China gets the benefit
Why do we want China to build a factory in the U.S., much less in Arkansas? All this money will go back to China. Then they can build more ships and planes to attack us with. You complain about the Chinese buzzing our carriers at sea, yet you want them in our state.
Tom Cotton got all bent out of shape when we decided to open up trade with Cuba. I haven’t heard him say anything about this deal with China.
I believe they’re cheating us in the trade deals. Thousands of jobs? Yes, working for China.
BOB MASSERY
Little Rock
Has no business in it
Most of the people pushing for Bible classes in the public schools are probably fundamentalists. They should realize that many of the people who will be teaching these classes believe the Bible to be mostly myths and legends and will be presenting it as such to their students.
The government has no more business teaching the Bible than it has teaching the Koran or the Book of Mormon.
ROBERT BURNEY
Conway
The goose and gander
A lot of the women being interviewed say they are voting for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. If one man would say he was voting for Bernie Sanders because he was a man, I’m sure he would be hung from a tree with an old rope.
JOHN H. NELSON
Horatio
Plunged into depths
I like Ted Cruz, as apparently some millions of Americans do, considering the number of votes he won in his (unfortunately) unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency. He won his U.S. Senate seat by a wide margin over a self-funded Republican who was supposedly ordained to have the position before underdog Cruz beat him. He again won Texas in the presidential primary by a wide margin. There is no good reason why Cruz shouldn’t be president. I believe he is immensely more qualified by actual accomplishments than the man sitting in the Oval Office for the last seven years.
It is disgusting to see Philip Martin use the Twitter bile of one of Cruz’s college mates to give credence to the allegation that Cruz has always been universally hated. Anybody who uses the sewer of Twitter as a truthful source has got to have a screw loose. Did you do one of those “fact checks” to see if Craig Mazin was actually a roommate of Cruz’s?
This campaign is indicative of the depths to which the culture of this county has plunged. When a man (Donald Trump) and a woman (Hillary Clinton) of such low morals can be the presidential nominees of the major political parties, I fear that our future as an independent democratic republic is very short.
I believe Cruz is disliked in Congress because he did what he promised when he ran for office. He went to Washington much as Mr. Smith did and took the corrupt cronyist system head-on instead of engaging in slick maneuvers to fool his voters back in Texas. The GOP is now probably going to lose the White House again, the Senate and maybe the House.
I’d be glad and honored to have Ted Cruz as my houseguest, and also Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, and maybe I could stand John Kasich’s sanctimony.
GERALD HOLLAND
Bentonville
So much for system …
Remember the Do Not Call Registry? Still getting those annoying unsolicited calls? Are they increasing? Ever get any help in stopping them?
I believe this was just a political ploy to get elected to office. The theory was good but there was not a real system in place to enforce it. Now they are calling on our cell phones. How did they get those numbers? This is an invasion of privacy.
Our elected officials are not doing their jobs to enforce the system. It is all about the almighty dollar. Those businesses that make these calls do not consider our feelings. They call any time of day. They know now that our officials will not enforce this program.
So much for the good old American system.
ELLIS M. JAMES JR.
Benton
Democratic victory?
Donald Trump has the Republican Party sewn up, in the bag. He likes to live in the lap of luxury. Limousine service, maids, butlers, cooks and chauffeur. I bet he even wears a Rolex wristwatch. He can afford anything.
However, it seems most Republicans are not happy with him. Some of the former presidential nominees have said they are going to skip the convention. Paul Ryan isn’t satisfied.
Could Hillary Clinton win the presidency? Maybe if the Republicans have a weak candidate, the Democrats can claim victory.
DONALD L. PUTMAN
El Dorado
Foreign-policy errors
I just finished reading the conservative column, “World according to Trump” by Charles Krauthammer. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner. He’s intelligent and effective. I agree with him on some issues and disagree on others.
Among other things, he castigated Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in general, and their foreign policy in particular. I admit that he also criticized Donald Trump just as much or more about his lack of knowledge and inconsistencies about his ideas of American foreign policy as he did of Obama and Clinton.
I agree with Krauthammer that the U.S. should not now or ever apologize to Japan for dropping the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I believe Harry Truman was right. In the long run it saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives.
What is really disturbing to me is the fact that I’ve never read an article by Krauthammer, other Republican columnists or Republican-leaning newspapers criticizing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the Iraq War and subsequent disaster. I believe it was our biggest foreign-policy blunder since Vietnam, and the Bush administration is to blame for it, not President Barack Obama.
JOE D. BENNETT
Harrison