Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/418554
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 I've done my fair share of stupid things over my life. WhenIwas5,myfather told me to stop jumping around the bathtub, but I ignored him. I slipped and hit my head on a ce- ramic soap dish, which busted into a dozen pieces. I should have been hurt, but my hard, dense noggin didn't even sus- tain a bruise. Over the years, I clogged a toilet with an apple core, shat- tered a picture window with a baseball and hit a golf ball through a neighbor's win- dow — I fled, was later appre- hended, and had to mow a lot of lawns to pay my father back for the cost of a new window. In my teen years, with my testosterone raging, I did many more stupid things — mostly with my father's cars. I delighted in smoking the wheels off our 1979 Ford Pinto — it was one of the few equipped with a powerful six- cylinder motor — as I mim- icked Jim Rockford maneu- vers. And I nearly had a head- on collision with our parish priest while cutting through the church parking lot to avoid a red light. As I sped onto Baptist Road, I was horrified to see, in my rear-view mirror, that Father Kram had turned around and was in hot pursuit. He caught up with me a few miles later, recorded my license plate number, tracked down my name at the police depart- ment, then let me have it on the way into Mass the follow- ing Sunday. To be sure, much of my stu- pidity revolved around cars — such as the time, in my late 20s, when I was duped by what I later learned was a con- victed con man. I was broke and had to sell an MGB con- vertible I had recently re- stored. The fellow looked it over and told me he would buy it if it checked out with his mechanic. He looked 40-ish and had arrived in a brand-new Infin- iti. His clothes were impecca- ble. He was masterful at tell- ing me exactly what I wanted to hear. I handed him the keys without hesitation. The next day, when I ar- rived home from work, how- ever, my garage door was open, my British sports car gone. As it turns out, the fel- low didn't drive my car to his mechanic. He drove it to a hardware store, where he had a key made. If only that had been the peak of my stupidity — but I was just getting warmed up. Shortly after buying my first house in my early 30s, I built a planter in front of the house. I tore out some old shrubs and came across a nest of very ag- gressive ground bees. The fellow at the hardware store told me to pour a half- cup of gasoline into the hole. I figured if a half-cup was good, two full cups would be better. And what good is gasoline if you don't ignite it? I lit a match, but before I could throw it into the nest, I heard "Wooooooooooof!" You see, "Wooooooooooof!" is the sound gasoline makes when it ignites. It ignites be- cause gasoline gives off fumes and gasoline fumes are flam- mable. I barely managed to douse the incredible flame be- fore it caught my house on fire. To be sure, I have done my fair share of stupid things over the years: poor financial deci- sions, bad career moves, pur- suing women who were bad for me. So why would I publicly share some of the many stupid things I have done? Because as stupid as I have been, I never once fell for the many promises, deceptions and outright lies of Obam- aCare before it was foisted on the nation. I have been stupid, but not that stupid. TomPurcell,authorof"Mis- adventures of a 1970s Child- hood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pitts- burgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons. com. Tom Purcell I've been stupid, but not that stupid As I sped onto Baptist Road, I was horrified to see, in my rear-view mirror, that Father Kram had turned around and was in hot pursuit. Cartoonist's take By Ron Paul Most Americans, regardless of ideology, oppose "crony capital- ism" or "cronyism." Cronyism is where politicians write laws aimed at helping their favored business beneficia- ries. Despite public opposition to cronyism, politicians still seek to use the legislative process to help special interests. For example, Congress may soon vote on legislation outlaw- ing Internet gambling. It is an open secret, at least inside the Beltway, that this legislation is being considered as a favor to billionaire casino owner, Shel- don Adelson. Mr. Adelson, who is perhaps best known for using his enormous wealth to advance a pro-war foreign policy, is now using his political influence to turn his online competitors into criminals. Supporters of an Internet gambling ban publicly deny they are motivated by a desire to curry favor with a wealthy do- nor. Instead, they give a num- ber of high-minded reasons for wanting to ban this activity. Some claim that legalizing online gambling will enrich criminals and even terrorists! But crimi- nalizing online casinos will not eliminate the demand for online casinos. Instead, passage of this legislation will likely guarantee that the online gambling market is controlled by criminals. Thus, it is those who support outlawing online gambling who may be aid- ing criminals and terrorists. A federal online gambling ban would overturn laws in three states that allow online gam- bling. It would also end the ongo- ing debate over legalizing online gambling in many other states. Yet some have claimed that Con- gress must pass this law in order to protect states rights! Their ar- gument is that citizens of states that ban Internet gambling may easily get around those laws by accessing online casinos operat- ing in states where online gam- bling is legalized. Even if the argument had merit that allowing states to le- galize online gambling under- mines laws in other states, it would not justify federal legis- lation on the issue. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given any author- ity to regulate activities such as online gambling. Arguing that "states rights" justifies creat- ing new federal crimes turns the Tenth Amendment, which was intended to limit federal power, on its head. Many supporters of an Inter- net gambling ban sincerely be- lieve that gambling is an im- moral and destructive activity that should be outlawed. How- ever, the proposed legislation is not at all about the morality of gambling. It is about whether Americans who do gamble should have the choice to do so online, or be forced to visit brick- and-mortar casinos. Even if there was some moral distinction between gambling online or in a physical casino, prohibiting behavior that does not involve force or fraud has no place in a free society. It is no more appropriate for gambling opponents to use force to stop people from playing poker online than it would be for me to use force to stop people from reading pro-war, neocon writers. Giving government new pow- ers over the Internet to prevent online gambling will inevitably threaten all of our liberties. Gov- ernment bureaucrats will use this new authority to expand their surveillance of the Inter- net activities of Americans who have no interest in gambling, just as they used the new powers granted by the Patriot Act to jus- tify mass surveillance. The proposed ban on Internet gambling is a blatantly uncon- stitutional infringement on our liberties that will likely expand the surveillance state. Worst of all, it is all being done for the benefit of one powerful billion- aire. Anyone who thinks ban- ning online gambling will not diminish our freedoms while en- riching criminals is making a losing bet. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential can- didate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. Ron Paul Internet gambling ban is a losing bet Another view By Tina Dupuy Did you hear atheists are su- ing god? According to Fox News' for-profit preacher Mike Hucka- bee they do it all the time. "Dear Lord!" he tweeted this week, "Atheists are suing God again!" Never mind the spurious premise of a group of people su- ing the very thing they don't be- lieve in. That'd be like Republi- cans suing birth control, scien- tific evidence or a living wage. Or Democrats, respectively, suing winning. Why is Huckabee making such a hokey accusation about those darn atheists? "The founders believed our in- alienable rights derive from a power higher than government," writes Huckabee. "'Under God' is a reminder that elected officials did not grant us our rights, and have no power to rescind them." Apparently, American Hu- manist Association has sent a let- ter on behalf of a student in Cal- ifornia who was punished by his high school for not saying "under god." A practice which has been held unconstitutional. To clar- ify, it's a school district, not a god and it's a letter not a lawsuit. Now I'm guessing Huckabee believes bearing false witness is breaking one of god's command- ments, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume his reading comprehension isn't all that strong. Which could also ex- plain why he's blissfully ignorant of American history. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by noted Christian So- cialist Francis Bellamy in 1892 for a children's magazine's pro- motion of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' sail "across the ocean blue." School children recited the pledge while making the "Bellamy salute" which was an homage to an an- cient Rome gesture of raising an arm in front of you with a flat palm with fingers closed. Later the Nazis and their fellow fas- cists adopted the salute and now it's universally recognized as how you heil Hitler. It wasn't until the middle of WWII that Congress adopted it as the pledge, later dropping the Bellamy salute and opting for a right hand over the heart. Then it wasn't until the Cold War that "under god" was added because our enemies were godless com- mies. So the Pledge is a jingois- tic chant created by a children's publication to celebrate an ex- plorer turned brutal torture- happy tyrant with a Hitler salute. It's not the best tradition we have in this country. And it's not that "under god" reminds politicians they can't take away our rights. "Under god" is a reminder that politi- cians invoke faith as a first ref- uge of scoundrels. The Founding Fathers are our American religion complete with its own creation story (Paul Revere), wise Kings Solomon (Washington and Lincoln) and Garden of Eden (see: the 1950s). The Pledge of Allegiance, our Founders' homily. It's very loosely based on a true story. We made most of it up. And it gets retold and re- sold — as in: click here to do- nate now. We didn't rebel against the crown because of religion. The Founders were not the Pilgrims. The two groups were from dif- ferent centuries. Think the tele- graph in relation to the iPhone. The passage Huckabee cites with the "unalienable rights en- dowed by our Creator" is the only sentence even remotely about religion in the Declara- tion of Independence. The list of grievances in the document have nothing to do with being able to practice religion. That came later in an Amendment to the Constitution. The list in the Declaration of Independence of what they call The Oppressions have to do with the King's ne- glect of the basic functioning of government — i.e., "For tak- ing away our Charters, abol- ishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments." The colonists found it arbitrary and deemed it despotic and ty- rannical. It's more accurate to say the Founders loved the morass of government — so much they fought to the death to frame one. Saying the Founders were anti-government is like saying Mrs. Fields is anti-cookie. Instead the Founders were pro-self-governance. The Founders were anti-monarchy. And wary of a state run reli- gion. Religious Americans are unthinking if they want their religion to be the one their gov- ernment encourages — see: every theocracy ever. The question of whether we are a nation under god should be asked. Our current enemies are not godless but are religious extremists, venerating a flag as they worship their deity. Is a pledge to a flag and a god still something we should demand American school children do? Are we really still mandating our kids recite this? Because we're a nation that welcomes and protects all sorts of beliefs — even the completely mistaken, bordering-on-disin- genuous claims about our or- igin story. Or a grade school pledge. Tina Dupuy is a nationally syn- dicated op-ed columnist, inves- tigative journalist, award-win- ning writer, stand-up comic, on-air commentator and wedge issue fan. Tina can be reached at tinadupuy@yahoo.com. Think over 'under God' Tom Purcell OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, November 19, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6