Reader Mail
Sinking Feelings Rise
The wisdom of Newt and Steve Forbes. The Dems’ BS degrees. Beck and the mainstream media. Here’s the plan. Plus more.
(Page 2 of 2)
PROVE IT
Re: Andrew Cline’s Criticism
Is Racism:
Andrew Cline’s response to Jimmy Carter’s charge of racism is “Really? Prove it.” Reminds me of “Shane” when Shane tells Wilson, “I’ve heard of you.” Wilson: “What have you heard Shane?” “That you’re a low-down Yankee liar.” Wilson: “Prove it.” That leads to a deadly gun battle.
Maybe Joe Wilson should have just quoted Shane and called Obama a
“low-down Yankee liar.”
— C. Baker
Fort Worth, Texas
ESCAPING BEATINGS
Re: Russ Ferguson’s The
Check on Healthcare is in the Mail:
To add a point to Mr. Ferguson’s piece, government employees are
irrevocably insulated from their failures to perform and from the
consequences of their actions, which means they may, and likely
will, inflict misery upon or kill the rest of us either via
benign neglect or to meet whatever passing political fancy (or
objective) grabs them at any given time. Until government
employees have “skin in the game” (i.e. they and their families
are at risk of their decisions the same as the rest of us) the
disconnect Mr. Ferguson notes will always exist. We see this
today in the fact that in the great de-leveraging of the last
year, while the rest of us took a fairly monumental financial
beating, the government not only has escaped the belt tightening
via “stimulus,” but plans to take to itself more (healthcare
system) and more (cap n’ tax).
— Reid Bogie
Waterbury, Connecticut
SCARY TIMES
Re: Ben Stein’s We’ve
Figured Him Out:
Mr. Obama in his health care speech left an impression on me that
has never been left before after viewing an address. I felt like
I was being scolded for not understanding “what was good for me
or my country.” Well, I do agree with your astute observation
that he is realizing that he is on a time line for pushing
through his agenda and there seemed to me to be a bit of panic in
his tone. When will the democratic party and some republicans
remember to study and vote for the good of the country instead of
behaving like a bunch of lemmings and blindly following a scary,
charismatic orator who is poised to send this country in a
direction that might take years or decades to turn around once
the damage is done and our elected officials wake up? These are
indeed scary times and thank you for your perspective.
— Eugene Meyer
Letter to the Editor View all comments (21) | Leave a comment
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http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/25/sinking-feelings-rise
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Michael L. Hauschild| 9.25.09 @ 8:54AM
Bowman and Kessel, yea.
A half yea to Leary (Armey) who I am sure has no children named Tim.
IMKessel| 9.25.09 @ 5:03PM
Thank you.
BMSmythe| 9.25.09 @ 5:02PM
Glen Beck is a right wing racist hack. His attacks on OUR president are based on Obama's race.
victor| 9.25.09 @ 8:43PM
He, Glenn Beck, and we, attack and castigate that Man in the White House because of his IDEAS and nothing else.
PS which race would that man be as his mother was white and his father was a Kenyan Arab, eh?
marie| 9.26.09 @ 7:44PM
thats a crock, he speaks the truth of obama, and his chicago thugs. truth hurts,get over it.
Robert| 9.25.09 @ 6:28PM
Leave it to a Smythe to misspell Glenn Back's name. Once again, a demonstration that those mindless mandarins of the left - bereft of any semblance of intelligence, reason and cognition - can only attack the man...not his ideas.
IMKessel| 9.25.09 @ 8:27PM
Mr. Bogie,
A deep insight. I had not thought of the stimulus as a reward for ineptitude, but you are dead on with that analysis.
S.L. Toddard| 9.26.09 @ 9:54AM
I cannot *believe* the letters-to-the-editor AmSpec chooses to publish. They say far, far more about your publication than even its daily content.
IMKessel| 9.26.09 @ 4:40PM
Mr. Toddard,
I found your comment interesting. I infer an negative connotation, but I don’t want to assume facts not in evidence. Please elucidate.
Thank you.
Alan Brooks| 9.26.09 @ 8:28PM
here's an excerpt from Brookhiser on Newt:
"...Another reason is Gingrich's rise through the ranks since 1978, and the Republicans he had to supplant and outflank. Before Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, the congressional GOP was a party of inertia and self-defeat. I remember once hearing former Minority Leader Bob Michel
about his first political experience: passing out sunflower buttons for Alf Landon. No wonder he expects to get kicked in the head, I thought. In the long years of fretting as the minority of the minority, Gingrich had to sustain himself with the hope that he was the wave of the future - and there were the Tofflers, to tell him that it was so.
Curiosity and hope explain Newt Gingrich's strange weakness for trendology, but they do not excuse it. Statesmanship is hard. The more we tell politicians there is an easy way, the more we trap them. If the Speaker wants to fulfill the mission he has set himself, he and his followers will have to bring the second half of their reading list up to the level of the first.
Alan Brooks| 9.26.09 @ 9:03PM
Come to think of it, blaming the Soviet Union for Afghanistan wont go.
the SU is long gone. So Toddard is correct.
But Newt ought to be hammered for his 'futurist' tendencies; futurism is in fact mind candy, Marxism for computer geeks-- everybody can see that now that the 21st century is in full swing.
For a brilliant, well connected (so presumably well informed) doctoral holder such as Newt to be a futurist in 2009 is unconscionable.
Newt is either desperate or slightly disingenuous.
martin j smith| 9.27.09 @ 8:29AM
As nutty as Glen Beck comes across at times he is the one that brought Van Jones,Acorn,stories about the czars and many other totally ignored by you know who. What has to happen I think is that the truth has to be reported in double time . Like a war room. So super saturated that there will be a point that you know who cannot ignore it. So i say--keep it up double time. !!!!!!
Joanne| 9.27.09 @ 1:58PM
Alan, I think your last sentence has one too many words. If you eliminate 'slightly', the sentence would make more sense.
Newt is doubtless extremely intelligent, but his moral sense and disingenuous disqualify him IMO from running for president.
Margie| 9.27.09 @ 7:08PM
Fab! (to use an old term) letter, I.M. Kessel! I especially appreciate this: "The coward attacks the weak, but a warrior only stands against the mighty."
And this: "he denounced their poisonously flawed philosophies and responded to their personal attacks with humor, grace and sagacity.)"
Being a very imperfect and un-Ivy League educated, I will try and attain to this standard whist posting in this forum. Very good indeed.
~Margie
IMKessel| 9.27.09 @ 10:14PM
Margie,
Forgive me the informality of addressing you by your given name, but I do not know how else to address you.
I thank you for your kind words.
Like you, I learned far from the shade of the Ivy Leagues. I am public school educated and graduated college with assistance from the G.I. Bill. Public library are one of the few services that are cost effective to the public.
I will keep a keen eye for your postings.
Respectfully,
IMK essel