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6A Daily News – Thursday, November 28, 2013 Opinion For these we give thanks? DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All 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 cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. 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How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 WASHINGTON -- We are tomorrow's past, so this Thanksgiving give thanks for 2013, a year the future might study more for amusement than for edification. HealthCare.gov performed the public service of defeating Barack Obama's ascription of every disagreeable effect to one of two causes -- George W. Bush or global warming. Concerning the latter, a CNN anchor wondered if an asteroid that passed by Earth on Feb. 15 was "an effect of, perhaps, global warming." The Los Angeles Times announced that it had stopped publishing letters questioning global warming caused by human activity. Which makes sense, if you agree with The New Yorker's resident expert, who called the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on warming "the last word on climate change." It evidently is the first science to reach the end of its subject, all questions answered. Therefore it is puzzling that dramatic predictions of an unusually high number of 2013 hurricanes were dramatically wrong. Paleoanthropology has not reached its last word. The story of human evolution may have been simplified by conclusions reached this year about a 1.8 million-yearold skull found in the Caucasus in 2005. The earliest human remain found outside of Africa indicates that our ancestors emerged from Africa as a single species, not sev- eral species. Its brain was about one-third the size of today's human brains. Some of today's brains. A Tennessee judge's ruling was reversed: She had ordered a family to change their child's name, Messiah, because that "title" has "only been earned by one person." At the school where a Maryland kindergartner is supposed to learn reasonableness, school officials interrogated him for more than two hours before notifying his mother that he possessed a cap gun. Fortunately, it contained no caps; otherwise it would have been deemed an explosive. Michigan educators forced the removal of the little plastic soldiers a mother had put on cupcakes she brought to school on her son's birthday. On Sept. 17, Constitution Day, a student at Modesto Junior College was told to stop distributing copies of the Constitution until he had filled out the requisite forms for permission to use the college's designated "free speech area." The Bank of England is putting Jane Austen on a new 10-pound note because without a woman on some notes, British currency would "not command respect and legitimacy." Queen Elizabeth II is on all notes. When Britain's education secretary said children should learn to add and subtract, and memorize some of the nation's kings and queens, a teachers' union objected. The union had hitherto said: "For the state to sug- gest that some knowledge should the Dupont Circle subway stop. be privileged over other knowl- The Transit Authority was edge is a bit totalitarian in a 21st- briefly deterred by the public outcry against its threat century environment." to punish Docter for his American University in uncompensated act of Washington, D.C., beautification. But then scheduled a course on it had the 1,000 morn"The 50 Shades Triloing glories and other gy." plants ripped out. The infantilization Those vigilant about of adults continued our welfare never sleep; with the marketing of Canadian relief sup$600 High Rollers, plies for Oklahoma torwhich are Big Wheels nado victims were for (biological, not stopped at the U.S. boractual) grown-ups. der until every item MSNBC, commemorating the 50th anniver- George F. could be itemized in alphabetical order and sary of Gov. George its country of origin Wallace's attempt to noted. You can't be too prevent the integration of the University of Alabama, careful. As the National Park Service identified Wallace as a Republiand NASA understand. They are can. Human remains found beneath among the federal agencies that a Leicester parking lot were con- have their own SWAT teams. firmed to be those of Richard III, The Department of Agriculture, missing for most of the 528 years however, stresses sensitivity. A since he lost the Battle of video of its "cultural sensitivity Bosworth. He remains buried training" shows employees being beneath the bad reputation instructed to call the Pilgrims acquired at the hands of the who created Thanksgiving "illeTudors' talented PR specialist, gal aliens." Of course there were no immigration laws to make William Shakespeare. In Washington, even local any one of the first Thanksgivgovernment is demented: The ings illegal -- for which fact, give Metropolitan Area Transit thanks. Someday, if there is no Authority threatened Henry Agriculture Department, more Docter with "arrest, fines and thanks to be given. imprisonment" for the crime of George Will's email address is unregulated gardening. Docter had filled 176 empty planters at georgewill@washpost.com. Will Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Jim Nielsen, 2635 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico, CA 95928, (530) 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 5583160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-2253076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary A modest Thanksgiving proposal This isn't another column complaining about Black Friday infiltrating Thanksgiving. Nope, I'm waving the white flag. The shopping public has proven its point. Instead, I'm just asking for a truce. What if us holiday traditionalists hand over the fourth Thursday of November to you sheep of commercialism and in return we take the following day as our new Thanksgiving. From here on out Thanksgiving would the be the Friday following the fourth Thursday in November. I think this solves a lot of the problems facing our beloved holiday weekend. One of the reasons I've hated the shopping push creeping onto Thanksgiving Day is that it makes extra people work. As it already stood the United States had far fewer holidays than other countries. There was only two — Thanksgiving Day and Christmas — where our society functioned at bareboned enough levels to allow almost everyone to have a day off with friends and family. But because there's one thing Americans love more than time off — saving a buck — that's all gone now. It's not just retail employees who have to work Thanksgiv- ing. Because so many people are out and about now, gas stations that normally would have closed have opened up. Shoppers get hungry and have to eat, so now fast food chains are expanding their hours to the detriment of Chinese restaurants, which had previously cornered the Thanksgiving market. More people on the streets and getting rowdy in the stores leads to expanded police presence. One extra person working just leads to three more that have to. That's why I'm saying let's just treat the fourth Thursday of November as any other work day. We'll all work and those who want to cut out early or use a vacation day can go on and shop their hearts out with fully functional capitalism backing them up. Then what we do is slide Thanksgiving back a day so it connects to the weekend — a place it always should have been. How many employees get tricked into wasting one of their vacation days to have Friday off anyway with the line, it's your choice whether you want to or not, but you won't be paid. In return you Black Friday deal seekers have to agree that while you get Thursday, in return everything goes back to being closed for one day on our holiday has been passed around new Thanksgiving Friday — the calendar like it was grandsave Chinese restaurants, they ma's homemade oyster dressing since the days of the pilgrims. still get to be open. It wasn't even until Yes you will sit the Baby Boomer down with your family years that the Fourth and break bread, listen Thursday was agreed to Drunk Uncle's stoupon and even that ries and come up with a took some wrangling. lame excuse to leave According to early and you will fake Wikipedia Texas had a smile through it all. something it objected You may even be forced to, but then again to play a game with Texas always does. your family, sing a In fact the tradiChristmas carol or tion of the Detroit preferably some situaLions playing foottion that combines both. Rich ball on Thanksgiving Just suffer through goes back further the one day and then than the day the holiyour precious shopping craze starts back up Saturday and day falls on. Oh yeah football. life returns to five weeks of holiMy rule about no one workday madness from then on out. OK, I think the shopping ing on Thanksgiving — obvicrowd will buy into this, they'll ously that doesn't apply to footagree just because that means ball players, tv crews, stadium stores will start doing block- ushers, parking attendants and buster deals even earlier, like anyone else needed to make the games happen. midnight Wednesday. I don't care if those people The ones I have to convince are the people like me, who work, because that way I get don't want their traditions to be my favorite tradition. This is America after all, a change — Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, land where I can be thankful I always will be, always should can always get what I want. be. Pound fist on beautifully Rich Greene can be reached at prepared Thanksgiving table. Except what if I told you it 527-2151, Ext. 109, or by email at wasn't. What if I told you this rgreene@redbluffdailynews.com. Greene