Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/570997
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@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 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 Everyone's asking whether Joe Biden will run for president, but he's already done something more important. He made me a better dad. Afterbuildingabusiness and fiddling around with writing columns, my wife and I moved from Texas to the D.C. area a year ago because I got what seemed like a dream job. There was just one prob- lem: My sons, then 13 and 11, would stay behind with their mother. "We get it," the older one said. "You're going to be up there helping millions of peo- ple. We'll be OK." I'd come back every month, I told them. I'd text every day. I told them we'd talk on the phone. I told them we'd make it work, but really my heart was breaking. We weren't hid- ing the pain from each other. On my visits we talked about our feelings, a minor mira- cle on its own. But they were thriving in school and seemed happy. We were going to make it work. The dream job ended but my lease didn't, and my job hunt led me one day into the final round of interviews for a job writing speeches for the Vice President. The job seemed important enough to justify being away from my boys, who seemed excited enough by the opportunity. But the pain of being away from them had burrowed deeper. I felt desperate to find something to do that would make our separation worth it. We were going to make it work. The interview with the speechwriting team went well. They assured me that the Vice President allowed his staff to duck out of the of- fice to tend to their families, a rarity in the adrenalized hothouse of the Washington workday. Why just that day, one speechwriter told me, he was able to take his daughter to the doctor. "He insists we put our fam- ilies first," he said, "and he ac- tually means it." This was before the Vice President's son died, but right after he gave a commence- ment speech at Yale Univer- sity that moved me to tears. Biden told the story about the long-ago car accident that claimed the lives of his wife and child and severely injured his sons Beau and Hunter. Just elected to the U.S. Sen- ate, Biden decided to com- mute to D.C. every day from Delaware. "Looking back on it, the truth be told, the real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me," he said. In the interview, they told me one of the benefits was flying on Air Force Two. "On the way back, he comes back and will get to know you," the chief speechwriter told me. "He'll want to hear all about your family." That was it. The thought of talking to Biden about my sons frightened me. I could not look into that man's eyes and tell him we were mak- ing it work. As much as I ad- mired him, I could not tell him that writing his speeches was worth missing my sons' award banquets, football games, and band concerts. I wanted to kiss their faces and smell their heads. They were doing fine, but I was a mess, shoving the broken parts of my heart together to make it through the day. I needed my sons more than they needed me. Fortunately, I never had to make that choice. When Beau Biden died they filled the po- sition internally to make it easier on the big guy. And now our Vice President, who was oft mocked as ol' Uncle Joey B, has become America's dad. He is sharing his grief with all of us, leading with a heart that is still broken for his oldest son. Telling these stories, connecting his loss to the broken parts that we all carry around, and sharing his love for his son will be his en- during legacy. I'm writing this in a house full of cardboard moving boxes that in a week will be on a truck heading for Texas. Biden might run for pres- ident, but I'm heading for Texas where before long my heart will be in one piece again. Until they go to college, that is. JasonStanfordisaregular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Democratic consultant and a Truman National Security Project partner. You can email him at stanford@ oppresearch.com and follow him on Twitter @ JasStanford. Jason Stanford Biden, America's dad Cartoonist's take Those words would start the list of adjectives describing the Iran "deal" foisted on Amer- ica by Emperor Obama and his dim-witted lackey and partner-in- deception, John Kerry. Also ap- plicable: dishon- est, disloyal, dis- ingenuous—there will be a few more if, God forbid, Iran's bru- tal Islamic mullahs detonate a nuclear bomb in a cargo con- tainer in the bay of a coastal American city, or in a rented truck with a jihadist suicide driver. While I was writing columns in July, scheduled to run while traveling in Idaho and Oregon, I observed the nation's news media and pundit class con- veying misinformation and ad- ministration spin on the "nego- tiated" agreement over Iran's nuclear program. Scare quotes convey the disturbing practice of caving to Iranian demands and calling it "negotiating." Duplicitous and potentially di- sastrous aspects deserve atten- tion in this column. Conservative blogger Paul Mirengoff summed it thusly: "John Kerry on the Iran Deal: A Litany of Lies." Lee Smith, at the Weekly Standard, accused Kerry of "making stuff up" but that is perhaps too kind, too polite. "Kerry is flat out lying." Almost 20 articles appeared on just the first page under the "Iran" label at Powerlineblog. com. They cited the misrep- resentations, hidden compro- mises, sacrificed national secu- rity—for America and Israel— and include a deeply insightful series, "Speaking of the Iran Deal." At DonPolson.blogspot. com, there are over 