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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 BecauseIoncevotedlib- eral, at the beginning of each new year I take it as my per- sonal responsibility to pose a few suggestions to my liberal friends out there who are still living on the dark side. So, without further ado, I present to you my third an- nual "Suggestions for Liberals" column. Quit Deflating the Ameri- can Dream. Encouraging your kids to dream big is not a sin, but creating an environment that prevents big dreams from blossoming is nearly unpar- donable. The economy your policies fostered has down- graded young Americans' defi- nition of the American Dream to what we see on HGTV's "Tiny Houses," which really should be called "Sheds on Wheels" or "Overpriced Camp- ers." The most recent U.S. Cen- sus uncovered the future for Millennials is bleak. Millen- nials make less, work less and are more likely to live in poverty than their parents did when they were the same age. No wonder a recent Har- vard University Institute of Politics poll asking 18-to- 29-year-olds if the Ameri- can Dream was alive or dead found half of this age group thought the dream is dead. Kids deserve better than the Sheds-on-Wheels economy you've created. Stop settling for substan- dard national security. Re- fuse to accept what your party defines as the "New Normal" regarding national security. During a hearing after the December 2, 2015 San Ber- nardino terrorist attack, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said Americans "just have to accept" that domestic terror- ism is "a new normal." No it isn't. The only way this will remain the new normal is if Americans give in to this shameful surrender. Our kids deserve to grow up in a world where terrorist attacks on American soil are not consid- ered "normal." Touch a gun. Despite the old wives' tales to which you cling, guns do not kill, nor do they bite. They might kick back a little though, so it makes good sense to learn how to handle one. Guns protect potential victims. That is why gun-free zones are known as magnets for mass killers. As I've written before, gun- free zones are really helpless victims' zones. Up here in the Arctic, guns protect us from dangerous four-legged pred- ators and sometimes two- legged ones. Guns also put food on the table. An expert marksman in our home helped stock our freezer with healthy, lean caribou meat this year. Raise the bar. Hillary and Bernie, seriously? If you raised your standards and expected more from your politicians, you wouldn't have candidates so low-caliber you are forced to schedule presidential de- bates on weekends or during big sporting events to keep viewership low. Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't schedule a debate on Super Bowl Sun- day. If you raised the standard, you might even get a candi- date who is not ashamed to re- veal his college transcripts. Seek truth. It'll set you free, right after it exasperates you. Truth is not open to personal interpretation. You can dis- agree with it, be disgruntled over it and downright dislike it, but the fact remains that truth is still truth. So why not embrace it and expand your horizon to in- clude daily Bible reading? While you're at it, increase your news source intake to in- clude alternate points of view beyond a daily diet of MS- NBC, The Onion and Comedy Central — if for no other rea- son than to gain intelligence and a wider perspective. Make it a goal to read and compre- hensively understand the U.S. Constitution. Back in 2011, the first or- der of business for Republi- cans was to read the Consti- tution. (Obviously, many wore earplugs.) Weirdly, some liber- als like Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) actually complained that reading aloud the docu- ment Americans have revered as the law of the land for more than 200 years was "propa- ganda" and "total nonsense." You might as well read it to understand what all the fuss is about. I hope this helps. Happy New Year. SusanStamperBrownisa recovering political pundit from Alaska, who does her best to make sense of current day events using her faith. Contact her by Facebook or at writestamper@gmail.com. Susan Stamper Brown Suggestions for liberals in 2016 Seek truth. It'll set you free, right after it exasperates you. Truth is not open to personal interpretation. Cartoonist's take To give you an idea of how far the nation's confidence has re- treated from the exuberance of the 60's — I promise this isn't an endorsement of Donald Trump — just look at current automotive culture. Government Motors designs flimsy boxes to conform to arbi- trary fuel efficiency standards. Electric cars, which the govern- ment wants a select few to drive while the rest of us are on a bus, are so expensive the only way to persuade the average person to own one is to subsidize the pur- chase with thousands of tax dol- lars. Naturally "activist" busy- bodies worry those geek hum- mers don't make enough noise to warn headphone—wearing idiots of the auto's approach. That certainly wasn't a prob- lem with the Shelby Mustang. The roar of the exhaust in even the stock model approached NASA decibel levels. Muscle cars were the perfect compliment to a muscular coun- try. "Big Daddy" Don Garlits was a household name, "Fun, Fun, Fun" dominated the radio and Ford won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Today we've gone from the "Little Old Lady From Pasa- dena" (Go granny, go granny, go granny go) to the Little Old Ro- bot from Cupertino (No baby, no baby, no baby no). The future, according to Google, features a self—driving car characterized by an inabil- ity to relate to the moving cul- ture around it. I call Google's ef- fort the Asperger Auto because of the effect the cars have when they leave the Google test track. Individuals with Asperger's Syndrome have trouble with so- cial interaction and are often bound by limited or restricted patterns of behavior. Google's car has all the classic symp- toms: inward directed, reluctant to change behavior to fit sur- rounding social circumstances and a refusal to acknowledge social cues from other drivers. Bloomberg Business reports a California motorcycle cop had experience first—hand when he observed traffic stacking up be- hind a suppository—shaped auto. He entered the history books as the