Reader Responses

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's Chief Economic Adviser, former Sen. Phil Gramm, recently said Americans have become "...a nation of whiners," apparently suggesting the economic problems we are currently facing are just a perception problem, that it's all just in our heads.

This might be the case for someone like Mr. McCain, but the average American, unlike Mr. McCain, doesn't own seven houses and have a family fortune in excess of $100 million. I wonder how Mr. McCain fills up the tank of his family SUV, or if he even knows gas costs more than $4 a gallon.

I've got a message to send Mr. McCain. In one sense, Sen. Gramm got it right: some of us whine; although often it's more like crying, every time we see where the Republicans, led by George Bush and his cronies, have taken this country.

I whine every time I full up my gas tank; every time I hear of another airline going bankrupt or a financial institution being closed; every time I hear about another family losing its home to foreclosure; every time I see a photo of another coffin coming back from the morass of Iraq and every time I'm reminded of the arrogance and incompetence of the Republican-led government that has brought us to this point.

In case anyone has forgotten, the government was completely owned by the Republicans for six of the past eight years (the Congress for 12 of the last 14 years), so it's a bit difficult to make the case the Democrats are responsible for the mess we're now in, as Republicans so often try to do.

So if you like the way things are going in this country now and would like to see it continue another four years, and you're better off now than eight years ago, then McCain is your man. As for me, I'll continue to whine loudly and often, right up until the time I punch the button on the voting machine and cast my vote for every Democrat on the ballot in November.

Enough is enough.

Dr. Nathan D. Greene
Bullard