Speak Out 3/14/13

Great performance

We saw "Annie" at the River Campus and it was a wonderful production. The cast was great, and it was well staged. As with all the productions at the River Campus, there is never enough parking.

Brazile's answer

On March 23 of last year, Donna Brazile, former co-chair of the Democrat National Committee, tweeted a celebratory shoutout for the second anniversary of Obamacare. This year, on Feb. 27, she tweeted: "Just got off the phone with my health-care provider asking them to explain why my premium jumped up. No good answer!" The answer, Ms. Brazile, is that your Obama government has a problem with telling the truth.

Christmas displays

Has it occurred to the county commissioners that people spend hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars, for their Christmas displays for the county park and these individuals give of their time to set the displays up and tear them down, much of the time in terrible weather. And now they are going to "charge us" for letting others enjoy our displays? Our display won't go up next year.

Adjunct professors

As a general rule, I think adjunct professors do a great job, and I don't like to read about them being criticized in the Southeast Missourian or in any other forum. In the interest of full disclosure, for about a quarter of a century I have considered myself an adjunct professor of Speak Out.

Unfair criticism

Why are so many around here so quick to bag on [Michelle] Obama for her Oscars appearance? Where were these people when Laura Bush and Ronald Reagan were taping their Oscar appearances?

Wall Street vs. Main Street

Wall Street reaches record highs. Corporate profits continue to soar. Yet middle- and working class wages and income continue to flatline or drop. If President Obama is the socialist so many claim him to be, why hasn't he done anything about this. Of course, President Obama is not a socialist. He and his party are in bed with big corporate America almost as much as the Republicans.

Excellent story

Rachel Crader's riveting piece on the 1969 Oran Eagles' basketball team and the controversial call denying Fred Johnson a last-second chance to tie the state championship game was sports journalism at its finest. It should be included in an anthology of the best sports writing in 2013.

Timeline

Something seems wrong with this. 1. Fast and Furious put thousands of guns in the hands of criminals. 2. Now they want to take away the guns of law-abiding citizens. 3. Criminals in prison recently were turned loose. 4. The Obama administration thinks it has the power to use drones to target and kill American citizens inside the United States. When Bush was president, Obama said waterboarding terrorists was torture.

Drone talk

It speaks volumes. I refer to U.S. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham's query to his Republican colleagues that he doesn't recall any of them coming to the floor and expressing concern about a noncombatant U.S. citizen within the U.S. being attacked by a drone when the president was George W. Bush.

Lexington roundabout

The bad and the good of the Lexington roundabout: [The bad] is we don't need to spend that much money on an area with heavy traffic only between 7:30 and 9 a.m. The good is the job was given to a local company.

Benefits of preschool

I have three children and the one who went to college was the one I had in preschool since age 4. I think preschool is a good thing. There's Head Start and everything else to keep children from getting behind. Preschool was the best thing to benefit him.

USPS, Armstrong

Now we know how our U.S. Postal Service got in trouble, giving $31 million to Lance Armstrong. Looks like the government shouldn't be in the job.

New jobs

The drop in unemployment and the creation of larger than expected new jobs results from the fact that job creators anticipated the election of Mitt Romney.