Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 277 Editor's Choice: 45
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By the seat of the pants
[Read the article: How will Barack Obama get to 270?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wasn't sure when I started reading that this was going to be a "gut check" article. His statement that he's "ignoring the polls", was a first indicator... a pollster not looking at or doing polling is a what? Second, remember that this guy is part of the pack of advice givers who've lost the Democrats a number of elections.
At any rate, reading his assessment of my state, I'm very suspicious of his assessments of any other state.
In Denver, the mayor prior to the black one (Wellington Webb) was a Hispanic one (Federico Pena). The black/brown tensions exist -- most notably in gang activity. It is true that we don't feel particularly threatened by voting for a racial minority... unless you remember that Tom Tancredo's home district is here, and he keeps getting re-elected in spite of breaking his promise of voluntary term limits. Ken Salazar replaced Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a native American. Also Ken's brother John holds a Congressional seat.
Interesting, but not mentioned in the article, Mark Udall, Democrat and part of the Arizona Udall clan, is running for Wayne Allard's Senate seat. So we have two reasons to look at Arizona this election cycle. I'd love to hear a gut reaction with that factored in.
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Precident
[Read the article: Gender lessons]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I remember 1977 my mom excitedly sat me down to hear "Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!" for the first time at the Indianapolis 500. Janet Guthrie didn't win that year and mostly disappeared off my radar. But Danica Patrick is all over it, and I don't even watch racing any more.
I don't know what's next for Hillary. While I like the idea of an Obama/Hillary ticket, I'm also rooting for Secretary of Health and Human services for her. I think she would rock in that job. (And I want Edwards for Attorney General, and Gephart for Department of Labor, and Richardson for Secretary of the Interior, and Gore in his brand-new Carbon Tzar post, and Kuchinich in the Department of Peace. sigh.)
I do think Ms. Clinton has paved the way right up to the door of the Oval Office. I think the next serious woman candidate will have a much easier time walking through it.
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Rove's not the only one...
[Read the article: Maps show Clinton better against McCain than Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rove's not the only one with maps that look like that... The Democratic-leaning www.electoral-vote.com comes up with very similar numbers from the head-to-head polls.
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The good news
[Read the article: My husband wants a different form of eroticism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The good news is that you now have a free pass to tell your husband exactly how betrayed and set up you feel, how unfair you feel his exploration has been, and how much he owes you. You can actually rage at him without feeling like he's going to leave the relationship, because that's what he's said he wants. Furthermore, if he really wants to get in touch with his feminine side, you can make him talk about his feelings before he gets any kind of reward from you.
It sounds like he might even be up for dressing in cute little boy shorts and bringing you drinks on the beach.
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You see what you want to see
[Read the article: Did a coding error contribute to the credit crunch?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As you say, blaming the code is a pretty low excuse. The reason the code was "wrong" was because it looked right to everybody at the time.
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C'mon
[Read the article: Teen Alex Phillips puts girlfriend's nude shots on MySpace: Child porn?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Two MySpace articles in two days and no commentary on Circuit City closing up shop? Multiple posts on the brilliance of Grand Theft Auto, but no comment on Microsoft's insidious Silverlight ads... I mean I followed a link about greening my life and ended up at a squeeze page asking me to install Silverlight... and I don't even know what it is! That's what I depend on this column for.
Please... a little less teen techno journalism and a little more for the rest of us. Even if you have to log on to a PC a couple times a week.
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Lady
[Read the article: Wheels of change]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But remember that a Victorian Lady was a certain class of woman and women world over were doing hard physical work. Perhaps the bicycle reminded a certain class of women that they didn't need to be chained to men and that class had the money, time, and freedom to argue for political change.
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LOL
[Read the article: Lieberman takes swipe at Democrats, Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Further left than it's been any time in the last 20 years? You mean *when they were losing* Joe? The policy of shifting to the center has only allowed the GOP to fall of the right side of the table. We sped past Nixon's campaigning on Universal Health care and right back to Warren G Harding when the public trust and public lands were payolla for the friends of the winning party. That's not progress, and it's not good for America or the world, Joe.
It was that strong, Republican fighting man, Eisenhower, who warned that allowing the military industrial complex to infect the government would be a grave mistake, KBR, Enron, and Blackwater are evidence that he was more right than even he knew.
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Nice
[Read the article: How Rock Band saved my marriage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My partner and I play Guild Wars together and I like the teamwork and communication that comes from it. Yes, it's imaginary, but it's still a puzzle with a solution -- whether it's obvious or hidden. Finding the solution by drawing on our individual strengths is something we don't generally have in the rest of our lives.
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"Keating 5" McCain
[Read the article: John McCain's subprime taint]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, this is a real story. The question is, how to get traction on it? Everyone I know thinks that some day they'll be in the wealthiest 10% of the country, so they don't look too hard at what that class is really doing. My friends think they can get there by the sweat of their own brow, so they're okay with people like Bush, McCain, Rove, and Gramm erecting barriers to keep other people out.
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They're going to have to work very hard
[Read the article: Are congressional Republicans doomed?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's going to take a lot of work -- likely more than they can do in six months -- to convince Americans that conservative values are something other than cronyism, war profiteering, and meddling in other people's business. They're the party of the mean old men and appearing meaner really isn't going to help.