Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/791244
ChipThompson, Editor 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 Major League Baseball has an annual training season in Florida. Maybe President Trump should have gone somewhere outside of Washington to hold tryouts for a month to see who on his team was ready to play in the big leagues. Atleast heshouldhave picked some veteran coaches who know how the profes- sional Wash- ington game is played, are loyal to him and who know how to make the White House work smoothly. All incom- ing presidents, even veteran politicians, have trouble with their White House advisers and underlings at first. But as a political out- sider and a disrupter, Trump is facing more trouble than most of his predecessors. The Democrats, their hys- terical pals in the media and the permanent Washington bureaucracy are doing their best to slow him up or bring him down. But so far Trump — the rookie manager in chief — has been his own worst en- emy. He assembled a White House team made up of third-round draft picks and minor leaguers and put them on the field before he knew whether they could hit a curve or field a hard grounder. What we're seeing in the White House — "Leakville," as I refer to it now — is a bunch of rookies trying to run the most important gov- ernment operation in the world. It should never have got- ten to this level of ineptitude, President Trump is respon- sible for it, and only he can fix it. A large part of his problem is that he doesn't have a chief of staff in the White House — he has two of them, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. Anyone who's ever man- aged a Starbucks knows when two or more people are "in charge," no one is really in charge. And when two or three people are in charge, then no one is ultimately responsi- ble for anything that happens and chaos and confusion run amok. The bumbled and hasty rollout of the executive or- der temporarily banning im- migrants from seven Muslim countries was a textbook ex- ample of what happens when no single person is in charge of the White House staff. The case of Michael Flynn, Trump's starting Na- tional Security Adviser, was another "rookie mistake" by a staffer that should never have happened. Flynn should have known better. He wasn't called up from the Class D Leagues. He had 30 years of ex- emplary military experi- ence and had worked in the Obama administration. What was he thinking? What made him believe he had the right to lie to the vice president — if that's what he really did? Flynn's been cut from the team and he'll be a source of bad PR for Trump for months. I'd hate to be Sean Spicer, who has to go in front of the Washington press corps and deal with the latest twists in the Flynn case or explain the White House's bungle of the day. President Trump is do- ing fine by holding all those meetings with business ex- ecutives and foreign lead- ers and issuing executive or- ders. It's his rookie squad that's holding him back. They seem more inter- ested in serving their own interests, not his. It's now up to the presi- dent to find a way to plug up the leaks and put together a competent, loyal and trusted White House staff. He has to work fast. The regular season is almost a month old and he still doesn't have a coaching staff or a starting lineup. And as Manager Trump has already found out the hard way, there are no exhi- bition games played in the White House. 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. MichaelReagan Rookiesinthe White House Cartoonist's take If readers were looking for 1,000 words of wisdom last Fri- day, they would have only seen an abbreviated I say column avail- able for viewing. What caused the short 300-word column to see daylight was one of those mysteri- ous glitches that plague otherwise competent users of personal computers, and probably go a long way toward convincing po- tential users to buy a flowering plant instead. I sent to Chip, the edi- tor, what I intended to be 1,000 words. That would have reached his desk by Thursday. However, he sent me an e mail at 4 p.m. on Thursday com- menting that my column was quite short and was that what was intended? Unfortunately, I did not read his message until later Thurs- day evening. By then it had been sent to Chico where the Daily News bible is put to- gether, and was too late for them to correct it, so the col- umn ran a third of its potential on Friday. Thinking that my readers were not patiently awaiting my liberal posturings, and would get in a snit after at least be- ing denied a closing joke, I was able to convince Chip to run the complete text Saturday, which he did. Ergo, I shall measure twice and cut once every time I send out a column in the future. ••• Department of Oh, Oh! A study by the Journal of Clinical Nutrition of 3,000 veg- etarians concluded that plant- based protein benefited muscu- loskeletal health equally as ani- mal protein. I'm grateful that the results of this study did not surface while we were doing our recent homage to the Red Bluff Bull Sale. Perhaps abundant rains will overshadow such informa- tion detrimental to the industry. ••• Sources say Queen Elizabeth is now 90, and on February 6 she will become the first Brit- ish monarch to reach her Sap- phire Jubilee, and yet she did nothing in public to mark the occasion. Time magazine states, "The world has changed since