Questioning Seward on support of Bush
Sen. James Seward has said that President Bush "will leave office with his head held high." Let's see what he's got to be proud of:
When Bush took office and was advised of the danger of "Osama bin Forgotten" and al-Qaida, he didn't even put it on the top 20 list for the Justice Department.
Withdrew from Afghanistan to lie us into, and totally mismanage, the Iraq war and occupation. (The "surge" notwithstanding, Gen. David Petraeus has said that we will not be able to declare "victory" in Iraq.)
Ate birthday cake in Arizona with Sen. McCain while New Orleans drowned.
Illegally spied on Americans.
Turned us into a nation of torturers.
Presided over the economic crash we're experiencing.
Has alienated friendly nations and destroyed our good standing in the world.
Started privatizing Walter Reed Army Hospital, resulting in deplorable mistreatment of wounded veterans.
Ignored nuclear proliferation and climate change.
I'll have to stop here with a very partial list, due to space restrictions, but we know it goes on far too long.
(If anyone out there, besides Sen. Seward, still thinks Bush is great, just try the "Clinton test": if ANY of these things had happened under President Clinton, what would you be saying? In fact, some still seem to blame Clinton _ almost eight years into the Bush disaster!)
Gotta question the judgment of someone who thinks Bush has any reason to hold his head high! Perhaps Sen. Seward has been in Albany government too long, and it has "mucked up" his thinking (his phrase).
For an eminently capable, qualified and clear-thinking replacement, for real and positive change in Albany, we couldn't ask for better than Don Barber.
David Grodsky
New Berlin
Obama not true agent of change
Barack Obama's campaign slogan is "change you can believe in." Yet when one reviews his political career, the evidence suggests he's more of a status-quo politician than an apostle of hope and change.
When Obama ran for state senator he was "elected" after paid consultants challenged incumbent Alice Palmer's petitions and had her and three other legitimate candidates removed from the ballot. Was this an example of "change you can believe in" or sleazy political tactics you can count on?
During the same year Obama was sworn in as state senator, his wife's employer, University of Chicago Hospital, more than doubled her six-figure salary. Senator "change you can believe in" then requested a million dollars for this institution. Coincidence? Ya think?
Convicted slumlord Tony Rezko helped Obama get a sweetheart deal on his house and was a major contributor to his campaigns. According to the Chicago Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak, Obama "wrote letters to city and state officials" supporting Rezko's successful bid for $14 million in state money for building projects. Rezko, along with Allison Davis, Obama's former law-firm boss, also received $855,000 from this amount for "development fees." More "change you can believe in" or money you can invest in?
Barack Obama is no more a candidate of hope and change than I am a liberal Democrat. He's a product of the corrupt Cook County Democratic machine and has not once backed any reform candidates trying to rid Chicago of this historic cesspool.
Behind the nice smile and slender physique is another good ole boy who takes money and does what he's told. President Obama? I'm not buying. They can have him in Chicago, and keep the change too.
Rick Day Jr.
Schenevus
Political exchanges not true debates
The so-called political "debates," with questions from a "moderator," occupy the sub-basement of political awareness. A real debate is unhampered by Whiffle-Ball questions. A conventional exchange begins with definition of terms, two longer statements, then rejoinders and surrejoinder. Each side concludes with an adequate summation.
As for the recent Biden-Palin exchange, the moderator posed such generalized questions that the occasion never rose to any definition of a real debate or even provided much essential information.
The moderator ignored Palin's record on attempted library censorship, "creationism," the bogus theory of "literal interpretation," the hiring of cronies and the firing of principled public adversaries. Why did the bubbling moderator not ask questions about women's issues? Palin believes that women, after rape and impregnation (even if by a close relative), must be forced by state authority to carry the fetus to term. What is "conservative" about such positions, all part of the Alaskan's record?
Anyone interested in serious political debate should turn to the Lincoln-Douglas exchanges, argued at length in the open air of 1858 Illinois. The listeners, not hampered with certificates of attendance from "schools" and "colleges," not ignorant of their own country's history, responded with laughter and applause. In a large majority, the audiences were tillers of the soil, avid readers, and proudly self-taught. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are preserved at the few libraries that have not displaced them with Danielle Steel and other maimed insignia of the ignorant.
Robert Moynihan
Cooperstown
Easy way to cut state spending
I read recently that state Assemblyman Thomas Kirwan of Newburgh, a Conservative-Republican lawmaker, called "outrageous" the state paying for transportation of families of prisoners. Kirwan said the state budgeted $1.4 million for bus transportation to prisons for visits by inmates' relatives. Kirwan wrote to Gov. Paterson urging him to stop the practice.
"If we are going to that extreme for these thugs' relatives, give free bus rides to visit them, then we should provide limousines for relatives to visit their victims' kin in either hospitals or cemeteries where these aforementioned thugs have put them." Kirwan said, "This is something that should go, but if it stays, I'm serious, then at least justice would demand that we take care of victims for a change instead of always worrying about bad guys' relatives."
Kirwan told the governor the budget allotment is "not only practical and prudent to cut, but to me seems to be an outrage to have in the budget in the first place." Hear! Hear!
Especially in these times of everyone cutting back _ let's get rid of this type of outrageous spending!
Michael Walls
East Meredith
Leadership change good for America
The theme of this letter is: "I can't wait until a new president takes office."
I don't usually criticize the president, but I can't wait until George Bush is out of office. Personally, I don't care which candidate wins the election (McCain or Obama). I don't care if he's black, white, Democrat, Republican, purple, orange or whatever.
I can't think of a time in the modern era when our country was in such a shambles. High gas prices, the current financial situation on Wall Street, not to mention the mortgage lending crisis, are big issues.
As turbulent as the 1960s were, at least we had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (a true leader, although not a president), better music, and good shows on television. Unfortunately, we lost President Kennedy, also, who was a great president.
What has messed this country up so much these days? Greed. Plain and simple.
Robert Caffee
Bainbridge
Festival wouldn't be bad for Springfield
I read in your paper's letters to the editor that the Amish people are going to sell their farms and move because of MSG. That is pure nonsense. They are much smarter than that. It would give them something else to do while here.
Some of the people who write to you claim to be writing for Springfield. Well, I know a number of people who do not feel like them. We are lucky enough to have the opera here for people who enjoy that kind of music. But I am also sure there are many people who enjoy other kinds of music, me for one. All these scare tactics are nonsense.
I would be living close to where it would happen and am willing to put up with three of four days of slight disruption to bring in some work, money and enjoyment for other people.
Frank Bodmer
East Springfield
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