BUCHANIANA
Re: Paul M. Weyrich’s Pat on Bush’s Back:
This man [Pat Buchanan] has become a joke and I give him no credence. He is a known anti-Semite and isolationist so why even read his writings, let alone rebut him? Americans recognize a man who keeps his word, as Bush has done, and will re-elect him no matter where Buchanan’s analysis strays.
— Darlene Lager
West Covina, CA
Paul Weyrich puts his finger on a potential vulnerability — for Bush and the economy both — when he writes that “(Bush) doesn’t worry about jobs being exported because free traders believe the benefits to the American consumer outweigh the disruption to communities when factories shut down.”
The problem with that is that the people living in the disrupted communities are the purchasers of the goods and services American businesses need to sell.
AOL may save a couple of bucks an hour by firing Sammy Slacker from its U.S. customer service center and hiring young Sittarondan Bichee in Calcutta for a third the price. But young Sitta isn’t going to going to be subscribing to broadband access in the USA. Likewise, Ford may cut costs by laying off Joe Sixpack in Detroit and hiring Jose Trabajedor down in Mexico for ten bucks an hour. But Jose isn’t going to be buying a $20,000 Focus from a Ford dealer in Akron.
And neither are Sammy and Joe. Even if they find other work, two $20k/year workers do not equal one $40k/year worker for discretionary buying power. They won’t buy the broadband services, they won’t buy the new car. The businesses that are patting themselves on the back for exporting the job have missed the point, that their employees are their customers, and this is going to slow the economic recovery.
And anybody who thinks a booming stock market while factories close is good economic news for the President has never seen a campaign commercial before. A montage of smiling stockbrokers contrasted with workers in unemployment offices is not an argument for the Bush administration.
— Richard McEnroe
GRAY CLINTON
Re: Jeremy Lott’s End of Days:
Lott is the Jim Rome of pundits. Loud, cynical, negative and often stupid. With this column, I guess one could add crybaby and quitter. Lott’s idea of an effort is a few puerile observations followed by abject surrender and constant whining from atop the moral high ground. Even if Lott is ultimately correct in the outcome, sometimes — just sometimes — the good fight is the right thing to do, even if there is little chance of success (and there is far better than little chance this time). More importantly, the good fight is almost always the beginning of something better.
— Larry Dempsey
Modesto, CA
After watching Gray Davis, being cheered mightily by the bussed in union workers, on television during the 5PM news, I can tell he took Bill Clinton’s advice.
Rather than step in front of the camera and address California’s voters, who have overwhelmingly decided he must go, and make his case for why he should stay and just what he will do to fix the problems of his prior four years of spend like there was no tomorrow, he chose the Clinton route. “Blame everyone else, but whatever you do, don’t take responsibility. Oh yes, and don’t forget to throw in that Vast Right Wing Conspiracy phrase and throw in that line that the Republicans have been after me and they can’t win elections fair and square.” It wasn’t the poorly prepared Gray Davis speaking haltingly about something he didn’t believe in, it was rather Bill Clinton trying to relive his eight years in Washington!
The Democrats want the voters to listen to them explain how they will fix the problem they created by being wasteful. Yes, they’ll increase taxes and make the rich pay their fair share, and hope that what drove business out in the first place will somehow miraculously be the reason they now return to California! Yes, if high taxes wasn’t the solution, perhaps HIGHER taxes will be!
— Harry Pike
CANCER WARNING
Re: Bernard Chapin’s Grover Norquist: The Interview:
Grover Norquist wrote a chilling column for the November ’92 issue of The American Spectator entitled “The Coming Clinton Dynasty.” “Conservatives who think the Clinton Administration will be a short interregnum are making a disastrous mistake. For since Watergate, Democrats have learned to deal behind the scenes to ensure their re-election … with or without popular support.”
Many people scoffed at the idea eleven years ago that such a thing as a “Clinton Dynasty” could happen, but Grover Norquist has been proven correct. I was so impressed with Mr. Norquist’s warning that I saved that column. I wish TAP would reprint it as a reminder to us all of how easily liberalism can metastasize.
— Kitty Myers
Painted Post, NY
MISSING THE STORY
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Richardson Blacks Out:
Please excuse me, but there is a minute chance that you missed a large part of the story here. You quite amply cover the conference between Gov. Richardson and Terry McNasty about how to blame the Republicans. You even do a wonderful job of quoting a Democrat staffer regarding the various reasons that it is really a problem birthed during the Clinton Administration.
Somehow, I failed to find or I overlooked your report of how the Bush Administration and the Congressional Republicans brought those facts to the public view and successfully refuted the entire Democrat story line. Perhaps the editing process cut those paragraphs out of the story.
What! You say that the Republicans didn’t defend themselves? Surely you jest. They must have defended themselves, didn’t they? Any normal person would, wouldn’t they?
Oh, oh wait! Now I remember. It must have been a senior moment. I forgot about the “new tone” that Dubya brought to Washington. I remember now. Teddy Kennedy and Tom Daschle and the rest sang a chorus of “Can’t we all just get along,” and Dubya said, “Sure, we can. Y’all jus’ come on over and we’ll have popcorn and movies and make fun of all those silly Conservatives that I fooled.” And Teddy wrote an education bill that Dubya couldn’t wait to sign and they got together again to write a new health-care entitlement and everyone lived happily ever after.
— Ken Shreve
New Hampshire
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Re: James Bowman’s review of Open Range:
There must be a generation gap here. I read your review of Open Range with amazement. My husband and I saw it yesterday and thought it was a great movie.
I didn’t think that Kevin Costner was having a romance with himself. Perhaps it has to do with our age, as we are 72 and 74 and really love westerns.
There aren’t many anymore and I hope that word of mouth will cause people to go to see this movie.
— Mabel Rockwell
Huntington Beach, CA
NEVER NORMAL
Re: Jed Babbin’s August SGO:
Exactly. While we should have been celebrating Idi V.D. Amin’s overdue trip to hell, we were busy inserting Marines on the ground in Liberia, arraying them between the forces of Whoo Zat and Wass Up.
What a waste of Semper Fi! There’s no American interest involved in Liberia (aka Equatorial Freedonia). And there’s zero chance of stabilizing the government in a country (if such it is) that’s had more than a century and a half to get it between the ditches and has not shown the slightest ability to do so. (Why couldn’t we just parachute in Rufus T. Firefly and be done with it?)
As for power back to the people in New York et al., the headlines in Monday’s papers said things had “returned to normal” in New York. Say-what? When were things ever normal in New York? (Normal, compared to what?) A more truthful headline would have been, “Things return to what passes for normal in New York.”
— Larry Thornberry
Tampa, FL
While it is true that the citizens of New York were relatively well behaved as compared to 1977, the assertion that disorder was virtually non-existent is simply misinformed. Dozens of stores were looted in the city, some stores were burned, and a looter was killed when he fell off the roof of a Foot Locker that was being sacked in Brooklyn.
Add that to the rock and bottle attacks on police in Coney Island, the cars being overturned in Staten Island, and the shops being destroyed in each of the five boroughs, and you can see that the story being told by the Bloomberg administration isn’t exactly factual.
— Eric Olivieri
STATELESS
Re: Larry Eubank’s letter in Reader Mail’s Hot and Cold:
Hear, hear! That’s telling it like it is! I suspect that Mr. Eubank, like me, is an expatriate Californian, doomed to live in another state by the Grasshopper politics of the California politicos.
— Bob Johnson
Bedford, TX
