Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 24, 2016

B4

OPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, September 24, 2016 

HILLARY SUMMONS THE 
DEAD FOR ADVICE

Mountain 
Views

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JOHN L. Micek


NO, YOU’RE NOT GOING 

TO BE KILLED BY A REFUGEE

 You know what the great thing about Skittles is?

 You can never eat just one. They’re just that tasty.

 So on behalf of fruit-flavored candy addicts everywhere - not 
to mention the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, I plan 
to enjoy a bag of that childhood favorite just as soon as I finish 
thanking Donald Trump Jr. for the spectacularly dense thing he 
said on Twitter on Monday.

 In case you missed it (and it’s hard to imagine how that happened), here it is:

 “If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a 
handful,” the scion of the Trump empire mused. “That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

 Then he added, just for good measure, “This image says it all. Let’s end the politically 
correct agenda that doesn’t put America first.”

 There are a number of things wrong with Trump the Younger’s assertion - putting aside 
the fact that, so far as anyone knows, Syrian refugees are neither chewy nor fruit-flavored.

 It is mainly that you possibly face a greater risk of choking to death on a Skittle (which 
is already astronomical) than you do of dying at the hands of a refugee.

 According to a report by the Libertarian Cato Institute released last week, your risk of 
being killed by a refugee is a truly insane 1 in 3.64 billion. 

 That’s billion. With a “buh.”

 By the way, you know who came into the country on tourist visas and killed a bunch of 
Americans?

 That would be the 9/11 hijackers, who largely entered the country on tourist and 
business visas, laid in wait, and then perpetrated catastrophic attacks that claimed nearly 
3,000 American lives 15 years ago this month.

 It is, in fact, much harder for a refugee to gain entrance to the United States than it is 
someone seeking entrance on a tourist or business visa.

 As The Week, and other sources have reported, it actually takes up to two years for a 
refugee to gain entrance to the United States. And no matter what a Trump (full-sized or 
bite-sized) tells you, the vetting process is a complicated one.

 It’s also important to note one really other important thing about refugees: They’re 
fleeing, amid great hardship and at tremendous personal risk, to avoid being killed in a 
horrible war back home or to escape some other tremendously dangerous situation.

 They’ve bought into the notion of America as a welcoming safe haven. If you want to 
radicalize them, the best way to make sure that happens is to be as unwelcoming and 
hostile as possible.

Like, say, comparing them to a bag of bite-sized candies.

 So before you go off half-cocked, thinking you’re going to be killed by a refugee, 
consider a couple more things.

 One, the bombings in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, as awful as they 
were, were committed by a naturalized American citizen of Afghani descent who was 
radicalized.

 Yes, the suspect in the Minnesota mall stabbing that left 10 people injured, was a refugee 
- when he was three months old.

 Vigilance is important, and yes, if you see something, you should say something.

 But, again, your odds of being killed in a terrorist attack remain astonishingly low.

 The Washington Post crunched the numbers a while back, citing data from a variety 
of sources including The National Safety Council (2004), the US Census Bureau and the 
Centers for Disease Control (2003).

 They concluded Americans are, among other things, 17,600 times more likely to die 
from heart disease; nine times more likely to choke to death on their own vomit; 404 
times more likely to die in a fall and 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident.

 Put another way, your chances of dying like Jimi Hendrix (choking on your own vomit), 
while suffering from heart disease while falling off a ladder strategically positioned over 
a railroad track are better than your chances of dying in a terrorist attack -- let alone one 
perpetrated by a refugee.

So have another Skittle. 

An award-winning political journalist, 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.


Journalists in the mass media love to dig up dirt on Republican presidential 
candidates. Well, I just dug up some dirt on Hillary Clinton. 
In Bob Woodward’s 1996 book, “The Choice,” Woodward reports that Hillary 
once conducted séances to summon the spirits of Eleanor Roosevelt and 
Mahatma Gandhi. Through some crack investigative work — I paid a Russian 
hacker 20 bucks to access Hillary’s server — I determined that Hillary is still 
talking to dead people. Here’s a transcript of her most recent séance:


