LEADING DISCOURSE

EDITOR: All I can say is "thanks." Well that's not all. The latest issue shows that you can recognize when our hopes come into conflict with reality and good policy ["Back to the Voters," Dan Savage, Josh Feit, Erica C. Barnett, June 30], and explain that to a readership that truly trusts The Stranger. As always, I think it's remarkable and admirable that the scrappy Stranger (porn contests and all) is still the leader of civic discourse in this town. When we are all dead I think some historian will characterize your work in the following way: "While The Stranger often pushed the limits of taste in the name of free speech, it was the real reporting work of writers like Feit and Barnett that kept The Stranger at the heart of the debate at the turn of the century."

Roger Valdez

SAVE MONORAIL, DUMP CONLIN

EDITOR: I'm an ardent monorail supporter, but it's time for the monorail's campaign spinners to get off their narcotics and get real again. While they were sequestered in their contract and finance enclave, they were apparently hand fed on some pretty rich bond bons. Now that they've grown fat and sassy, they need to ditch their rich bondmeisters and get the monorail back on track.

It's not the price tag that's the problem or the scope of the construction plan—it's the high interest and long term of the financial plan. The monorail dinner club needs to work out with those city council members who are monorail supporters, like Nick Licata, to shed their pounds while Coach Licata puts them on a much leaner financial plan. Meanwhile, the citizens of Seattle need to support their transformation by voting to recall Council Member Richard Conlin. He looks at all of this as the perfect "I told you so" to his dastardly efforts to derail the monorail. Seattle citizens have said four times that they want the monorail, but Conlin thinks he knows better. The last vote was nearly a two-thirds majority against the initiative to "Recall the Monorail." Conlin still thinks he knows better, so it's time to "Recall Richard."

At this important time, Seattle needs a creative transportation chair on the city council and a new vice chair of finance (both roles filled by Conlin). A forward-thinking transportation chair and finance vice chair would find every way possible to turn the public will into a reality. So, ditch the rich and can Conlin.

David Haggith

LET IT ALL OUT

EDITOR: In response to a request for input by the monorail folks I sent the following:

Monorail: Maybe. Design: Yes. Route: Yes. Station Reduction: A Begrudging Yes. Financing: Have You Lost Your Fucking Minds? DO NOT EVEN BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT SADDLING US WITH THIS NIGHTMARE! If this financing plan is approved, I'll move. I'll never pay $140 per year, per $10K value, per vehicle owned for the rest of my life to finance only the first phase of a system I'll ride maybe once with my grandkids who will be paying for it for most or all of their lives as well, with the burden of even more taxes if they want to see the system expanded. What color is the sky in your world? Helloooo... Read The Stranger June 30 edition and take the advice. Pack yer bags. We'll get someone else to pick up the pieces. Buh bye now!

Richard Nix

SEATTLE SUCKS, PART 7,694

STRANGER: Hey Seattle! Congratulations on messing up the only good thing Seattle has left going for it, the monorail! Somehow, in the past few years, you've managed to kill Cobain, bust the dot-com community (like Kozmo, and HomeGrocer), drive all your artists and creative people south to Portland and California with your lack of creative momentum (and your runny-nosed rejection of any music that isn't part of your 15-YEAR-OLD STALE DIET of RETRO-GEEK and, um, Weezer rock), but now you can't even build a FUCKING ELEVATED TRAIN, or EVEN GET A WORKABLE PLAN, in a decade!! "We'll have a monorail by 2003! No wait! 2005! No—'07! No wait, um, 2010!! Umm, okay, we QUIT!!! WE QUIT! No monorail at all!" Why don't you just lie down, let all the BELLEVUE-ITES and TRANSPLANTED BELLTOWNERS have their way and scrap the whole thing, then you can build a "Metro-Link" and be just like The O.C.?

So tuck in your shirts, put your pocket protectors back on, and cry for a few minutes. Go to Red Light and shop and then "go quietly into that good night." Seattle's snotty, creativity-hating, upper-crusties have consistently beat you at everything (from taxes to local housing), and will eventually have their way with our monorail, as they did with our long inoffensive and complacent music scene, and our destroyed, commercialized art communities (um, Fremont?).

Goodnight Seattle—no tears for you, or what you won't fight for.

Matthew Schwab

HORN AS DICK

DEAR JOSH FEIT: Your comparisons of Joel Horn with Richard Nixon are right on the money [CounterIntel, June 30]; both of these "men" are/were paranoid, deceitful, manipulating bastards who care/cared not how many people had to die to further their own narrow-minded agenda, no matter how backward the goals might have been.

