Return to Bushville

After listening to Republican plans for the country, I conclude that a vote for Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a one-way ticket back to Bushville.

Mary Ellen Page

Blue Springs

Glenn McCoy cartoons

One Oct. 9 letter writer thinks that Glenn McCoy’s cartoons are “not ... clever or funny or creative. Just hateful.” Well, I rather enjoy them and think they are to the point.

I guess it all depends on your political point of view, doesn’t it?

Harry Roth

Shawnee

Shading with statistics

Statistics are like bikinis — what they reveal is interesting; what they conceal is vital.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, despite the unemployment rate for September 2012 dropping to 7.8 percent, there are more than 5 million fewer people working who want to work than there were in June 2009 when the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent.

The labor force participation rate is the “share of the population 16 years and older working, or seeking work.” The average labor force participation rate from January 2009 through June 2009 was 65.7 percent.

It has steadily dropped since that time, dipping below 64 percent in 2012 for the first time in a decade and currently standing at 63.6 percent.

Bob Jackson

Leawood

Overreacting on statue

Well, they are at it again. The do-gooders are going to protect us.

Now, they are getting a grand jury (how much does this cost the taxpayers?) convened to try to remove the statue in the Overland Park Arboretum under the guise that it is obscene (9-15, C1, “The naked truth”).

Folks, there is nothing obscene about women’s breasts.

They are part of the woman’s anatomy, and they are dirty only if you choose to think that way. There are nude statues all over the world and in Kansas City.

Do you think children don’t know we all have different parts? The next step is for the do-gooders to head to Italy and put pants on the statue of David.

Hundreds of families (including children) visit that statue every year, and I don’t hear any complaints. If people don’t like the statue, stay out of the park and leave the rest of us alone.

W.R. Ernie Vietze

Lee’s Summit

Term limit Congress

Congress should seek clarity in what we, the people, want from it. If the Congress doesn’t know what we want, I would like to suggest a few things.

First, we would like honesty from members of Congress. I know they could be honest during their elected term.

Next, we would like them to look out for the people who put them in Washington, D.C., instead of looking out for themselves when they retire from office. This is one big problem they have.

They think we sent them to Washington to make their retirement after service a good one, and like nothing we could get from our government. They pass bills that they surely didn’t read or that they don’t care how they affect the people.

Somehow we need to set term limits on people we send to Washington and make their retirement package realistic and give them a package that would fit their jobs.

Kenneth Langley

Kansas City

Romney bends truth

The closer we come to November, the more I relish President Barack Obama’s try for a second term.

I was taken aback by his first debate performance, but lately I’ve come to think that perhaps he also was taken aback by the unsupported statistics of Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney.

Follow-up scrutiny of what Romney said has revealed so many untruths and half-truths that I am eager for the next debate, wondering how far to the middle and away from the right the GOP challenger will have moved by then, and how he will further fiddle with the facts to make them conform to what his supporters want to hear. Meanwhile, something besides lower unemployment figures may go the president’s way, and the Republicans will again have to find some chicanery to blame.

First they denounced lobbyists, then poll-takers and finally those tricksters who report on the labor market. Amazing how many phantom collaborators there are in the effort to make the Obama administration look good.

It must be getting harder for the president’s detractors to find something terrible to say about him, especially if, for a change, they want it to be true.

Janelle Lazzo

Roeland Park

‘Obama’s America’

Every American should watch the documentary or read the book, “2016: Obama’s America.”

It helps us understand why his economic policies don’t work and why they won’t if given four more years.

The movie draws from the president’s own book, “Dreams from My Father.” Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, the movie’s producer, doesn’t make claims that Obama is an anti-American extremist. He lets Obama do it in his own words, in his own voice, from his own book.

The best way to bring our beloved, still-free America down is to do it financially. The debtor is always at the mercy of the lender.

I work for a local health care system and will probably lose my job because of Obamacare. By 2015, the reimbursement cuts will be so deep many hospitals won’t survive. Caught between that and the costs of operating, frontline health care workers will get laid off.

If patients return to a medical facility within 30 days with the same diagnosis, the health care provider will be reimbursed nothing.

Why are hospitals penalized because Americans have poor lifestyles that lead to chronic conditions?

Donna Wilson

Kansas City

Obama over Romney

Well, I saw the presidential debate last week, too, and I have a different take (10-4, Editorial, “Romney wins on style, but still short on facts”). In Republican challenger Mitt Romney, I saw a man who speaks in platitudes, no specifics, just more of the George Bush trickle-down nonsense and promises to cut Medicare and Social Security. Conservatives hate Medicare and Social Security.

We cannot let this conservative cancer kill the only hope for health care reform we’ve seen since President Lyndon Johnson. If you work for a living, remember it was the Republicans who defended Wall Street when your savings were lost.

Remember the jobs lost to overseas American corporations. Conservative Republicans will cut Medicare and Medicaid as Kansas has, while duping us into another hopeless war to help their military contractor friends.

Republicans got us into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. How many more must die? President Barack Obama ended the Iraq war and has the date to leave Afghanistan.

Romney will surely extend that war. He’s a fast-talking rich man.

We’ve had enough of rich men. Keep Obama, a man who stands for peace and the welfare of the American working class.

John Kovelan

Lenexa

Obama not presidential

President Barack Obama is proof that weakness has consequences, especially in foreign affairs.

Several U.S. embassies were attacked or burned to the ground, and Obama hits the road for another fundraiser.

What kind of president is he?

Glenn E. Schreiber

Overland Park

Disappointing KC teams

Jackson County voters were threatened that if they did not cough up some tax money to revamp the stadiums they might lose the professional teams that occupy the Truman Sports Complex.

Well guess what, fans? The Royals have not had a championship season since 1985, and the poor Chiefs have not been champs since 1970.

I have always lived in the Kansas City area and have always cheered for my hometown teams, but after decades of being losers, it gets harder and harder to work up any enthusiasm for these teams of ours.

Soon we will all see former Royals in the playoffs again playing for other teams because the Royals seem to enjoy being a farm team for the nation.

Most area high schools are off to a better football season than the Chiefs are.

I guess area sports fans will have to stick to this motto, “Those who expect nothing shall not be disappointed.”

Lynn Pierce

Independence