Speak Out A 02/28/02

Opportunity to succeed

I AM proud to be both a Christian and a Republican. As a Methodist, my greatest calling is to the service of the needy. I serve with alacrity. As a Republican, I believe that the service of the needy is the right of the people, not the responsibility of the government. The beauty of America is the opportunity to succeed, not the guarantee of success. Protection from failure is found only in communist society.Support the police

I DON'T understand why we're so quick to judge the police officers of Cape. I think it's time we support our police officers instead of always looking for their mistakes so that we can criticize them.

Special treatment

WHEN I make an appointment for the doctor and have to wait two hours to get in, and the doctor explains that he's taking care of 70 patients daily during office hours, I don't think so. The only thing he's taking care of is his wallet.

Bring back the flags

IT'S BEEN confirmed that Danny Pearl was killed, and now there are 12 young soldiers who have given their lives. Come on, Cape Girardeau, get those flags back out. Your patriotism was flying high, and it's slowly disappearing. It's not over. Show these young people that we are still behind them.

Law is strange

IT'S STRANGE to me sometimes how the law works. We have a young lady who had a wreck that killed her sister, and they're making her feel like she's totally responsible. Yet we have a grown man who's a sex offender, and he gets off. Somebody explain this to me.

Win some, lose some

IN RESPONSE to the caller who can't understand why people keep saying George Bush was not elected by a majority of the people. It's because he wasn't elected by a majority of the people. The Supreme Court stole the election for Bush by overriding the will of the people in Florida. That gave Bush the electoral majority and the presidency. But even Republicans agree that Al Gore won the popular vote. The caller's confusion stems from not understanding the difference between electoral and popular votes.

Little compassion

MY SON-IN-LAW was just fired from a job because he missed one day of work with a doctor's excuse. This is a 20-year-old young man trying to support a wife and a baby. He goes to the doctor on his day off, and the doctor tells him to stay off his foot for 24 hours. He takes the message to his boss, and the next day he's told he's been let go because he missed that day. I often hear employers around here telling people how low-quality the employees are. Yet when it comes practicing ethics and common sense and a little human compassion, they seem to have none. How do they expect to find quality workers when they themselves behave in such an uncompassionate manner?

Environmental failure

ON CLIMATE change, the reality is not that the United States is ahead of the rest of the industrialized world. The reality is that most other industrial nations have already signed on to the Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore, Germany and Britain have already met the Kyoto requirement of lowering carbon dioxide emission levels below those of 1990 and have suffered no economic catastrophe. By his rejection of the imperatives that this problem dictates, George W. Bush is placing the United States squarely in obstructionist isolation. Nations that have grown fat on decades of air pollution should be leading the way to solving the problem, not blocking progress at every turn. Americans making a living off of agriculture and forestry -- Southeast MIssourians, that is -- will be the first to suffer if international efforts to control climate change are inadequate.