There were 13 letters to the editor today, 8 of them bashed * and Repukes

[dflprincess]

The other 5 were local issues. Somedays I love that newspaper.

Me thinks people are waking up.

Here they are:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/563/4086076.html

Picking up the Iraq tab

President Bush is now requesting an additional $87 billion to sustain his war in Iraq for the time being (Star Tribune, Sept. 8). He says he "will spend what is necessary" to continue his war on terrorism.
But at some point you need to pay for your spending. You can't cut taxes and increase spending indefinitely. Individuals who spend more than they earn go bankrupt. The deficit is closing in on $500 billion for the year.

The president needs to tell us how he intends to pay for this additional expense without bankrupting our country's future.

******

With a catch?

President Bush is going to ask Congress for $87 billion in aid to help the Iraqi citizens reach utopia. Will the Iraqi schools he mentioned in his speech have to meet the No Child Left Behind mandate to receive these funds?

Before Congress again gives approval to President Bush to pour even more billions of dollars into his misguided mission in Iraq, I would encourage it to insist upon a matching grant to be given to American public schools. Both efforts should be directly tied to a significant tax increase to defense industry companies such as Halliburton, just to name one.
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Terrorized at home

As an unemployed American, I would also like to request $87 billion to fight terror: terror that I might not be able to pay my bills since I was laid off. Terror that my loved ones feel worrying about me. The same kind of terror that so many Americans just like me are feeling right now.
***************

Nothing in the win column

When will the American people open their eyes and realize that the foreign policy of the Bush administration has been an abject failure?
Two years after the terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden still runs free and the Taliban is rising as a force in Afghanistan.
The United States has attacked, bullied and defeated the vastly inferior Iraqi military and killed thousands of civilians en route to this hollow victory. Yet Saddam Hussein also continues to run free.
The hawks were dead wrong regarding the threat Iraq posed to the United States and were grossly misguided regarding the hero's welcome that awaited the U.S. troops. Now it appears that the cost of rebuilding what we destroyed will run far greater than the estimates sold to the American people.

Just where is the foreign policy success of George Bush? How dare he go in front of the American people and ask for $87 billion when there are so many more pressing needs facing this country. This money will do nothing to make America a better place.
***************

George Will, in his benevolent conservative tongue, floats the idea of finding an Iraqi form of James Madison to help shape Iraq (Star Tribune, Sept. 8). Will should remember that James Madison was not a puppet of the British regime that was "occupying" our country; he belonged to the "rebel" force that had just thrown out the occupiers.
Before we can discover a Muslim "James Madison," we need to "deoccupy" Iraq and let go of our control of its oil.
**************

My compliments on the timely and incisive editorial raising serious questions about a backdoor effort to facilitate further privatization of our national air-traffic control system ("Air traffic / Questions about privatization," Sept. 5).

It is mind-boggling that, at a time when the nation is concerned with threats of terror, any member of Congress -- let alone the majority of a conference committee -- would seriously entertain such an idea. An extreme act of faith is required to believe that the type and degree of oversight we should expect and demand of such an important function, and the personnel involved, will be best served through privatization.
*****************

Minority has its powers

A Sept. 8 letter writer complained because a minority of the U.S. Senate caused Miguel Estrada to withdraw his name from nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia due to a filibuster.

The complaint is not valid. The founders gave the Senate the responsibility to confirm or reject the president's judicial appointees and filibusters are an accepted practice.
If the majority always made political decisions in this country, Al Gore would be president.
***************

Tit for tat

President Bush calls Democratic opposition to his judicial nominee Miguel Estrada "an unfortunate chapter in the Senate's history." Doesn't he know Republicans wrote the book? Just four years ago, Republican leadership was notorious for obstructing judicial candidates. If Bush calls blocking six out of his 120 appointees "disgraceful," how would he characterize the Republicans' treatment of the 60 unapproved nominees of President Bill Clinton?
It's bad enough that both parties have to be so petty. Do they have to hypocritical, too?

[Warpy]

1. I'm stuck in Florida for a few weeks,

and I'm blown away by all the anti-Bush letters to the editor in the Orlando Sentinel. The editorial content of the paper is still way to the right, but those letters! Oh, my goodness! People here in this bastion of mawkish patriotism and pious conservatism are NOT happy with the bogus POTUS.

Bush is in trouble. I can't wait to see what those Diebold machines do.

[wabeewoman]

3. Same thing here in Tacoma, Washington paper

Some samples: "The occupant of the White House is out of touch if he thinks that the American people will stand for $87 billion and whatever it takes in Iraq while millions of our children go without adequate health care and are poorly educated and poorly fed; while millions of our neighbors go without jobs or without a living wage; while more and more of our parents and grandparents overpay for prescription drugs; while our land, water and air quality are being made worse"
snip
"In its arrogant eagerness to display America's military strength and to show the world that we could go it alone, the Bush administration used flimsy evidence to convince Americans that we were directly threatened by Saddam, thumbed its noses at the U.N. and invaded Iraq.
Now the Pentagon's "lessons learned" are showing that our haste left insufficient time to plan for the war's aftermath. We have seen the war's cost in the lives of U.S. soldiers and now in dollars. Bush & Co. are having to eat crow to get the U.N. to help.

It is time for a change in leadership. We can't afford the Bush administration."
snip
snip
"In our media we see numbers of casualties suffered by coalition combatants and civilians. Both government and media have been unwilling to publish comparable estimates of Iraqi deaths and injuries, either combatant or civilian.

Now that the president bases his $87 billion request on the assertion that this war is superlatively humane, he invites investigation of the full human cost on all sides and a consideration of the proportionality or disproportionality of human suffering in this war.

We should expect of a responsible government that such consideration must be made. We should expect of a responsible press, including The News Tribune, that this question will be researched and reported."

Then there is this one which show not everyone is waking up:
"I can't stand listening to all this Bush-bashing about having our troops fight a war based on the probability of finding weapons of mass destruction.

Wake up: Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction; take a look at his life's work. Somebody needed to defuse him.'

[chaumont58]

2. The people may be ready to dump Chimpy, but the....

beltway whores will continue to regale us with stories of the popular war time president. Tweety, Margaret Carlson, all of the Capital Gang will never will never give up on Bush. So what if he is dumber than a bag of hammers, he's one of them, a part of the beltway insider clique.