LETTERS

Upholds GOP agenda

Isn’t it odd that Paul Greenberg, who apparently knows more about education than anyone else, is much smarter and politically astute than the duly elected president of the United States, can run the Department of State to perfection and still function as editor of this Republican advocacy paper’s editorial page, chooses to remain just a cog in a very large wheel and be ignored for his obvious genius?

Jennifer Rubin, a columnist for the Washington Post and reprinted here, seems to have unparalleled insight into the operations of the Department of State as well as the coordination with them of the CIA, and is also privy to the ground conditions of the Benghazi area before anyone else could determine them. She presumes things to be fact that cannot be proven. Like Darrell Issa of the “investigate anything you can”committee, she and her cohort seem to think if they hold their breath and stomp their feet like angry 3-yearolds, they will get their own way.

Sen. Bryan King still is adamant that he can overturn a settled law of the land that has been acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court as legal. Because he’s a senator and he is powerful, and head of a committee. Devil take what is good for the country, it seems the Republican vendetta against the first black president must be upheld.

Folks, aren’t you about getting a belly full of this garbage and racism? Look at the history of the Republicans since Barack Obama was first elected. Leadership then swore to defeat any policy Obama was for, for as long as he was in office. You’re witnessing them doing exactly that with the help of this newspaper.

KARL HANSEN

Hensley

Displayed true colors

John Brummett’s latest bloviating column about Mark Darr provided, I think, even more insight to just how much he hates anything conservative.

I am no fan of the lieutenant governor position, or Darr for that matter; however, I believe his description of Darr as “disgraced Tea Party Republican and mislabeled fiscal conservative” (all of which has nothing to do with anything) showed his true colors.

Would he have been so effusive with a lieutenant governor with a “D” following his name?

Isn’t it time to get over Rs and Ds? I lean libertarian in ideology, but tend to look at what is right, and the scruples of the candidate.

PAT SELLARS

Cabot

In the heat of a fight

Here’s an easy question.

If you found yourself on a raging battlefield seeking cover, who would you rather share a foxhole with-John Brummett or Tom Cotton?

BERNARD A. FRAZER

North Little Rock

Aging isn’t for wusses

I am in pretty good health at 60 years. The things that went wrong with my body were successfully lopped off or drugged to a manageable level. But recently I have been experiencing a problem with my hearing that doctors do not have a fix for. It is called Senior Selective Hearing. SSH is when someone can be listening to speech and hear things that surely were not said.

For example, a month or so ago, a young weather personality was doing her thing, and as usual I was only watching the numbers and graphs when she seemed to have said that it was going to be raining the next morning and that people may want to stay home. The hideous thing about selective hearing is that one starts to doubt everything spoken. Luckily for me, another writer to this page brought up this example, calming my fears that my SSH was out of control, and I thank him tremendously.

Over the years I have been rather snide on this page, and I apologize. If readers can forgive me, please help me discover if I actually heard these things:

I caught the tail end of a radio commercial for the state lottery and I heard, “… problems with gambling? Odds are 5 to 2 we can help.” It seems I am the only person who heard this.

Recently, an NFL game was playing in the background as I sat reading the paper and I think I heard the announcer describing the previous play. “He ran downhill, got into space and just exploded.”

Please let me know if any of you heard these things. It would help me deal with my next-to-last malady. The last one is One-Eyed Reading, where I believe only half of the things I read.

CARL E. BUCHANAN

Benton

Crossed the silly line

Re the recent editorial about the State of the Union address: Come on, gentlemen.

I’m a longtime reader and first time writer only because you’re getting sillier. I have never seen so many big words to say absolutely nothing in my life. It would have been so much simpler to say “we like government, just so it is not run by a black man. We like poor people just so they fend for themselves. We like free speech just so it depicts our beliefs.”

Gentlemen, it would be a big help to all you fellows, senior fellows, Pulitzer Prize winner and Ph.D.s to have the young lady that edits Voices look over and fact check your information before you print it. It would save lots of space.

In closing, I noticed you just touched on the executive-order issue. Could it be because our president has issued fewer executive orders than four of the last five Republican presidents? I’m sure that omission was an oversight.

In the words of a could-be-decent newspaper, your editorial page was filled with all drift, no real direction.

DAVID L. KIMBALL

Havana