Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/788232
ChipThompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Donald Trump is driving everyone in Wash- ington nuts with his mad presidential style. Republicans in Congress are getting jumpy. ThepowerlessDemocrats are so desperate they actually think Senator Elizabeth War- ren is the fu- ture of their party. The main- stream lib- eral media are overacting to Trump's dumb daily morn- ing tweets like they are official edicts coming from the ghost of Joe Stalin. The media are so hysterical they see Trump's comments about "so-called" judges or his complaints about a biased judi- ciary as signs that he is a des- potic imperial president intent on blowing up the federal gov- ernment's balance of powers. Meanwhile, Time magazine has Trump's evil rightwing guru Steven Bannon on the cover looking like Darth Vader. And David Frum's cover story in the Atlantic about President Trump — 20 minutes into his presidency — is head- lined "How to Build an Autoc- racy." Let's all relax. Let's all take a deep breath. Let's all get a grip. Rome wasn't made in a day and America is not going to be saved or destroyed by Presi- dent Trump in a month. The most important relax- ing needs to start at the top with President Trump. He's been acting like he has four days left in office, not four years. He's been issuing execu- tive orders and making ten announcements a day about trade, terrorism, immigra- tion, oil pipelines, the bor- der wall, relations with Rus- sian, Israel, Mexico and who knows what. For your own good, Mr. Trump, you have to slow down the pace of making America great again to a gentle sprint. I don't agree with every- thing you are doing, Mr. Pres- ident, but you need some friendly advice. First, you need to stop try- ing to do so many things so quickly. You need to give the public and everyone else time to ab- sorb and understand what you are doing, so you'll have more people on your side. You wouldn't be having a problem with the so-called Muslim ban if you not done the rollout so quickly. Second, you need to know that Washington is like a $4 trillion aircraft carrier. It can't be stopped, turned around or sunk quickly or easily — and maybe not at all. Third, you knew from the start that the mainstream me- dia were not going to be on your team. Now, one of your most im- portant jobs is to not give the media any free ammo to fire back at you or your adminis- tration. So, President Trump, that means stop talking about ille- gal voters. Stop picking fights with fed- eral judges — especially three hours after you file an appeal with them. Stop talking about whether the murder rate is up or down unless you actually know what you're talking about. And if you are going to refer to certain networks as purvey- ors of "fake news," even when they are exactly that, don't be surprised if they fact-check ev- erything you say and start re- ferring to you as "The fake president." The danger in the long run is that you're spending all your political capital in the first month. Your base is secure — and happy with whatever you say or do. But you're trying to do stuff so fast you're missing the most important thing — com- municating with the rest of the country about what your doing and why. So choose your words and tweets wisely, Mr. President. Cool it and start acting like the president of the United States. You were elected by all 50 states and their people. I know it's not your style, and I know you got to be presi- dent in part because you shoot your mouth off so well. But you need to take some advice from my mother, Jane Wyman, who told me many a time, "If you have nothing good to say, keep your mouth shut." Meanwhile, Mr. President, you've been working too hard. It's time you took a mini-va- cation or at least took a week- end off. Maybe you could call up Mr. Obama and join him for a round of golf or have him show you how to kite surf. I can guarantee no one working in Washington's swamped news media would complain that you were dodg- ing your duties. MichaelReaganisthesonof President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of "The New Reagan Revolution" (St. Martin's Press). Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. Michael Reagan Relax, Mr. President Cartoonist's take I observe that many pedestri- ans talk to themselves. Their lips move and they ap- parently are say- ing something of import. If they verbalize loudly we avoid them like the plague. If they merely mut- ter, then that is their business. In this age of Trump, this conduct is completely un- derstandable. However, an article in The New Yorker states that a book by British professor of psychology at Durham, England, Charles Fernyhough, makes a case for "inner speech," in memory, reli- gious revelation, psychotherapy and literary fiction. He states, which he has dubbed "dialogic thinking," is certainly impor- tant in memory and not merely mnemonic recitation of lists. In- ner speech may participate in discerning right from wrong by constructing point-counterpoint situations in our minds. Some- times the voices people hear are not their own , and instead are attributed to a celestial source. God's voice figures prominently early in the Hebrew Bible as he speaks individually to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah and Abraham. Fernyhough is reluctant to call such voices hallucinations, in fact 70 percent of writers at an Edinburgh Book Festival re- sponded that they heard their own characters speak and stated that some of their