Letters to the Editor
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PLEASE GET IT RIGHT: IT IS NOT DEBATE, BUT TV SHOWS.
I don't watch debates because they are a waste of time. Their existence IS purely for TV networks to make advertising money. It should not be called debates, but TV shows.
Debates should be back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between two parties. Here, we have so many participants; each is asked the same questions. There are no back and forth.
So, I suggest that we should all stop watching this type of political shows that only benefit TV networks, but mislead voters.
It is definitely not good platforms for voters and does a disservice to serious candidates (Lets say if one of the candidates make a one-time verbal mistake, everybody will try to get him, but in reality, so what, it is only a verbal mistake, it should not have any bearing on the true qualities of the candidate). After the shows, those "stupid" TV pundits will give "stupid" comments about the candidates. Those people think just because they are on TV and just because they can open their mouths, we should believe what they say. Most of time, what they say are nonsense.
I suggest to everyone not to watch those silly political reality shows any more. They are truly stupid.
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Coors
Why when mentioning the Coors family did you not note that the irony is that they are sponsoring a debate of the democrats when they provided much of the lobbying and financing of legislation under Reagan that changed the FCC ruling formerly holding the airwaves accountable to both sides of the story. Nor did you indicate their ultra social conservative agenda and the fact that john McCain is married to a Coors.
MJ
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Education
Actually, I liked Mike Gravel's anger. I agree with Lee Iacocca. If you are not outraged by what is going on in this country now, you are not a patriot.
Biden came across well. I thought it honest when he said about the man toting the assault rifle that if that was "his baby" he had a problem.
It was Gen. Smedley Butler who said 70 years ago in his "War is a Racket" speech -- read it, if you haven't -- that the only way to stop the "racket" of war was by ending funding for it -- conscripting capital and labor and paying all who worked in the war industries, including the CEO'S, the same wage the soldiers got. He also said the soldiers should decide whether they went to war or not.
Eisenhower said if we were not vigilant the financial needs of the weapons industry would come to determine government policy. Especially if the vice-president were in the pocket of one of those industries and the president's father in another! He also said a "preventive war is an impossibility" and that every "gun that is made" is a "theft" from those who hunger and are not fed. And he would NEVER have misused his soldiers the way Bush is!!
The candidates delivered the usual platitudes about spending more money on education. However, the candidates will never talk honestly about education. No matter how much money you throw at schools, if kids have lousy parents and role models, MOST of them will not do well. AND, no matter how much money you throw at the schools, money can't make dumb kids smart and it cannot make kids (like Bush when he was a student) who do not hunger for knowledge and who only do as much as they have to to get by, either informed or wise. If we want to improve education, our first priority should be in strengthening the family. Some countries pay mothers to stay home with their kids.
ALL the candidates talk about spending more money on math and science. To what end? I know several people who have doctorates in Physics, but who are teaching at universities for relatively low pay because with a Physics degree their only other option is to work for the defense industry. That would be true of many other graduates with math and science degrees as well. Especially as we spend ever more money on the military. What we spend the most on is how to deliver death and destruction, and we wonder why we are hated.
Increasingly we are outsourcing high paying jobs to people in other countries anyway, and we are also bringing in medical doctors from other countries.
I have seen the ads advertising borrowing up to $40,000 a year to go to college. If you come out of college with a $160,000 debt, you would have been better off borrowing that money to invest it and working at whatever job you can find! Education for the gifted should be nearly free in this country, as it is in many civilized countries in the world.
No one asked about impeachment. No one asked if it was THEIR kid in Iraq, would they still be okay with taking so long to get out.
Kucinich was spot on when he said that you cannot separate global warming from global warring. Would anyone like to guess how many millions of barrels of oil this war for oil has wasted. Not to mention how many barrels are being sabotaged by the Iraqi people because they don't want us to steal it. Additionally, the military is probably the largest single source of pollution on the planet.
I also agree with Hal Crowther. Without the draft, we are becoming a nation of the users and the used. Neither the president nor Congress would be so quick to vote for war if THEIR child had to go!!
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The 800 lb.Gorilla Questio:Youtubers and CNN Fail a Test of Priorities
Just to show how little attention is given one of the most threatening wounds on the battered body of the world community, one ommission by the Youtubers and CNN was particularly galling. That one issue which has sparked multiple wars, 9/11, RFK's and Sadat's and Rabin's assasinations, Olympic Munich's 1972 kidnappings, Lebanon's many agonies, 2 generations of apartheid and much of the entire world's post-1967 suffering: the Israeli occupation and settlements- and just what the next US President hopes to do about this overlooked horror.
Not one single Palestine question! Even now after years of proof that this is the core dilema of so much of our globe's many conflicts. The very answer to the question: "Why do they all hate us?"
Perhaps there was just not enough air time, after so much time was allotted to other issues: relative personal preference;gay marriage;Iraq impossibilities; various rehashes; lies on such gesture-only issues as minimum wage and race- all of this deemed more important than Palestine/Israel to the Youtubers and CNN.
Obama took the time to lie twice. (flagging down taxis in NYC?,He doesn't take lobby money?)
Further, I do not believe any of those country clubbers on that stage would ever accept any minimum wage job. Period. Well, Mike Gravel, now, maybe.
All of that fluff and filler and all those warm fuzzies toward the end after a löittle faked tension, the...NO PALESTINE?
The Edwards/Clinton/AIPAC axis question must still be on the CNN cuttingroom floor somewhere. Why such contrivance? Unless, as Wonkette suggests- that Youtubers really are stupid. Well, most of them except Tennesse Jackie and Art, that is.