Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/774231
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: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS DuringWednesday's cholericpresscon- ference, Donald Trump compared the intelligence community to the Nazis. Not a good idea. Actually, Trump has been trash-talking the intel com- munity for months, siding with a foreign adversary and dissing our spy agencies as bumblers, based on what they said about Iraq 14 years ago. Not a good idea. The most dangerous thing that this intemperate, un- qualified man-child could possibly do is precisely what he continues to do — alien- ate the people whose job is to protect our national secu- rity, people whose pursuit of foreign secrets sometimes re- quires them to put their lives on the line. In the apt words of former National Security Council and State Department coun- ter-terrorism official Dan- iel Benjamin, the incoming leader's "wild, swinging at- tacks against the intelligence community have been so far off the charts of traditional behavior for a president-elect that it is hard to wrap one's mind around it." Trump is "sabotaging his own presidency before it even starts," Benjamin said. "In the end, there is sim- ply no evading the score- card that governing creates. No American president can succeed in foreign policy — and by extension his term as commander-in-chief — without a good relationship with the intelligence com- munity." Trump doesn't know such things, but he has never gov- erned anything. What he does know how to do is make things worse. He's ticked off about the unsubstanti- ated dossier that says the Russians caught him doing kinky stuff. Fine, he's enti- tled to be ticked off. But then he semi-coherently insisted that the intelligence commu- nity leaked the dossier to un- dermine him: "I think it was disgrace- ful — disgraceful that the in- telligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be false and fake out," Trump said during his press conference. "I think it's a dis- grace, and I say that... that's something that Nazi Ger- many would have done and did do." It just so happens that the dossier dirt had been circu- lating in Washington since last summer. Media people knew about it (and largely ig- nored it), people on Capitol Hill knew about it, and in- deed, the material was origi- nally gathered by anti-Trump Republicans who were en- gaged in opposition re- search. No wonder it leaked. There isn't a shred of the in- tel community was respon- sible for that. Indeed, Direc- tor of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed in a statement that the mate- rial was all over Capitol Hill "before the IC became aware of it...This document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product." Just last week, for a mil- lisecond or so, Trump de- clared that he's "a big fan" of the intel community; then yesterday, they were Nazis. This is not smart. If spooks and spies don't feel respected, if they perceive that this president's mind is closed, "they will find it tougher to push their con- sidered views against his surly blasts," says Benjamin. "How many times will the briefers come back to warn Trump that his friend Vlad- imir Putin is indeed hack- ing U.S. government com- puters or massing troops on the borders of Estonia or Latvia when he refuses to heed it?" Michael Morell, former CIA deputy (and twice act- ing-) director, says that if Trump reflexively demeans the intelligence he receives, and the briefers who bring it, "how will (he) know whether the Iranians are liv- ing up to their commitment not to produce a nuclear weapon without good intel- ligence? How will he know how close North Korea is to mating a nuclear weapon to a long-range missile and detonating it over Ameri- can soil? How will he know whether the Islamic State or Al Qaeda is plotting an- other 9/11-style attack?...And why would a foreign agent take extraordinary risks to spy for the United States if his or her information is not valued?" And he rightly warns: "If the president rejects out of hand the CIA's work, or in- troduces uncertainty by praising it one day only to lambaste it on Twitter that afternoon, many of- ficers will vote with their feet. These officers cannot be easily replaced. It takes years of training and, more important, on-the-job expe- rience to create a highly ca- pable case officer, analyst, scientist, engineer or sup- port officer. It would take at least a decade to recover from a surge in resigna- tions." See, this is what I meant when I wrote, repeatedly for a year, that Trump was a clear and present dan- ger to our national security. Thanks a lot, Trumpkin vot- ers. Thanks to your clue- lessness, we in the 2016 vot- ing majority feel less like citizens and more like hos- tages. Dick Polman is the national 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 Trumpis sabotaging his own presidency Cartoonist's take Some current news narra- tives cannot be understood outside of recent, even dis- tant history. Rus- sia-related news must be looked at through the prism of Barack Obama's actions(or inac- tions) for the last 8 years. The So- viet Union's Com- munist Party has a thinly veiled connection, over nearly a cen- tury, to the Progressive side of the Democratic Party. In 3 days Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as Amer- ica's 45th President; I'm writ- ing a week ahead due to travel plans. The Democrat Left has sought to undermine Trump's legitimacy and our faith in No- vember's election. Intelligence agencies cited Russian efforts to undermine faith in our elec- toral process; Soviet/Russian spy agencies have often worked to destabilize the political af- fairs of democracies by under- mining faith in the electoral processes. In that sense, I applied the term "useful idiots" (coined by Vladimir Lenin for those in western nations that unknow- ingly advance Communist Party goals) to those undermining the legitimacy of Trump's vic- tory. "Puppets" would apply