The phrase "borrow and spend Republicans" is starting to work its way in to the common vernacular. Say what you will about abortion, but the "tax and spend Democrat" label is what has really killed us. We need to be pushing the new meme every day, in letters, conversations, blogs, and everywhere else the opportunity arises. If we can eventually make this label stick, we have a fighting chance again.
Today's "Letters Tuesday Editor" also includes one of the best lines I've ever read about supporting the troops. One wag writes "Yes, there are military Democrats. We are called enlisted." Bravo.
Las Vegas (Nevada) Sun
The phrase "borrow and spend Republicans" is starting to find its way in to the common vernacular. We need to push this HARD, for it could eventually compete with "tax and spend Democrats," and quite literally gut the best presumption they have against us.
Wake up and smell the deficit, Senator
Sen. John Ensign's defense of his actions in your Oct. 9 newspaper, "Hurricane bill wasteful spending," is another example of his disconnect with the needs and true compassion of Americans. He writes he was justified in voting against a bill that would provide $9 billon for Medicaid reimbursements to states burdened with an influx of new residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ...
It's interesting to see that he voted for over $350 billion for the war in Iraq. He voted for the energy bill, which gives billion-dollar tax breaks to oil companies. Finally, he voted for the Fiscal Year 2006 U.S. Budget that projects a deficit of $571 billion for 2006, and he did not find that wasteful and irresponsible.
Senator Ensign is one of those borrow-and-spend Republicans who believe we can mortgage our future with a national debt approaching $8 trillion while giving tax breaks to wealthy Americans. Wake up, Senator Ensign, billion-dollar special interests don't need help, working class Americans and people without medical care do!
Wayne Smith
North Las Vegas
Detroit Free Press
It's certainly no surprise that Delphi dominates the LTEs in the Detroit Free Press. Most of the venom is saved for CEO, who demands huge pay cuts while setting aside enormous bonuses for executives. This letter makes a great point- if you must compare us to our foreign competitors, how about giving you wallet the same treatment?
Can pay cuts save Delphi?
...
Miller states that to be competitive, hourly workers must take a 63% wage cut to be in line with the industry. By that standard, though, shouldn't Miller and other auto execs be making something more in line with the rest of the world's corporations? CEOs in Japan make somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 plus about 10% in bonuses. Are they doing less work than Miller? I doubt it.
Paul Bondurant
Utica
Detroit Free Press
Delphi is just the largest and most recent example of a trend, and it is a trend we can place squarely in the lap of Republicans- the trend toward the destruction of the middle class, and a return to the days of robber barons. If Republicans really cared about American industry we would have, for one thing, a decent national health care system.
Brutal honesty
At least Delphi is honest. If it can't treat its employees as Third World people with no future in America, then it will move to a Third World country where it can. That is saying more than the corporations that move to Third World countries while collecting millions from taxpayers and saying they are saving American jobs.
Daniel C. Davis Jr.
Oxford
El Paso (Texas) Times
Illegal immigration is NOT a problem of brown-skinned people teeming over the border. It is a problem of American industry wanting cheap labor, and American consumers wanting cheap goods. Henry Ford realized a long time ago decent wages were necessary for a decent standard of living. Yet we now seem to believe we can increase our standard of living while keeping downward pressure on labor costs. Eventually, we will pay for such stupidity.
Everyone watching
What is going on here? We have the Minutemen watching Mexicans, the Border Patrol watching the Minutemen, neighbors watching neighbors and El Paso County Sheriff Samaniego watching all of them.
What these groups have in common is they drive around in gas-guzzling, taxpayer-provided vehicles, or bunch up together in their private vehicles, all while no one is picking America's crops. ...
The truth is, America won't move if it isn't for these legal or illegal slave-labor markets. As long as the present corporate-bought government is in business, the issue of fair labor practices in America is not going anywhere.
Most Americans are not going to work for slave wages.
Fermin-Fermon Torres
Rincon, N.M.
Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.)
Mier's religion might be unrelated to her qualifications, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it is one of her only two qualifications. The other is blind loyalty, to the point of fawning and truly creepy obsequiousness, to George W. Bush.
Miers' religion unrelated to her qualifications
Our president is desperately trying to salvage Harriet Miers's nomination by touting her religious beliefs. In the name of all that is (truly) holy, can someone tell me what relevance her personal faith has with her ability to do this very important job? This is troubling on so many levels, it's hard to know to where to start. First, it is incredibly insulting and patronizing to conservative Christians to assume that if he can somehow convince them that Miers is "one of them," they'll forget the important question of whether she is actually qualified. ... Miers will make decisions that are of vital importance to all Americans, be they Catholic, Jew, Hindu, Unitarian, atheist or sun worshipper.
PATRICK OBREGON
DURHAM
Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.)
Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design" is the most reliable constant in Letters Tuesday Editor. While we in the reality-based world laugh, it is valuable to peek inside the brains of the other side, to understand their reasoning, or lack thereof. This letter debates the "legged whale," making invalid presumptions about modern whales to support the stupid argument. You can see a bit on the "legged whale" HERE, and it is most definitely NOT the 60 foot modern whale this writer describes. As for the "law of thermodynamics" argument, it is profoundly ignorant, for the laws of thermodynamics presume no new energy added, and if you look up on a bright day, you will see the flaw.
