Speak Out 4/23/18

No civility

Mike Jensen recently denounced the lack of civility and inflammatory rhetoric in our public discourse and then proceeded to vilify "crazy" Joe Biden and "race baiting" Al Sharpton. I appreciate Mike Jensen's ongoing effort to bring back civility to the public domain.

Roundabout

For quite some time, there was a subject being discussed very regularly on Speak Out. It died out and I thought the discussions were over but here lately another comment or two on the matter has popped up. For the sake of brevity and to keep everyone from having to listen to the same arguments over and over, let me sum up the feelings of the people who are making these comments: "WHAA, I don't like roundabouts, WHAA-WHAA!"

Investigation

Various callers refer to investigations into Gov. Greitens and President Trump as "witch hunts." Yet the Mueller investigation has resulted in 19 indictments and five guilty pleas. Republican leadership in the Missouri General Assembly, several Republican governors in adjoining states, and a host of others, have called on Gov. Greitens to resign. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson once famously chastised the Russians for focusing their attention on the one who caught the burglar, rather than the burglar. The same good advice applies in these investigations.

Greitens

Sorry, but it's over for Gov. Greitens. He has been found guilty in the only court that counts; the court of public opinion.

Who is responsible

Immaculate (Conception Catholic Church) has almost doubled in size and now wants the city to close a street for their convenience. Obviously, they believe it is the city's responsibility to accommodate them. On the contrary, Immaculate Conception needs to accept responsibility for meeting their parish and parishioner needs. Do what other churches have done. To accommodate the growth, add more services. As for the safety issues pertaining to people crossing the road, add crossing monitors. In all of that growth, they must surely have people willing to volunteer at service time and during the school day. If that isn't palatable, build a new facility elsewhere, just as other churches and schools have done. The situations created are the church and school's to fix, not the community's.