Letters to the Editor
TheF79
Published Letters: 41 Editor's Choice: 7
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pulling strings
[Read the article: Goodling's McNulty-bashing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have this mental image of Karl Rove dancing a bunch of clueless puppets on a stage, each of them pointing at each other. It will be interesting to see how long the puppets can resist pointing up...
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OMG MUSLIMS!
[Read the article: Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]MSNBC just jumped on the bandwagon, with a graphic that said "26% of Muslims under 30 believe suicide bombings can be justified."
Given that something like 50% of Americans approve of dropping The Bomb (or The Bombs, it was unclear) on Japan (not just a hypothetical "can", but an actual "was"), wouldn't the conclusion be that Muslims in America are twice as peaceful as the general populace?
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Polling American Muslims vs. American Jews
[Read the article: Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Piggybacking on Gator90's comment that it's likely that many respondants may have been specifically thinking of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, I wonder if you asked the following questions to 2nd-generation plus American Muslims and American Jews, what their responses would be:
Can a military occupation of another country to suppress violence be justified?
Can suicide bombings of civillians be justified?
I imagine the responses would be drastically different than one another, and also different than the general populace as well, simply because both of those questions are going to be viewed through the Israeli-Palestinian lens.
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File this under...
[Read the article: Wolfie out, Frist in?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Are you kidding me? Maybe we can apppoint an economist to be the Surgeon General next. Maybe the Pope can run NASA. All bets are off in Crazyland!
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Defensive?
[Read the article: Spinning the disaster in Gaza]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Also Israel's wars, starting the 1940's, were hardly defensive."
Do you honestly believe that? I know there has been some question recently on Salon about 1967, but surely 1948 and Yom Kippur were defensive actions.
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Breathtaking intellectual dishonesty...
[Read the article: John Yoo -- then and now]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]even by typical Bush Adminstration standards. I know I (and most likely everyone) occasionally support or oppose some proposition based in part on partisanship. But I'm at least aware of it and try to avoid it, and not, you know, write contradictory Op-Eds in the WSG.
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You'd think SOMEONE connected with The Factor...
[Read the article: Michelle Malkin's hate sites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]would say "Hmmm, I wonder if any people are posting crazy stuff on Bill and Michelle's website before we start this crusade?"
I guess when you're used to spouting inanities with impunity, you don't bother to check for skeleton's in the closet.
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Double standard?
[Read the article: Obama and Clinton, Round 2?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Sounds like a little pre-emptive war in the making from the left-wing of the Dems. Very interesting. Sounds like a little double-standard here as well."
Uh, the a-holes responsible for 9-11 are actually IN Pakistan, so pre-emptive? Not quite right. Though, you're right that there would be more outrage if Cheney had mentioned it, but to my knowledge, Obama hasn't been in charge of a government that launched a real pre-emptive war on a country that had nothing to do with 9-11. Anyone NOT questioning any of Cheney's motives at this point is insane.
Heck, the invasion of Iraq has turned out to not even be pre-emptive: there was nothing to pre-empt! There was a fair amount of (albeit shoddy) debate in the media about the "legality" of pre-emptive wars before the invasion, but that discussion has sort of disappeared from the media, despite the fact the "legality" of the invasion is even more dubious than it looked in 2002/2003.
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"The Left" has been fighting Islamofacism for years...
[Read the article: The Islamists are coming]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We just call it by a different name: The Religious Right
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"Okay, 3, 2, 1... Let's jam"
[Read the article: Credit check]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]BAH-dum BAH-dum BAH-dum ba-da-da
At the risk of geeking out an already geeky discussion, the intro theme to the Japanese Anime "Cowboy Bebop" is probably my favorite intro sequence of any show in the last 10 years or so. The kinetic intro animation full of guns and cigarrettes is perfectly paired with the percussive brass jazz of "Tank!" by Yoko Kanno, performed by The Seatbelts. Sets the stage perfectly for this western/sci-fi/kung fu/noir/dystopic fusion series.
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More than just Grand Canyon's...
[Read the article: The man who put a price on nature]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]where the "right" thing to do is relatively clear, Krutilla also gave us a framework to think about more mundane trade-offs at a local level. We all like forest, and we all like the benefits of development (whether we acknowledge that or not), so how do we trade off the two? What's the right "price"? More forest, but at what cost? More development, but at what cost?
For those who view environmental issues through a quasi-spiritual lens, the notion of prices and trade offs is heresy. They will have little to no use for Krutilla's ideas. But for those of us who love the environment and also recognize the tradeoffs that society faces due to a scarcity of resources, Krutilla (and his legacy at RFF, where I interned) provided an immense contribution.
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Price vs. Value
[Read the article: The man who put a price on nature]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Economists stubbornly refuse to recognize that price and value not only aren't the same thing
What? The entire field of environmental economics is based on the notion that the price of many environmental goods (clean air, fisheries, conservation, etc) doesn't reflect the value of those goods because they are public goods, or goods without secure property rights. I'm not sure who these economists are that stubbornly refuse that value and price aren't the same thing. But considering economists going all the way back to Marshall in the 20's recognized that value and price are completely different concepts, maybe you should update your textbooks or clarify who exactly you think doesn't recognize the distinction.