Letters to the Editor
Stentor
Published Letters: 65 Editor's Choice: 2
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Re:The long march of Dick Cheney
[Read the article: The long march of Dick Cheney]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dick Cheney: Full of shit in the seventies about the war in Vietnam, full of shit in the eighties with his wildly overestimated categorization of Soviet power and their ability to project that power worldwide, full of shit in the nineties with his Project for a New American Century, and finally, full of shit in the 21st century with his over-stated clarion calls about the abilities, will, and WMDs of a tinpot middle-east dictator in an oil-rich country.
When, oh when is someone going to indict this man for having a clear conflict of interest in the Iraq war, and the larger war on terrorism? When Cheney first took office, Halliburton stock was hovering somewhere around nine dollars a share for taking a beating in the Dresser asbestos lawsuits. Halliburton's stock is currently in the neighborhood of sixty dollars a share. Dick Cheney has four hundred thousand stock options, 400,000, just so you can see it in numerical terms. If he exercises his options at this point in time, buying for nine dollars a share, and selling for sixty dollars a share. He he will then spend 3.6 million dollars to buy shares which he can then sell for 24 million dollars, a profit of over 20 million dollars, and all because of Halliburton's no-bid war contracts pumping up their stock price over the last three years.
After reading this article, I have come to the following conclusion, Dick Cheney isn't Darth Vader, he's Senator Palpatine, and George W. Bush is still Luke Skywalker, which means the real Darth Vader was George H.W. Bush. Cheney has powerful aspirations, and let's just hope he never gets the chance to reveal the Emperor, or we as Americans are going to be in truly deep shit.
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Re:Sex Ed
[Read the article: Bad education]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The hypocrisy here is that the government, and Republicans in general, don't even flinch at the logical contradiction exposed by two government-supported informational campaigns, drugs and sex.
We don't want our children using drugs at a young age, and abusing recreational drugs like tobacco and alcohol. So what do we do? We educate them about alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, etc.
Similarly, we don't want our children having sex, or unprotected sex at too young an age. So what do we do? We tell them nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch, crickets chirping softly in the silence.
If parents want to help their children avoid the pitfalls of drug dependency, and addiction, they need to talk to them about drugs.
If parents want to help their children avoid the pitfalls of teen pregnancy, child molesters, sexually transmitted diseases, and other issues, they need to talk to them about sex.
Where is the logic of informing someone about drugs in the hopes that they'll be able to exercise good judgement when the time comes, and make good choices, when you have an exactly similar situation with sex, and the government-approved solution is to do the exact opposite?
It's all about parents squeamishness about discussing sex with their children in a frank and honest manner, grow up people, these are your children. It amazes me that parents will do the bravest things when it comes down to protecting their children, go into burning buildings, step in front of a moving vehicle, attack someone twice their size, but the strongest of them can't seem to steel themselves to have that all-important talk about love and sex with those same offspring.
Additionally, children need to get over their own squeamishness about their parents' sex lives, and parents need to actively discourage that type of thinking entirely. I feel these types of attitudes contribute to parental squeamishness about sex later on in life.
People, get over it, and get over yourselves. Everyone has sex, everyone wants to have sex, and everyone will have sex, no matter how hard you try to stop them. It's time that we as a society just acknowledge the fact, and move beyond it, so that we can move the discussion forward.
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Re:A Few Clarifications
[Read the article: Going beyond God]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Atheists need to question their sacred texts too."
"If you don't believe in God, you're right -- for you, there is no God."
Calling Atheism a belief system is like calling bald a hair color. Unbelief is not the same as belief.
Similarly, science is not a belief system, it is a method to verify or disprove any hypothesis about the physical world. It is the self-correction that scientists provide to guard against self-deception and other errors that can creep into data, hence the peer review process, and requirement that the experiment be repeatable.
Lastly, I agree with Ramon, religion is like gambling, don't much care for it, don't like the after effects.
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Re:Stallone's 60th
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sly's birthday is listed as July 6th on the Internet Movie Database, so I don't understand why he's celebrating it a whole month early. Just the thought that Rocky's turning sixty is enough to make me shudder, what's next, Rocky VII, Rocky goes to the Old Boxer's Home?