Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/329418
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, 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@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS TheAmericanRedCrossiscelebrating100 years of swimming safety education, not by patting itself on the back, but by redoubling its efforts to make us more prepared for aquatic mishaps. StatisticsfromtheCenters for Disease Control and Pre- vention reveal that acciden- tal drowning claims an aver- age of 10 lives in the U.S. each day and is the sixth leading cause of accidental death; but getting people enthused about water education is swimming against the current. According to a survey con- ducted for the Red Cross, 80 percent of Americans claim they can swim. But when pre- sented with a list of the five basic life-saving skills re- quired for water competency, only 56 percent of those folks still qualify. Yep. A lot of Greg Louganis wannabes think a "butterfly stroke" is something that en- vironmentalists try to prevent when they picket a subdivi- sion construction site. Count- less people who think they can handle a large body of water struggle with someone who sprays his S's when he talks. This self-delusion is typical. We underestimate how many calories we consume, how much time we watch TV and how often we doze off while driving. We overestimate how often we exercise, how of- ten we floss and how much time we devote to spiritual- ity. ("I'm in church practically every time the door is open. Uh...they do still have doors in churches, don't they?") A lot of myths need to be dispelled. Groundbreaking re- search from Tyson Foods re- veals that "the last one in" is not necessarily a rotten egg. Josef Stalin does not chuckle in hell every time someone falls for his master plan of us- ing chlorinated water. No "Baywatch" babe has ever said, "My turn-ons are moon- lit nights and guys who get concussions from running alongside the pool." The Pulit- zer Prize committee has ruled that no story ends well when it begins with, "Bet you sissies have never seen this before..." We do make our excuses for not taking a Red Cross swim- ming course. "Since when is a six-pack not an approved floa- tation device?" "I'm afraid the tubes will get tangled in my flip- pers while I'm donating blood." "I never go near the water," asserts one fellow. "Unless the grandkids drag me. Or I go on a cruise. Or cross that rickety bridge near my house or..." "Accidents happen to other people, not to me," swears Lucky, who cuts quite a figure at the lake, with his eye patch, grease-fire scars, iron hook and peg leg. "Cannonball! No wait — cannonballs scare me, since I dropped that one on my knee." My son Gideon (age 10) completed the first two lev- els of the Red Cross Learn-To- Swim program in May. He has the lithe build of an Olympic swimmer, but he needs to de- velop some muscle and endur- ance before proceeding. Right now he is at a disadvantage because he spends much time as a couch potato and because he finds many vegetables about as appealing as your Un- cle Bubba in a Speedo. The Red Cross Learn-To- Swim program has six lev- els, but we sort of concocted a seventh to keep Gideon moti- vated. He has his eye on "King of the Seven Seas" level. We're depending on the Red Cross to teach people the health and recreation benefits of swim- ming, reinforce safety precau- tions — and hurriedly develop one of those gigantic seahorses like Aquaman rides. DannyTyreewelcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page "Tyree's Tyrades." Danny Tyree Are you drowning in excuses We overestimate how often we exercise, how often we floss and how much time we devote to spirituality. Cartoonist's take We learned that vot- ers prefer to keep in- cumbents in office and that the biggest spend- ers usually win regard- less of merit. Of course how does a voter know if an office holder, such as a District Attorney, is doing a good job? It depends on any incumbent not getting caught with a hand in the cookie jar… and that the office holder plays no favorites when it comes to prose- cution. I recently received a hand- written letter on four pages of binder paper. It was from an in- mate currently in prison. He ad- dressed his letter to me as edi- tor of the DN, not realizing that I am merely an unpaid contrib- utor. If he thought I had clout and could help boot current of- fice holders out of office, it was specious thinking like this that probably got him in the slammer in the first place. The writer admits he was and still is a junkie. Addict is a bet- ter word. He apparently was ap- prehended with illegal stuff and after repeated offenses was sen- tenced to 16 years in prison. The thrust of his letter was that the incumbent DA should not be re-elected because he con- spired to somehow have drugs for sale planted in the letter writ- er's house…and that said writer tested positive for morphine when the writer, let's call him Mike, indignantly states he has used various drugs but never morphine…ergo he was set up. Further, the Public Defender assigned to his case was incompetent or in cahoots and should be dubbed the "Public Pre- tender." To add insult to injury, Mike was given the chance to par- ticipate in the Adult Felon Drug Court, which he said is an excel- lent program in which he was testing clean, going to meetings and so forth until a mysterious bag of meth was discovered in his wife's house…and his rehab came to an abrupt halt. Not knowing the merits of his charges I can only state that im- prisonment for drug dealing seems to occupy the majority of the time of law enforcement people and wouldn't it be lovely if all charges were dropped and users left to their own devices of self destruction? Think of it as population control. ••• Speaking of elections, a ma- jority of the voters agreed that the County Supervisors should concentrate less on road mainte- nance and more on joining other county's dissidents in breaking up California into new manage- able smaller states. Learning of which brings to mind the great H.L. Mencken's quote, "Nobody ever went broke underestimat- ing the taste of the American public." Substitute "taste" for "intelligence" and this shoe fits the acceptance of measure A, se- cession, and the defeat of Mea- sure B, salaries, in which su- pervisors were denied pay in- creases. Tsk, tsk. ••• A current expression in print circles has to do with "trigger warnings." The London based Times had an article on the sub- ject. The term is explained as "preemptive alerts issued by in- stitutions at the request of stu- dents, indicating that material presented in class might be suf- ficiently graphic to spark symp- toms of post-traumatic-stress dis- order." Study that explanation carefully and