Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 269 Editor's Choice: 44
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Cute
[Read the article: My failed lesbian romance]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Ann - I'm so glad you found someone soft and dependable to be there for the worst days of recovering from your divorce. As Melody Beattie (queen of Co-dependancy) says, "There are no mistakes in love", you got what you needed at the time.
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What a joke
[Read the article: McCain's new ad goes green]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is the same John McCain who stood in the way of solar investments because not enough money was set aside for nuclear power. Not only is he bad on economics, he hasn't wrapped his head around the idea that nukes make a bad thing worse... they depend on coal to refine the fuel for the plants. Arizona stands to profit immensely by turning their solar assets into energy for the world, but McCain can't see it. And now he wants to make hay out of admitting there's such a thing as global warming?
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Insanity
[Read the article: Imprisoned to iron, birth illegitimate child]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]These stories remind me of the book "A Child Called It". It is sad to see that this kind of abuse isn't exclusively American, but also a good reminder that we sometimes have to stretch beyond our anger and gut-values to see the humanity of other people.
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In the public interest
[Read the article: Comcast's efforts to protect members of Congress who, in turn, protect Comcast]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Too bad the FCC isn't the watchdog it's supposed to be... every broadcaster in the US rents the right to communicate information because information is in the public interest. Comcast has made it quite clear they're comfortable screening information -- whether it's on the internet side of your account, the phone side of your account, or the cable side of your account. This seems to me to be a blatent violation of the public interest.
Oh wait... the FCC has been gutted by the Bush administration which wanted to do illegal wiretaps in collusion with the cable companies who want protection from breaking the law in multiple ways...
What a tangled web.
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These Techniques Do Not Work
[Read the article: A timeline to Bush government torture]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A major point of the article is how wrong-headed the administration was in using SERE training as a model for intelligence gathering. SERE is not based on what other governments may do to our soldiers to gain intelligence, it is based on what other parties might do to humiliate our soldiers.
I have two people in my life with direct connections to this. One is a former Navy man currently working as a software engineer for a defense contractor. He has had intelligence training. He has been educated in identifying ways that people might approach him for friendship with the goal of getting intelligence from him. He does not ever speak about his work to family and friends. That's intelligence.
Another signed up in the Air Force with the goal of becoming a survival school instructor. Part of her training was SERE training. She's never spoken about specifics as they are top secret, but she was humiliated. And she recognized the images from Abu Ghraib. That's humiliation.
Humiliation does not result in intelligence. It results in bitter prisoners and families, breeding generations of antagonism. Which means that while it's dramatic, it's ultimately stupid as well as immoral.
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Bringing it home
[Read the article: How low can American drivers go?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was in a board meeting for my church last night and there were four mentions of gas prices... two board members report that when they don't *have* to drive somewhere, they're now staying home. Our pastor mentioned that he made his education plans based on last year's plane ticket costs, and those have changed. And then we got to wondering what impact gas and food prices are going to have on our congregation, especially if they continue to go up.
In related topics -- use of our food pantry has gone up. We have finally installed a timer rather than turning the swamp coolers on and off manually and many of the decorative lights that "couldn't" be changed to CFLs two years ago have now been changed.
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Include HOAs
[Read the article: Ask Pablo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As you're getting politically active, don't forget your HOA. HOAs are another political organization with competing voices. Many HOAs are currently dominated by people who are convinced that what was common during their childhoods or their parent's childhoods are signs of poverty and therefore will lower property values.
But the truth is there is a real practical wisdom in having a vegetable garden instead of lawn, having a clothesline, and having a lawn that requires little or no watering. HOAs can be in the business of helping their communities transition by arranging tool shares, bartering services, supplying rideshare boards on their web page, setting up a community garden, offering workshops, and making the community bike friendly. My local bus service even offers their annual discounted bus pass to HOAs that are interested.
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Umm...
[Read the article: Times slams Obama on ethanol]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did the Times mention McCain's ties to the nuclear energy, which takes even more fossil fuel to jump start than ethanol does? Did they mention McCain's stated reason for not voting for the bill that extended subsidies on wind and solar investments -- that it didn't include enough incentives for nuclear?
One expects to see the concerns of a Senator's home state affect his/her politics. Obama is trying to find renewable ways to use the resources that Illinois is strong in, John McCain ignores Arizona's sun and places his bets on manufacturing a million years worth of radioactive waste to go with his hundred years war.