With all he’s accomplished, why is President Joe Biden so unpopular?

Republican plans

Following the election, I find myself wondering why people vote Republican. President Joe Biden has a favorable approval rating of only about 45 percent. What has he done to alienate 55 percent of the voters? Was it the big push on Covid vaccines that resulted in 250 million Americans getting vaccinated? Was it the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that will refurbish and rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, and water systems? Was it the Inflation Reduction Act, which will lower costs for families, combat the climate crisis, reduce the deficit, and ask the largest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes? Or perhaps it was his legislation that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices with big Pharma and insure that no family spends more than $35 per month for insulin.

What are the Republicans plans? Well, we know they plan to increase the retirement age for social security and Medicare to 70 and to reduce benefits. We hear that they are planning to cut military aid to Ukraine. And they want to repeal Biden’s legislation on drug price negotiations and insulin cost caps. On the other hand, they plan to reduce taxes for the rich and for wealthy corporations yet again.

Folks, that’s all they have!

James Porter, Danville

Legislative debacle

By overreaching on both Amendments during the recent election, Republicans may have succeeded in making Gov. Andy Beshear’s re-election more likely.

More personal to me is that they chose to ignore a likely outcome of igniting the pro-choice majority, particularly dominant in urban areas, to vote against all Republican candidates whom many might otherwise have favored. Only “rooster tail” voting can explain how Geoff Young got 48 percent of Fayette County’s votes.

Inside Republican circles I frequently heard voices say abortion exceptions for rape and incest were reasonable or necessary. But these voices were never heard by angry women’s choice advocates who falsely believed every “R” was their enemy on all issues they felt dear.

For the future, the pro-life, anti-abortion groups, who have energized the Republican Party since Ernie Fletcher won the Governor’s mantle, should be disappointed with their party’s failure of leadership.

These leaders might be responsible for killing the golden egg laying goose, which has produced the supermajority in our General Assembly.

By going two bridges too far with their Amendments, leadership has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Leaders should accept blame for trying to impose minority values upon an aroused majority. To move forward on a pro-life agenda now seems a fool’s errand.

Those leaders should go back to their primarily rural constituents, with their tails between their legs, and admit they cannot do what they were sent to Frankfort to achieve.

Then, voters might recall those “100% pro-life” slogans and relabel these folks as “100% stupid.”

Jon Larson, Lexington

DeSantis’s leadership

To those pronouncing Florida results as an indication Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is leader of the GOP — be reminded that Florida is where elephants go to die. Florida’s political factor has a shelf life — the life expectancy of the aging northern boomer in The Villages.

DeSantis’s allure ends at the Florida-Georgia line.

Bill Adkins, Williamstown

Trump’s legacy

I lost friends after Trump became president. I worked with two of them for years. I noticed a change immediately after Trump won. They spoke to me less and less until it turned into total silence. It really hurt my feelings. We had been to each other’s homes for dinner. It was a shock to see one of them wearing a Confederate pin on her blouse. The other one started to eat lunch every day with a known racist.

Trump didn’t tell them to stop speaking to me. One lives in Waco, Kentucky. The other Martin County, Kentucky. They both grew up in towns with no black people. Today, I got the surprise of my life. Miss Confederate Pin stopped by and asked me how I was doing. She was no longer wearing her confederate pin. She said to me, “Mr. Waco said hello!” You have got to be kidding me! They turned on me! They really hurt me! Broke my heart in two! I had to get used to them not being around! And now they’re back! From outer space! With that sad look upon their face! I know their true character now.

Now I am the one that doesn’t speak.

Yolanda Averette, Lexington

Legislative choices

He faced two doors, one labeled Heaven the other Hell. He opened the door to Hell and saw a long table filled with every kind of food imaginable. The people around the table were tied to chairs bolted to the floor, one hand tied behind their back, the other tied to a spoon with a handle so long it was impossible to put food in their own mouth. Everyone was starving. People were using their spoons to beat others away from the food. Misery was everywhere.

He turned to the door marked Heaven. He saw the same table overflowing with food, each person tied to their chair, one hand tied behind their back, the other tied to the long handled spoon. But at this table people were laughing. Instead of beating each other with their spoon, people were feeding their neighbor.

Kentucky’s legislators need to START passing laws that benefits Kentucky as a WHOLE. We can’t continue to live in this Hell with neighbors dying, food shortages, gun violence, unaffordable medication and healthcare, low wages, pollution, high taxes on the poor, and low taxes on rich.

We’ve voted, now we must hold our legislators accountable for the laws they make.

Margaret Groves, Frankfort

Critical analysis

I always find it telling how a journalist finishes an article (or an editor cuts it off, as a reader I can’t tell). There are many articles I read in the Herald-Leader that finish unsatisfyingly with a quote from an authoritative source on the subject of the article without critical analysis or challenge to the hegemonic perspective. The piece that inspires my comment now is the Nov. 16 update on the Nicholasville Police Department’s killing of Desman LaDuke by Joseph Horstman on Oct. 22. Taylor Six finishes their article with TWO paragraphs of quotes from the Kentucky State Police referring to the inside investigation of this killing. Herald-Leader, please inspire more critical investigation of your journalists, especially in matters of state killings of its citizens in crisis.

J. Evelyn Miracle, Nicholasville

Family experience

It is sad to me, having grown up in Lexington and having worked one summer delivering the paper, to see U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul vote against the bill to protect same sex marriage. Why? My wife’s brother is gay. A brilliant student, he served in the U.S. State Department admirably for years. He and his partner were discriminated against. When Connecticut passed a law making it legal, we had their wedding in our backyard.

Family intimacy and love can open your eyes and help you embrace diversity. My wishes go out to Kentucky to be less prejudiced.

George Wiedemann, Brewster, Mass.

McConnell hypocrisy

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell speaks of “candidate quality” as if his unethical conduct, ignoring his Constitutional responsibility to remove criminals from the White House, did not occur! He sat unrecused as jury foreman for the trial of his wife’s boss, a deadly conflict of interest as it turned out.

McConnell has done nothing to protect anyone. He silently watched the inhumane “separation” program, and passively observed a COVID war that took over a million lives and spread globally because of obstruction of mitigation efforts. He repeatedly and consistently lied in his successful abuse of privilege to sabotage our courts; fast-tracking biased, unqualified candidates who have now targeted pregnant women.

Knowing that classified documents are now missing, our nuclear security is irreparably compromised, and the leader of a deadly coup attempt is again declaring his candidacy for President, McConnell talks about candidate “quality” as if he had not led this chaotic sabotage! Does Kentucky want a Constitution to live by or just to sit by and be ignored when convenient? McConnell’s conflicts of interest are despicable and deserving of expulsion if not indictment.

C. Wulf, Front Royal, Virginia

Adult civility

I would like to speak against name calling. When I was a young mother and as an elementary school teacher, that was a basic lesson to teach small children.

In this country we have finally figured out that it’s terrible to say derogatory things against certain groups. It’s now deemed discrimination and should be.

Name calling has spread out even further, however, to people who differ in beliefs and ideas. A person can say just a few words, and another person immediately will label them a “such and such.” As far as I’m concerned this is another form of name calling, just as young children would do on occasions, and had to learn otherwise.

This behavior among adults can be extremely divisive and harmful to our country. It needs to be called for what it is.

Belinda French, Columbia, Tenn.