Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 1, 2015

Mountain Views News Saturday, August 1, 2015 OPINION14 
Mountain Views News Saturday, August 1, 2015 OPINION14 
Mountain 
Views 
News 
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Susan Henderson 
CITY EDITOR 
Dean Lee 
EAST VALLEY EDITOR 
Joan Schmidt 
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LaQuetta Shamblee 
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Chris Leclerc 
Bob Eklund 
Howard HaysPaul CarpenterKim Clymer-KelleyChristopher NyergesPeter Dills 
Dr. Tina Paul 
Rich Johnson 
Merri Jill Finstrom 
Lori KoopRev. James SnyderTina Paul 
Mary CarneyKatie HopkinsDeanne Davis 
Despina ArouzmanGreg WelbornRenee Quenell 
Ben Show 
Sean KaydenMarc Garlett 
Pat Birdsall (retired) 
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WILL Durst Raging ModerateMORE THE MERRIER 


I’ve got to congratulate Donald Trump for how fasthe’s become more annoying to the Republican Partythan a mouse in an air conditioning unit. He’s like thatpopcorn husk that gets stuck in the back of your molarsand you can’t pry it out with a cord of toothpicks. He’salmost as grating as the Kars for Kids commercial.
The aerodynamically coiffed real estate developerrecently announced that if the GOP big boys don’tstop saying mean things about him, he might run asa third party candidate. “Be nice or I’ll poop on your 
parade” is pretty much the bombastic billionaire’sblackmail. And the way he looks when he purses hislips in concentration, you kind of get the feeling he ain’t speaking figuratively.

In other professions, behavior like this is commonly called extortion, but withthese guys, it’s just politics. It’s effective politics that rekindles memories of 1992, 
when Ross Perot deprived Jeb’s daddy of a 2nd term. Or so GOP party stalwartswould have you believe. Of course, they also would have you believe that RonaldReagan never raised taxes and George W. was a wartime genius.

Trump is sucking up so much oxygen from the airwaves that his rivals haveresorted to shooting off verbal flares trying to climb into the top ten of any poll and 
be considered FoxWorthy come debate time.

Ted Cruz accused his own majority leader of lying to his face. Lindsey Grahamdestroyed his cell phone on video because Trump gave out his private number. Butthe major takeaway by most viewers was that Lindsey Graham still uses a flip phone.
Way to appeal to the young, Mr. Modem.

Scott Walker said if elected, he’s willing to start bombing Iran on InaugurationDay. And that’s if he’s in a good mood. God have mercy should he have a flashback 
and think he’s dealing with a Wisconsin teachers’ union. Jeb Bush talked about 
phasing out Medicare and moving on to some sort of coupon plan. Because oldpeople love coupons.

So far, Republicans have managed to frighten minorities and seniors, and it’s 16months before the election. Figure the over/under on a “legitimate rape” comment 
to be eight weeks.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders vowed never to run as a third partycandidate but that was before he started drawing stadium crowds like a rock star.
A 73-year-old socialist rock star, but a rock star nonetheless. Without the leatherpants. Thank god.


LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 
HOWARD Hays As I See It 



”If you look at thenumber of Americans 
killed since 9/11 byterrorism, it’s less than 

100. If you look at thenumber that have been 
killed by gun violence,
it’s in the tens of 
thousands.” 
- President Barack 
Obama 
A week ago Thursday

I logged onto a site lolearn President Obama told the BBC the “greatestfrustration” of his presidency was “the fact thatthe United States of America is the one advanced 
nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient 
common-sense gun safety laws, even in the face ofrepeated mass killings,”

I then turned on the TV and saw the “breakingnews” of the shootings in which two women werekilled, plus the gunman, with nine others injured ata movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana – an eventtaking place after the president made his remarksto the BBC. 

The next morning I tuned in NPR and heard adiscussion about armed guards, searches and metaldetectors. It wasn’t about some military or CIAcomplex, but whether these things should becomepart of a family’s experience in going to the localmultiplex; whether security for catching a movieshouldn’t be as routine and intrusive as for catchinga plane.

