SPEAKOUT

Happy for children

I AM directing my message to people over 40 years old. I am 66 years old myself. I am so sick and tired of hearing old people tell young people "Well, I never had that. I never had that privilege. Nothing like that ever happened to me. I was never so privileged." I am so sick of hearing that. Would you please tell us old folks it's only because those things had never invented, had not been invented, had never happened yet. Our children and grandchildren are privileged, and parents and grandparents should be happy that these children are experiencing things, learning things that we never knew, never saw.

Then and now

BILL CLINTON ran on the idea that he was going to balance the budget in five years, that he was going to cut Medicare, that he was going to cut Medicaid, cut Social Security, whatever was necessary to balance the budget in five years. Now the Republicans are trying to do it in seven years, and the 43 percent that voted for Clinton are up in arms and against it. Now which 43 percent of the people in this country is ignorant?

Matter of fault

TO THE caller who is bashing the Social Security people who earn their way. No, we're not calling Speak Out because we're being ripped off. We're calling because we don't want to be ripped off. We like our benefits that we've got. We earned them, and we want to keep them. It was our generation that built everything up. We worked long hours, we built up our labor unions to protect the working men and women. We bought American products, and we supported our country 100 percent. We were very patriotic. It was your generation, from the baby boomers on, that allowed foreign products to come by not buying American, by letting the labor unions get run over by presidents like Ronald Reagan and left the labor unions to go to pot. And let the American industries, like the shoe industry and electronics industry be taken over by the Japanese industries there went the people's jobs. So if you want to be technical and nasty about the deal, it was your generation from the baby boomers on that are creating these welfare recipients. By letting American industries go to pot and we rely on our neighbors overseas for work.

What to believe?

I WANT to comment about the caller who said Clinton's best friend killed himself. I doubt that. Believing that this man killed himself is about the same as believing that Hillary and all of her top legal aides can't remember anything because they've all got amnesia. If you believe all this stuff, I've got some great land in Florida I'd like to sell someone. If you can believe that, you can believe me too.

A simple plan

I'M NOT a very smart man like the people are in Washington, but I believe that if they quit taking so much away from us citizens and cut their wages a little bit, we could balance the budget a lot quicker than seven years.

Now in print

I'VE MADE several comments to your newspaper about how biased you people are towards Republicans up there. You keep saying you're not and that you're a fair newspaper. I disagree with that. I've called in sundry remarks on past Republican issues like Mr. Nixon, Reagan and never heard anything about it. I'm pro-Clinton myself. But I called three times last week saying derogatory things about Clinton just to see if they'd be printed. Guess what? You guys printed everyone of them. Thank you very much, Southeast Missourian.

REPLY: Callers who make up facts to prove a point are going overboard. In the seven days prior to this caller's comment, there were four anti-Republican comments published in Speak Out and six anti-Democrat comments. However, there were also two pro-Democrat comments published and no comments favoring the GOP. In addition, there were three comments that were generally anti-Washington regardless of political affiliation. The published comments fairly and accurately represent the sentiment of the calls to Speak Out. Of course, when one caller tries to skew the comments, fairness flies out the window.