Farrell Wheeler

UP YOURS, RALL

EDITOR: Ted Rall is an idiot and you're fools for publishing diatribes like "Victory is Ours" [June 30]. Contrary to Rall's appallingly self-serving analysis, the alternative to "not A" isn't "Ted Rall was right about B." Any high-school student knows you can't use a negative to prove a positive—just because the American public is deciding that Bush is a fuck-up and his approach in Iraq was a bad idea doesn't mean they've "come around to [Rall's] way of thinking," or that "were the 2004 election held tomorrow, John Kerry would defeat Bush." It means that Bush is an idiot. John Kerry, on the other hand, is just the guy who couldn't win an election versus an idiot.

If Rall's logic were correct his "you'll still be scum" attitude might be justifiable. It would also be ill-advised, politically counterproductive, obnoxious, disingenuous, and insufferably self-righteous, but at least he could stand on the, "Yeah, but I was right!" principle. As it is he just comes off like an enormous dick.

Every time that asshole publishes one of his diarrheic diatribes, every warblogger on the web uses his spittle-flecked shrieking to whip people into a partisan frenzy. WEIRDLY ENOUGH, lines like "you'll still be scum" seem to give a lot of people the impression that all lefties are arrogant ideologues, so sure of their moral and intellectual superiority that they're basically incapable of giving other views a fair hearing. For some reason, a lot of Americans seem reluctant to vote for people like that or for candidates who are supported by people like that. But hey, that's just democratic process. The important thing here is that the polls prove that America is finally realizing that Ted Rall (and, by extension, The Stranger) was right all along. Except oh, wait—they don't. But thanks for making us all look like dicks. Again. I'm sure that'll be helpful in 2008.

Joshua Norton

IDEOLOGICAL RETARD

EDITOR: Congratulations for accepting a full page from Ted Rall's typewriter. We rarely get to see a Marxist wheezing windbag outside of a museum. As a fossilized relic of discredited, ideologically retarded, well-preserved, ill-informed condescending bullshit, Rall's example is pure archival quality. As a cartoonist, Ted's a mildly entertaining figure of hopelessly frustrated leftist rage. As an aspiring op-ed writer, he's an excellent choice to wheel out of the Museum of Discredited Ideologies during summer break. Bravo!

Michael Dougan

DARK VICTORY

EDITOR: The victory that Ted Rall claims in "Victory is Ours" is that American popular opinion apparently now opposes the war. Big deal. It's like being down 15 to 1 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and celebrating a mere base hit. This can't be made into some sort of political game. This can't be about Left vs. Right, Blue State vs. Red State, or Liberal vs. Conservative. Whatever our political affiliations, as Americans no one can be smug about the fact that over 1,700 soldiers—as well as numerous civilians—have died. Even if the day comes when George W. Bush makes a public speech announcing the Iraq War as an error, I will not celebrate. I can't celebrate knowing that someone's sister, father, or son didn't make it home. What victory?

Monique Green

HATE THE GAME, NOT THE PENGUIN

EDITOR: I know you pride yourselves on your hip cynicism but really, it seems silly and useless to have a self-professed penguin hater review a movie about penguins (Charles Mudede on March of the Penguins) [On Screen, June 30]. Come on Stranger, have someone who has some interest in animals other than humans review these sorts of movies.

Jennifer Calkins

MUFFIN MESHUGAAS

EDITOR: Finally, someone has told the ugly truth about the boring morning pastries that so many coffee shops sell ["Most Unwanted," Sara Dickerman, June 9]. I have been trying to spread the word for years that it doesn't need to be that way. I manage a wholesale bakery in Seattle and I get so discouraged every time I try to get a new account. I hear that they love our product but we are a few cents more per item. Does saving a few cents justify having a bad muffin instead of a great one? I hope that people start to say no to Mostly Muffins and start to enjoy real food.

Chris Mosher The Wallingford Bakery

GO TO HELL, AOL

EDITOR: I was extremely disappointed in your choice to include AOL CDs in your papers this week. One would think a liberal publication such as yours would be against the distribution of so much unnecessary, unrecyclable waste. I've picked up every one I've casually come across—over 70 just in the last couple of days—and added them to a package I'm mailing to an organization in California that is collecting a million of the CDs to dump on AOL's doorstep. Please print their address so that your readers will know where they can send the CDs, if they haven't already dumped them in a landfill to remain for all time: NO MORE AOL CDs, 1601 Navellier St, El Cerrito, CA, 94530.

Jennifer Trout

FROM THE FORUMS AT WWW.THESTRANGER.COM

The following was posted in the Politics Forum: I'm so fucking sick of whiny nonsmokers. If everything that's bad for you is banned they'll be nothing fun left to do for those of us that have accepted our mortality and are okay with vices that may prove detrimental to long-term health. It should be up to the owners of restaurants/ bars/clubs whether they are a smoking or nonsmoking establishment. I know second-hand smoke can cause cancer, but somehow I doubt that people who don't frequently associate with smokers die from nicotine-induced cancer all that often. If you don't like it then go to nonsmoking establishments and avoid people who smoke. Choke on my smoke. Posted by Toxic, July 3, 4:05 am

Care to respond? Log on to forums.thestranger.com.