Responding to the Lafayette shootings,
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry ofTexas told CNN he advocated more people bringingmore guns into more places – as if the prospect ofa firefight breaking out in a darkened movie houseshould make us feel more secure. 

Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal, another GOPhopeful, didn’t think this was the “appropriatetime” to discuss gun policy, while acknowledging“folks will want to score political points off thistragedy”. It wasn’t time a week earlier, either, when 
four Marines and a Naval officer were killed at 
recruitment facilities in Chattanooga.

A month before that, President Obama spoke atthe White House the morning after nine were killedat the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston; “I’ve 
had to make statements like this too many times.
Communities like this have had to endure tragedieslike this too many times. . . . once again, innocentpeople were killed in part because someone whowanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting theirhands on a gun.”

Back then, Gov. Jindal said “Now’s not the time”, 
and accused the president of “trying to score cheappolitical points”.

Louisiana has no background checks for 
private gun sales (including assault weapons), noregistration requirements, no state licenses for 
gun dealers, and no limits on how many gunscan be purchased at one time. Local governmentsare prohibited from enacting their own gun laws.
Thanks to Gov. Jindal, it’s now okay to bringconcealed firearms into places that serve alcoholand to church. 

Louisiana has the second-highest gun deathrate in the country (after Alaska). A study from 

the Violence Policy Center shows that states withthe weakest gun laws and highest rates of gunownership have the highest per capita rates of gundeaths, while states with the strongest laws andlowest rates of ownership have the lowest rates ofgun deaths (“Surprise!”).

Louisiana has a 45.6% household gun ownershiprate and ranks no. 2 at 19.15 annual gun deaths per100,000 in population. New York has relativelystrong gun laws, a gun ownership rate of 18.1% andcomes in 48th with a 4.39 death rate per 100,000.
California is 42nd with a 7.89 death rate. With all 
the shootings in Chicago despite tough gun laws,
Illinois’ rate of gun deaths per 100,000 is 8.67 – lessthan half that of Louisiana’s. 

Data came from the Centers for Disease Control, 
with another CDC-funded study showing havinga gun in the home brings a threefold increase inthe risk of a homicide. Republicans in Congressresponded, right after the shootings in Charleston,
by moving to block further CDC research into gunviolence. 

John Houser, accused of the Lafayette shootings,
had a decades-long criminal record and history ofmental illness. Ten years ago, his wife and familymembers filed a domestic violence complaintagainst him. That was enough to prevent himfrom getting a concealed carry permit in Alabama,
but not from walking into a pawn shop there andbuying his .40 caliber semi-automatic.

Mohammod Abdulazeez went online to gethis AK-74, AR-15 and Saiga-12. “Armslist. 
com” maintains it doesn’t deal in arms, but is 
there to connect private buyers and sellers whodo. Abdulazeez made those connections before 
heading to the Chattanooga recruitment centers.

When the FBI can’t complete a backgroundcheck in three days, as happens with 2% of the58,000 checks it runs each day, the gun dealer cango ahead with the sale anyway. Wrong informationwas entered when Dylann Roof was booked ona drug charge. An FBI examiner says she faxedcounty officials for information but received no 
response. When those three days were up withthe investigation still “pending”, Roof was able tobuy the .45 Glock he took to the Emmanuel AMEChurch. 

Responding to Gov. Jindal referring to theseshootings as “unthinkable” and “unspeakable”,
Esquire Magazine’s Charlie Pierce says, “If at thispoint you cannot think about how one of thesethings happens, then you haven’t been payingattention. And if we don’t speak about it, thenthey’re going to keep on happening.”

Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
says we need at least to enact universal backgroundchecks, close the gun show loophole and ban thesale of assault weapons. Meanwhile, Republicansfret over how many days it took President Obamato order flags to half-staff following the shootingsat the Chattanooga recruitment centers. On Fox 
News, Megyn Kelly asks a Lafayette Police Sergeantabout any connection to ISIS.

In June, the Iowa General Assembly took up gunpermits, but not to limit them. You can now no 
longer be denied a permit in Iowa to carry a gun inpublic – just because you’re legally blind.

What could go wrong? 

