Letters on Iowa results, Trump, global warming, medical cannabis

Iowa is first skirmish in long election battle

How the news media have hammered Donald Trump since the Iowa caucuses. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, fared well. His victory puts him in the lofty company of Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Bob Dole – all past Iowa caucus winners. Trump must console himself with defeat, much like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, all of whom lost in Iowa.

See a pattern here? Winning the first skirmish is hardly indicative of eventual victory.

The news media should remember that their job is to report news, not create it. Whomever the Republicans select as their candidate will have to square off against the winner of the other bracket, now tied between a self-avowed socialist and a corrupt woman about to be indicted for espionage.

Not presidential

I am a Republican. All Republicans are not idiots, regardless of what most of the media indicate.

The thought that Donald Trump might actually win the nomination scares the life out of me, so I may have to rethink my previous statement. Trump is an egotistical bully who has mesmerized much of the population with his histrionic rants. He has some good ideas but has not offered one solution that is workable. Russian President Vladimir Putin would turn him every way but loose in a confrontation.

Trump is not presidential in his speech or actions. One example was his statement, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” If that is true, his followers are fools. That is the most asinine statement I have ever heard, especially by a man who would be president.

I implore everyone to take a good look at every statement Carly Fiorina has said. She has more common sense than most of the other candidates combined. She has the controlled, cool persona to handle any situation, and she is tough.

Warming false alarms

“Climate talks a victory” (Jan. 6 Letters to the Editor) stated that “to turn our backs on the truth may cause catastrophic weather events.” It was just another retread of familiar somber warnings of some kind of certain world devastation at some uncertain time in the future, unless those of us in developed countries mend our ways and do it fast. We must be willing to settle for austere lifestyles with fewer conveniences and comforts. But, mind you, the austerity is not to be expected of elite scaremongers such as Al Gore, with his multiple mansions and gas-guzzling Gulfstream jet.

The hucksters of despair have made the mistake of making numerous short-term ominous warnings, none of which has materialized. One was Gore’s pronouncement in 2006 that “unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return,” with the prime danger that the world would become uninhabitable from scorching heat. Time ran out for that embarrassing dud on Jan. 26. Understandably, Gore makes no more definitive prognostications.

How much longer can vain environmentalists expect us unenlightened rubes to pay attention to their consistent false alarms?

Really that beneficial?

Regarding “God-given plant” and “Medical benefits” (Feb. 3 Letters to the Editor): I’m not sure that medical cannabis has all the healing properties mentioned. At best, it probably is a symptomatic reliever for most mentioned ailments. I feel that if it were as beneficial as some think, the medical arts would have been using it for a long time, as they have cocaine and other narcotics. As for not causing any deaths medically for 5,000 years: I know of nothing that can make that claim, much less cannabis.

It may be a God-given plant, but so is poison ivy, and I think I’ll not smoke that anytime soon.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Letters on Iowa results, Trump, global warming, medical cannabis."