Everyone's talking, no one is listening

Some observations:

1. White Republicans from the Party of Lincoln seem to make up the vast majority of tea party and health care reform town hall participants. At one health care town hall the Republican governor of Texas called for secession.

2. The tea parties seem to be organized by groups of whites who loathe seeing "their country" headed by someone they say is an alien, non-Christian, minority black man.

3. So called Birthers, even when shown a copy our president's Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper birth announcement, shout that they are fakes.

4. The signs seen at tea party rallies portray our legally elected president as a Kenyan tribesman, as a black Batman "Joker," as cannibal; a Nazi, a Socialist or a Communist.

5. Some folks at tea parties and health care reform town hall meetings carry loaded guns, claiming it's their right to do so, making it more difficult for the Secret Service to protect both the president and those attending.

6. Some folks at these rallies yell things like "We need to take our country back" and that the president is "Muslim not a Christian" in this, apparently, "Christian exclusive" country.

7. British citizens are becoming increasingly angry with the Republicans for calling the British National Healthcare System a "bureaucratic and Orwellian system that often denies care to the elderly," in the words of Sarah Palin.

The old TV show, "Who Do You Trust?" is becoming far too applicable to today's world where lies, bullying, loud voices who never listen, lack of manners and common civility, absolute partisanship and businesses who only want to make money from other's misfortune rule supreme. How about we send all of the "children" to the timeout corner and the rest of us have a thoughtful, ethical, sane, nonpartisan discussion about how to fix things properly.

Pat Harrington

Palatine