But say he does get rolled by the machine known as Hillary; Senator Sanders couldeasily return to his lovably independent ways and run on the Vermont Loon ticket.
Besides, by then, he might not be a 3rd party candidate, but a 4th party candidate.
Then you consider Ralph Nader is only eight years older than Bernie, so maybe hecould be convinced to return to the fray. And Pat Buchanan obviously has thingsleft to say. The Green and Tea Parties both get into the act, and pretty soon we’re a3rd world country with upwards of 20 legitimate candidates on the ballot, and thewinner has to form a coalition with some of the also-rans and be forced to actuallycompromise. 

Naw. You’re right. Could never happen here. 
——


Will Durst is an award- winning, nationally acclaimed comic. Go to willdurst.com for infoabout the documentary “3 Still Standing” and his new one- man show “BoomeRaging: FromLSD to OMG” appearing the entire month of August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at theGilded Balloon. Visit to willdurst.com to find about more about his new CD, “Elect to Laugh”
and calendar of personal appearances. 


MICHAEL Reagan Making Sense 
DUMB AS TRUMP 

Trump can’t help being Trump.
He says outrageous or dumb things about 
immigrants or his fellow Republican primarycandidates five times a day.
But no one – not even the liberals of the 
mainstream media – really takes Donald Trumpor what he spews seriously.
No one thinks the billionaire’s mix of egotisticalbloviating and off-the-cuff policy positionsrepresents the Republican Party or conservatism.
Mike Huckebee and Rick Perry are a whole other story. 


They’re not clowns. They’re ex-governors. They’re supposed to be seriouscandidates for the Republican nomination for president. Yet last week, 
they each said something dumb as Trump. Perry’s statement, at least,
was made, more or less, in defense of the Second Amendment. But in the 
wake of last week’s theater shooting in Lafayette, La., he said that the way 
to prevent future shootings would be to encourage moviegoers to taketheir guns into the theaters. 

I’m a fervent Second Amendment guy. And I agree with Perry that gun-
free zones are always a bad idea because they attract the well-armed crazieswho want to commit mass murders. But even I wouldn’t want to go into 
a movie theater where everyone was packing – especially a John Wayne or 
Clint Eastwood movie. Especially in West Texas. Gov. Perry should haveheld his Texas tongue. All he did was make himself – and by extensionthe GOP – look like he was exploiting a tragedy to make a political pointabout gun rights. 

Then there’s Mike Huckabee. 
What he said about the effect the Obama administration’s nuclear deal 
with Iran was going to have on the state of Israel caused a national 
political hissy fit. Huckabee was right on target when he charged that the 
president’s foreign policy “is the most feckless in American history” andthat trusting the Iranians was “naive.” Where he got himself in troublewas when he said the Iran deal was so bad it “will take the Israelis and 
march them to the door of the oven.” Huckabee’s Holocaust reference 
was not the real problem. As the leaders of some Jewish American groups 
protested, the real problem was his premise that the state of Israel is aweakling that can’t defend itself from Iran. 

Israel counts on our support, but it can take care of itself if it has to. Ithas a strong government, a strong leader and a strong military, not tomention lots of tanks, jet planes and scores of nukes. Israel’s leaders also 
have something else -- courage. They’re not afraid to act decisively orpreemptively when their nation is threatened, as they proved 35 yearsago when their jets bombed Iraq’s nuclear research facility. Huckabee’s 
Holocaust rhetoric was tut-tutted by some other Republican candidateswho thought it was too strong.
Hillary Clinton and other phony Democrats, plus the usual liberalcrybabies in the media, made faces and agreed that it was “offensive” and“out of line.” 
What Huckabee said didn’t hurt his already slimmer-than-slim chances,
but he hurt the GOP team. 
He set up an easy layup for the Democrats so they could rise up in fakeoutrage and paint all the other Republicans as nuts as Trump.
Perry and Huckabee are desperately trying to boost their low poll numbersto qualify for next week’s “Top 10” primary debate.
They tried to out-trump Trump. But all they did was cause trouble intheir own ranks and give Democrats a boatload of fodder that will be usedagainst the GOP next fall. 
——


Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a politicalconsultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’sPress). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president ofThe Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com andwww.michaelereagan.com. 

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