LTTE from a friend of mine in CA

[radfringe]

The Skeptic Pencil and the Cynical Men

Dear Editor:

Oscar Wilde, that foppish curmudgeon, famously defined a cynic as
someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I am not a cynic, though I thank the gods I am foul.

What I am is a skeptic, one with values and beliefs. Asking questions is a necessity of democracy, even if we don't like the questions or the answers.

A skeptic wonders why this Administration tries to convince us that the new Iraqi national anthem is "Put on a Happy Face."

Sheba Crocker of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Salon.com a few days ago, "There is a disconnect between the very
positive pronouncements that we are hearing and the reality on the
ground. It may be understandable because of the politics of it. But to
be faced with beheadings, daily bombings and vastly increased attacks
against U.S. forces, and the establishment of these 'no-go areas;' and to then say it's only dire pessimists raising questions seems to deny the reality."

A skeptic wonders why we spend more in four days in Iraq than we have in three years of promising to improve security at American ports. And then he reads this, by James Fallows in the October issue of The Atlantic:

"The government-wide effort to wage war in Iraq crowded out efforts to
design a broader strategy against Islamic extremists and terrorists; to this day the Administration has articulated no comprehensive long-term plan. It dismissed out of hand any connection between policies toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and increasing tension with many Islamic states. Regime change, it said, would have a sweeping symbolic effect on worldwide sources of terror. That seems to have been true - but in the opposite way from what the President intended. It's hard to find a counterterrorism specialist who thinks that the Iraq War has reduced rather than increased the threat to the United States."

How remiss on the Administration's part and, er, dare I say, cynical?

Yes, a cynic twists his opponent's comments out of context and devil
take the hindmost. He suppresses unhappy information or releases it late on a Friday afternoon so the fewest people will hear about it.

It takes a cynic to tell someone like Andrew Mosholder, a medical
officer at the Food and Drug Administration, to delete from a report he was submitting to Congress information that antidepressants
may double the risk of suicide among children. That same brand of
cynicism triggered Monday's New York Times report that, "In recent
weeks, federal agencies across the vast Washington bureaucracy have
delayed completion of a range of proposed regulations from food safety
and the environment to corporate governance and telecommunications
policy until after Election Day, when regulatory action may be more
politically palatable.

"The delays come after heavy lobbying by industry organizations,
including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Business
Roundtable, the cattle and feed industries, the four regional Bell
operating telephone companies, big health care providers and timber and mining interests."

Cynicism is leaving a gobstopping deficit and a crisis in social
security and health care to your children and grandchildren. The
Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 2005 and 2014,
the amount of the government debt held by the public will nearly double -- from $4.3 trillion to $8 trillion. Know how much of that will be owed to Japan - and China?

Cynicism is promising, as the President did in his acceptance speech, a billion dollars to enroll "millions of poor children" in government
health care programs. But, as the Washington Post notes, "The Bush
administration plans to return $1.1 billion in unspent children's health funds to the U.S. Treasury, making his convention promise a financial wash at best."

Another great curmudgeon, H.L. Mencken, said a cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks for a coffin. Neither do such men hold
compunctions about using fear as a cudgel.

On September 11, when the nation was attacked, we in Manhattan were
attacked most directly. Our buildings fell, our friends or friends of
friends died, our senses filled with never-to-be-forgotten sights,
sounds and smells. But contrary to opinion, we're skeptics, not cynics,and unafraid to vote the rascal out. Why should you be?

Four more years - that's what we're afraid of.

[AndyTiedye]

1. kickeroo

:kick: