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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, 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Predictably, America's Troll is still attacking the federal judge who's handling the lawsuit against Trump University. OnMemorialDay,Donald Trump twice tweeted that the judge he derided last week as "Mexican" (Gonzalo Curiel was born, raised, and educated in Indiana) is "totally biased" against the inherent greatness of Der Leader. All because Judge Curiel has declined to dismiss the lawsuit and thinks the stu- dents who paid up to $35,000 for tuition, and got nothing in return, should at least have their day in court. As an offi- cer of an independent branch of government, Curiel simply wants the judicial process to play out. In Trump's words, all this is "negative, negative, neg- ative." There's something way worse going on here than just tagging Curiel as "Mexican" (the latest of Trump's serial lies). If you read the full text of Trump's remarks on the stump (courtesy of Josh Blackman, an assistant law professor), you'll get the full flavor of his authoritarian spirit and his ut- ter contempt for constitutional democracy and the separation of powers. Especially this: "I am getting railroaded by a legal system, and frankly they should be ashamed.....It is a disgrace. It is a rigged sys- tem....This court system, the judges in this court system, federal court." Attacking the credibil- ity and legitimacy of the ju- diciary is a tyrant's timeworn tactic. It is designed to erode checks and balances, and is an open invitation to mob intim- idation. As legal ethics expert Charles Geyh tells Reuters, "He has impugned the honesty of the judge in a pending case, and has done so in the context of a political rally that seems calculation to intimidate by inciting anger among his sup- porters." What aspiring tyrant Trump instinctively believes (if he believes anything) is that he is the law. And that if a public servant in an inde- pendent branch of government dares suggest otherwise, then clearly the system is "rigged," and any public servant who re- fuses to bow down should be investigated. Or, as Trump put it on the stump, the system "ought to look into Judge Curiel." So are Trump's followers so deaf and blind that they truly don't realize what is happen- ing here? Has their faith in our democratic institutions eroded to the point that they're happy to feed a junkyard dog who would treat our institutions as his personal chew toy? Are they so ignorant of world his- tory that they can't see the danger of a leader cult? And can the complicit Republican party sink any lower? David Frum, the conserva- tive analyst and former George W. Bush speechwriter (who coined the term "axis of evil"), has nothing but contempt for the voters and leaders in his party who are indulging Trump's trampling of democ- racy. "They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They knew he habitually sympa- thized with dictators and klep- tocrats — and that his instinct when confronted with criti- cism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress," Frum wrote recently in The Atlantic. "They knew his disrespect for women, the disabled, and eth- nic and religious minorities. They knew that he wished to unravel NATO and other U.S.- led alliances, and that he spec- ulated aloud about partial de- fault on American financial obligations. None of that dis- suaded or deterred them..." According to Frum, regard- less of the outcome of the elec- tion, "conservatives and Re- publicans will have brought a catastrophe upon themselves, in violation of their own stated principles and best judgment." I can't say I disagree. The real question for No- vember, prompted anew by Trump's attack on the courts, is whether there will be enough voters — patriots with common sense — to save this constitutional democ- racy from what the Repub- licans have so disgracefully wrought. DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman Trumphits new low with attack on 'Mexican' judge Cartoonist's take It was just another day off from managing a restaurant, in the late 1980s, watching a movie in one of Los Angeles' best theaters, the Cin- erama Dome in Hollywood. I re- call seeing three African-American gentlemen in suits and ties take their seats behind me. My attention to the screen was distracted by what seemed to be one of the men breath- ing through his mouth onto my neck. I turned around and whispered a request for him to please exhale away from my neck. Then, the man behind me leaned forward and said, in a low, husky voice, "Do you know who I am? My name is Muham- mad Ali." Now I'm thinking that he's a mouth-breathing prankster, to whom I turned and said, in the dimly lit theater, "I don't care who you are, please stop breathing my direction." Noth- ing else occurred until I went to the men's room; a few places to my right stood one of the men in suits. At that moment, it dawned on me that, if it was Muham- mad Ali, he could have had a couple of Nation of Islam body- guards in their typical dark suits, white shirts and ties. To this day, I think it really was the boxing legend himself, just taking in a movie with a cou- ple of associates. I also think I might have come way too close to getting beat up, you might say, for my temerity. If he was a mean man, it might have ended that way; the Champ, however, was not a mean man. It seems hardly a week goes by without some new, or even recycled, outrageous statement, proclamation or speech from Emperor Obama (he said only an emperor could ignore immi- gration law, then went ahead and did it, anyway). I omitted intentionally, from last week's Memorial Day tribute to Amer- ica's fallen warriors, comments on Obama's Hiroshima speech. In his backhanded way of be- smirching the use of nuclear weapons by President Truman, he also displayed his cavalier attitude toward dead American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. It was, you see, an irrefutable fact of anticipated warfare on the island of Japan itself—war- fare promised by Japanese mil- itary leaders—that hundred of thousands, perhaps millions, of American casualties and deaths would most certainly have re- sulted from the house to house street fighting necessary to sub- jugate our enemy. I'll simply refer the reader to Ben Shapiro's "President Obama Gives One Of The Most Repulsive Speeches In Ameri- can History In Hiroshima" for an extended analysis and ref- utation of Obama's utterances. "On Friday, President Obama said America's use of the A- bomb to end the threat of Jap- anese fascism sprang from American desire for conquest, suggested that America had ushered in an age of 'atomic warfare', and said that we could achieve a 'world without nuclear weapons' if only we clapped for Tinkerbell…Yes, our president is a total dis- grace." Shame on Obama for ignor- ing the unprovoked attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, killing 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians. "Hiroshima hap- pened because the world slept as fascism rose; Obama wishes to sleep on evil again (or worse, forward it), hoping that na- tional narcolepsy becomes con- tagious internationally, and we share the same peaceful dreams. We don't. If we go to sleep again, our enemies will use that reverie to rise…The re- sult will be more Hiroshimas after 70 years of nuclear peace." A similarly astute critique came from "Barack Obama, Pacifist" by John Hinderaker. "The lesson that Obama draws from World War II—the most epic conflict between good and evil in history—is the same for all nations. Those who started the war have nothing special to learn from it. [America and the nuclear-armed west are] the most indicted by history… "What Obama calls the logic of fear is actually the logic of deterrence. But the practical need to defend oneself from evil regimes is not Obama's concern. Rather, he calls for a 'moral revolution' that will make war obsolete. What- ever. There is no mystery as to Obama's ideology…Obama is an old-fashioned pacifist: indis- criminately hostile to the use of force, he papers over the funda- mental difference between ag- gression and self-defense. "Pacifism of this sort was rather common during the years between the wars, but World War II refuted it, seem- ingly, forever. It seems that the passage of time has allowed fuzzy thinkers like Barack Obama to use that black-and- white conflict to illustrate, not the need for eternal vigilance in defense of liberty, but rather the moral case for disarmament. How far we have come in a few short years." Some short points: the In- spector General's report on Hillary Clinton's use of a per- sonal server for her official cor- respondence shows that Hillary has lied at every step, on every material point, every time she has opened her mouth and con- tinues to this day falsely restat- ing her case. And yet, we have the ad infinitum, ad nauseam calls to ignore such outrages and elect a woman. Trump's detractors rush to harp on Trump University but ignore the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars by Bernie Sanders' wife who ran a small university into financial ruin. They also say nothing about the trillion dollars in student debt, averaging $30,000 to $100,000+, for degrees that, in many cases, have no prac- tical use in securing jobs with income sufficient to ever re- pay the loans. People err; businesses fail; only govern- ment creates massive catas- trophes. On the San Jose anti-Trump rioters, I only wish there had been 1,000 bikers with chains and pool cues escorting Trump attendees out of the hall to their cars. They could have burned a few Mexican flags to boot. Na- tional socialist (Nazi), leftwing and fascist violence has come to America's streets. 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 Obama, Clinton, le ist outrages They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They knew he habitually sympathized with dictators and kleptocrats — and that his instinct when confronted with criticism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress. Don Polson About 20 years ago, I was a French teacher in a girl's high school outside of Phil- adelphia and was picked to chaperone 40 of my students on a class trip to Paris. I spent two nights at the local gendarmerie trying to calm several girls who had slipped out of the hotel with the in- tention of losing one thing and instead, lost something infinitely more replaceable: their passports. I accepted the responsi- bility, because that's what I was raised to do. Fortu- nately, my negligence re- sulted only in a lecture from my supervisor, and pursed lips from the nuns. The girls were fine, and to this day I believe that be- ing raked over the coals by French police officers scared them straight. As we all know, because we all spend so much of our lives on social media, a rare and endangered go- rilla housed at the Cincin- nati Zoo was euthanized over the weekend when a 4-year-old boy fell into its preserve. The child had ei- ther jumped over or un- der a fence on the perime- ter of the preserve, and had fallen into the actual pit where the gorilla, named Harambe, lived. Video of the incident shows the lit- tle boy being dragged by the gorilla some distance, and then sitting in front of the animal almost as if they were having a dis- cussion. It is a surreal cir- cumstance, and one which should strike fear into the heart of anyone who has ever loved a child. Ultimately, the gorilla was shot and killed, and the little boy was taken to the hospital where he was treated for non life-threat- ening injuries. As expected, there was outrage on the internet. There were the usual sus- pects who believe that zoos are horrible places and that these majestic animals of the wild should not be caged for our human enjoyment. I always discount them as the PETA crazies, who have no problem with trashing med- ical laboratories that house experiments that might yield a cure for cancer, sim- ply because some of those experiments are being per- formed on animals. I'm sorry, but while I adore my dog Chance and don't want to see any animal suffer, I'm of the surprisingly contro- versial opinion that human life is more valuable than that of an animal. For that reason, while I mourn the loss of that ma- jestic primate, I under- stand why the zoo took the steps it needed to. So do re- nowned animal rights ac- tivists like Jack Hanna and Jane Goodall. Christine Flowers Mom to blame in gorilla tragedy OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, June 7, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6