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ChipThompson, Editor 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 Ashewrappeduphisfirstspeechtoajoint session of Congress on Tuesday night, Presi- dent Donald Trump offered a bromide to a fractured nation: "Thetimefortrivialfights is behind us," Trump said, of- fering an olive branch both to the audience seated before him and the au- dience watching at home, after six weeks of ag- gressive tweets, attacks on the press and de- nunciations of anyone and everyone who dis- agrees with him. Trump's nearly 75-minute address offered some cause for optimism — he denounced the ant-Semitic acts of vandalism and terror that have marred the nation for the last few weeks. And he offered a broad, if detail-lacking agenda, that he said would restore Ameri- can greatness. Thehighpoints: Infrastructure: Trump sounded the right note in calling for the largest public works program since the cre- ation of the interstate highway system under President Eisen- hower: "To launch our national re- building, I will be asking the Congress to approve legisla- tion that produces a $1 trillion investment in the infrastruc- ture of the United States — fi- nanced through both public and private capital — creating millions of new jobs," he said. In this, Trump is correct: Infrastructure construction is a sound bet economically, cre- ating direct, indirect and in- duced jobs. One of the big challenges: It's not clear how Trump in- tends to pay for this program. Nor is it encouraging to think of Congress moving swiftly when lawmakers struggled for months to reauthorize the fed- eral highway bill. NATO: In what must have been a balm for America's Eu- ropean allies, Trump said America "strongly [supports] NATO, an alliance forged through the bonds of two World Wars that dethroned fascism, and a Cold War and defeated communism." Child Care: Trump's men- tion of his intent to improve access to childcare was one of those rare moments that prompted mostly stone-faced Democrats to rise and ap- plaud. The issue: Trump's plan to make childcare cheaper seems mostly like a gift to the rich, according to a study by the non-partisan Tax Policy Cen- ter. "The tax experts at TPC say 70 percent of the benefits will go to families that make $100,000 or more. And 25 per- cent will go to people earning $200,000 or more," Heather Long, of CNN money, re- ported. "Trump has identified a real challenge affecting work- ing families, but his proposal would do little or nothing to help them," Elaine Maag, an expert at the Tax Policy Cen- ter, told CNNMoney. A typi- cal middle class family earns about $56,000." The low points: Immigration: A disappoint- ing amount of Trump's speech focused on the non-existent public safety threat posed by undocumented immigrants, who commit crimes at a much lower rate than the native- born population. Trump's or- der creating a new agency fo- cused on undocumented crime within the Department of Homeland Security was pure fear-mongering. Healthcare Reform: Trump repeated his call for the repeal and replacement of the Afford- able Care Act. He offered five principles for the future that included guaranteeing access to care for people with pre- existing conditions; tort re- form, and expanding access to health-savings accounts. These are Republican solu- tions that have been circulat- ing for years. And if they were easy or practical, they would have been done already. Making things more com- plicated, Republicans, fac- ing enraged crowds at home, are hardly unified on the best way to go about any such exer- cise. Democrats have zero in- terest at all in repealing or re- placing the former administra- tion's signature piece of public policy. The inevitable victory lap: Trump can't seem to get through a speech without turning the spotlight on him- self. And Tuesday was no ex- ception, He told Congress that the "earth shifted be- neath our feet" because of his win last November, ignor- ing the reality that his was an unremarkable electoral col- lege victory. In short, the speech was vintage Trump. He attempted a pivot to the presidential, even as he got in his own way. High-flown rhetoric about clean water was kneecapped by executive action ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to review Obama-era water rules to gauge their im- pact on the economy. Similarly, the president's welcome, if tardy, condemna- tion of the acts of anti-Semi- tism (along with the shooting of Indian immigrants in Kan- sas City) was undercut by re- ports that Trump had sug- gested that they might have been false flags, or hoaxes, perpetrated by someone else. To be sure, Trump could use a legislative win right now. But it remains to be seen if his administration can work with Congress to translate the vague outlines of a sweeping agenda into actual policy. His tendency toward chaos and disruption doesn't augur well. As with so much else with this president, we'll have to wait and see. Anaward-winningpolitical journalist, John Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@ pennlive.com. JohnMicek Trump's speech — the highs and the lows Cartoonist's take The marvelous speech that President Donald Trump deliv- ered to Congress last Tuesday night certainly deserved bipar- tisan kudos, in- cluding from a re- liably liberal lo- cal columnist. The speech gave Trump a venue for framing his basic goals and policies—advocated consistently from the earliest speeches in his campaign—in a way, a tone and with logical underpinnings that appealed to all but the hardest of Democrat partisans. I can see how it would have been unnerving to seri- ous thinkers on the left be- cause Trump's speech seemed to appeal not only to Repub- licans and independents but also to sober-minded Demo- crats wanting improved secu- rity, health care and economic growth. The howling and hys- teria from the far left is for naught without a message and plan to begin reversing the loss of over 1,000 elections to Republicans. That goal is fraught with political and ide- ological landmines of the "fur- ther left's" doing, since any efforts by Democratic office holders to move to the center, and agree (or even