Speakout 4/6

I want to thank the Standard Democrat for the wonderful job on basketball coverage of teams. I live in Dexter and you did a spectacular job of putting us in there. The write-ups on the games were so good, they were excellent. Reading them was like reliving the games and the pictures were great. Out of the three papers that ran them, your paper was the best. You guys did an awesome job! I'm not the only one who feels this way. Several people around town have commented that the Standard Democrat does the best job around of covering sports events. We are making a scrapbook for the varsity players and all the articles and pictures were cut out and copied. The colored pictures made the scrapbook look a lot better. As a personal note, my son made the second-team All-State and you put a picture and write-up in there and the other papers just kind of clumped them together.

People who call SpeakOut just complain, complain, complain about anything and everything. Not everybody believes in God, but if gay people think they're going to heaven, then I think they need to read the Bible. There is a time and a place. This is not judging, but as far as gay marriages, if that's the way you live, then God help you all.

What happened to the lady named Jessica who worked at Dairy Queen? Even though my friends and I are not part of the young crowd, she was always very kind and treated us with respect. I hope we encounter her again. Thank you very much for your kindness, Jessica.

In response to the March 31 article about parking at the dialysis center, whoever wrote this must not realize that there aren't many dialysis patients who drive. Most of them are dropped off at the front door by someone else who drives them there. So they don't use many of the front parking spaces. Those spaces are being used by patients of the doctor's offices next door. The dialysis crew has to walk a mile at 5 a.m. to get to work. That leaves the door open for possible muggings and the workers are exhausted before they can even start to work. Then when we get off at 7 or 9 p.m. we have to make that walk back in the dark. The people who get to park there are a doctor's staff, nursing students and the instructors. It is not the dialysis staff. If the Jaycees built the unit for dialysis staff and patients, then why is everyone else getting to park in our spots? That's all the caller was trying to say in the first SpeakOut article.

Mike Jensen's March 31 article about the $42 million given to homeland security was right on. Here in Missouri, I don't think we really need security like New York or other big cities. Why don't they use the $42 million to drop our gasoline prices, or give us a receipt when we get gas and then get a percentage of that money back every quarter or something? The gas prices are outrageous and stupid. Bush may be a great president, but he's sitting back making billions of dollars off his oil bonds. What are we working people to do? We are the ones who suffer the most. Give us taxpayers a break on our gasoline. They haven't even demanded OPEC to increase production. Bush should put his foot down and demand to meet with OPEC and get something done.