Letters to the Editor
dwg
Published Letters: 145 Editor's Choice: 18
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Paula Dobriansky
[Read the article: World to America: Cool down]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From Wikipedia: "She is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton, in which a group of conservatives advocated a US military attack on Iraq."
and: "According to her official Department of State biography...Dobriansky's responsibilities include 'a broad range of foreign policy issues, including democracy, human rights, labor, counter-narcotics and law enforcement, refugee and humanitarian relief matters and environmental/scientific issues.' "
Kind of fuzzy on those responsibilities, isn't she? If I was sitting next to her on a plane, I'd get up and move. Boo, indeed.
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Fog, amphetamine, pearls
[Read the article: For Clinton, a "voice" and a victory]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The media will have its field day: Hillary aches just like a woman; Edwards is from Mars; Obama floats like a butterfly, stings, etc. So it's a horse race or a snow-struck college game. Is it the second coming? Can we get a witness? Who's your daddy? Who's your momma?
Let the press turn nuclear microscopes on the candidates, and monitor their blood pressures hourly. I don't care. At the end of the day, I want health insurance. I want to unravel the massive blotch on our nation that is Bush. And I want the issue of global warming to be placed front and center on our agendas and our consciousness.
Tonight we have such wealth - an outpouring of progressive support for several great Democratic candidates, any of whom would do this country proud. A woman, a mixed-race man with decidedly non-Anglo name, a standard-issue Wasp who might be more progressive than those that push the envelope. What a strong field, what a great race. We have the turnout, we have the floor. Let's dance.
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You don't get it
[Read the article: Will whites vote for Barack Obama? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama isn't black. He isn't white. He's of mixed race and that puts him outside simplistic profiling and cliched tennis-match reporting in one fell swoop. The media doesn't have a paradigm elastic enough, and it shows in every article that second-guesses his white-appeal, or doubts if he's "black enough". He transcends, as mixes often do, and profoundly.
Is Giuliani Italian or American? Is Hillary just a woman or merely a wasp? Can we elect a Mormon if he's good looking, or a warmonger who's the walking wounded? This election, as no other, pushes envelopes in new and surprising ways, and I'm fascinated that Obama's politics of inclusion mirrors his DNA. Who'd a thunk, after Bush broke the glass-basement, that we'd see something new under the sun?
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Anonymous:
[Read the article: Bush's delusions die in Gaza]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Very, very good post.
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"...We believe that the most reliable guide for our country is the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens."
[Read the article: The dismal state of George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And they don't get much ordinarier than you Bushie Boy.
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Damn
[Read the article: A farewell note]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tim - I'm so sorry to see you go. Yours has been the only blog I felt I needed to read, several times a day in fact. Your wit and insight and info made me feel up to date and taken care of. I don't understand your decamping for Politico - a very strange place indeed - but I wish you all the best and thank you for glorious postings. Well done.
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We the people
[Read the article: Obama and Clinton plan to cool it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Terrific article. This is the most crucial issue of either Democratic candidate's potential presidency. Aggressively dealing with the economy, health care and the war is essential to our nation's health, in the broadest sense. But climate change puts us squarely within the web of the world. No seas can separate us from its predicament. No ignorant press can make it go away. Only we can.
The fact that both candidates have positive, detailed programs is heartening, and outweighs the useless attempts to make them appear so profoundly different. They are not. Either will provide a sea change, hopefully, after 8 long years of mean-spiritedness. Either will be remembered in future generations for their action, or lack of it - not their campaign.
And either can provide the inspiration and the fight needed to address a planet's malaise - if we require it of them, and of ourselves.
Thanks Salon for posting Mr. Romm's urgent appeals.
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Down the mine shaft
[Read the article: Obama and Clinton plan to cool it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A few articles from today's BBC online about climate change, culled from 15 minutes of browsing. Lots more on the site, with useful links.
- BBC March 2008 - reporting that some glaciers are melting more than twice as fast as they were a decade ago, and the implications for impact to water supplies, affecting millions:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7299561.stm
- BBC December 2007 - the increasing rate of disappearance of Arctic summer ice - it may be gone by 2013, rather than 2040 or 2100, as previously thought.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
- BBC December 2007 - the expansion of the tropics as the world warms, and its effect on global food supply and extreme weather:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7126069.stm
- BBC October 2007 - CO2 levels rising 35% faster than expected since 2000, partly because of decreasing ability of land and ocean to absorb it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7126069.stm
It's just not about arguing with the canaries anymore.
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had_enough has got it
[Read the article: The crash in Republican economics ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with the pithy summary, and would add one more thing:
"Unqualified buyers" are basically people toward the bottom of the ladder. Don't throw everything including the kitchen sink at them - falling real wages, gorged energy companies, outsourced jobs, revolving credit-debt, imaginary war/money pit, bogus tax relief - without expecting that they'll tumble downwards, taking the fabricated mega-profits after them.
A good system benefits the widest constituency; a bad one the fewest. It's a well-made web vs. a hammer. Anyone can be part of a web; hard to be part of a hammer.
Fat cats: ignore the fine line between class and servitude at your own peril (or at least of those on the rungs just below you.)
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God forbid
[Read the article: Seduced by the Dalai Lama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that a global icon of goodness would be in charge of anything.