Your Letters for June 13, 2025

It's just odd

I agree with several letter writers in the St Joseph News-Press who are concerned about Joe Biden's cognitive impairments while president. Its obvious Joe Biden wasn't cut out for president. His babble isn't just garbled talk; it is messed up thinking. When Biden and his wife Jill flew away to California on Jan. 20, I sincerely hoped he would take it easy out of the limelight. He could enjoy the beach, or a game of checkers at the senior center, or attend meetings of the prince hall lodge he is said to have joined. If he joined so recently, why not attend and relax?

It is odd that instead of retiring and mellowing to "Joe Biden private citizen," he has had relapses of impaired cognition and bizarrely thinks he is still on the world stage. Just days ago, that 82-year-old Biden made the bellicose statement that he could supposedly "beat the hell out of" 56-year-old reporter and author Jake Tapper. I don't think so! Biden's detail should have grabbed a straitjacket and taken him to a padded psychiatric cell at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. During the debate, Biden boasted: "We finally beat Medicare." Why is he always resorting to violent metaphors? The man is seriously disturbed. I feel sorry for his prostate cancer. He needs help and seclusion. His family shouldn't have subjected him to elder abuse. But additionally, the nation deserved a younger, attentive man who was overseeing our country and not a bunch of unelected cronies commandeering the White House and abusing the public trust. Aside from form letters and ceremonial proclamations, the autopen should be rendered null and void.

James A. Marples
Longview, Texas (former Kansan)

Westward Ho

As we drive towards Colorado, I would like to share some of the thoughts I had while traveling across Kansas.

While going 70-80mph across Kansas, I started wondering how those “wagon trains” going just a few miles a day did it. How did their backs hold up, no rest stops, no convenience stores, no repair stations, no highway patrol help, no bathrooms — of course that could have been a blessing considering the condition of some those alone on the trail.

Kansas is flat, wide open spaces for miles. As we were approaching Colorado, I wonder what would they have thought of the oil rigs in the fields pumping something out of the ground, the open fields for the cattle grazing, water, and just how bad are the Indians? And what would they have thought about the native Indians, their villages, would those windmill farms be seen as some God they had, or a weapon?

Today, there are feed lots for cattle with fences. The sizes/number of the bales of hay in the fields. They did not get to see those church steeples off in the distance, picturesque. But the advantage, it was flat?

Today, we have the southern borders with people flooding across, with hand-out stations, cash, food, housing, etc. awaiting them. Those poor farmers only had their skills and expectations of asking for just a piece of land they could settle on and build a life. They will do the work! And their children worked alongside them.

As we got closer to Colorado, all I could think of what was their reactions when they got their first a good look at those mountains. What were their thoughts, impressions, fears, and hopes? Did they wonder if they made a mistake, and what was ahead of them crossing over them?

How do we get over them? Which one? How can the wagons climb those?

Would these people have gone through these hardships if they knew what their hard work someday would lead to government waste, the powerful rich, the politicians, who were going to do to get rich at their expense without any of the risk, dangers, and hard work, and them taking all the chances? I say yes because the true American people expect to work for what they get and remain in hopes of keeping what they achieved/earned and will be able to pass it to their children.

Now, we have Illegal immigration, food stamps, welfare, government corruption, millionaires, rules/regulations, health care, whereas they did not.

Questions:

1. Why didn’t God put some of those mountains in the middle of Kansas?
2. Why are the people of the U.S. so easy to be fooled by politicians and the news media?
3. Why is bad/wrong thing to do away with corrupt politician’s or lobbyist a bad thing?
4. Why are term limits a bad thing?
5. Why is it a bad thing to fire people for not doing their job?
6. Why is it bad to improve government systems — update them?
7. Why is it a bad idea to sell off empty government buildings? Bring back the workers at home or sell the property.
8. Why hasn’t the Afghanistan pullout been more of an issue — the lives lost, losing that equipment and a base?
9. U.S. dollars to Ukraine?
10. Why was looting allowed? No jail time?
11. Why are these riots and protests still allowed?
12. Those paying for these protestors?
13. Why is ICE wearing a mask to protect their I.D. and the future operations wrong?
14. Why isn’t it wrong for protestors breaking law ok for them to wear masks?
15. Why do we allow so many foreign college students? Is it for the money? Okay.

It is our country, everybody (that is a legal U.S. citizen) is entitled to an opinion.

Ben Pecora
St. Joseph