the day in 1952 when she be- came Queen upon the death of her father George VI," and con- cluded with "...but some things have not." I took this to mean the regal Queen has carried the weight of her crown with dig- nity and aplomb all these years without succumbing to grand- standing and self promotion. Her continuing presence is liv- ing proof a country with a mon- arch may be superior and in great contrast to our system of electing a President every 4 years. Let's hear it for Queen Clinton, or perhaps Queen War- ren. ••• Yale University said it would rename Calhoun College, named after the U.S. Vice President who advocated slavery and white su- premacy, and would rename it in honor of computer scien- tist Grace Murray Hopper. This may be well and good, but Yale is probably not cognizant of the fact there is a great joke which relies on the name "Calhoun." The late Dr. Bill Martin said this was his favorite joke, said joke supplied upon request. Advertizing in a magazine such as Time must be costly and yet Serta, the mattress company, apparently paid big bucks for the first 8 pages of a recent is- sue of Time. Does that mean that the magazine found itself run- ning short and offered Serta a cut rate deal? Or does it mean that the company is embarking on an expensive advertising pro- gram prior to a stock offering, or could it be that it has been los- ing ground to competitors and is desperate to regain same with a desperate 8 page spread? Only the shadow nose. ••• Speaking of Time, I was sur- prised the editors allowed a sen- tence in their most recent issue which read "What the f-ck does she have to do to win album of the year?" Tsk, tsk. The powers that be at the DN would not al- low it, would they? ••• I asked last week about the si- lent carillon high atop the Cone & Kimball tower. Todd Dolling, proprietor of the longest running insurance office in the county has responded. He reports that the matter is under consideration whether the car- illon should sound on the hour or just at noon. There are appar- ently advocates of both concepts. My office is directly across from the stately Cone & Kimball Clock tower and I, for one, would wel- come any music coming forth at any time of the day or night. There are churches who sound off in this fashion, why not the C&K? By the way, said carillon is courtesy of the local Masonic Lodge of our fair city. ••• Speaking of a carillon, it is a musical instrument typically housed in the bell tower of a church. The instrument consists of at least 23 cast bronze, cup- shaped bells, which are played serially to produce a melody, or sounded together to play a chord. A traditional manual car- illon is played by striking a key- board — the stick-like keys of which are called batons — with the fists. A carillon-like instru- ment with fewer than 23 bells is called a chime. That said, I suspect the C&K carillon produces its sound in a much different manner. Hands? ••• Worth relating again: A teenage boy had just passed his driving test and inquired of his father as to when they could discuss his use of the car. His father said he'd make a deal with his son, "You bring your grades up from a C to a B average, study your Bible a little and get your hair cut. Then we'll talk about the car." The boy thought about that for a moment, decided he'd set- tle for the offer and they agreed on it. After about six weeks his fa- ther said, "Son, you've brought your grades up and I've ob- served that you have been studying your Bible, but I'm dis- appointed you haven't had your hair cut." The boy said, "You know, Dad, I've been thinking about that, and I've noticed in my studies of the Bible that Samson had long hair, John the Baptist had long hair, Moses had long hair and there's even strong evi- dence that Jesus had long hair." And his father replied, "Did you also notice that they all walked everywhere they went?" 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 Abbreviated effort last week was not intentional Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. How about a real town hall? Instead of this cowardly playing to Trump's twisted base? LaMalfa and the so-called Patriots of Tehama County need to take the advice of a real President of the people, instead of supporting this sick, fake and terrorizing President. Pat Johnston: On Rep. Doug LaMalfa's talk Tuesday to the Tehama County Patriots Doug did present a reasoned rational case about the situation at Oroville Dam, but I came away with the impression Doug would rather be the sole Congressman from the State of Jefferson, than the representative of the First District of California. He doesn't realize that his liberal and progressive constituents will still be here. Micheal Rampley: On Rep. Doug LaMalfa's talk Tuesday to the Tehama County Patriots 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 LaMalfa, 507 Cannon House Office 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, Richard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, Kris- tina Miller, 824-7033 Your officials The bumbled and hasty rollout of the executive order temporarily banning immigrants from seven Muslim countries was a textbook example of what happens when no single person is in charge of the White House staff. Michael Reagan Robert Minch OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, February 24, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6