to those knowingly passing on ei- ther CIA-sourced "fake news" or scurrilous stories fed to them by foreign agencies. First, a symbiotic relation- ship existed for decades be- tween the Communist Party movement in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and the Progres- sive movement in America. Not all otherwise-sincere American Progressives did so knowingly. However, the socialists and their sympathizers in the West were "fellow travelers" in the sense that they had common goals for state ownership of, for instance, utilities, oil compa- nies, land and commerce. Progressive/socialist agen- das gave us direct self-rule through initiatives and prop- ositions; they had no place in the constitutions of America or any state. They're used rou- tinely in California and else- where, with mixed and of- ten disastrous results (capping property taxes, good; releas- ing violent criminals and drug dealers, bad). Progressives were enamored, as if through "rose colored glasses," with the ideol- ogy of "direct rule" and public ownership of "the means of pro- duction." Witness their fascina- tion with "universal (socialist) health care." The Soviet (or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR) Com- munist Party, their only legal political party, exported—by any available or necessary means— its monolithic state ownership and control over every aspect of life, to other nations out of ide- ological fanaticism. Such fanati- cism found a home in the social- ist, progressive left in America. Since a Marxist, socialist system required the supplanting or de- struction of America's economic and political freedom, Commu- nism was condemned as ille- gal—or un-American, if you will. Devoted to the Soviet Com- munist Party, American social- ists/communists revealed their hypocrisy during WWII. They advocated loudly for America to stay out of the war while Ger- many and the USSR had a non- aggression treaty; they shame- lessly demanded America enter the war after Germany invaded the USSR. After the war, they worked their way into institu- tions (e.g. movies and the State Department) from which they could exert influence and con- trol, and propagandize for Com- munist Party goals. Republicans fought to expose communist infiltration, a com- mendable and necessary effort in spite of excesses by Sen. Joe McCarthy; Democrats opposed those efforts and vilified Re- publicans. Some Democrats and most Progressives shared Soviet Communist (i.e. anti-American) goals including efforts to under- mine America in Viet Nam and support communists in other places like Nicaragua. When Barack Obama was emerging into his own politi- cal and community-organizing phase, American communists and socialists began to formu- late their long-term agenda. That meant removing the "so- cialist" label, taking over the Democratic Party, and using that political machine to pur- sue the same collectivist goals of undermining America's free- market economic system. That agenda continues piecemeal to- day (i.e. health care). Barack Obama was schooled in that quasi-socialist agenda in meetings and seminars while he was at Columbia Univer- sity, having earlier bonded with Marxist Frank Marshal Da- vis in Hawaii. The proof that it took hold came when Obama became involved (as a "useful idiot" or knowing puppet) in the anti-nuclear movement op- posing President Reagan's de- cision to counter Soviet aggres- sion and threats against Eu- rope with missile placements. A clearer evil/good binary choice could not have been found than the Soviet military threat to Europe against American ef- forts to protect the free world; Obama took the side of the evil Soviets. "The FBI, CIA and NSA are now on record for the fact that the Soviet and Russian govern- ments have carried out pro- paganda and false front cam- paigns for decades, trying to in- fluence American politics. The nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, in which Barack Obama participated, is a great example of a Soviet front operation. This is something conservatives have been saying for a long time…" To Russian and Chinese cyber warfare and illegally accessed computer info, emails, etc. of the White House, the State Dept, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, many corporations and entities, "Obama has been typically su- pine, failing to respond to these attacks on the U.S. Only when he thought political hay could be made did Obama belatedly swing into action." (Powerline- blog.com) Obama's record on Rus- sia: "Russia invades Crimea— oh well; Russia shoots down airliner—mistakes happen; John Podesta falls for phishing scam—Restart the Cold War!" (Dave Burge, aka Iowahawk- blog). Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said that Obama's recent sanc- tions against Russia marked Obama as a latecomer to efforts to take a harder line on Rus- sia and Putin. He said "I wish they hadn't gone to such ex- tents to undermine (earlier leg- islative efforts by Congress) to get tough on Russia." Now we're told Obama's the Russia hawk? Horse pucky. 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 a Russia hawk? Horse pucky It just so happens that the dossier dirt had been circulating in Washington since last summer. Media people knew about it (and largely ignored it), people on Capitol Hill knew about it, and indeed, the material was originally gathered by anti-Trump Republicans who were engaged in opposition research. No wonder it leaked. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. An awesome publisher and all-around great guy. Congrats, boss. You will always be my publisher. Kimberly Wear: On the retirement Friday of Daily News Publisher Greg Stevens. I spent more than 9years on the committee to get Boys and Girls Club in Red Bluff. It's a long time and good luck. Beth Glenn: On efforts to bring Boys and Girls Club to Corning. Dick Polman Don Polson OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, January 17, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4