characters do not agree with the writer and de- mand to change things in the story. In conclusion, psychologist make a case for the validity of one talking to oneself. It may be therapeutic or just the way some of our minds work. The next time you observe this condition in others, keep in mind they may be merely sorting things out in an orderly fashion. Or they may be composing a newspaper col- umn designed to appear in this very newspaper. Many current columnists appear to have been talking to themselves. ••• A woman jumped out of dou- ble parked van recently, dropped a sheet of paper on my desk and then quickly departed. It is a cu- rious entreaty of some sort and hand printed, but I can't make heads or tails of it. She asks, "Respectfully for the love of all that is holy to stop this gangstauking J. Monarch abuse on me and my son Joseph" and adds "Please don't push me." The letter ends, "With all God's love" and her signature. Below that she wrote "P.S. Lovely insur- ance Companies. Sooo many." Robert Minch is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff, former columnist for the Corning Daily Observer and Meat Industry magazine and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmurray@hotmail. com. I say Scientists make the case for talking to yourself StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@governor. ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Kamala Har- ris, 501 I St., Ste. 7-600, Sacra- mento 95814, 916 448-2787, fax 202 228-3865 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, Kris- tina Miller, 824-7033 Your officials I wish I could tell you that my old alma mater (Marshall County High School in Lewis- burg, Tennessee) still publishes a student news- paper, but that would be fake news. The defunct MCHS paper (where I spent some of the hap- piest, nerdi- est years of my life) has a lot of company. A Google search promptly brought up a National Public Radio story from four years ago titled "High School Newspapers: An Endangered Species." Around the same time, the New York Times reported that only one in eight public schools in New York City pro- duced a newspaper. Numerous factors have con- tributed to the decline of stu- dent newspapers. For one thing, tight budgets have squeezed ex- tracurricular activities in gen- eral. Too bad a good PR per- son hasn't helped newspapers compete with the extracurricu- lars that fire up more commu- nity support. ("No, there aren't many concussions or torn liga- ments, but that rascally 'Asso- ciated Press Style Book' would just as soon paper-cut you as look at you!") Standardized testing has taken time away from "luxu- ries" such as journalism classes. But emphasizing fact regurgi- tation over creativity and com- mon sense may not work out so well in the real world. ("The robber wants me to give him my money or my life. But he didn't offer options C and D! I can't function without options C and D.") Schools have always seen a dichotomy between those stu- dents who eagerly await the gossip and accolades of the stu- dent newspaper and the hip- sters who find the whole en- deavor "lame"; but the immedi- acy and brevity of today's social media have made ink-on-pa- per reporting seem as outdated as emptying the potbelly stove ashes for the schoolmarm.Still, the passage of 10 or 15 years might make the periodical seem less tedious. ("So, reading my three-paragraph expose© of gymnasium conditions doesn't seem so boring compared to staring at the wallpaper in your parents' basement, does it?") I hope society can recog- nize the value of a strong stu- dent press. Student journalists give parents/taxpayers a more nuanced view than the "Okay, I guess" or "Everything sucks" assessment that students usu- ally deliver upon arriving at home. (Granted, it may be just "Okay, I Guess And Whatever: Which Is Right For You?" or "Everything Sucks, and We've Got The Bar Graphs To Prove It"; but you take your victories where you can get them.) No matter what career path students wind up taking, stu- dent journalism teaches invalu- able job skills, such as team- work, sensitivity to deadlines, analytical thinking, clear writ- ing and protecting company shareholders from calamitous split infinitives! School newspapers have a value that goes far beyond the brief time they're "hot off the press."Although the yearbook gets all the glory, the school newspaper is a priceless time capsule of fads, fashions, slang, nicknames and Burning Issues. ("Grandpa, I never realized you were so passionate about ani- mal rights. But wasn't that sort of hypocritical? I mean, weren't newspapers printed on dino- saur skin or something?") There are some positive signs. A teacher at MCHS has agreed to coordinate young journalists, and my hometown paper (the Marshall County Tribune) has graciously offered to give them a page in the weekly shopper to air their news and views. I hope teachers, newspapers and potential financial backers nationwide will take inspiration from this. "Retro" is in. Someday there may even be a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Reporting On Chalkboard Eraser Clapping. Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol. com and visits to his Facebook fan page "Tyree's Tyrades." Danny Tyree Are school newspapers hanging by a thread? Danny Tyree Robert Minch Michael Reagan The danger in the long run is that you're spending all your political capital in the first month. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, February 17, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6