Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 321 Editor's Choice: 48
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Why I don't subscribe
[Read the article: Last exit to book land]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If this rant were a book, I'd have to call it rambling and poorly structured. The author conflates the decline of the newspapers first with censorship and then with the disappearance of book reviews and perhaps, ultimately book worms.
I qualify as a book worm. I am in my late 30's. I do not subscribe to a paper. Here's why:
1.) Newspapers have sold out to ads. If I could get a paper that contained only the current news and features, I would happily subscribe. Instead, 50-80% of the paper I'm buying is printed with ads.
2.) Newspapers focus on telling me exactly what everyone else is telling me. Wire services are a boon on the expenses side, but they make your paper exactly like the one in the next county over.
3.) Newspapers think of themselves as a print product. But I don't want more things I use once and then take to the recycling yard. Give me good on-line design or an inspirational end of life for the paper. (I like the idea of paper mache bowls and boxes for take-out food. You can read as you eat!)
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And then there's that pragmatism...
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Since Obama has shown a definite streak of pragmatism when it comes to Illinois coal fields, it's hard to imagine he'd have voted against the war if he'd been included in the closed door briefings and secret information the rest of the Senate got. It's easy to say what you would have done differently when you didn't have to have the whole experience of being there.
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It takes more than education
[Read the article: Accidental babies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I grew up in Colorado and worked with Colorado teens for 10 years of my career. More education--whether it's sex education or abstinence education--isn't going to change things. The two things that are going to change things is kids knowing adults outside of their family unit -- so that they can ask questions without having to live with them every day, and access to birth control.
The problem with the anti-abortion forces targeting Planned Parenthood clinics is that they are attacking the one organization that it out to make it easy for a girl to walk from her high school to a health organization office, get information about STDs, check out the lies her boyfriend is telling her, and get birth control without it showing up on her parents' insurance.
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Bigger
[Read the article: Compromise or compromised?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The bigger disappointment for me is that the Dems have failed to be playful and creative with the bill. How easy would it have been to say "Okay, Mr. President, if you don't want a time line, how about a series of quotas?" When he vetoes that, send him a bill that finances the war with a tax on petroleum products so the war is limited by Bush's own cronies. If he finds a way out of that, send him a bill that matches the spending on the war with spending on renewable energy.
My frustration is local as well as general... I was sending letters to my congressman to suggest things like this... hoping in some small way to encourage a broader discussion instead of getting trapped in seeing only the game as the president sent it back, and got letters back from him thanking me for my concern about high gas prices and assuring me he's looking for opportunities to lower them.
I guess that's what you get when your guy is on to his 2008 election.
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I get so tired...
[Read the article: I feel terrible about leaving but I have to go]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I get so tired of people who get into therapy and immediately start judging everyone in their lives on how immature and childish they are. As if therapy is about learning new words and skills for insulting those closest to us in an attempt to get them to change so our lives feel better. If that's the result of your therapy or your spiritual journey thus far, buckle in, you're about to hit the first corner on the race track.
The LW is clearly conflicted about the choices facing him or her. The claim is made, "I have to go." Why? Are you going to stop breathing if you don't? The claim is made, "He's so childish!" as if name calling as an excuse for stopping associating with a person isn't also childish. "I'm interested in checking out what might be available with Bill." Okay then. You want to leave your current supportive guy and his current supportive family to check out another possibility. Call it what it is and stop making excuses.
It's okay to want to try something different. But basing your decision on what you want to do -- regardless of the names people are going to call you -- is acting with a lot more dignity for everyone that using your therapy to throw labels around to excuse yourself.
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Yes, and then there's the accuracy of his "soul-dar"
[Read the article: Bush on Karl Rove and America's soul]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A news report I heard today reminded me that Bush also said he got a sense of Vladimir Putin's soul and that he was a guy to be trusted, so maybe some calibration is in order.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010618.html
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The HuffPo article
[Read the article: Bush and the World Bank: Bloody but unbowed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The interesting article at HuffPo is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/bob-zoellick-and-medicine_b_49929.html
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And then there's Al...
[Read the article: Nancy Pelosi's Greenland adventure]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with Speaker Pelosi that the American people are ahead of Congress and the White House on this. The Kyoto accords are the gateway to the economy of the future and the US is mired in colonialist thinking.
What frustrates me isn't that the White House continues to get in the way, it's that Al Gore, as a follow up to his Oscar award, released a book criticizing the way the Washington Beltway thinks about thinking!
Al, buddy, why weren't you on the dog sleds? Why aren't you out there with Anderson Cooper touring green-built homes? Why aren't you doing an episode of Extreme Makeover that makes a house livable and sustainable for a needy family? You had us by the heart, and then you went back to talking to our heads.