Speak Out 6/17/09

Economic future

OUR government is spending money so fast that we all know we will not be able to pay it back. The Bush administration spent too much money. Now the Obama administration is spending three times too much money. It is not going to work. Will our country go into a complete deflation and depression, or will it go the other way into hyperinflation?

TV racket

SO far the grand digital TV scheme has turned out to be a bust, as far as I'm concerned. I can get three new channels on my antenna TV -- when they're not freezing up and reading "No signal." At no point today have I been able to watch an entire program without interruption, even after rescanning. And for what? So the picture can be a little clearer? Maybe my TV's old signal was a little fuzzy, but at least it came in continuously. My grandparents said they thought this was a giant racket, and I'm starting to think they're right.

Shopping bags

AT grocery stores, paper is not all right with me, and neither is plastic. Millions of trees are cut down to make the paper bags, and tons of plastic bags eviscerate our environment. It's time for area city councils to pass ordinances requiring shoppers to provide their own, preferably cloth, shopping bags.

Radical ideas

FOR those voters who voted for hope and change, now must be a difficult time to watch the news. An arrogantly Marxist government is pushing its radical ideas with almost daily news accounts of cronyism and corruption, and this will surely bring a voter backlash. The Republican Party isn't finished. It just has to wait while the Democrats keep revealing themselves for what they truly are: political machine thugs who will do or say anything to stay in power.

Conservative naivete

NOTHING illustrates the naivete of neoconservatives (Cheney, Feith, Gingrich, Perle and David and Rush Limbaugh) better than their wrongheaded belief that democracy is the be all and end all solution to the problems that confront nations all over the world. Nothing illustrates this better than democratically elected members of the terrorist group Hamas in the Palestinian Territories and Ahmadiinejad's landslide re-election in Iran.

Obama not weak

SO we're going to get nuked because President Obama is weak? Are you sure? He doesn't seem all that weak, and the scenario doesn't seem likely. It would also seem that we have the nuclear upper hand just by knowing where most of our nukes are, not to mention where the other guy's nukes are. Whether Obama is weak is a matter for substantial argument. I consider it weak to not have the self-control to not start a war with a sovereign nation to get back at a nationless organization living next door to it. I consider it weak to have no moral courage at all, no respect for others, no empathy. I consider stupidity to be the greatest weakness of all. So where were you "strength auditors" when George Bush was letting his childish frustrations drag our great nation through unjustified war and economic disaster? Whose weakness compromised our country's integrity with torture? Be fair, or be quiet.

Bringing justice

BRIDGET DiCosmo deserves national recognition for her coverage on the Josh Keezer case alone. Now she may have given widespread public attention to another wrongly convicted murderer, this one hailing from Sikeston. If DiCosmo is dedicated (as she seems to be) to help bring justice to Scott and surrounding counties, as she seems to be, then one hope that DiCosmo is a young reporter and will be able to live and work on these matters until she's 153 years old.