note what it implies. The explanation continues, "The term seems to have origi- nated in online feminist forums, where trigger warnings have for some years been used to flag discussions of rape or some other form of sexual violence." The TIMES skeptically implies that such warnings might more broadly apply to literary works… and "Huckleberry Finn" might be published with warnings for those who have experienced rac- ism. This movement is not a good trend and if some readers are so susceptible to the printed text, they should give up reading entirely and rely on the carefully edited utterances of television news anchors. ••• Once again we have too many cats at the ranch. The spring birth rate has been successful if one is talking to a mother cat. However, it has been a conten- tious subject when talking to the mother of our household who does not care for kitties under foot every time she ventures out of doors. I mention this because I found that a recently discov- ered demised cat, dying of natu- ral causes, was vastly preferable to culling the herd in a more vi- olent manner. One seems to be an act of nature…and the other a calculated ending of a life. ••• Last week's quiz was answered most favorably by L. Brown who supplied missing words start- ing with the first 3 letters of the months of the year: Jangly spurs complete the cowboy, Febrile at- tempts are just that, Marriage can be lovely, Appropriate action is the only action — although Apricot brandy is a heady mix was a more accurate solution — Mayors are often out of office, Junkets are the life blood of poli- ticians and Juleps and mints per- sonify the old south. This week's quiz: Continue in this vein: Aug…go into the ground, Sep…….tables make for lonely dinners, Oct…..can be spanned by most pianists, Nov… riche are different than you and I, and Dec…… decadent are the Kennedys. ••• A visitor to a small town in Georgia was walking down a main street when suddenly a wild dog leaped out and attacked a small boy. Without a thought for his own safety, he dragged the dog off the boy and throttled it with his bare hands. The inci- dent was witnessed by a reporter for the local newspaper and he went up to the hero, shook his hand and said, "That was a brave thing you did, and the headline in tomorrow's paper will read, "Brave local man saves boy by killing vicious beast." The man protested, "But I'm not from this town." The reporter replied, "OK, the headline will read "Georgia man saves child by killing dog." The man protested once again by saying, "I'm not from Geor- gia…as a matter of fact I'm from Connecticut." The frustrated reporter glared at the visitor and said, "Then the headline will read, 'Yankee slays family pet." Robert Minch is a lifelong res- ident of Red Bluff, former col- umnist 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 What did we learn from the recent local election? Another view By Peter Funt The headline on a new poll about Hillary Clinton's pre- sumed presidential bid is that fallout over Benghazi hasn't hurt her chances. The data show 67 percent of all voters be- lieve she is a "strong leader" and 60 percent find her to be "trustworthy." With the release of her book, "Hard Choices," this week, in which she addresses Benghazi and other challenges during her time as secretary of state, Clinton is oiling the machinery for a run. The ABC News and Washington Post poll results seem to fit perfectly: despite Benghazi and relentless at- tacks by Republicans, her num- bers remain just about where they were when she entered the 2008 race as the overwhelming favorite among Democrats. But deep inside the poll — so far down that the Post didn't even mention them in its story — are some details that the Clinton team might find trou- bling. It seems that as people become older, wealthier and more educated they are some- what less likely to support Mrs. Clinton. Put another way: Clinton is weakest among people who are most like her. Take, for example, the ques- tion of whether Clinton "has new ideas for the country's fu- ture." Among adults 18-39, an impressive 61 percent believe she does. But when those over 40 respond, the positive re- sponses plunge to 49 percent. Within her own age group of people over 65, only 48 percent believe she has new ideas. Among those who, like her, have a college degree, only 47 percent believe she has new ideas. However, among people with no degree, it's 56 percent. An even more puzzling result involves the statement, "She un- derstands the problems of peo- ple like you." Among people un- der 40, there was a 59 percent positive response. But affirma- tive answers among those over 40 yielded only 51 percent. A remarkable 75 percent of people under 40 believe Clin- ton is "a strong leader." Yet, among Clinton's own age group the number slips by 14 per- centage points. If she runs and wins, Hillary Clinton would be 70 when she takes the oath of the office. The question regarding lead- ership provides similarly sur- prising data among those who, like Clinton, are more afflu- ent. Those earning less than $50,000 a year, affirm her lead- ership by 73 percent; those with higher incomes by only 63 per- cent. The Post-ABC poll does not cross-reference demographic factors, such as age, educa- tion and wealth, with party af- filiation. It could be that older, wealthier Republicans account in part for the gap in Mrs. Clin- ton's numbers. However, in 2012, President Obama beat John McCain handily among the most educated voters as well as the most affluent. Mc- Cain's greatest strength was among middle-age males. In her book Clinton in- sists she remains undecided about running. If she does seek the presidency, she'll have to work harder than might have been expected to gain sup- port among her peers. Why are those who've known her longest and share some of her demo- graphic traits, beyond gender, the most skeptical? Answers may be provided in the coming days as Mrs. Clinton makes as big a media splash as modern book-promo- tion can provide. She'll be tak- ing questions from all corners and on virtually all networks about "Hard Choices." She writes, "Ultimately, what happens in 2016 should be about what kind of future Americans want for them- selves and their children — and grandchildren. I hope we choose inclusive politics and a common purpose to unleash the creativity, potential, and op- portunity that makes America exceptional." So far, those with the longest, toughest road ahead seem most willing to buy in. Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, "Cautiously Optimistic," is available at Am- azon.com and CandidCamera. com. Hillary's puzzling demo gap Robert Minch OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, June 13, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4