work) with Republicans on issues most Americans care about, will earn them a primary opponent funded with money and vitriol from their "further left" base. The response by the perma- nent governing class in Wash- ington—together with the orga- nized masses (which may num- ber between 30,000 and 50,000) of leftist, social justice, femi- nist, gender, environmental and union activists—began even prior to Trump's inauguration. Bureaucrats and public employ- ees in numerous agencies, in- cluding national security, have circulated their "resistance" in e-mails and on Facebook, to- gether with their mutual sup- port for undermining the Trump administration at every turn. While not treasonous, it is subversive. The seemingly broad ap- peal of the Women's March (WM) was a chimera, an illu- sion driven by the obsessive and slavish coverage of news media. Witness how the same WM leaders, including radi- cal Muslim anti-Israel fanat- ics, are now reported to be co- ordinating with broader anti- capitalist groups for future demonstrations. Sorry, Ameri- cans like their economic free- dom. Paul Sperry wrote "Obama- linked activists have a 'train- ing manual' for protesting Trump" on 2/18: "An Obama- tied activist group, training tens of thousands of agitators to protest President Trump's policies, plans to hit Repub- lican lawmakers supporting those policies even harder this week, when they return home for the congressional recess and hold town halls… "Organizing for Action (OFA), a group founded by Obama and featured prominently on his new post-presidency website, is distributing a training man- ual to anti-Trump activists that advises them to bully GOP law- makers into backing off support for repealing ObamaCare, curb- ing immigration from high-risk Islamic nations, and building a border wall… "The manual, published with OFA partner 'Indivisible,' ad- vises protesters to go into halls quietly so as not to raise alarms, and 'grab seats at the front of the room but do not all sit together.' Rather, spread out in pairs to make it seem like the whole room opposes the Repub- lican host's positions. 'This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.' It also urges them to ask 'hostile' questions— while keeping 'a firm hold on the mic'—and loudly boo the GOP politician if he isn't 'giving you real answers.' "After the event, protesters are advised to feed video foot- age to local and national media. 'Unfavorable exchanges caught on video can be devastating' for Republican lawmakers, it says, when 'shared through social media and picked up by local and national media.'" Anyone watching the news has probably seen footage simi- lar to what was shown on Sun- day, where these loud, rude ac- tivists displayed such quasi-vi- olent tactics at Congressman Tom McClintock's town hall. I don't blame local Rep. Doug La- Malfa for his successful avoid- ance of these "astro-turf" rent- a-mobs, seeded with a fair quota of "just regular folks" that never voted for him, never voted for a Republican and rep- resent one-fourth, at most, of voters. President Trump has insisted that he's moving ahead with plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which has ballooned health-insurance pre- miums and deductibles. "Obam- acare is a disaster, folks," he said, adding that activists pro- testing its repeal are hijack- ing GOP town halls and other events. "They fill up our ral- lies with people that you won- der how they get there," Trump said. "But they're not the Re- publican people (supporting) our representatives." In fact, Obama appears to be behind the anti-Trump pro- tests—he praised demonstra- tions against Trump's travel ban. He personally rallied OFA troops to "protect" his legacy in a conference call; he prom- ised OFA activists he would soon join them in the fray. "Un- derstand that I'm going to be constrained…until I am again a private citizen…You're going to see me early next year, and we're going to start cooking up all kinds of great stuff." (Said the Alinsky-ite) I'm reserving judgment on Trump's weekend tweet about Obama "tapping" his "wires." However, conservative fire- brand Kurt Schlichter wrote, on Feb. 20, about the "Rus- sian/Flynn nonsense, a non- story that America non-cares about. Oh, there's a real story there, but the press isn't inter- ested in that. Here's the real story—the intelligence com- munity under the Obama ad- ministration was obviously eavesdropping on Trump's campaign in violation of prac- tically every law ever written. Whether it was direct tapping of phones and e-mails, or il- legally accessing the commu- nications swooped up by the NSA in its nets, it's clear that Obama's people were spying on Obama's political oppo- nents. "The transcript excerpts of Flynn's phone call with the Rus- sian diplomat leaked because it could be played off as targeting the Russian, though this was still an outrageous disclosure… The only question really is what did Obama know, and when did he know it?" 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 Subversion, 'astro-turf' and crimes Similarly, the president's welcome, if tardy, condemnation of the acts of anti- Semitism (along with the shooting of Indian immigrants in Kansas City) was undercut by reports that Trump had suggested that they might have been false flags, or hoaxes, perpetrated by someone else. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Oh Robert typical mindless killing. This guy was a stranger, in the yard, with a loud machine, and puppies. All that will lead to the dogs becoming defensive. They shouldn't be breeding the dogs in the first place. Now three lives will be destroyed because of stupidity. Robin Capfer: On a man being attacked and seriously injured by dogs in Rancho Tehama As recall, this is not the first attack to happen in Rancho Tehama. They seem to happen more o en there than in other areas. With that said, maybe it's time to start shooting these animals when they show up. Robert Staton: On a man being attacked and seriously injured by dogs in Rancho Tehama Don Polson John L. Micek OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, March 7, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6