Letters to the Editor
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Obama Unqualified
Why give so much attention to Barak Obama? The man is unqualified to be either President or Vice President. I'm a Democrat and if people are foolish enough to give him the Democratic nomination, I will not vote for him. We currently have an unqualified President, and look at the disastrous results. When unqualified people take office, they must rely on a team of "advisors" to tell them what to do. I would rather have a President with the ability to make his own decisions, but who knows how and when to seek advice. This is what a leader does.
Salon and other media outlets seem more intent on finding somebody with what they call "star power." They want us to vote with our emotions. Well, feelings are not facts, and feeling good about Obama or another similarly unqualified candidate does not make this candidate Presidential material. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is not the place for on the job training.
Furthermore, world leaders will not be persuaded by a novice with "star power." They will use his inexperience against him, and by extension, against America.
If Obama wants to be President, then he needs to gain the requisite experience. In other words, he must WORK for it.
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Oh Yeah...
...this essay is definitely a One on "The Finger Scale."
Enjoy that cigarette, Joan.
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Hey, It's the 21st Century
You know, I get kind of tired of reading screeds by senile pseudointellectuals from the last century, like that old bag Camille Paglia.
Why not give someone like JC Miller a column. Salon needs to give a voice to someone who is fresh, who has something to say. Sorry but Camille is so 1995, even though in 1995 she was so 1982.
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Susan
Read history much? Heard of Kennedy? Lincoln? Neither had appreciably more experience than Obama, and less impressive intellectual credentials (president of the Harvard Law Review isn't given to teacher's pet). To compare Barack with the dimbulb loser in the White House is preposterous. Widdle Georgie had been an abject failure at everything in his life before KKKarl and the Bush wealth connections assassinated Ann Richards' character and installed Codpiece in a figurehead governorship where he did little but execute minorities without regard to guilt. Obama may not have the longest resume, but he's damn well qualified. I lean towards Edwards, but I'd work my butt off to get Obama elected if he's nominated. Name a republikan you prefer.
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For Camille
I'll be keeping my Premium membership specifically FOR Camille, thank you very much. I'm still a bit at a lose as to why, two articles in now, people are so vehemently opposed to Camille being here. She's written for Salon since the beginnning, and on her good days is spot on. I won't lie, I have faults with a good deal of the things she says, but I find her opinion and synthesis of various ideas fascinating and stimulating. I've never come away from a Camille article not feeling challenged, or even worse like I couldn't remember what I had just read.
Two articles in, and I'm ready for more.
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regressive "Progressive" platitudes
Camille Paglia is one of the best reasons to log onto Salon. Her analysis is always a breath of Democratic fresh air rising above the monotonous droning sea of the "Progressive" propaganda that gets spun by the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Tim Grieve, Joe Conason & Co. While most of Salon's political contributors just ape their right-wing doppelgangers by spewing regressive leftist slant via their sanctimoninious reactionary histrionics, Camille comes up with gems like-
" What is this morbid obsession that liberals have with Fox? It's as if Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda, are so shaky in their convictions that they cannot risk an encounter with opposing views. Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding. But no, that's not enough -- every spark of dissent has to be extinguished with buckets of bile."
Paglia's take on Hillary Clinton is right-on, Hillary's got issues, expediently apeing a southern accent to show she's a "sistah", waltzing around in her teflon coat of infallibility, Clinton is as freakish, gender or otherwise, as Anne Coulter is.
The neolibs deserve being spanked as hard as the necons do. Good going Camille.
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Camille Paglia
The only thing I don't read in Salon is Camille Paglia. It was really nice when she was gone.
Why not give an opinion page to Nancy Giles? Smart, not self-obsessed, and rational!
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JC Miller, that was brilliant
Thank you.
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Tom Payne
Kennedy served in Congress from 1947-1953 and in the Senate from 1953-1960, and was considered relatively inexperienced when he took office. But he was better than Tricky Dick.
As for Lincoln, he was inexperienced as well. He had only served one term in Congress when he was elected President. And look at the mess he had to deal with. If we had had somebody with more experience would things have deteriorated the way they did? Who knows.
The next President has to negotiate with the whole world. He needs to have more on his resume than making a good speech in 2004 and writing a few bestselling books. Nobody cares about that!
I don't care how the media spins it. Obama is unqualified. World leaders will not care about "star power," or other equally vacuous labels. They will sense instantly that he doesn't know what he's doing and exploit his weaknesses. The Republicans will do the same thing.
If Obama is serious about running our counttry one day, then he should serve several more terms in the Senate and possibly a Cabinet position. He doesn't want to work for it.
Which Republican would I vote for instead of Obama? Possibly Chuck Hagel.
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Suan, Again
100 years ago the average life expectancy was 50. Obama's nearly 46. How old were Shakespeare, Plato, or Socrates when they created their legacies? 30, maybe 35, tops. Michaelangelo did much of his work in his 20's. Life is not a resume, and brilliance is not a resume. Actually, tricky dickster had a deeper resume than Blackjack Kennedy, but Kennedy had, um, star power. You damn Obama with that phrase. I say it's time for brilliance, and Obama won't gain a great deal being in the Senate another term or two. If you like old senators, Dodd's your guy. Washington suffocates creative energy, except on K street, where bright whores make seven figure incomes. They love lobbyists with years in congress. It's almost guaranteed that whatever idealism they had to start with has been snuffed out. And, speaking of shallow resumes, how deep is Hillary? Wow, she's in her second term. That must mean she knows twice as much as Obama. The theory doesn't hold. And Lincoln's election, because he was a Republican, ordained that the south, starting with South Carolina, seceed from the Union. To imply that Lincoln's inexperience somehow instigated the Civil War is profoundly ignorant. The causus belli, if it comes to one event, was the Missouri Compromise. We're in sore need of the kind of inexperience Abe brought from Illinois. We need vision and eloquence and bravery. Multiple congressional terms or cabinet posts don't imbue one with those qualities. You know who best meets your criteria for experience as presidential preparation? Dick Cheney. Helluva resume. But I do agree about Chuck Hegel. He is a man among boys in the republikan party. But I'll next vote for a republikan when they reanimate the Rail Splitter.