Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 15, 2015

Mountain Views-News Saturday, August 15, 2015 
15OPINION 
89% SURE CONGRESS WON’T 

JASON Stanford 

REJECT IRAN DEAL 

Want to know 

a secret? 

Congress 

isn't going 

to stop the 

Iran nuclear 

deal, and not 

because of 

the merits,

popularity or 

the fact that 

despite what 

everyone 's 

telling you, 
they can't really stop it (more on thatlater). I can say with near certaintythat the Iran deal is a done deal 
because that's what an overwhelmingmajority of D.C. insiders are bettingwill happen. 

People in politics rarely put theirmoney where their mouth is. Anynumbskull—and I've been one 
of them frequently—can go on 
cable news to argue against theirideological counterpart. The "he 
said, she said" format encouragesa childish dichotomy, even whendiscussing over adult topics suchas the Iran nuclear deal. Nuance is 
thrown over in favor of clear contrast 
as pundits turn gray area into blackand white issues. 

That's the way the Iran deal isbeing portrayed: It's Obama versus 
Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, andCongress has 60 days to rejectthe deal. Everything is riding onCongress' say-so, according to, 
well, everyone, and this popularmisconception has turned this wholething into something of a legislativedoomsday clock counting down toa parliamentary apocalypse. It's this 
deal or war with Iran. The fate of the 
world hangs in the balance. 

"If this deal is consummated, it will 
make the Obama administration the 
world's leading financier of radicalIslamic terrorism," said Ted Cruz. 

Obama countered in a speech atAmerican University, saying, "Bykilling this deal, Congress would notonly clear Iran's path to a bomb, butwould accelerate it." 

If you read your tealeaves on 
television, the outcome is unclear. 
One poll by Pew shows opponentsoutnumbering supporters by 12 
percent. Another by WashingtonPost/ABC News says a 56-percentmajority of Americans support thedeal. American Jews want Congressto support the deal, 53 percent to 35 

percent, while 70 percent if Israelisoppose it. 

But I'm sure this sucker is good togo because 89 percent of people onPredictIt say so. PredictIt is a websitewhere you can make—for money—
predictions about current events.
The price of your prediction is someportion of a dollar that depends onhow popular the prediction is. If youturn out to be right, you win a wholedollar. For the folks in D.C. who 
do this stuff for a living, this is likefinding money in old pants. 

On July 23, PredictIt posted the 
question "Will Congress overridethe Iran nuclear deal?" and the Yes 
propositions shot to 18 cents andhave been falling ever since. Rightnow, you can bet—sorry, predict—
that Congress will reject the Irandeal if you have as little as 11 cents.
In other words, the PhiladelphiaPhillies, owners of the worst recordin baseball, have better odds to win 
the World Series. The people whoknow how Washington works saythere's no way Congress rejects theIran deal. 

How can that be so with the pollsin doubt and Congress under 
Republican control? It's not 
complicated. To reject the deal,
Congress would have to overcome 
a presidential veto, and 150 Housemembers—more than needed to 
sustain a veto—have signed a lettersupporting the Iran deal. This is athriller with no suspense, and we 
already know the ending. 

It's also possible that the D.C. insidersputting their money on PredictIt 
know the dirty little secret aboutthe Iran deal: If Congress passes aresolution disapproving the Iran deal,
Obama can still sign it and ask theUnited Nations to lift international 
sanctions. All Congress controls 
is the sanctions put in place by theUnited States. The Iran deal isn't a 
treaty requiring Senate approval,
and Obama still retains the power tonegotiate for the United States. 

This deal is going to happen. Therewere show trials in the Soviet Union 
with more integrity than this process.
Congress gets to act like it is fit tolead the country, and Obama getsto pretend he cares what Congressthinks. It's not a perfect system, butnow at least now you know the secretof how it works. 

DANNY Tyree Tyrades

HAS YOUR CAR BEEN CYBER-ATTACKED YET? 

So, did a recent "Wired" magazine article bring your complacencyabout automotive safety and privacy to a screeching halt? 

