Speak Out 4/8/10

Diaper dumping

IF you travel Route M every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you won't miss it. It's the diaper dumper, two bags of used adult diapers dumped on the road.

Health costs

I'M sick and tired of everybody running down the Obama health care package. Critics keep saying costs will go up. They go up anyway. What caused that?

Religious views

SAYING that the Democratic Party is the party of atheism is offensive. The overwhelming majority of Americans are spiritual no matter which party they affiliate with. In this two-party political system, centrist thinkers who differ just a little from each other might find themselves on opposite sides of the aisle. Just because we differ on some political points doesn't make us mortal enemies.

False alarm

THERE are people around Cape Girardeau and Jackson who believe there are going to be 17,000 IRS agents knocking at your door if you don't buy health insurance. Read what was passed. There will not be 17,000 IRS enforcers added to the payroll. That was never even in the bill. Actually, 16,500 was the claim, and someone is inflating that fallacy to boot.

Common sense

I laugh whenever political movements try to label their thinking as "common sense." If you travel this country end to end, you'll never meet an individual who doesn't think he uses common sense almost all of the time. The phrase is no more righteous than "good thinking according to the person who says it."

Makes no sense

CHARLES Krauthammer bemoans the fact that President Obama is going to Indonesia and attributes it to nostalgia. Never mind the fact that Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation with a rapidly developing economy and a strategic ally in the war on terrorism. Krauthammer, apparently a hopeless Anglophile, somehow interprets this as a snub of Great Britain. I know. It makes no sense. It's just that irrationality is something you don't expect from Krauthammer.

Health entitlement

MORE than a few Speak Out comments refer to "the government" instead of the appropriate "our government." In a democratic republic, the government belongs to the people. If we don't like the performance of some of our elected officials, we can change it at the ballot box. Having said that, it is a wonderful thing that health care is now an entitlement and that our government (society writ large) finally has a responsibility to see to it that the private sector attends to the health care needs of nearly all of its citizens. Private giving is a good thing and will continue, but there's no way it could make a dent in covering the 30 million or so Americans who are now, finally, entitled to health care coverage.