Letters for Feb. 9, 2022

GOP has no shame

So the Republican National Committee is going all in on Donald Trump as the 2024 presidential candidate.

Like a flare in pitch-black darkness, the RNC’s political direction highlights its moral bankruptcy, by supporting a pathological liar, a bully, a coward and a sexual predator. The GOP resembles mythical lemmings who en masse go off a cliff to destruction.

Should Trump be convicted of tax evasion and/or election tampering, it’s going to be pretty tough campaigning from a jail cell.

In conclusion, I’ll quote from the movie “Extreme Prejudice,” starring Nick Nolte as a Texas Ranger and Sheriff Rip Torn, who says, “Hell Jack, the only thing worse than a politician is a child molester.”

When it comes to the Republican Party, I wholeheartedly agree.

Dan Keenan

Spokane

We are no longer a serious nation

Let’s suppose a manager is able to discern with 100% accuracy which candidate for an open position will fulfill the duties of a job perfectly. If presented with a list of all available candidates he or she would therefore hire the perfect individual.

Now, let’s suppose this manager had 50% of the applicants randomly excluded from his or her view. Simple logic and math tells you that there is only a 50% chance the best candidate would be selected, since the perfect candidate would be just as likely to have been excluded from his consideration as to have remained in the pool of applicants.

Now let’s suppose 94% of all applicants were excluded from the manager’s view. Then the likelihood that the perfect individual would be hired would be only 6% . This is exactly what President Biden is presenting to the American people. He says the next Supreme Court justice must be a Black woman. Only 6% of all Americans, let alone judges, fit that criteria. President Biden is excluding from his view 94% of all qualified applicants leaving himself to choose from only 6% of applicants giving the American people only a 6% chance that the next Supreme Court justice will be the best choice.

Perhaps the best candidate is in that 6%. Math suggests the odds of that are slim. Is this any way to run a business or a serious country?

David Barnes

Spokane Valley

Easy pickings

Kudos to Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers for watching out for our veterans and staying on top of the Veterans Affairs’ problematic new electronic health system. Computerized systems are extremely complex. A multitude of factors often lead to mistakes and failures. Pointing those out and demanding they be fixed is necessary but also easy.

Where is her voice when a more important and far-reaching issue, the state of our democracy, is at stake? More and more we learn how our former president tried to subvert the law so he could stay in office. Recently, he even explicitly said he was trying to overturn the election. More and more members of her party endorse and repeat the Big Lie of voter fraud in the last election. Members of her party in many states have passed laws making voting unnecessarily more difficult. And a proposed law in Arizona would allow the Legislature to reject election results without listing a single reason why they would take such a step. And now the Republican National Committee says that the Jan. 6 attack was “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Did our congresswoman feel that way while she was seeking shelter that day?

Never mind all that. Look at all these problems with the VA’s new electronic health system. Her behavior is akin to a dog yapping at the mail carrier who’s trying to do their job and looking the other way in silence while a burglar ransacks the house.

Hank Greer

Spokane

Birds of a feather

In tweet after tweet Lesley Haskell, wife of Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell, makes no bones about it. She’s an avowed racist and white nationalist (“Prosecutor apologizes for wife’s racist online comments,” Feb. 3)

Mr. Haskell doesn’t deny this. He merely says that he’s not a racist or white nationalist and to think so would be guilt by association.

Last month Spokane regional law and justice administrator Maggie Yates resigned after three-and-a-half years of thankless labor to reform the criminal justice system in Spokane County. (“Region’s leader in criminal justice reform resigns,” Jan. 31)

For three-and-a-half years Mr. Haskell has stubbornly resisted criminal justice reform in Spokane County. Is it mere coincidence that Mr. Haskell’s opposition to criminal justice reform and his wife’s racist and white nationalist values share the same home?

If Mr. Haskell is not a racist and a white nationalist, he needs to tell voters how his values differ from his wife’s and how they have informed his tenure as Spokane County prosecutor.

The rule is that if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Birds of a feather flock together. It’s common sense – not guilt by association. Mr. Haskell, it’s time to stop hiding behind your wife’s skirts and come clean with Spokane voters.

Tim Gallagher

Spokane