Readers react to Donald Trump, the iPhone court case and deficits

Trump-Palin ticket

I keep reading letters and comments from my esteemed friends on the far right who claim Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is causing us liberals to gnash our teeth and spin our heads. I’m totally befuddled by this. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Dear friends, we’re all on the same side on this one. I hope and pray and keep my fingers crossed all day that Trump will be the Republican nominee.

The only thing that would make me happier is if he chose that font of flowing oratory, Sarah Palin, as his running mate.

Oh, joy. Oh, happy day.

Please, please, oh yes, oh yes, please, please, puh-leeeeeze!

Talis Bergmanis

Fairway

iPhone court case

Apple CEO Tim Cook has taken a stand to protect our right to privacy (2-23, A5, “FBI appears to be winning P.R. battle over Apple encryption”).

In the post-9/11 era, we have gradually allowed agencies to take away much of our privacy.

Mr. Cook has wisely drawn a line and has refused to build a back door or master key to information on an iPhone. We should carefully consider the opinion of the leader of a company that has invented and produced products we did not know we needed and now feel we could not live without.

Do we really think government bureaucrats are wiser? Mr. Cook has nothing to gain personally from his stance. When you look at presidential candidates, do you feel comfortable handing any of them the master key to all of our private data?

What would Stalin have done with this key? He simply killed anyone who disagreed with him.

Dick Whitehouse

Olathe

Action on deficits

Didn’t someone already say, “A house divided cannot stand”?

Now is the time to tone down the talk, listen to opinions and do what is best for our country and for Kansas.

Have you written your Kansas legislators and let them know we want them to take responsibility for our deficits and lead a way out?

They asked for our vote. Now if they won’t fix the problem, vote them out.

Myrna S. Guion

Osawatomie, Kan.

Honesty lacking

I am an 84-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran questioning the integrity of our leaders.

I can see the love affair between the Obama administration and the Justice Department. I can somewhat understand the dysfunctional Internal Revenue Service and the State Department. But I expect honesty and uncompromising principles from the Department of Defense and the FBI.

Why haven’t they indicted the former secretary of state for mishandling secret information?

Jerry N. Roemer

St. Charles, Mo.

Trump’s snake oil

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is reminiscent of the snake oil salesmen of the Old West.

He peddles his wares to all who will listen and makes outrageous claims as to the powers of his lotions, promising they will turn back the clock and reinstate the white male to his proper place in the world at the top of the food chain.

Women, minorities, the disabled and the poor will return to their subservient places, and all will be as it should be once again.

Sadly, it appears an increasing number of adults are drinking the snake oil in the hopes that these outlandish promises will come true. But, as with all snake oil salesmen, past and present, he will tire of these games and, in the dark of the night, slip off to parts unknown.

It will then be up to the adults to step forward and put all those harebrained notions to rest, which we hope will be sooner than later.

David Briggs

Basehor

Backward Missouri

Let’s see if I’ve got this right? In order to punish one professor, Missouri House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Flanigan, a Republican, wants to cut $8 million from the budget of the University of Missouri system.

Nothing like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Let’s hurt the university, the faculty and, most of all, the students, who we know will bear the brunt of this budget cut.

Perhaps the protest group Concerned Student 1950 should change its name to Concerned Student 1850. That appears to be the year some of our elected lawmakers want to take our state back to.

Paula Anderson

Blue Springs

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 6:01 AM with the headline "Readers react to Donald Trump, the iPhone court case and deficits."