City not listening?

I went for lunch at a restaurant near The Landings and asked the manager why there was no handicapped parking nearby. Her answer was that she had called the city three times. The first two answers were that the number was as many as the city had allotted in the area. The third was that the city would look it over, and she has received no reply.

If you look over the area you will find all the parking spaces are across from the restaurant. Also at Applebees and Fudruckers. That is a long way to walk. I use a walker and had to keep it closed to walk to the end of my car. The car parked next to me was too close, and I was concerned about falling as I leaned next to my own car.

I feel the city should examine the rules for handicap parking. If a business calls three times for spaces, it should be mandatory to provide spaces. Perhaps the city rules should be changed for the convenience of the patrons.

Moral decay

Even as our nation faces the prospect of nuclear war in the Korean peninsula, we remain a divided America with the left establishing a cultural meme that opposing President Trump at every step is both "noble and glorious." Their inexhaustible anger does not lead to catharsis but to deeper expressions of the same anger.

Truth has been displaced by a dictatorship of relativism. We are a ravaged political society. Liberal secular progressive policies blanket our thought processes and social media; journalists mistake randomness for patterns, conflate correlation with causation, and give excessive rein to emotional and cognitive tendentiousness.

Contraception was legalized in 1965 and made available to all in 1972 via the Supreme Court. Our Constitution became a "living constitution" with Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion and Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex "marriage." To add to our moral decadence Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, has recently passed legislation paying for all abortions any time during pregnancy and without need for parental notification.

Fifty percent of individuals under 30 are "nones" -- no religious identity. Family and family values are withering on the vine. In March the Associated Press announced it was introducing the singular “they" to accommodate those who are "nonbinary and don't use gendered pronouns."

Our concerns with self, money, power, greed, incivility, and ad hominens as a norm of expression have replaced the need for the "common good." We in a quagmire and an abyss to deep too fathom. Only with a strong moral compass with God at its center will we be able to stop the pain we are inflicting on one another. John Pauker (1920-1991), the poet, sums up man's perennial conflict in a two line poem: "All men are brothers/Like Cain and Abel."

Do we look pessimistically at Cain or optimistically at Abel?

A better picture

Writing to a newspaper is a new experience for me, but given the negative press given to veterans’ hospitals these days, I thought it important to share the positives of the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care Center.

A Korea and Vietnam veteran, I find the professional staff outstanding. While demonstrating outstanding technical skills, they also exhibit the quite sympathetic and personalized service that lets one know that they are genuinely interested in me as an individual. Special recognition in this regard toes to the work of Amanda W. Samson, Ph.D., MPH and Gregory Gannon, LSCW. Furthermore, I find the overall staff outstanding. From the moment one enters the center, the young staff is welcoming and convivial when rendering assistance. This courtesy extends to the peripheral staff (those who have no direct responsibility to me), but who are always friendly and acknowledge me as a person.

I am sure that I am not the only person receiving this careful care, and hope that this letter helps to ameliorate the poor publicity given to veteran care.

Sold us out

It is absolutely incredible how our Congress can quietly chip away at our privacy protection and the public sits unaware! Yet, with current legislation nothing else could have happened, since the mainstream media is obsessed with Trump and Obamacare.

Nevertheless, our U.S. Senate voted to allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell, trade, barter, or give your personal data to any third party they wish. In our current Internet age including smartphones, these ISPs store more personal information on each of us that any other agency including banks, your doctors, even the IRS. The Senate vote was 50-48 in favor -- including both Alabama senators, Shelby and Strange, voting in favor.

Whoever your ISP is, AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum, Verizon, etc., are allowed under the new law to profiteer your most sensitive information. Previously, your financial, medical, location addresses, children info required your ISP to secure permission prior to releasing, thus limiting any profiteering. Not anymore!

So the next time you start being inundated with harassing, worrisome solicitations you can thank our U.S. Senate for selling we the U.S. public out, all in the name of corporate profits.

This story was originally published July 20, 2017 at 3:55 PM with the headline "City not listening?."