Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 525 Editor's Choice: 1
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Blueranger:
[Read the article: GOP presidential debate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If I may, I will answer your questions as the GOP candidates would:
- How do you propose to make and keep America solvent financially?
Market fairies and tax cuts will cure everything. Also cutting tons of valuable social programs, and privatizing social security so the elderly poor can eat all that surplus pet food full of poisonous Chinese uninspected ingredients.
- How do you propose to care for the citizens of the United States with regards to health care and education?
We're huge believers in choice (except for reproduction) so we'll gut public education, provide more tax incentives for private and home schooling and market fairies will cure health care except for the poor who don't vote for us so we don't look out for them.
- What will you do to increase the quality of the transportation, communication, and energy infrastructure? Do you feel that these essential local, state, and federal services are vital to America's national security and way of life?
More market fairies will wave their wands and fix transportation, communication and energy problems. If we just get government out of the way of the nice giant multi-national conglomerates, they'll be able to help us all out, the way greedy corporations usually do.
- Do you agree that America is a bipartisan nation and that we are all loyal citizens in love with our country and willing to fight to keep it free?
We like Joe Lieberman, we'd keep him around to represent America's 50M democratic voters.
- Do you believe that the immigrant work force is an important resource to the American economy?
Yes, we do think that. That's why we want a giant wall and mass deportations to let the legal immigrants know how valuable they are.
- Do you believe that the Bill of Rights can be suspended by the Executive Branch in times of national crisis or in wartime?
The President has the duty and power under our constitution to defend the nation, so we would support him doing whatever he has to in order to defend the nation against all enemies, foreign, domestic and imaginary.
- How will you handle the conclusion of the Iraq war?
Once we show how strong we are to the Arab world by staying indefinitely, the insurgents will all cave in and meekly accept whatever deal we tell them to accept. As long as we pound the table so long and hard they can't hear themselves think, that's good "negotiations." Maybe we'll even use a shoe to do it. Much more effectual. Anything else is surrender.
That's my realistic (if cynical) take on abridged versions of what they would answer to such questions.
Sorry, I don't think your questions would get the meaty responses you're seeking. Just platitudinous fables for the Free Market cultists. Republicans don't have a plan to govern, other than "hope someone else does it while we're busy making it easier for the rich to get richer" - any good that comes from their policies is always an accidental by product, never a necessary and essential part of the programs.
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oh yeah
[Read the article: And the winner is ...]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And this is why the republicans really prefer a coronation to an actual primary race. With a presumptive front runner, he can just stay above the fray, mouth platitudes and never engage in substance to reveal how offensive republican ideals really are.
Now that they have to compete for votes, they actually feel like they have to answer questions sometimes, and the answers are almost uniformly alarming to anyone who cares about his fellow man.
From Thompson's "ok to fire gays" to others advocating an "aggressive" foreign policy (ie more wars) to endless faith in the free market fairies to more fortress america fences and berlin walls.
It's awful, what these people really believe in when you get right down to it.
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sammis:
[Read the article: Who funds and runs the Politico?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1) Salon is nowhere near as influential as the Politico
2) As Glenn points out, the Politico pledged to be so very transparent and new and different. Glenn is merely holding them to their own word.
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Slogans and sound bites
[Read the article: Have Bill Frist and right-wing bloggers plagiarized their new Iraq plan?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It occurs to me that the reason Democrats are traditionally bad at "messaging" and boiling down their policies to sound bites and slogans is because they have real policies to begin with.
For Republicans, the slogan is the policy. They don't start with a well conceived, detailed plan and try to boil it down for easy digestion, they create the slogan first and try to create the policy details later, after getting elected. If they can't make a good slogan out of something, they won't make a policy of it.
It's no different when you see some organization whose name is a really cool acronym like T.E.A.M. but the words behind the letters are a real stretch, and you can just tell they came up with the Acronym first, then tried to figure out what the letters stood for. "Totally Efficient Activity Makers" or "Terrific Exceptional Anti-Abortion Moms"