Speak Out 11/26/13

Christmas card postage

Suggestion to the call on postage for Christmas cards. Throughout the year buy extra forever stamps and put them away until you send your Thanksgiving and Christmas cards. Even if the price of stamps goes up it is a low-cost way of giving a smile to someone.

Reading bills?

Nancy Pelosi said, "We need to pass this bill (Obamacare) to find out what is in it." This is so stupid, surely Pelosi is not doing this in her private life. If so, I have a contract for Pelosi to sign to resign for that statement and not doing her job properly in reading what she is passing.

Speak Out comments

Although wildly erroneous and filled with mind boggling misinformation, Speak Out comments do give us a general sense of what's on the mind of contributors. For example, Speak Out sages have recently been focused on such subjects as Obamacare, area school test scores, road repair or the lack thereof, the federal budget, food stamps and so forth. What about the terrible tragedy in the Philippines and what we can and should do about it? Nary a word. And what does that tell us? To me, it illustrates an almost incomprehensible interest in the parochially petty at the expense of an epic humanitarian crisis.

Health law

A recent writer noted that his BCBS insurance premium was going to increase sharply and that if he wanted to keep his premium the same, then his coverage would drop sharply. He said the president promised lower premiums for the same coverage and he asked why it wasn't cheaper. The answer is simple. The president lied to the American people in order to get his legislation passed. He figured, as all politicians do, that the important thing is to get it passed, then it is almost impossible to change it or do away with it.

Consultant

I have a question for the city of Cape. I would like to know why the city has to hire an outsider and pay him $100,000 to come in to Cape Girardeau and tell Cape Girardeau whether it needs a new police station or not. Really? Are you serious about doing it like that? Who knows better whether we need a new police station than the chief of police and the people working under him? We don't need an outsider coming in and giving him $100,000 just to tell us we need a new police station.

Help Americans first

Yes, I just have a question. I noticed that the United States is one of the first ones to pitch in and help foreign countries when they have a catastrophe, which I think is a great thing. However, I think the United States needs to take care of its own people first. We still have people homeless from Katrina. And we're helping foreign countries out, but we won't help our own people? We still have people in New Jersey who are trying to recover from all the disasters they've had this year. But we can't help the people in New Jersey out? We have to help foreign countries out? We have people out in California who have had devastating fires. They've lost their homes. They've lost everything they had. But we're not helping those people out either. I'm sick and tired of us helping foreign countries out, when we don't help our own people out.

Wishy-washy D.C.

This Obamacare thing and about the insurance and what have you, this shows that none of those people from Obama on down, all the people, Congressmen ... I doubt if there's a one up there who could honestly and truthfully say that they had read those 2,700 pages before they voted on it. Obama has admitted, around the bush, that he didn't know what was in it by trying to correct some of the mistakes that he didn't know were there. We have a bunch of wishy-washy people in Washington who are looking out for themselves. If Obamacare was as good as they want to make us think it is, they would have voted to include themselves in that and do away with the health insurance they have now. But I haven't seen a thing about them doing that, or anybody even mentioning such a thing.

Loud music

We enjoyed the spaghetti supper at the Arena. But the music is too loud. You can't hear yourself think and you're deaf when you come out. Why don't they tone the music down to about half the volume, and people could really enjoy it? And it's not just at the spaghetti dinner. It's the same way at the pancake supper, or whatever they have. They think they have to have the music so loud and it kind of echoes in the Arena. And people can't even talk. Just turn the music down a little so we can enjoy it. Thank you.

Questions for president

Yes, I wish these TV news media people, especially the reporters, would start doing their job. Next time President Obama has a news meeting, why don't one of these reporters ask him, "If your health care thing is so good, how come you and your wife and your kids aren't on it?" Thank you.