SPEAKOUT

Scavengers: Be tidy

THE CITY supplies us with one service a year that makes you feel like your actually paying for something and then actually doing something, but my problem is the scavengers that go through your trash during spring cleanup. Could they at least please not dump the trash out of the bag?

Six guardian angels

WE WOULD like to publicly thank our six guardian angels who rescued my husband and I from the flash floodwaters of Crooked Creek of Route A early on April 6. If not for our faith in God and our angels, we would not have gotten out when we did.

Confederate memorial

I'VE BEEN reading lately about the Confederacy in Speak Out, and I wanted to inform everybody there's a nice memorial to the Confederate soldiers in Cape Girardeau next to the old library in front of the Common Pleas Courthouse on Lorimier Street.

Civil War was about greed

I'VE READ some comments about the Confederate flag. I've just got to say this: If a person wants a flag flown or wants to put a sticker on his car, it's his own business. Your rights end at his nose. If you do away with the Confederate flag for the reason that people are calling in -- saying it was slavery -- then you're saying yes, you're right, the war was over slavery. If it was over slavery, why were there was over 100,000 black troops fought for the Confederate cause? Read "Black Confederates in Virginia." Also go to Canton, Miss., and look at the Black Confederate monument. The Civil War was over what brought down the Soviet Union, exactly the same thing. The peasants in the Soviet Union would not sell their products to the state stores for a low price, in other words, subsidizing the state. And the same thing with the South. The North, as soon as they got power with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, got more votes on their side in the House and Senate. They passed a tariff. In other words, the South would have to sell their cotton to the North at below market price and would have to buy northern made products. They could no longer trade with Europe. This is what caused the Civil War. It was over greed of the North.

Comet watchers

ON BEHALF of my husband and me, I am expressing a heartfelt thank you to Southeast Missouri State University's Astronomy Club and others who set up telescopes and had binoculars available at Cherokee Park for viewing the Hale-Bopp comet.

He's a saint

IN ANSWER to the Speak Out titled "Scoundrel in the White House." Well, I too was in the big war, and I too charged up Ham Bone Hill. I think our commander-in-chief is a saint.

Welfare or crime

WHILE READING the paper, I noticed an article that said the welfare rolls in the United States are shrinking. Well, I'll tell one thing, if the welfare roles are shrinking, you can bet your bottom dollar that the crime rate's going to go up just as much.

Thanks for Bill Cosby

I WOULD like to thank KFVS-TV and Southeast Missouri State University for bringing Bill Cosby to the Show Me Center. This is the third time my husband and I have had the pleasure of hearing him. Each time we laughed until we cried, and this time my husband even got to shake his hand. Bill Cosby is a personal, genuine man and a wonderful entertainer. Thank you again for bringing first-class entertainment to Cape Girardeau.

IRS is exposed

THE IRS thinks that they're so high and mighty because they are the IRS. You know what I say to that: Big deal. The IRS is just like you and me, ordinary people trying to do a job, but they think they can always do more because they are in a power position. Power can be defeated with careful planning and thinking, but they have people in the IRS that are crooked just like some Americans are today.

More Civil War information

TO THE people worried about the Confederacy and the Old South and accusing the Old South of slavery. This was something that was not unique to the Old South. First off, African chiefs sold their own people into slavery. Secondly, Native American Indians also had slaves, and according to a 1840 census about 3,500 Black Americans in the Old South owned slaves.

Reno is a yes man

I'VE SAID it before and I will say it again, Janet Reno is Bill Clinton's yes man, and I don't use that term loosely. After all, Bill Clinton appointed Janet Reno to the position that she holds today. Can't you figure that out? Any idiot should be able to.

Which bridge first?

I WAS just wondering if anyone out there taking bets on which bridge is going to get done first, the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge or the one on South Sprigg Street.

Getting a dirty name

I WANT to comment about cleaning up Cape Girardeau. My opinion is that the worse spot that we have here is Capaha Park. It's a beautiful park, and so many people enjoy going there, watching ball games and letting the kids play. But it's the terrible mess that the dogs are leaving. You can smell it all over the park. It's sad. People from out of town come and step in it. It's really awful. I don't know if the city should do something. I understand in other places, they have to bring some kind of scoopers and pick it up themselves. And in some places if they don't, they get fined. I think maybe they have to go to that extreme. Something needs to be done or this town is going to get a terrible name.