Letters to the Editor
-
@Marcus225
I imagine anyone living in a REAL third world country would be aghast at you characterizing the U.S. as a third world country.
That was a really elitist statement. We all have running water, indoor plumbing, and I have never known anyone who has starved to death. The U.S. has an incredibly high standard of living. Our "poor" have shelter, food, cars, iphones, clothes, education, and medical care, microwaves, and fridges.
You don't know what poverty is. In Haiti, they are eating dirt cookies.
-
Enough with the career guilt!
Hey!
You creative professionals!
Quit guilting out.
If there's a career we could use less of, it's the creepy MBA-mathematicians who work up ways to sell debt and moonshine to hedge fund investors. Let them pick potatoes.
There have always been a need for artists, musicians, entertainers and creative rabble-rousers, even in the worst of times. Roosevelt knew that; he could have shipped the hungry creative types out to Yellowstone to work alongside juvenile delinquents in the CCC; instead he founded the WPA and had them paint murals and write tourist guide books.
Ya worried? Start working together now. The useless incompetent government Bush created won't be of much help this time around, but you have an Internet to organize with.
-
Stop your Complaining!
The new anthem of the MSM.
-
Not Half Bad for a TV Critic!!
I was speaking to a financial advisor friend of mine yesterday- someone who sits on the board of my company. What I was positing was the idea that I had become too focused on the material items of my existence, the toys if you will. I told him that I was thinking about things in fairly dramatic terms given our collective and recent past. I told him that I realized to my astonishment that I loved my wife just the same when we lived years ago in a small and cramped apartment in Palo Alto. We struggled to make ends meet, but I realized in thinking about it that our life was actually better then- in some huge yet unquantifiable way.
I told him how I had been thinking recently about the reality that I was slowly succumbing to- of how little it would take to be happy, and how I had lost sight of that in the ersatz prosperity of recent years. Of how a relatively tiny TV brought me great happiness in the distant past- and of how that same TV would be laughed at by the person that is me today.
And I told him that in the end I wanted a healthy planet, and a healthy world for my children to grow up in. That no number of material trinkets could replace a safe and prosperous world in which my children would thrive. This then is how my perspective has changed over the past 10 years.
It should be clear from my words that I believe that a lot of Americans are going to be facing a reality check in the near future- my kudos to Ms. Havrilesky for stepping far outside her chosen comfort zone and writing a piece that is as prescient as it is wonderful.
And no, I still won't eat any legume- they are the devil's creation- each and every one of them, and I would rather starve thean eat one of the damn things!!
Well done Heather- very well done indeed!!
Cheers,
dce
-
I like your Moxie...
...and your beans--more please!
I've always felt that the post-911 economy has been Fed vaporware (not worth a hill of beans, as it were), so I played it accordingly. But we're all going to feel some pain from it, and maybe it's not the worst thing.
Heather, you didn't mention your modern local library. A veritable treasure trove! (shhh!!!)
-
Very funny and well-written
piece by Heather H.!
As for the fall-of-Rome comparison - there are many uncanny similarities.
-
Make cheney and bush cut the coupons
In eight years we have gone from having a Surplus Budget & Strong dollar (and low local prices) to the weakest currency (with high local prices).
If a gallon of milk has moved up $1.69 to $4.39 today the blame should squarely fall on our foolish economist president who thought having a war AND cutting taxes for the rich is good for the economy as a whole.
And to reduce the bloating defecit he cuts funding for low cost housing, increasing taxes for mom-and-pop stores, while still reducing taxes for those with $200,000 incomes.
I wish the new coming president orders Bush & Cheney [via executive privilege that Bush so loves] to cut coupons for a month for a poor family, peel potatoes for them, and eat the sorry KBR food that troops are forced to eat. Oh, and make them work in the "safe" green-zone of Baghdad for a month.
The executive privilege orders cannot be challenged in court, since that is what bush has claimed so long, and we get to see our ex-presidents work for a living just like most of us do.
I would sell tickets to watch them work hard peeling potatoes and sorting beans.
-
thingswesaid, why AREN'T we a Third World nation?
Look at the similarities. We have a dictator heading up a junta of powerful economic interests running the country. The "free press" prints nonsense the junta wants the proles to hear. The public's attention is focussed on sex and violence in entertainment - both promoting it and decrying it, it doesn't matter which, it's a distraction either way.
That "running water and electricity" you crow about can be turned off at a moment's notice. And probably will, with the rising price of fuel - which also benefits the junta. In the meantime, we proles are kept at each other's throats so we can't organize. (Anti-gay groups, anti-abortion groups and racists of all stripes keep people from realizing we all have more problems in common than divide us.)
All it takes is the assassination of potential opposition leaders, like the assassination they have planned for Obama in a month or two, and there will be no difference between us and the worst of the third-world dictatorships.
So, anyway, what's Britney doing now?
-
so
you're talking out of your ass huh? cool.
-
Response to tomreedtoon letter
What you are saying is terrifying. What makes it more terrifying is that it could come true.
With obama out of the way, Hillary could easily project herself as "carrying out" obama's vision, as a torch bearer for him, who had loved obama from the start, etc.
Her opponent McCain was delibrately chosen to lose, since he spouts quite often about war, etc.
Emotions rule high, hillary gets elected as per the original plan of the elite and nothing changes: EVER.
Hillary will go onto say we need to beat down AlQaeda in Iraq, withdraw a few token reserve divisions, and send more trained visions to replace them.
The Fed bails out a few more banks, while houseowners continue to lose their homes due to no fault of theirs.
And Obama's vision goes into smoke...