Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/455524
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 Every Feb. 2, Punxsutawney Phil, a ground- hog, is pulled from a tree stump in Punx- sutawney, PA. If he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, spring is just ahead. Ina2010interview,Iasked Phil about a request made by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He wore dark sunglasses, smoked an un- filtered Camel cigarette and sipped bourbon. Purcell: In 2010, PETA said that groundhogs are con- stantly alert when out of their burrows — that yanking you out of a stump before bright lights and a large crowd is tan- tamount to animal cruelty. They want you to be replaced with an animatronic ground- hog. Phil: Look, do I dig the big crowds and bright lights? No, but let's put things in per- spective. I only work one day a year. Show me a groundhog who wouldn't want that gig. Purcell: PETA argued that your natural cycle has been disrupted. You should be hi- bernating this time of the year. Phil: Hibernating? Only a fool would want to be in a co- matose state in a dirt hole, when he could live a life of lux- ury indoors. Purcell: But the organizers of your annual event, the In- ner Circle, are exploiting you for human entertainment and profit. Phil: That profit has af- forded me all the luxuries a groundhog could want. I have a personal veterinarian. I eat as much lettuce, carrots, ap- ples and grains as I want. I have a fine bachelor burrow that includes a running brook. And the Inner Circle fellows supply me with three female companions — the finest lady ground dwellers this side of the Mississippi. Purcell: The Inner Circle is trafficking in woodchucks of the night? Sir, PETA believes you'd be happier in your natu- ral habitat. Phil: My natural habitat in- volves becoming the dinner of several larger creatures. Look, man, the cats at PETA need to lighten up. America needs to lighten up. You Americans need to get your priorities in order. Purcell: Our priorities? Phil: Look, there is ani- mal cruelty out there. PETA does some good things fight- ing against it. But complain- ing about me is ridiculous. There are real problems in the world — poverty, unrest, suf- fering. America continues to struggle. Purcell: Your point, Phil? Phil: You cats are spoiled. You've misused your wealth — taken it for granted. Many of your politicians no lon- ger know where wealth comes from or how it is maintained for future generations. Purcell: You follow our pol- itics? Phil: I read the papers ev- ery day. Look, your "educated" people lack common sense. They are easily misled by sil- ver-tongued politicians. Purcell: You're losing me, Phil. Phil: As the American peo- ple attained material wealth, you let yourselves become spir- itually and emotionally poor. So desperate are you for mean- ing, you latch on to any old "cause." One involves med- dling with the well-being of a groundhog in Punxsutawney. Purcell: You've been brain- washed, Phil. We need to break you out of here. Phil: If you or anyone dis- rupts my groundhog heaven, I'll plug up your sewer line. Editor'sNote:Apriorver- sion of this column was dis- tributed by Cagle Cartoons in 2010 and it is an excerpt from Tom Purcell's new book, "Comical Sense: A Lone Hu- morist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" available at amazon. com. Tom Purcell, author of "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 Interview with Punxsutawney Phil, groundhog Look, man, the cats at PETA need to lighten up. America needs to lighten up. You Americans need to get your priorities in order. Thriftstoreoffersthanks Editor: The volunteers and employ- ees of Dignity Health Hospice Secondhand Store would like to thank Jessie Woods, owner of the Gold Exchange, and her awesome employees for Christ- mas for a Cause. Of course, Christmas for a Cause couldn't have been done without our caring commu- nity. The program has given the thrift store pricing tape, reg- ister tape and a new pricing gun. These items are used ev- ery day at the thrift store and should last us quite a while. One big thank you to Jessie and her employees and one big thank you to the community. — Lisa Elliot, Red Bluff Kraft Library Editor: I was born and raised in Red Bluff. I have fond memo- ries of the Kraft Library and the countless hours I spent there. Long summer after- noons were spent brows- ing and checking out books weekly. During elementary and high school days I used the resources available at the library. The Kraft Playground lin- gers in my memory also. If you drive by today you'll see a ne- glected lot overgrown with weeds, debris, etc. At one time there was a large slide, bars, see-saws, and other play- ground equipment for the chil- dren's enjoyment. At the lower level there was space for ball games, etc. Most importantly there was a playground super- visor on duty. Her name was Hattie Lingscheid. Now there is a lot of talk about moving the current li- brary to a new location away from the central district. It was unfortunate that we lost the original Kraft Library, and it would not be an improve- ment to move the new library to an outlying area. It is a shame that the city did not find a way to keep the original library, which was a wonderful and generous leg- acy left by the Kraft family. Robert Minch is right. Let's return the library to the orig- inal Kraft building where it was meant to be — in the heart of Red Bluff. — Freda Marengo, Red Bluff Response to columnist's critics Editor: Don Polson's column "Lib- eral propaganda; Islamic ex- tremist hypocrisy," dated Jan. 20 was lambasted by our old friend Mr. Mazzuc- chi and some unknown bush- whacker that hides behind the phony name of Another_Bob that called Polson a hack. So, Don Polson is just a hack and Bushwhacker Bob is not? Blas- phemy for Don, but not for Another_Bob. While the Bushwhacker and Mazzucchi drool and slobber all over Obama and his "fun- damental transformation of America," while Obama bol- sters our worst enemies and disrespects our most