Someone help me. I drove by a sign today which asked “How’s the hope and change thing working out?”

This just upsets me. I voted for President Obama and I’m still waiting for the change thing. Over the last two years, the GOP has not agreed with much that the president and the Democratic Congress have set forth in their agenda and have therefore not voted in favor of many (if any) of these things.

This is their right. The GOP does not like our ideas so they say “no” to them. I think most of us can agree that the GOP has done quite a good job of not allowing ideas that they don’t believe in to pass in Congress.

So, if there hasn’t been much done by the Democrats in Congress, I guess most of us have to agree that things are pretty much the same as they were about four years ago, when the GOP had control of the Senate, the Congress and the presidency.

So, if you don’t like what we Americans have right now, it’s pretty much what the GOP created during the previous administration.

I’m just using logic. If anyone can explain to me what laws the Democrats have passed to make this country so different from four years ago, please let me know. I haven’t seen too much change allowed.

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Please help me understand. Until then, maybe we should try the change thing, because change does not always make things better, but nothing gets better without change.

Jim Kavanagh

South Portland

To constantly call fellow Americans that are labeled liberals un-American is in itself un-American.

To constantly undermine and call names, at a large percentage of the population and ridicule their significance, is wrong. It’s not left or right, it’s wrong.

To every day viciously attack a president who was overwhemingly elected to the highest office in the land is folly and, much worse, unpatriotic.

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Who said it was all right for part of the population to go on the attack and disparage a president that inherited great damage to our country and who is doing his level best to repair it?

Where is our American spirit? All these people who claim to love Jesus and the founders of our Constitution would lambast them today for their so-called liberal agenda. A president who has in large part ended a $1 trillion ill-founded war, and managed another simultaneously, and brought a country off the brink of Great Depression No. 2 should be given much more patience and support during his second year in office.

People who hate this administration will have their chance in two years to vote their conscience again; in the meantime, stop throwing rocks and slinging arrows, stop the terrible rhetoric and join with other Americans and work together.

Zoo Cain

South Portland

Money is so deeply rooted into our country’s decision-making process that I wonder how far down the priority list “We The People” have been pushed.

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The Supreme Court has ruled that corporate America can unleash unlimited amounts of money to candidates who will vote in their favor. So where does that leave us? What on Earth were they thinking? Has greed reached up that high?

We have two parties; one leans toward giving corporate giants a free pass to insane profitability, the other seems to have a plan to address the needs of working-class Americans.

One party refuses to work with the other and we blame the president for a lack of progress. As we lose our jobs and homes, corporate executives collect, in annual bonuses, more money than 90 percent of us will earn in a lifetime.

Sitting on billions of dollars, they refuse to create new jobs just to make this administration look bad. Both parties have representatives who are more concerned about their campaign contributions than with the people they represent.

TV ads are half-truths and lies, paid for by corporate giants. Elect the wrong people and expect change for the worse. Deregulation will prevail, Expect gasoline and home heating fuel to go back to $5 a gallon.

Alternative energy ignored, health care and Medicare will vanish, Social Security will be privatized and placed into the hands of the idiots who tanked Wall Street.

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You’ll be 70 before you can collect benefits, borrowing from loan sharks will be cheaper than credit cards, forget pay raises, insurance will rise again — and then refuse to pay out claims. Is all this acceptable?

The November elections are a test of our intelligence, with no room for party loyalty. Change with no plan is no change at all. Please use your vote wisely; so much depends on it.

Doug Davis

Windham

When the moderates were silent in Germany in the ’20s and ’30s, and when the moderates in the Middle East and in our political parties are silent today, the extremists gain power and wreak destruction on their people.

It’s time for the Republican and Democratic moderates to confront the extremists in their own parties. If moderates continue to cower in the face of their parties’ extremists, they will lose control and moderates themselves will become the target of angry extremists.

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I will listen to and willingly follow thoughtful, passionate and considerate leaders of any political persuasion. Those who are driven by anger without reason are dangerous to all of us.

Cliff Bolster

Saco

Voters who are dissatisfied with the two present political parties and the candidates they offer should consider voting Green.

Green candidates will be on the ballot for various offices in many states, counties, and municipalities (www.gp.org).

Many Green candidates have a chance of winning, and every vote cast for a Green registers a protest against the idea that we have only two options on Election Day.

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Green candidates don’t take any money from corporate special interests. They run to serve the people of their state or district.

Voting for Democrats or Republicans means voting to make rich people even richer, with little help for the rest of us.

It means voting for more war and more corporate power.

When we vote Green, we vote for our own best interests, for Main Street instead of Wall Street, and for peace and the health of our planet.

If you think the Green Party is only for lefties and tree-huggers, read “Why True Conservatives Should Vote for Me,” by Rich Whitney, Green candidate for governor of Illinois (www.whitneyforgov.org).

Nancy Allen

Brooksville

 


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