Opinion Archive

This week we say goodbye to our newfound and reluctant reporter Jon Crider who is leaving us for medical school at the University of Mississippi. We tried to talk him out of it, but his response was perfect, of course. He said they haven’t discovered a cure for cancer yet and there was important research being pursued on other diseases.  So, he is going to have to leave us for the greater good of all mankind – or something like that.  I believe, if he really wanted to follow his heart, and money was no object, that he would stay. However – I know neither to be true, so he is physically leaving the area. However… (to be read dot, dot, dot) he is still writing one more story and it is going to be a-w-e-s-o-m-e when that story is ready for prime time. In fact, it might actually be good enough for prime time – in a TV movie special. Do they still do those?

Do black lives matter or do all lives matter? The divisive rhetoric coming from our president and his administration is having a terrible effect on our country. This dishonesty has driven some to resort to terrorist activities and murder. The man that was supposed to reconcile our differences has fostered division. I long for those that want us to live in peace and love our neighbors as ourselves.

What have these two concepts yielded for the average American? We have been practicing a world view for the last 30 years resulting in the degradation of the middle class. If a world-view candidate is elected president, our standard of living will continue to degrade. The current democratic candidate for president has a world view. Like the British, I think a change is in order.

The past two weeks have been truly tragic for police officers, the protectors of our communities.  In the most recent highly publicized cases, the force as a whole lost five officers in Dallas and three in Baton Rouge.  But the total loss for the month of July nationwide so far is 17.  We know about eight of those, but what follows are the names you probably haven’t heard. 

Regarding the “Pokemon Go” craze – I guess you can tell that we incorporated the theme throughout. The first I noticed something was going on was when I saw people walking down Palafox in Pensacola Friday night with their heads in their phones barely looking up to cross the many crosswalks. Then I noticed some young men walking around the yard at our office with their heads in their phones. They were very excited when I asked them to come inside the office and talk to me about Pokemon. And then, I realized, that was too easy. What if I were a weirdo? OK – I know what some of you just thought…that I am a weirdo.  OK – I’m just abnormal – and proud of it.  Who would want to be normal anyway?  Back to Pokemon Go…I liked one Facebook post that said – how about…”Pokemon Go…do something useful, Pokemon Go pick up trash on the beach and more.  And then there was a text I received this morning from my daughter at 12:15 a.m. that said that she and her husband were in Navarre Park playing Pokemon Go.  You will read in the story how Navarre Park is the Pokemon Go place to be.  Some lucky businesses were able to be special places for the game such as Johnny Huston’s and Lewis Funeral home. We had a few jokes around here about how people would show up at funerals to catch characters in Pokemon – but then they didn’t sound so funny.  When you have to write stories about perps, creeps, and offenders on a regular basis – your humor does get a little warped. We did take a family walk last night to try to catch some Pokemon characters – so there is a positive side to the game. I haven’t downloaded it to my phone – and I don’t plan to. But, that’s just me.  I just will be busy keeping my eyes open for gamers who aren’t looking at where they are going.

Nicely written opinion on 7 July, “Trespassing on peace?” Your response was well-reasoned and reasonable. Christan Bowen’s primary problem was poking at a straw man – a weak but very flammable target.

The United States of America has been in precarious positions before, but it seems lately things are not turning as they should.  Something is out of balance, or as we would say in the south, out of whack.  The list of what is out of whack is long and disturbing.  To name a few, a satanic group will deliver a satanic invocation at the next City of Pensacola meeting in an effort by the council to be fair across religious boundaries, a spotlight shines on law enforcement and their use of force and sometimes deadly force with black lives (not all lives), a sniper shot and killed five police officers in Dallas during a Black Lives Matter rally in what appears to be retaliation for black people who have lost their lives at the hands of deputies, former secretary of state and now presidential candidate sent classified and top-secret emails on an unsecured server at her house and is deemed reckless by the head of the FBI yet no charges are filed and no consequences are delivered, we are at war with Islamic extremists in our own country and abroad.  We are a nation under siege by both ourselves and others. 

The FBI describes finding a terrorist rooted amongst our population similar to finding a needle in a haystack. Common sense states if looking for that needle you don’t add hay to the stack. Common sense also states that if the hay-eating animals are being hurt by the needles you don’t add more hay that contains more needles! This action only complicates the problem of not just having to find one needle, but multiple needles in a much larger haystack. If the educated Liberal Left Democrats can’t understand this simple common-sense concept of thought should they really be running for any office within our government? Of course their solution to any problem is to spend more of our borrowed money to correct the problem. Has government recently corrected any of our problems by spending more money?

Santa Rosa’s roughly 130,000 voters will have the opportunity to cast their ballots for a variety of state candidates, county officials and local-option sales taxes Aug. 30 in the county’s primary election.

The following arrived in our inbox as a letter to the editor, and the opportunity of a response should not pass: