Speak Out 10/22/08

Back to normal

OH THAT the election was tomorrow and that the TV ads would fade to a distant memory. I'll be glad when it's over. I'd like to read less of this bickering and fighting and get back to a normal life again.

Parents' music

THE PROBLEMS with the music at school and youth dances will never stop. Most of the parents listen to that garbage at home and don't think it's a big deal. If you've ever watched these children dance to it, you'd think you were at a strip club. That comes from letting your children watch garbage videos. When the parents grow up, the children will know how to act.

Having your say

TO CLAIM that the content of the syndicated columnists published by the Southeast Missourian is too far to the political left is, frankly, frightening. With perhaps one honorable exception, the syndicated columns are consistently Republican conservative in nature. Speak Out is the forum that keeps the Opinion page of the Southeast Missourian fair and balanced. People who want to read only opinions reinforcing their already preconceived notions should look to sources other than the Southeast Missourian.

Limbaugh's rhetoric

WHO TOLD David Limbaugh to tone it down? After claiming that the Obama campaign was surrounded by the "stench of Stalinism," thus implying that Barack Obama was another Josef Stalin (a brutal communist totalitarian dictator responsible for the deaths of 40 or so million of his own people), Limbaugh backtracks and refers to Barack as a "mere" socialist. Don't get me wrong. Limbaugh is incorrect in that allegation as well. Socialism is an economic (as opposed to a political) system whereby the government owns and operates many of the major businesses and industries. Obama does not favor that either. What he does favor (as do most Americans) is reining in runaway crony capitalism (with closer government oversight and regulation) that has led to corporate and other excesses, is responsible for our current economic and fiscal crisis and left the average middle class American holding the bag. This is precisely what presidents like Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt did. They saved, not destroyed the free-market system by making sure that people played by the rules. Still, considering all the other names Limbaugh has used in reference to Barack and his campaign, to now refer to him as a socialist is an anticlimactic letdown.