Letters to the Editor

Letters posted here are associated with the following article:
A scary Halloween with Sarah Palin In central Pennsylvania, the Republican base is afraid of Obama, and lost in fever dreams of a neo-Soviet nightmare. But it's all in God's hands.
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  • It Does't Work Like That.

    Barbara, a huge Palin fan, said that "any woman who can manage a state, five children, and the housework, can manage a country.

    Every time I hear this I just want to scream.

    Stupid hurts.

  • Selling Fear

    I have a sister who is an evangelical who refuses to speak to me because I am going to vote for Obama....also I am a godless Catholic...oh, well.

    She says if I vote for Obama I am going to hell...I guess these people know everything.

  • With love: Back the Hell Off

    Some of these posts are so hostile; it frightens me almost as much as Halloween Palin. Why is it we humans must see things in black and white? "They" are bad for not supporting Obama, so therefore they are terrible, ignorant people. "We" are good because we support Obama, so therefore we are brilliant, wise and worldly people. Get off it. We are all on this earth together and we don't all think alike and that's (believe it or not) a good thing. My guess is that if you met any of these people that Rebecca Traister writes about, in a different setting, like at the park or at a ball game and sat down and had a chat with them, you would like them, think they were nice people, maybe even find you have a lot in common with some of them. We need to stop this "Us vs. Them" mentality. And if you've really been listening to the brilliant Senator Obama, that's exactly what he's been talking about all this time. “There are no red states or blue states; there is only the United States”. So, get over yourselves and start reaching out. We all have the same serious problems and we need to put our heads together, whether we disagree or not, and start to try to fix them. Enough of these nasty, sniping comments at people you don’t even know. Now go out and vote. And spread a little love, while you're at it.

  • Graduated income tax = commie

    The Republican ticket's attacks on Obama as a socialist are only viable among people who think that a graduated income tax equals Marxism--who are too bedazzled or inattentive to realize that (1) the income tax has ALWAYS been graduated, (2) the topmost bracket was, under Eisenhower and even Reagan, MUCH higher than it is now, and (3) taxes are a tool of capitalist, not Marxist governments, so shut up already.

    Such people can probably also be persuaded that speed limits on highways are a tool of totalitarian control.

  • 3catz

    Yeah, true, things and people are more complicated than black-and-white. BUT...people who are really nice, love their children, etc., can be total shits about other things. Lynch mobs weren't totally composed of psychopaths - they were complicated people who were mostly nice (I guess), but had the occasional, ah, bad day. When THEY're demonizing us, it's hard to be tolerant and inclusive. (That's what great leaders do...) (And what I hope and pray Obama can do as prez...)

  • Commie turnips

    All this commie-mongering just makes me laugh. Turnips! Soviet high-rises! These people are all grandparents and retirees, if you notice. People who would never vote for Obama anyway. No one under the age of forty even knows what "socialism" is, for Pete's sake. It's just not working. It's amazing to me that this is the best the vaunted Rethug attack machine can come up with at this point. Turnips!

  • Are these people morons or do they just choose to be ignorant?

    This is what happens when people cannot or do not think for themselves and prefer to trust people just like them rather than educated, smart, informed people. They are completely manipulated and just do not have a clue.

    And with Palin's lack of understanding of even the basic principles of democracy (come on, it doesn't take long to read the constitution and if you want to work in politics you should make the effort to understand policy enough that other people are not manipulating you) it truly is the blind leading the blind.

    I'm sorry, but these are people I have no respect for.

  • Shadowlands

    More and more it seems that if ultra-conservatives couldn't band together and find something or someone to be afraid of, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. While crediting their religious faith as the cohesive force of their numbers, ignorance and fear are the true binding agents of their paranoid epoxy. By now, though, most people--including increasing numbers of conservatives--realize that looking constantly over their shoulders for the boogeyman is exhausting and counter-productive, and on Tuesday will affirm that realization with a vote for Obama.

  • Scare tactics

    What a phenomenon, this scare tactic. I have a feeling that many of these people, who are evidently very susceptible to believing the flashiest, scariest scenario that underscores an adamantine world-view shaped largely by the ancient fears of the cold war, are going to wake up sometime soon and realized that they have been "had" in the same way radio listeners woke up the morning after Halloween Night in 1938, when Orson Wells fooled them with his famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast.

    I have a feeling that Sarah Palin will go down as the same kind of historical (hysterical?) footnote, one that causes us to laugh at how ridiculous we can be.

  • God's hand...

    I love how if McCain wins it's the fulfillment of the Lord's will, but if Obama wins it's the Lord "allow[ing] us as humans to stumble and fall". It must be nice to have a belief system that explains every possible outcome in such a way to validate your own preconceptions.

  • Sarah Palin: Fearless of birth

    I'm so glad Sarah Palin's not afraid of having kids. What a refreshing change from 200-plus years of childless Democrats.

  • Afrais of America

    Please do not think I am a racist when I say that every person in that video is actually afraid of black and brown and Latino America. They want an America that is white and religious and static and very, very fifties. An America where they get to keep all the stuff while the other folks work in their little ghettos. Their beliefs go beyond isolationist into something surrealy un-American, actually.

    How frightening- for me and my family and others who look like us.

    The Republican Party has become a dinosaur, as surely as the world continues to turn.

    Weird.

    Tom Ridge, who I saw the other evening sounding jovial and conciliatory, and his moderate Republican base are in serious trouble.

    THey had an opportunity to transform the party, and I think Ridge sorta tried, but the insularity is so great that without a transformative candidate they had no chance. And then their guy chose Palin.

    So, they sink.

    Good riddance.

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