Now is the time for change
It will come as a shock to no one that a new year has just begun. What may come as a shock to many, though, is that a jaded, ultra-cynical, extremely world-weary and forty-something still greets every new year with the same energy and enthusiasm with which each kiddie looks forward to that annual visit from St. Nick.
Call me a nut, a loon or just plain crazy but, as wacky as it sounds, I still greet every January with a silent but yet firm and determined resolution that, as the song says, things can only get better. That, long after the ball has dropped in New York, the last firework has fizzled out and the last Mummer has strutted his stuff here in Philadelphia, I still hold fast to my belief that this year will be better than the last, that we can actually do the impossible, that we, as Thomas Paine so eloquently put it, have it in our power to begin the world anew.
I know I am not the only wide-eyed fool who feels this way. I know there are others out there like me. I may not have met all of these senseless daydreamers, but I know they exist. And I am certain my fellow crackpots and I share many of the same wishes for the coming year. More money, less death, more money, less body fat, more money, less Miley, LiLo, Kim K and baby North. And more money.
I guess you could say the one common denominator uniting this offbeat band of misfits is hope. And I am talking about real hope. Who knows? With a little help from our long lost friend common sense, maybe 2014 will be the year when this bright, shinning hope carries the day, recusing us from the mind numbing, soul crushing, emotionally depressing, financially ruinous despair that is, as Gerald Ford once said, our long national nightmare.
Maybe this will be the year when We The People finally wake up and see that something is definitely going wrong around here. I am a hard-working, true red, white and blue American who is fed up. An American who is as mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. An American who is thoroughly disgusted watching his country die a bit more and more each day.
The long delayed, desperately needed and eagerly anticipated time for impeachment has arrived.
Never give up. Hope. It’s a beautiful thing.
Bill McDevitt Jr.
Torresdale
In response to Sen. Leach
Finally, someone with enough guts and compassion to do what needs to be done. It is entirely ludicrous that we cannot chose our moment to die, when we are “at the end of life.”
We are an intelligent, compassionate and loving race, yet it is required that people who are suffering through terrible pain remain in pain until the last little bit of life fades away. How barbaric is that? It is devastating to watch someone that you know won’t recover suffer the ravages of cancer, renal failure, brain injury, dementia/alzheimers (yes, it’s terminal), etc.
Thirty years ago, I watched my father wither away from emphysema along with what (at that time) was considered a rare disease, interstitial fibrosis. When my time comes to an end, should I be sickly, I would like to have that choice and save my family the pain of watching me lose who I was. It’s not necessary. I applaud Sen. Daylin Leach for introducing the Death with Dignity Act and I will stand whole-heartedly behind what it represents.
Rose Higgins
Rhawhurst
ACA website still a failure
After reading Edward S. Marks, Ph.D’s article on the 654-million-dollar disaster called the ACA website, I have to wonder what his Ph.D is in?
The doctor wants to compare a site that 50 million people will be forced to use under ACA to some site that slowed the workers compensation process and may have caused some college applicants to check their smart phones for other ways to contact schools, all of which have their own websites.
Fortunately, most people with at least a minimum amount of intelligence can see this comparison is absurd.The 654 million dollars wasted on the site could have paid college tuition for every student in America and could have settled every worker’s compensation claim.
Ron Kall
Bustleton