"Wired" assigned two security experts to attempt hacking into the"brain" of a Jeep Cherokee. Working from home, they were able tocontrol the stereo, air conditioner, transmission and brakes of the 
vehicle, while the driver struggled to remain in charge. 

The hackers didn't even bring out the big guns, like remotely causing

the license plate to morph into a Confederate flag, inflicting male

pattern baldness on the fuzzy dice or directing Siri to ask, "Are we there yet? Are we there

yet? Make Johnny quit looking at me!" 

Some vehicles are safer than others; but given all of today's navigation systems, smartphonesyncing 
setups and other electronic doodads, the problem goes far beyond Jeep. 

The opportunities for eavesdropping and mayhem by car thieves, pranksters, paranoidbosses, spy agencies and terrorists are mind-boggling. It's an Orwellian nightmare.
(Especially if someone writes malicious code to run down people who are always saying"Orwellian nightmare.") 

It gets scarier. With self-driving cars on the horizon, you might just soil the "rich Corinthianleather." 

My own rattletrap pick-up truck is vulnerable enough, but at least it could only bereprogrammed via smoke signals or Morse Code. And the manual windows are still justbison hides scraped really thin. 

We are ill-prepared for a world in which "dealer prep" includes administering last rites, inwhich "your mileage may vary" is replaced by "Your ritual beheadings may vary," in which"under factory invoice" is replaced by "under a parking lot somewhere in Jersey." 

Henry Ford allegedly said that consumers could have any color of car they wanted, as longas it was black. Now the philosophy is, "You can have any personality of car you want, aslong as you rooted for the title character in Stephen King's 'Christine.'" 

I worry about the cardiac health of all the valet parkers who will be able to drive yourvehicle like maniacs without even getting off their lazy duffs. 

On a positive note, the next "Fast & Furious" movie can be filmed with more crashes, on ashoestring budget, unless those spoiled stars kick out a window and escape. 

Of course I'm not so sure deliberate tampering would be any worse than the aggravationwe have to put up with from automotive SENSORS, which must be made of reconstituted,
extra-fragile Magic 8-Balls. Admit it: you get tired of (presumably) false warnings fromyour ashtray, such as "Attention! You have just struck a unicorn while driving 350 mph ata depth of 20,000 leagues." 

What exactly is the automotive industry doing about the threat? Mostly saying things like,
"Um, here are about 10 years' worth of coffee and doughnuts in the Customer ComfortArea. Enjoy, while I run a few numbers past my lawyer...er, manager." 

What can the poor consumer do, besides scour the used-car lots for low-tech vehicles?
("We won't steer you wrong — and neither will your girlfriend's crazy ex!") 

At least wear a parachute in case someone activates those ejector seats. You know, theones that have been standard-issue in all American-made vehicles since 1965, but the 
automakers have been too wimpy to tell anybody about them and rile up the Ian Fleming 
estate. 

Oops. Now they'll have to kill me. 

Can I at least get a horse-drawn hearse? 

Danny welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fanpage "Tyree's Tyrades". 

Mountain 
Views 
News 
PUBLISHER/ EDITOR 
Susan Henderson 
CITY EDITOR 
Dean Lee 
EAST VALLEY EDITOR 
Joan Schmidt 
BUSINESS EDITOR 
LaQuetta Shamblee 
PRODUCTION 
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SALES 
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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 
HOWARD Hays As I See It 



“A morsel of genuine history 
is a thing so rare as to be 
always valuable.”

- Thomas Jefferson 
I’ve always been 
fascinated by those able 
to offer such a firsthand 
“morsel of genuine 
history”.
I was in grade school 
home for the Veterans 

Day holiday, when my mother recalled that 
when she was a girl, on what was then called 
“Armistice Day” her class would visit residents 
at the “old soldiers’ home”. I asked if she heard 
stories about fighting the Nazis. No, but she 
remembered having met residents who’d fought 
for the Union, and some for the Confederacy. I 
then had serious concerns about how old my 
mother really was.
My Dad was in the toy business in Seattle, 
with an elderly couple with thick European 
accents working for him. I knew what those 
numbers tattooed on their inner forearms were 
all about, but it was a history they didn’t talk 
about. They did, however, occasionally refer to 
loving families – parents, brothers, sisters and 
cousins – who didn’t make it. 