Hillary: It’s tough being a strong, smart woman, Eleanor. What should I do?
Eleanor: You must pretend to be humble, right Mahatma?
Mahatma Ghandi: Yes, humble, and she must change her hair style.
Hillary: Change my hair style again?
Mahatma: Try the Mary Tyler Moore look from the old Dick Van Dyke show.
FDR: Eleanor, come back to sleep, dear.
Hillary: President Roosevelt?
Eleanor: Go back to sleep, you old philanderer.
Mahatma: And try some zippity doo.
President Truman: Hillary, I have some advice for you.
Hillary: President Truman?
Truman: If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
LBJ: I couldn’t take it and I got out.
Hillary: Lyndon?
President Nixon: You were run out, Lyndon!
LBJ: A subject you know well, Dick!
Shirley MacLaine: Hello! Hello!
LBJ: MacLaine, what are you doing here? You’re not dead!
Shirley: There is no death, Lyndon.
Nixon: No death to LBJ’s commie government programs, anyway!
President Jefferson: Good God, what have you people done to the country!
Hillary: President Jefferson?
Jefferson: It takes a village, my eye! Individuals get things done.
President Washington: Jefferson, how’s it going, old boy?
Jefferson: They’ve run up $20 trillion in debt, George!
Jimmy Hoffa: You people want to keep it down?
Hillary: You’re the real Jimmy Hoffa?
Hoffa: Does a bear –
Shirley: Jimmy!
Ghandi: Alberto VO5 also offers some products to make your hair shiny.
Ben Franklin: What did you people do to the Constitution?
Bill Smith: Hey, Hillary, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.
Hillary: Who are you?
Bill Smith: A Trump supporter. I got so mad when you called me and my friends 
a basket of deplorables that I had a massive coronary and now I’m 
stuck in your damn séance.
Shirley: Anyone hear from George Burns?
Franklin: What happened to limited government!
Hillary: Eleanor, I summoned you and Mahatma for inspiration.
Eleanor: But you’re not getting inspired?
Hillary: No, I’m suffering more abuse than I get from the living.
Truman: If you can’t take the heat...
Eleanor: Ignore them, dear. They’ve been moaning about FDR’s programs for 
60 years.
Hillary: I feel so down lately. I feel so heavy, like someone buried me in 
concrete.
Hoffa: Lady, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Hillary: Eleanor, I need your help. I’m falling in the polls. What do I do?
Eleanor: Just as I was a revolutionary First Lady, you, the first major-party 
female presidential candidate, are a revolutionary. Revolutionaries 
ruffle feathers, dear.
Hillary: But I should be slaughtering Trump. If I’m not careful, I could lose 
this thing. What can I do to make people like me?
(Silence.)
Hillary: Eleanor? 

Ghandi: Eleanor left, Hillary. But she said you might try a good conditioner. 

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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

 
MAKING SENSE by Michael Reagan

DICK Polman


CROOKED DON’S SLUSH 
FUND AND THE ‘16 DOUBLE 
STANDARD

 Yes, folks, it’s time for another episode of “Imagine The 
Outcry!”

 Imagine the outcry if Hillary Clinton was outed for taking more than a quarter of a million 
dollars in other people’s money - donations to the Clinton Foundation, donations that were 
intended to be used for charitable purposes - and spent it instead on herself, in a breach of 
federal tax laws, in order to settle all kinds of lawsuits filed against her. And to buy several 
paintings of herself.

 Well. We know what would happen. Donald Trump would cite that as fresh evidence 
of Clinton crookedness, Democrats would double down on what they do best (panic), the 
pitiable Trump trolls would drag their knuckles on their keyboards, and the cable networks 
would feature wall-to-wall coverage not seen on the airwaves since that Malaysian plane 
vanished from radar.

 I’m referring, of course, to the latest revelation from David Fahrenthold of The Washington 
Post, who has been digging deep all year into Trump’s charitable work (or lack thereof), and 
repeatedly exposing the GOP nominee as a fraud. Fahrenthold - a cinch finalist for next year’s 
Pulitzer - is the guy who recently outed Trump for taking money from his Donald J. Trump 
Foundation and funneling it to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (an illegal campaign 
contribution; nonprofits are barred from such giving), and shortly thereafter Bondi decided 
not to investigate phony Trump University’s bilking of Florida consumers.

 Anyway, his new article - which shows us copies of the relevant receipts -— is potentially 
the most damaging of all (or should be, if facts still matter), because it’s so easily summarized 
in ways that anyone can understand: Trump took other people’s money in apparent violation 
of the law, and spent it on himself.

 The Donald J. Trump Foundation is supposed to make contributions to charitable causes. 
Trump himself hasn’t donated a penny to the foundation since 2009; whatever money it has 
comes from outside donors. But it’s clear from the available records that Trump’s favorite 
charitable cause is himself. In 2014 he took $10,000 from the foundation’s coffers and spent 
it on a portrait of himself, just a few years after he took 2$20,000 and spent it on a different 
portrait of himself. And because he gets sued a lot (big surprise), he has settled a number of 
these lawsuits by taking money from the foundation. Basically, he has used it as his personal 
slush fund.

