Text The Times.

Text The Times.

In the February 13 edition of your paper, a police officer was quoted as advising the public to check their vehicles each night. When someone broke into my vehicle recently, I called the WMPD, and an officer was dispatched to my house. He told my neighbors and me to leave our vehicles UNLOCKED. He said that was better because someone wanting to steal something from our cars would just break the windows to obtain access, and that would be expensive. We all simply looked at him in disbelief.

[Editor’s Note: I can neither confirm nor refute that claim. I will confess that was actually my mindset for a long time. I think it goes back to my Dad once telling me something like “a lock will only stop a lazy thief’ before busting open a padlock to a storage unit (we were renting but could not find the key) with a couple of strikes with a hammer. And since I never keep anything of value in my car, I had it in my head that I’d rather a thief rummage through my car and find nothing that bust my window and then rummage through my car and find nothing. I’m not saying that’s the way to go, but if you were told that, I get the logic there. But, yes, it’s probably best to lock your car doors. I would also be sure to note that you should definitely not leave anything in your vehicle of even the slightest value though] We were looking for a new vacuum cleaner as the old one sucked at doing anything but blowing smoke. As we passed the Steam Irons we saw one for $487, which seemed a ridiculous price for a simple household item.

The iron apparently had many wonderful features including being able to iron clothes. I know the world has moved on from my grandmother’s hot iron that was heated on a stove but they still fulfill the same basic purpose. Fancy isn't always better, it just looks like it is.

It may be time to consider value for money and what else could be done with the money, including donations to charity. A cheaper version was available for $19 and surely the difference in cost would feed a number of homeless people. It may be cynical to say so but I think that many people who buy the very expensive model will hire someone else to do their ironing for them. They will also be unlikely to be short of food. Let's spend some of our money on making the world a better place, not just one with prettier toys. [Editor’s Note: Yeah, I’ve got a $12 Walmart iron at home that seems to do the trick. Unless that $487 iron also washes, dries, folds and hangs the laundry, whoever buys it is either ridiculously m ’ealthy or an idiot… or both.

Being rich doesn’t make one immune to stupidity. Also, putting a ridiculous price tag on something doesn’t make it better. Some recent examples that come to mind are Kanye West’s “hip-hop t-shirt. ” The cost? $120. In case you were wondering what sort of “hiphop t-shirt would justify that sort of price, it’s a plain white t-shirt. No, really. A simple plain, white tee, with nothing special on it. The sad part… it sold out. My personal favorite, though, is the Best Buy “Monster HDMI” cable. If you have an HDTV and you want to actually watch HDTV, you have to connect your cable b ox Isate llite/stream in g device to the television via a “high-definition media input” or HDMI cable.

They’re so cheap to produce, the cable company or whoever gives you one with the device. But never underestimate the power of corporate greed and consumer gullibility. Which brings us to the $99 “MonsterHDMI' cable.

You see, unlike those sad little (and free) HDMI cables, this gold-plated high-tech state-of-the-art cable offers gooder, more better images and sound. How much better? So much better! Except that it was all a lie. Funny thing about a screen built to show' 1080p resolution, once you hit 1080p, that’s all the “p’s” you can get. Putting a fancy “monster” cable on your TV isn ’t going to change that. The best part is that those cables, it turns out, cost about 59 cents each to produce. In case you were wondering, yes, they eventually got sued, in a suit of the “class-action” variety, and were forced to pay back $3 million to anyone who could prove they bought one of the cables]

So, there’s a national emergency? At our nation's borders? How about we declare a national emergency for what is going on INSIDE our nation’s borders. 2020 can NOT get here soon enough!!! [Editor’s Note: I’ve often had a similar thought about foreign aid. I mean, I understand that people are suffering all over the world, but there are people suffering right here in the United States. Why don’t we solve our problems here at home before we spend billions of dollars overseas? As for your last part, don’t think for a minute that 2020 is going to magically bring an end to all our problems. It’s becoming clearer and dearer that Trump intends to run for a second term. He’ll probably have some challengers in the primaries.

He’ll definitely have a challenger from the Democrats, but for those who supported his candidacy in 2016, I can’t imagine too many of them have changed their minds. Don’t forget, the Republicans GAINED seats in the 2018 mid-terms in the Senate. We’re still a divided nation and it’s going to be interesting to see where we stand next November and who our options are for the presidency]

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