OpinionFebruary 3, 2010
Speak Out 2/3/10
IF President Obama is really serious about wanting Congress to do something about our debt, Congress should pass a bill limiting the number of air miles he can travel. There's no telling how many millions of dollars he's spent in the last year traveling by airplane all over the world...
Airfare
IF President Obama is really serious about wanting Congress to do something about our debt, Congress should pass a bill limiting the number of air miles he can travel. There's no telling how many millions of dollars he's spent in the last year traveling by airplane all over the world.
Go to neutral
REGARDING the problem some Toyotas are having with the accelerator sticking: If it were to happen to anyone -- I don't care what kind of car they're driving -- put the gearshift into neutral as soon as it happens and turn your key off. When you turn off your car, you won't have power brakes or steering, but you'll have a few seconds between putting it in neutral and the motor going dead before losing those things. The immediate thing to do is to put into neutral. This doesn't matter whether you're skidding on ice or what. When you don't have control, put the thing in neutral.
More borrowing
I see that 60 Senate Democrats voted to raise our debt limit and 40 Republicans voted against it. How stupid is our Congress that they can't pay the bills now and they have to keep borrowing money? That's like someone who can't pay his credit card bill and getting a note from the credit card company saying it will raise the credit limit. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life.
Passing the blame
I have a problem understanding the proposed health care legislation. First of all, I can't understand why the Democrats and the president are blaming the Republicans in Congress for not passing a health care bill. The Democrats have a supermajority in the Senate and a big majority in the House. They have plenty of votes to get this bill passed if they want. But for some reason they didn't, so now they're trying to blame it on the Republicans. How can they possibly blame someone else?
Foreclosure rehab
OUR home was one of several foreclosed on in the past year in the Red Star area. Now the federal government is stepping in to use my tax money to fix up my old house to sell it after draining my finances, credit and dignity. I wonder how much money I will end up spending on that pit with nothing to show for it. When we needed money to help us out of the situation, we couldn't get it. But now that it's all been taken away, we get to pay for it again. The kicker? The main reason the whole thing went downhill was due to a chronic illness and high medical bills. With a gridlock on any health care reform (and, no, I do not want the public option, thank you very much), I will probably end up losing health care coverage forever if I am downsized from my state job due to the crappy economy. Thanks, Big Government, for getting in the way and using my bad fortune to make others money.
Hot-air jobs
THE president was in Florida indicating that jobs were to be had soon on the new high-speed rail line. It appears that the right of way has been purchased, the rail line designed and the materials procured in order to start construction work. I doubt it. It sounded like a good speech, but leadership is what we need. I haven't seen very many jobs created from hot air unless you're in the balloon business.
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Emotional argument
I respect Tom Meyer as a good businessman, a good family man and a good Catholic, but I challenge him to give us the president's exact quote regarding abortion that would lead one to think he favors aborting babies at birth. No one, especially not a parent, is for abortion. We might differ as to whose choice it is -- the court, the legislature, one's church, the medical community, the potential parents, the individual states -- but no one is happy that it happens. I propose that it would be more effective for people of different opinions on the topic to work together in a rational manner to reduce the number of abortions rather than to resort to loaded language sure to swell the emotions of all sides of the argument.
School support
LET'S hope a recent comment is not representative of public opinion. Voting against Cape Girardeau's school bond issue because of alleged shortcomings in school personnel is a pitiful commentary on the state of support for schools in our community.
Defining socialism
BY definition, socialism is government ownership of the major means of production. Therefore, people who persist in saying the president is a socialist are lacking in knowledge of the basic political definitions.
Hatchet job
THANK you for prefacing the piece about the president's state of the union speech with the title, "Fact check: Obama and the 'hatchet' job," because it certainly was the intent of the authors of the article to perform a hatchet job on our popular president. Shame on them.
Venting anger
I read Josh Bill and Hamner Hill's piece about credit default swaps. I assume they were being facetious when they said the recent Massachusetts shocker that sent Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate was "all about credit default swaps, stupid." Bill and the professor did an excellent job explaining this esoteric big bank and Wall Street financial instrument that contributed to our financial meltdown. However, the column's collaborators were way off base when they wrote that this was neither a Republican nor a Democrat issue. It very much was. Unfortunately, the voters in Massachusetts vented their anti-incumbent anger by sending a Republican to the Senate who will be much less likely to vote for the sweeping financial reform that both Bill and Hill seemed to agree was so desperately needed.
Slip and slide
THE Jackson slip-and-slide has returned. Several years ago the slide in Jackson closed, but for the last three years when it snows Jackson uses streets to rekindle memories. The city does a poor job clearing the streets compared to Cape Girardeau and other nearby towns. Stop wasting time with salt and cinders at intersections and use the plows to move snow off the roads. On Sunday and Monday the sun made slush of the snow, but new Main Street was still one and half lanes wide east and west.
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