Evolution isn't science
The ongoing evolution/creation debate has provided comedy, fiction, fantasy and tall-tales but little true science. I especially enjoyed the example of the legged whale. The "leg" consists of a pelvic bone approximately three inches long that is not connected to the spinal column. I ask the readers to picture a 60-foot, 70-ton whale with one three-inch long "leg". ... The greatest challenge to evolution is not creationism or intelligent design but true scientific principles such as: evolution violates the unrefuted law of biogenesis. evolution violates the first and second laws of thermodynamics -- mutation results in a loss of information, not a gain as evolution requires. No new information is ever created.
RANDY JACKSON
DURHAM
Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes gives us wonderful insight into the minds of our fighting men and women. In this letter, one of them rebuts the argument that we are fighting for "One Nation Under God."
Keep God to yourself
I've read the letters to the editor blaming atheists for the recent court decisions regarding the Pledge of Allegiance. One letter writer ("One Nation Under God," letter, Oct. 4) advised everyone to "...stand up for something." Well, I am.
I am an atheist. I bet your reaction proves my point -- that you are just as offended by my saying that as we are every time you force your religion on us. The Religious Right wants us to keep our views to ourselves. All we're asking is you do the same. Keep your God to yourself. ...
For those who say atheists are making a mockery of our religious heritage, consider the following quotes
Thomas Jefferson: "I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature."
John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which states: "The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
James Madison: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
Benjamin Franklin: "In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by lack of it."
And finally, ask your school-age children what the pledge means to them, since they are the ones forced to recite it. I bet they don't know what it means. It's our job to teach our children morals and values, not the schools' and certainly not the government's.
Tech. Sgt. Mark Mastrorocco
Naples, Italy
Las Vegas (Nevada) Sun
Here you find the heart of the "Intelligent Design" argument- `I am too stupid or ignorant to understand the universe, therefore it must have been designed by somebody far smarter than man.' This type of lowest-common-denominator science should be soundly rejected, unless we all want to return to the days before flint tools.
Intelligent design should be considered
I'm astounded over the debate regarding intelligent design.
I look at the balance of the solar system, the precision of the proximity of the sun and planets. I also consider the balance of nature, the moon, the tides, the oceans and oxygen. ...
To say that intelligent design should not be considered goes beyond the realm of scientific thought. Only a dysfunctional mind would conclude that there is no evidence pointing to an intelligent design.
Robert Slaby Las Vegas
Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser
This letter includes perhaps the best line I've read in months, "Yes. There are military Democrats. We are called `enlisted.'"
Democrats also back military
Democrats support our troops. They do not support their leaders who led them and their fellow countrymen needlessly and fraudulently down the path of war that to date has cost almost 2,000 American lives. All of this for a no-bid Halliburton contract.
Every time I see someone write the lie that "Democrats don't support the troops" in our overseas conflicts it makes me want to throw up, especially since I was one who responded when my nation called me to duty during the last Bush war.
Yes, there are military Democrats. We are called enlisted. We actually go to war and get trained, deployed, gassed, bombed, shot at, killed or wounded, repaired, re-deployed, and ignored, and then our spouses and children and mothers and fathers have to deal with the elimination of our hazardous duty pay and other entitlements that have been shrinking over the past five "pro-military" years. ...
Jimmy Gilliland
Montgomery
Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser
This is another version of the "borrow and spend Republicans" meme, pointing out where the costs and benefits flow- mostly to Republican cronies.
Republicans loot with pen, computer
Let's face it, our politicians are only concerned about how they look on TV hugging babies and storm victims. ...
Since Katrina and Rita, it is so apparent that we Americans have a lot of fixing to do to our own house. The only way to do it is with money. Bush is still using those tragic storms to fill the pockets of cronies. It is called "no-bid contracts." The Republicans have shown us how to loot. Their looting is done with a pen and computer keys.
Mary Hooks
Tuskegee
Danville (Virginia) Register & Bee
The "Hitler" ads sure seem to be backfiring, as the ugliness of the Virginia campaign drives voters away. Here is a letter from a Republican who now refuses to back Kilgore. Good for him. May many follow.
No silk purses this year
The Virginia governor's race started at a low level and has now deteriorated to a point of public embarrassment that deserves widespread voter rebuke and condemnation. If we could re-nominate candidates and start over again, we might reclaim some dignity and decorum; but, we can't. Fueled by national political party money and nameless political advisors, the public has been exposed to a litany of name-calling and skullduggery that numbs the mind. ...
Like many Virginians, I watched the so-called debate. All I learned is that the party apparatus for the Democrats and Republicans must be hard broke to put forth such candidates and tolerate such a charade. One looks like Aaron Slick from Pumpkin Krick and the other like the used car salesman I tried to avoid.
Enough already - I am a Republican but Jerry Kilgore isn't my candidate. I don't care where he is from he is an embarrassment. Tim Kaine may not be a John Kennedy and he sure as heck isn't a Mark Warner. A plague on both their houses. ...
I'm going to vote for independent Republican Russ Potts for governor because I don't believe he should have been muzzled, nor has he gotten a fair shake from his party or the political intelligencia. Indeed, given the simple nature of the dialogue at the "Jerry and Tim Show" practically anything Potts said would have been a refreshing interruption. I can live with a man who conducts himself with dignity and maturity. Perhaps if enough people told the state parties to give us some grownup candidates for governor rather than "pretty boys," we would restore some dignity to our process. ...
LEN RIEDEL, Danville