Old Friend Hits the Mark 


One of my oldest friends, Tim Farkas, recently wrote this letter to the editor to the Las Vegas Review Journal. I think he hit the nail on the head with the Republicans blaming everything on anyone but themselves. Touché Tim! Link. 

To the editor: 
Let it never be said that the liberal media is in charge of the newspaper of record in Las Vegas. Your Friday editorial, " 'Windfall' profits," is the epitome of politicization and mindless rhetoric that permeates and putrefies the political climate in this country. 
Is it possible that corporations are doing what they are legally required to do, which is maximize profits? And is it also possible that when they have their guy in the White House, the same guy who did nothing when California was raked over the coals by the energy industry with power shortages during a very mild spring, the oil companies are going to milk every drop of profit out of every situation that will allow it? That is what they do every day. They find ways to exploit situations, and when they know the lifeguard is asleep they jump in the deep end and make the biggest mess you ever saw. 
Is it also possible that politicians who aren't expressly beholden to these companies -- politicians such as Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada -- should stand up, point it out and try to do something about it? By presenting this situation into a ploy for votes from a 65-year-old senator who is five years away from re-election and who just had a stroke, you are playing the same tired, lowest-common-denominator card of the post-Newt Gingrich era that has given FOX News something to say for the past five years. 
They blame everything that they can't come up with a reasonable argument for on someone else playing politics. If you don't like the news, it's the liberal media, not reality. If you don't like the indictment, it's the overzealous liberal attorney, not the 12 average Americans who sat on a grand jury and handed down the indictments. If you don't like the science, it's the liberal elites at the universities. The armchair quarterbacks of the right wing somehow know more. 
For shame. You have encapsulated in a very short, simplistic, mind-numbing way what is wrong with the whole discussion in this country. Sometimes politics is about being right and not about your lame excuses. 

Posted: Sat - October 15, 2005 at 10:48 PM          

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