first motorman to initi- ate a traffic stop on a robot car. Equally unique, he resisted the temptation to inquire: "Do you know why I stopped you," be- cause there was no one to ask. The self—involved vehicle was putt—putting along at 24 mph in a 35 mph zone, ignoring the jam it was creating as driv- ers with a rapidly deteriorating opinion of Google stacked up behind. The quandary for the cop was to whom to give the ticket? The car couldn't sign the sum- mons and the two engineers aboard claimed to be just pas- sengers. So the officer let the human cargo off with a warning and threatened to drop a mag- net into the car's CPU if it hap- pened again. Depending on whom you ask, auto—autos have between twice and five times the accident rate of human drivers. One simi- larity the cars share with hu- mans is the accident is always the other guy's fault, although in the car's case it appears to be true. A study from the University of Michigan found driverless ve- hicles, like your teenage daugh- ter, have never been at fault in an accident. The auto—autos are "usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes by inatten- tive or aggressive humans unac- customed to machine motorists that always follow the rules." In essence, an auto strictly obeying the law is such a rare occurrence it may actually con- stitute a road hazard. California is ready with a so- lution similar to the old law that required a horseless car- riage to post a man with a lan- tern walking before it to warn unsuspecting horses. Regula- tors want a "backseat—driver— on—call" vehicle that "would require a human always to be ready to take the wheel." Naturally Google, the inven- tor of the "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" model that doesn't have a steering wheel or a gas pedal, objects to the new rule. Google has managed to auto- mate the velocity vigilante who parks his sanctimonious speed limit observing vehicle in the fast lane and forces drivers with a greater sense or urgency to pass on the right. The self—righteous, self—ab- sorbed Aspergers Auto coming to a highway near you. Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of "A Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times." He can be reached at mandate. mmpr@gmail.com. Michael Shannon Google designs the self-righteous, self-absorbed car Another view Have you taken sides in the eastern Oregon anti-government standoff? As you've probably heard, on January 2 a group of armed ac- tivists (Citizens for Constitu- tional Freedom) seized control of a federal building at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They say they've settled in for the long haul, protesting the imprison- ment of two ranchers in particu- lar and federal land policies in general. Most people in the eastern half of the U.S. don't realize it, but the federal government owns nearly half the land in the West. I hope this hoarding doesn't end tragically, with Uncle Sam buried under a mountain of sagebrush and his dog gnawing off his leg. No reasonable person wants to see the entire West converted into one big subdivision or one strip-mined wasteland. Most of us have affection for the conser- vation principles of Pres. The- odore Roosevelt. But perhaps Washington, D.C. has turned TR's "speak softly and carry a big stick" mantra into "speak lawyer- ese and carry a big stack of reg- ulations." Certainly, we need some un- spoiled wilderness. As one fed- eral spokesman says, Ameri- ca's parks and refuges should be enjoyed by everyone — unless they're too busy working three jobs to pay for student loans, Obamacare premiums, etc. I'm sure many in the bureau- cracy would love to see grazing ended altogether, thus eliminat- ing the threat of cow flatulence melting the polar ice caps and ending Life As We Know It. This fits in with the agenda of the Of- fice Of Keeping Cows From Wav- ing Confederate Flags and the Office of Preventing Bovine Us- age of Redskins Jackets. The Hollywood Liberal Elite have been unsympathetic to the anti-tyranny movement, but that may be changing, now that the feds have claimed ownership of actor David Spade. ("What do you mean, that's an overreach of government authority?" blus- tered one official. "He's David SPADE. And he plays Joe DIRT. Could the federal jurisdiction be any clearer?") Some opponents of Citizens for Constitutional Freedom have tried playing the race card, fum- ing that the feds are going too easy on this bunch of Angry White Men. Yeah, the ranchers really flaunt those privileges — like encountering rattlesnakes and cougars, rebuilding fences in the hot sun and the ultimate spa experience of delivering a calf during a blizzard. As with the outspokenness of Donald Trump, a lot of peo- ple have a grudging admira- tion for those who actually take action. You know, "Every- body talks about the weather, but nobody ever waits until a holiday weekend and seizes a weather station in the middle of nowhere." The feds are in a quandary. Some officials urge patience and negotiation, lest a confronta- tion turn into a bad-P.R. blood- bath. But others want the pro- test quashed quickly, reasoning that if the authorities ignore the problem, other groups of malcon- tents nationwide may be embold- ened to strike. Strange, this is the same government that thinks ig- noring Muslim extremists will inevitably lead to their women driving topless to pick up bar mitzvah gifts. If the Oregon protest doesn't fizzle out, it might inspire a coast-to-coast Occupy Every Street phenomenon of citizens defying zoning regulations, vehi- cle inspection fees, etc. ("So the mayor's butt-ugly daughter won the beauty pageant four years in a row? Town gazebo, meet my Barcalounger.") I'll leave you with the rancher movement's theme song: "Home, home on the range/Where pam- pered antelope dismay/Where often is heard a discouraging word/And the rulebooks are cloudy all day..." Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol. com and visits to his Facebook fan page Tyree's Tyrades. Will the civil disobedience in Oregon spread nationwide? By Susan Stamper Brown By Michael Shannon By Danny Tyree No reasonable person wants to see the entire West converted into one big subdivision or one strip- mined wasteland. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Thursday, January 7, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6