This is Lombard calling. I was just curious as to why, when there is an attempted child kidnapping around a school, just the teachers and parents are alerted. I think it should be village-wide. I live by two elementary schools and I certainly can keep my eye out for things. I just heard about this at work from my fellow co-workers who have kids. I think this should be a village-wide alert, like an Amber Alert, when there is an attempted abduction.

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OK, America, I think I’ve had enough. I’ve heard it all now. I’m getting this generous tax cut from President Obama, $13 a week. That’s really going to help me a lot. But what really frosts me is that people who are on unemployment are getting a $25 a week increase in their unemployment benefits. I’m working my tail off keeping my head above water so I don’t have to go on unemployment and I get a $13 tax cut. If I go on unemployment, I get a $25 increase in my unemployment benefits. What is wrong with this picture? A tax cut? We should be getting $100 a week tax cut, not $13.

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You’re right. The person can’t blame Barack Obama for losing his or her job three days into his administration. But you certainly can blame Barack Obama for everything now. He spent more money than any president in the first 30 days of office. This is his economy. It’s not George Bush’s anymore. It’s his. This ignorant thinking of people, thinking it’s George Bush’s fault, it’s not. It’s our own fault.

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Hey, this is Lombard calling. I watched the president on TV and he informed us that the reason we’re in the trouble we are now financially as a nation is that we spent too much money. Isn’t this the same guy who just spent almost a trillion dollars in less than what, six weeks in office, and he’s planning on spending close to a trillion more on the budget we haven’t even passed yet for this year? Then he says, Oh, by the way, we’re going to spend more money on education, we’re going to spend more money to cure cancer—all of these programs, but we also have to be fiscally responsible. It’s unbelievable, folks.

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I’m a hands-on hospital health care giver. I take care of people who are sick in the hospital. When I hear more talk of improvement by cutting Medicare, I know that what that translates into is more of my co-workers—people who actually put their hands on people and take care of them when they’re sick—will lose their jobs. I want all of you to think about when you or a loved one was in the hospital. Were there too many people there to take care of you, or were there not enough people to take care of you? Then also, I want you to think about who helped you more when you were sick—the hospital workers or the people at the insurance company. What percent of our health care costs go to pay for insurance companies? I think it’s more than half. I could be wrong, but I think so.

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This is Lombard calling in response to the individual in SPEAK OUT about the police department, that we’re over-policed, and especially in the wrong areas. We need the police and the extra squad cars at the police station and they are probably there for a specific reason. If we didn’t have enough police or squad cars, you probably would be the first individual complaining about it. So, quit complaining about these people who put their life on the line every day of their life, whether they’re on the clock or not—some people know who they are in plain clothes. So, get a life, stop complaining about the police department. Maybe you’ve got a kid on a skateboard who’s doing something wrong, not abiding by the town rules.

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Lombard calling. I see you initiated the red light cameras at Finley and Roosevelt eastbound. My comment is that you’re actually going to cause more accidents than less. My reasoning is that people are going to slam on the brakes when seeing a yellow light and there are going to be cars behind them, causing multiple chain-reaction accidents, or at least one car behind them, smashing into the first car. Also, when you approach and it’s green and changes to yellow and you can’t stop fast enough before it turns red, you race through it and you potentially cause more accidents that way. Then, they’re going to try to give you a ticket if it changes to red before you fully clear the intersection. What a bunch of nonsense.

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I think it’s finally starting to happen—there’s a pain growing behind the eyes of all of you Obama voters, all the people who thought, “Oh, he can’t be so bad.” The pain behind your eyes is the Obama hangover. Some of you are starting to actually realize that some of those people making $250,000 a year, and who Obama is just going to soak, are the people who actually hire you, who keep you employed. You’re taking pay cuts, you’re losing your jobs. Factories are going to close, people aren’t going to the movies or getting their hair done. Thanks for voting for Obama because he doesn’t care—he wants this country to be completely changed and you’re just steps on the way to making it happen. So, grab some aspirin, but it’s not going to help.

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Once again the TV news is talking about people having difficulties with their mortgage and whatever, paying their bills. They had a couple from Wheaton, which is an affluent community. Their house is totally paid for, yet they’re having problems. Oh, my gosh, please stop. Any house in Wheaton is probably not worth less than $300,000 and they’re on the news because they’re having problems paying their bills and their house is already paid off?

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Everybody knows this, but I don’t think they’re thinking about it—the Iraq War that Bush started for no reason, as you know, cost us $10 billion a month. Now that’s a deficit we’ll never get over. Every four weeks we’re paying $10 billion for nothing. We should have never gone there. My heart is broken. I love America. That’s all I care about. Our country; you and I live here. We wanted to be safe. That’s all I care about. God bless America before it’s gone.

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Hi, this is Lombard calling. My neighbor’s been building an addition on his house for over a year now. Every day, all day long, hammering and sawing, hammering and sawing. Isn’t there a requirement as far as how much time they have to complete the project? It’s annoying—it was all last summer, spring and summer, it’s going to be all this spring and summer, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., just hammering and sawing. Don’t they have to finish that in a certain time frame? Please help.

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Hi, this is Lombard calling. I would just like to reflect with a young moment of mine. I’m a 22-year-old citizen of Lombard, and I would just like to reminisce that when I was a kid, I was going to Lilacia Park, and would climb up on those rocks behind the pond and see the tadpoles in there. I would pick out the tadpoles and bring them home and would release them when they were big frogs ready to take on the big world. I just thought that SPEAK OUT could use a different tone than the politics and hullabaloo going on in the world and with the economy.

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On Westmore Avenue the garbage is picked up every Thursday. What a mess. There are the automatic dumpers, and when they pick up on a windy day, the papers fly everywhere. There’s garbage everywhere from St. Charles down to probably the Prairie Path. It’s about 6:30-7 a.m. when I drive by there. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know whose fault it is, but someone should look into it. It’s not the kind of service we’re paying for, and it makes the neighborhood look terrible.

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I’ve lived in Lombard for 45 years. I have a fine young man who delivers the Lombardian to me each week. His name is Mike. He puts it on my porch; he’s an excellent young carrier. I am thrilled that he is my carrier. He is doing a great job.

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The weather is getting nice out now. You drivers on Meadow between 53 and West Road, you can slow down. The kids are out playing. There’s no need to go speeding down Meadow to get two blocks later to a stop sign either way. You need to slow down a lot.

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President Obama promised to do things smarter and repair our relations with our friends and our allies. The recent visit by the British prime minister demonstrates his complete ineptness and incompetence. What a total disaster. God save the queen; God save America.

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How quickly we forget. Yes, we were attacked on President Bush’s watch, but it was the president before him, I think it was—oh, yes—Bill Clinton, who didn’t do a thing and bombed an aspirin factory and also let bin Laden get away. You can blame him as well. We haven’t been attacked since. George Bush went into Iraq and Afghanistan. Praise George Bush.