trusted allies, while this once great nation loses the respect of the world, our borders are open to anybody and everybody and the racial divide is the worst it's ever been, I would say his transformation of America is a success. Under the leadership of left- wing liberals, socialists and communists over many de- cades this once great nation has been transformed. Charity is now an entitlement, moral- ity is a hate crime, faith is ig- norance, envy is righteousness and theft is justice. Both Mazzucchi and the Bushwhacker praised the Is- lamist and Mazzucchi posted a couple of Muslim-friendly websites most likely funded by someone like George Soros. If Islam is so friendly, how did Islam become a "religion of peace?" How did the Obama administration convert the act of war on 9/11 that resulted in the mass-slaughter of almost 3,000 Americans into a "man- caused disaster" and the Fort Hood massacre into "work place violence." The Bushwhacker posted a website that put Obama's ap- proval rating at 45% then com- pared it to George W. Bush at 36% and Ronald Reagan at 48%, then says Obama is do- ing just fine. Really? From the birth of this nation until George W. Bush left the White House this country became the strongest most respected na- tion in the world and in just six years Obama has damaged if not destroyed both. Obama's 45% approval rat- ing is a disaster compared to Bush's 36% and Reagan's 48%. For six years Obama received nothing but praises from the mainstream media, while Bush was the liberal media's favor- ite person to trash and Reagan didn't get very many thumbs up. What would Bush and Rea- gan's approval rating be if they had received the same praises that Obama got and didn't de- serve and they did? For instance, Dan Rather took a phony document about Bush's National Guard service and tried to destroy him with it. Thank God it didn't work very well for him. Where has Obama been for our service men and women? Even after Bush left the White House he and Laura greeted our warriors when they re- turned home from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also visited our wounded war- riors in hospitals and Bush also went on bike rides with them. Check out the difference in the way our brave service men and women look and act in the presence of Bush, it's a mutual admiration, not so much with Obama. — Les Wolfe, Red Bluff Your opinions Cartoonist's take There was a time when read- ers who are offended by a po- litical cartoons would write a letter to the editor. Now angry readers rant online; they de- mand apologies or retribution for being offended. I run a "syndicate" that dis- tributes editorial cartoons and columns to about 850 subscrib- ing newspapers in America. I'm perceived to be the "boss" of the cartoonists, and I get angry demands that I fire car- toonists I work with, who drew cartoons that offend. Just draw about abortion, the Confeder- ate Battle Flag, gun control, re- ligion, Israel or the Palestin- ians — and the cyber outrage will flow. One of our cartoonists drew a cartoon a few years ago that showed an Iraqi soldier hold- ing a book titled, "The Koran for Dummies." The cartoon motivated a group called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to put a call out to their members to e-mail me, demanding that I punish the cartoonist; I received many thousands of crazy e-mail threats in response. When- ever there is a big response to a cartoon, it is usually because some group is organizing the effort. Recently my political car- toon web site at Cagle.com has been getting hacker at- tacks. New, crazy, huge, sophis- ticated, brute force, distrib- uted denial of service hacker attacks, from IP addresses all over the world, focusing on taking us down. The hackers succeeded in breaking through to erase data on our hard drives on our serv- ers and bring our Cagle.com site down. Luckily, we had an unconnected backup in the cloud, and this attack had us down for only a day rewriting the hard drives. We don't keep credit card information or sa- lacious emails about movie stars online, so there isn't much for hackers to do except to take us down. The new attacks started be- fore the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, back when we were featuring cartoons about North Korea and the Sony Pictures hackers. Cagle.com is still going down occasionally as the hackers change their strategies. I sup- pose this is the new reality for editorial cartoonists, who have never been well paid by news- papers that are continuing to cut their budgets. Editorial cartoons seem to be the new flashpoint for a clash of civili- zations, even as we tighten our belts. The bottom line is that our Cagle.com site is now expen- sive to host as the attacks con- tinue to become more costly and time consuming for us. We thought about dropping the site and concentrating on our little newspaper syndicate, but we're trying something differ- ent. We're putting up a plea to our readers to make contribu- tions to help us keep the Cagle. com site online. I see lots of other sites with "donor" buttons, including opinion sites like Slate.com and Truthdig.com, but this is new to us. Visitors to Cagle.com will see a pop-up window this week, asking for support, and offering lots of nice perks for different levels of support. We're hoping the love and support of editorial cartoon fans can overcome the costs of the evil editorial cartoon hat- ers. Want to help? Visit cagle. com/heroes. We need more he- roes. Daryl Cagle is an editorial cartoonist who runs the Ca- gleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate, distributing edito- rial cartoons to more than 850 newspapers around the world, including the Daily News. He is a past president of the Na- tional Cartoonists Society. Comments to Daryl may be sent to editor@cagle.com. Read Daryl's blog at www.darylca- gle.com. Daryl Cagle Some seek cartoon revenge through hacking of website Tom Purcell OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, January 31, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6