50 "Iran" posts March to July; "Bolton calls the Iran deal 'unprece- dented surrender'" appeared 3/19. One obvious example of du- plicity would be Kerry "claim- ing that the administration had never promised 'anytime/ anywhere' inspections of Ira- nian nuclear facilities…Any- time/anywhere, Kerry said on Face the Nation, 'is a term that honestly I never heard in the four years that we were negoti- ating. It was not on the table.'" However, there were ref- erences to "anywhere/any- time" inspections; as recently as April, "national security adviser Ben Rhodes prom- ised that the Western negotia- tors were going to secure any- where/anytime inspections. Ernest Moniz, who sat next to Kerry throughout the Iran talks, also said, 'we expect to have anywhere, anytime ac- cess' to Iranian facilities. But Kerry's lieutenant, Wendy Sherman…said that anytime/ anywhere was rhetorical over- reach. The administration didn't really mean it. Kerry preposterously maintains they didn't even say it." Just as preposterously, Obama/Kerry mouthpieces said with straight faces that no na- tion would accept "anywhere/ anytime" inspections—not even America. What global-citizen, U.N.-supremacist, America- bashing claptrap. Any nation that agreed in good faith to end its nuclear weapons activity, under the Nuclear Non-Prolifer- ation Treaty, willfully submit- ted to intrusive verification and inspections, as in South Africa. You surely recall Saddam Hus- sein's efforts to thwart inspec- tions—he acceded, with lip ser- vice, to U.N. demands while do- ing everything possible to delay, deny and distract inspectors. Iran gets a better deal by exec- utive fiat. Iran has succeeded in de- nying access to military loca- tions, which would be prime weapons-assembly sites. It will be able to use the 24-day ad- vance notice to scrub evidence from other facilities to the point that the major nations won't raise the issue for pur- poses of re-imposing sanctions, let alone treating Iran as a hos- tile belligerent. Kerry also beclowned him- self by lying about sanctions being lifted on Quds Force commander, Qassem Sulei- mani. "Kerry denied [that sanctions of Suleimani will be lifted] when the terms of the deal were first made public. Administration spokespersons set the record straight, explain- ing that, yes, U.N. nuclear-re- lated sanctions would no lon- ger apply to Suleimani in eight years' time. And yet in a press conference ... two days after the correction had been made, Kerry still insisted Suleimani was not coming off the sanc- tions list." That's called mak- ing stuff up. We now know of the two se- cret side deals between Iran and the IAEA (U.N. atomic en- ergy agency)—one relating to Parchin, a military base be- lieved to be part of the re- gime's nuclear weapons pro- gram, and the other relating to military dimensions of the pro- gram. Hence, Kerry's lies be- come more problematic, pa- thetic and destructive of Amer- ica's national security. The law that Obama signed (under the duress of knowing his veto would be overridden), granting Congress approval rights to any deal, requires Congress to be provided all an- cillary, additional agreements. Hence, we had the specta- cle of Kerry's lame attempt to deny their existence, Obi-Wan Kenobi-like: "These aren't the side deals you're looking for." Any attempt by anyone to deny that Kerry/Moniz knew of the particulars, even the ex- istence, of the Iran/IAEA side deals is immediately subject to dispute on veracity alone. "The administration knows what these deals say; it probably helped broker them. However it has been unwilling to share the details with Congress… Given John Kerry's serial dis- honesty about the deal, trust- ing this administration should be out of the question." Among other nearly-diaboli- cal elements of the deal, Kerry et al can't even bring them- selves to honestly quantify the vast amounts of money Iran gets with little more than a promise to be good. While it could approach $150 billion, authoritative estimates (CNBC, David Rothkopf in Foreign Pol- icy, Reuters, Al-Monitor) put it at $100-120 billion. Kerry low-balled it at $50 billion and minimized its use for terror- ism, in spite of Iran's undeni- able history of funneling large sums to its terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East. Blood will be on Obama's, Ker- ry's and even Hillary Clinton's hands, if she had any role in dismantling the sanctions and encouraging Iranian hopes for Western acceptance of its nu- clear ambitions. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com. The way I see it Dishonorable, disgusting, despicable The dream job ended but my lease didn't, and my job hunt led me one day into the final round of interviews for a job writing speeches for the Vice President. The job seemed important enough to justify being away from my boys, who seemed excited enough by the opportunity. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Amazing. Wish I would have been brave enough when I was young. Darla Brewer: On a story about a Red Bluff High School grad who cycled across Europe. This was a nice story to read in the Daily News. I even went to page 9to finish. Good for Kelly, to follow her dreams. Sharon Wilkes: On a story about a Red Bluff High School grad who cycled across Europe. Don Polson 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, Sac- ramento 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.SenatorDianneFeinstein, OnePostSt.,Ste. 2450,SanFran- cisco 94104, 415 393-0707 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, September 15, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6