clearly demonstrated - women were full partners, and usually leaders, in society til the Christian church took over northern Europe.)
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The real culprit
[Read the article: "My uncle was laid off from that American Standard plant"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Remember when a successful company made good products and supported it's workers and management in a solid middle class lifestyle. Local markets absorbed that company's inventory, and shipping was limited to the major cities in that region. When quality was job one. When profits were plowed back into the company. When skilled workers stayed with the company and trained the new generation. When the only imports were novelty items that weren't necessities of life. Companies were frequently owned by families whose name on their products showed that a person stood behind them.
When Wall Street's gamblers started setting the value of companies, the actual production of goods took a back seat to stockholder perception. Maybe the stock market had value once upon a time to allow companies to generate new capital to invest in hard goods, but now the only ones benefiting from public companies are the uber-wealthy CEO's who usually have no idea of what life is like on the production line and could care less. Greed overcame quality as job one, and the workers became cogs in the generation of wealth, not products. Outsourcing is the next obvious step in the creation of wealth, because the American production line is meaningless in that paradigm.
When I look for a culprit in this spiraling tragedy, I see Wall Street and the leeches that have sucked American industry dry. Is this a naive viewpoint? Is this the third rail? Just like the cancerous insurance industry in the medical world, the stock market siphons wealth from the people who do the actual work in this country. It is time to reform both at the least, and abolish both at the best.
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Copycat movies
[Read the article: "The Other Boleyn Girl"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't you hate it when we get 3 or 4 versions of the same movie all bunched up together, on the big screen and the little? Helen Mirren's Elizabeth I vs Cate Blanchett's, for example. They seemed virtually identical to me, though I'm just a movie-goer, not a historian so I wouldn't know which is more accurate. But as much as Mirren and Irons are wonderful actors, I liked Blanchett and Fiennes more, that's all. The younger actors' chemistry was far more exciting.
So when I go through this review, I am expecting, but not finding, a comparison to Showtime's The Tudors, which might be affected and overacted, but damn, Rhys-Meyers is hot, hot, hot as Henry! Eric Bana is NOT king material, people! And, at least R-M has the accent down and the sex isn't hidden behind Hollywood scrim. The Other Boleyn Girl feels like the copycat in this comparison, a latecomer and underachiever.