Christmas was the busiest time of year. I 
remember a truck driver at the dock for a 
late-hour holiday shipment to the department 
stores – back when there were toy departments 
in department stores. He marveled at the array 
of toys ready for delivery, and then recalled 
Christmas as a kid during the Depression. He 
and his sister woke early and rushed to the 
stockings they’d hung the day before, where 
inside they each found “an orange! And it 
came all the way from California! What a 
special holiday treat that was!”

I used to hang out at a bar in L.A.’s 
Chinatown, frequented by older Japanese-
Americans. I spoke with one who, like me, had 
roots in Seattle. I mentioned the county fair in 
the town of Puyallup, with its livestock shows 
and horse races. She said she was familiar with 
the race track, as her family lived in the horse 
stalls during processing for relocation to the 
camps.

Over the past few days there have been firsthand 
accounts of the Watts riots (“insurrection” 
or “rebellion”) of fifty years ago - evocations of 
hopelessness and rage that led to “burn, baby, 
burn”. 

One woman, who unapologetically took part 
in her early-twenties, recalled when responses 
sought solutions rather than assignment of 
blame. She later used funds from the education 
component of President Lyndon Johnson’s 
“War on Poverty”, enacted the year of the riots, 
to attend school, get her degrees and go on to 
a nursing career. This enabled her to make 
sure her kids went to college, and now she’s 
confident they’ll make sure her grandkids do, 
too. 

I enjoy recollections about Sierra Madre. A 
woman I met who grew up here recalled that 
at least until the late 1960s, Sierra Madre had 

racial covenants in its real estate contracts – 
enforcing racial discrimination in housing.

This was true with many communities 
fifty years ago and provided context for the 
1965 Watts riots. A bill was passed two years 
before banning such discrimination, but the 
California Real Estate Association teamed 
with the John Birch Society and the California 
Republican Assembly to make sure it never 
took effect. Prop. 14 was put on the 1964 ballot 
to amend our state constitution to protect the 
“right” of landlords, sellers and communities 
to racially discriminate. It passed with 65% of 
the vote. 

Gov. Pat Brown (D) went to court to have 
that amendment overturned, an effort which 
in 1966 became an issue in Ronald Reagan’s 
campaign to defeat his bid for re-election. 
Reagan characterized efforts to ban racial 
discrimination as attempts “to give one segment 
or our population a right at the expense of the 
basic rights of all our citizens”.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Prop. 
14 in 1967. Its right-to-discriminate language 
wasn’t removed from our state constitution, 
however, until 1974 - a “morsel of history” few 
care to talk about. 

It’s getting hard enough to hear from those 
with first-hand recollections of fifty years ago, 
but even more so after seventy years. A couple 
weeks ago I heard from such witnesses at a 
memorial service held in Little Tokyo.

One began by stating that when you see your 
first dead body at the age of sixteen, it’s a scary 
thing. But by his count, at that age within a 
short time he’d seen five-or-six thousand. 
His job was taking them to the fires. The first 
reaction of survivors was to go to the Red Cross 
for help. But there was no Red Cross left to go 
to; they didn’t arrive for another two-three 
days – and within a month, they themselves 
saw their own hair fall out, with splotches 
appearing on their skin.

He recalled those walking around with arms 
outstretched like in a zombie movie. This was 
because with skin burned off it was too painful 
to allow surfaces to touch. Another witness 
described taking the outstretched hand of a 
man on the ground seeking help, and having the 
skin come off like a glove. A woman who was 
seven at the time and managed to escape her 
destroyed home says what she most remembers 
is the cries of younger sisters she was unable 
to go back and rescue. They all agree that one 
thing impossible to forget is the smell.

Estimates vary at around 120,000 deaths in 
Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki – a third of 
the populations of both cities. I’ve heard the 
effect of a current nuclear weapon targeting 
a major population center like Los Angeles 
would be a loss of life significant enough to 
permanently alter the history of the planet.