 Using a non-profit charitable foundation to pay off one’s personal obligations (or, in the 
case of the portraits, to indulge one’s personal narcissism) is known in the tax laws as “self-
dealing,” and it’s apparently against the law to do it.

 During the first debate next Monday, it would be nice if Trump were asked about all this. 
Why does he presumably believe he did not break the law? Why won’t he release his tax 
returns, as every other nominee has done these last 40 years? Does he fear that the public 
would discover more instances of self-dealing? And would he not condemn Hillary Clinton 
if she were found to have engaged in exactly the same behavior? By what right does he get to 
benefit from the prevailing double standard?

 Of course, the odds that he gets asked any of those questions is approximately zero. But 
perhaps we can content ourselves with Team Trump’s hilarious responses to the self-dealing 
story. Top flack Jason Miller declared, “In typical Washington Post fashion, they’ve gotten 
their facts wrong” - without contesting, much less disproving, a single specific fact in the 
story. Miller also insisted that Trump is “generous” with his money, without once addressing 
the thrust of the story, which is that Trump hasn’t 
been generous with his own foundation since 
2009 and instead pays for lawsuits and portraits 
and toys (a $12,000 autographed football) with 
other people’s money.

 But the best part was when Kellyanne 
Conway played a shrink on CNN and suggested 
that Post reporter Fahrenthold “seems a little 
obsessed with Donald Trump these days.” 
Fahrenthold promptly responded on Twitter. 
Trump, he pointed out, happens to be “a major 
party’s nominee for president.”

 And of all the facts, that one is still the most 
horrific.

 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.

LET TRUMP BE TRUMP

 For months we’ve been hearing complaints from the pundits 
that Donald Trump has not given us a clear idea about how he 
plans to defeat ISIS.

 The TV pundits – left and right – are frustrated because 
Trump won’t say whether he’d use American ground troops.

 He won’t even automatically take the use of nukes off the 
table. Their complaints remind me of what Ronald Reagan did during the 1980 
election against Jimmy Carter.

 The pundits did the same thing to my father that they’re doing to Trump. They 
never stopped asking him during the campaign what he was going to do to solve the 
Iran hostage crisis.

 But he did the right thing. He never said anything.

 The liberals spent the whole 1980 campaign saying Ronald Reagan was a war 
monger and he was going to turn Iran into a glass parking lot with nuclear weapons.

You never saw a speech when he denied any of their most idiotic concerns because 
he didn’t given one. My father was smarter than the pundits were.

 He knew you should never forewarn your adversaries what your plans were.

So he never said anything. He just let the liberals scare the Iranians and the world 
with all the things he might or might not do as president.

 Everyone gives my father credit for the hostages going free on the day he was 
sworn in, and they should. But one reason they went free was because he kept the 
Iranians guessing.

They never did know whether he’d nuke them until he didn’t.

 I find it interesting this election year that the right and the left keep asking the 
same questions of Trump. What will he do to defeat ISIS?

 But the real story shouldn’t be what Trump might do. It should be what Hillary 
Clinton won’t do.

 To appease her voters and liberal friends in the media, she’s already said she 
won’t use ground troops. I’m sure the monsters who run ISIS were relieved to hear 
that.

In the debates on Monday night I hope Trump doesn’t make the mistake of coming 
up with his plan to take care of ISIS.

 I want him to come out with that plan after he becomes president. I want it to 
be a surprise for MSNBC and ISIS.

 I want Trump to tell us nothing. It’s a no-brainer. When you go out to play an 
NFL game Sunday, you don’t give your game plan to the other team beforehand and 
then wonder why you keep losing.

 The left spends too much time wanting to give the game plan to the other team 
and then they’re surprised when we lose.

 Another thing I don’t want to hear from Trump in the debate on Monday is a 
whole lot of specific talk about policy.

 The 100 million people who are going to watch the most watched debate in 
world history are going to be looking to see who is the most presidential.

 They won’t be looking for the best policy wonk. If Trump starts talking about 
policy, you’ll hear millions of TVs turning off.

 In my father’s first debate with Mondale in 1984 
he was absolutely terrible because his advisers 
filled him with too much policy information.

 In the second debate, they didn’t do that. They let 
Reagan be Reagan. And he won the second debate 
with ease.

 On Monday, Trump needs to show some self-
control but most of all he just needs to be Trump. 
If he does that he should win the debate because 
Hillary can never stop being Hillary.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald 
Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of 
“The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press).

Editor’s Note: Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan!

Not even close!

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