Numbers may be incomprehensible, but not 
so much the accounts of those who experienced 
the history. I wonder, if I’m around a generation 
from now, what recollections I might be able to 
offer – and if such future “morsels of history”, 
whether or not “always valuable”, will at least 
be something I can be proud of. 

MICHAEL Reagan Making Sense 


TRUMP, TRUMPIES &
RINOS TROUBLE THE 
GOP 

Donald Trump did wonders for 
Fox News' ratings and MegynKelly's star power last week. But 
"The Donald" didn't do himself, 
the Republican Party or the 
conservative cause any favors. 

Millions of viewers saw clear 
evidence that Trump is not aserious Republican candidate or 
really a conservative. He espoused 
no conservative principles or 
policies. He offered no ideas orspecific conservative solutions toany domestic or foreign problem.
All he proved — as if the whole 
TV audience didn't already know 

— was that he's an egomaniacal 
billionaire who's certain he'd make 
a good Republican president. 
During the debate, he repeatedhis shallow generalities about 
building a high wall to stop illegalimmigration, making better tradedeals with China and the serial 
incompetence of our leaders inWashington. And he boasted 
that "I'm rich. I buy candidates.
Government is broken. I can fix it." 

Because he appeals mostly topeople who listen to conservativetalk radio 24/7, Trump has wonover a large number of Republicansand conservatives who mistakenlythink he is one of them. 

Trump's poll numbers in Iowa,
New Hampshire and elsewherehave gone up since last week. Theyremain embarrassingly high forthe Republican Party, but they'll 
start falling to Earth soon. It'll 
happen when his Don Ricklesroutine wears thin, his liberal 
tendencies are exposed and theGOP's bloated preseason roster 
gets cut down to Jeb, Scott, John,
Rand, Ted and probably Carly. 

Meanwhile, Trump has issued athreat to the Republican Party. 

He said that if it does not treat him 
"fairly" or with "respect," whateverthat means, he might run next fallas an independent or a third partycandidate. Trump calls his threat"leverage" but I think others wouldcall it "extortion" or "blackmail." 

If he doesn't get his way, he'd be 
willing to sabotage the GOP in2016 and almost certainly giveHillary, Joe Biden or even Berniethe Socialist the keys to the WhiteHouse. 

Meanwhile, as if Trump was notcausing enough trouble for the 
GOP, the party has to deal with achronic problem within its own 
conservative ranks that cost it the 
last presidential election. 

For some reason, many 
Republicans and conservatives 
have become their own worst 
enemies. If they don't agreewith 100 percent of everything aprimary candidate says or does,
they call him or her a "Republicanin name only" and they're against 
them. It's gotten totally nuts andself-defeating. As a party we laudJeb for his many successes as aconservative governor of Florida.
But because he's in favor of 
Common Core or immigration 
reform, some conservatives 
declare him a RINO unfit to be 
president. 

It's the same with John Kasich. 
Conservatives love him because 
he brought us a balanced budgetin Washington as a congressmanand then went on to turn Ohio 
around as governor. But because 
recently he accepted federal 
Medicaid money for Ohio, someconservatives don't think he 
should be president. He's a RINO. 

To make matters worse, if theirfavorite in the primary doesn't win, 
many conservative Republicans 
won't show up in the generalelection to vote for president. AskMitt Romney how that works out. 

Conservatives love to drop my 
father's name and try to findcandidates that act and think like 
he did. But they forget that RonaldReagan was an 80-20 guy. He was 
happy to agree with 80 percent of 
a Republican candidate's views 
because he knew that he'd never 
find someone with whom he 
agreed 100 percent. 

He didn't make the perfectconservative the enemy of thegood conservative. And he always,
always, always supported the finalchoice of the Republican Party —
even after they beat him in theprimary. 

Finally, may I remind everyonethat as governor, Ronald Reagan,
the great conservative, raised taxesand signed an abortion bill. That 
would disqualify him as a RINOby today's standards. Yet he was 
the best president in our lifetime.

 Michael Reagan is the son ofPresident Ronald Reagan, a politicalconsultant, and the author of "TheNew Reagan Revolution" 

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com