Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, February 4, 2017

B4

OPINION 

Mountain Views-News Saturday, February 4, 2017 


RAGING MODERATE 

by WILL DURST

ICYMI: (In case you missed it – things that you probably want to know)

TRUMP SAID HE’LL ‘TOTALLY DESTROY’ THE JOHNSON AMENDMENT.

In his address at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, President Trump 
made one clear policy declaration: “I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson 
Amendment.”

What is that? Is it in Trump’s power to destroy it? And who would want him to do 
that?

What the Johnson Amendment is: It’s named for Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced 
it in the Senate in 1954, nine years before he became president. It bans all tax-exempt 
nonprofits — which includes churches and other houses of worship, as well as charities 
— from “directly or indirectly” participating in any political candidate’s campaign.

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PASADENA CITY 
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CONTRIBUTORS

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Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

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Merri Jill Finstrom

Rev. James Snyder

Dr. Tina Paul

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Renee Quenell

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1939

Donald Trump is the political reincarnation of Tina Turner - 
he doesn’t do anything nice and easy. Also, they’re both Type 
A personalities who expend a lot of energy, but hardly move 
at all. And both are famous for high-maintenance hair. 

 Since his January coronation, the New York City real estate developer turned 
Leader of the Free World has partied like its 1939, issuing polarizing edict after 
polarizing edict. The surprising thing is Fox News hasn’t started to refer to him as 
Chancellor Trump. Or Gropenfuhrer. Yet.

 Traditionally, a newly elected, first-time president hits the ground running 
with hand outstretched in a gesture of sociability, solidarity and camaraderie. Not 
Donny John. He hit the ground whining, with a fistful of disdain for everyone he 
slapped upside the head: Democrats, Republicans, the media, Iran, Mexico, Great 
Britain, the media, his own Cabinet appointments, refugees, the media, the NSC, 
TSA, and National Park Service. And don’t forget the media.

 Experts theorized the weight of the White House would settle him down but 
alas, no such luck. He’s still up all hours tweeting out a barrage of alternative facts, 
choosy truths, questionable veracities and marginal actualities that reflect a reality 
only he can see. As fluid and murky as the Potomac River.

 What little presidential honeymoon he enjoyed ended long before the cake was 
cut. The groom ditched the bride and boogied across the floor alone performing a 
solo victory dance in front of a mirror. As graceful as an angry anvil.

 You could describe his movements since as jerky, spasmodic and frenzied, like 
when he obsessed over the election being stolen. Ignoring the fact that he won. 
Even 46’s own staff is having problems negotiating his tricky hairpins turns. Not 
only does the emperor have no clothes, his skin is really thin and kind of blotchy.

 According to the most aerodynamically coiffed president in history, 3 to 5 
million undocumented aliens illegally cast ballots for Hillary Clinton causing him 
to lose the popular vote. It’s the only possible answer. Because how could Donald 
Trump not be associated with whatever was most popular? It’s unthinkable and 
unpresidented.

 President Trump loves his invisible people. And there’s tons of them. The 
invisible people who cast fraudulent ballots- totally different than the invisible 
people who came to Washington to be part of the largest crowd ever to witness 
an Inauguration but conveniently vanished when aerial photographs were taken. 
Maybe they’re shy.

 And neither of those two groups of invisible people should be confused with the 
thousands of invisible people who celebrated in New Jersey after the World Trade 
Center came down. Which only he saw. Maybe it’s a Sixth Sense sort of thing; “I see 
non-existent people.” No wonder Bruce Willis supported him.

 During the rest of his first term, we can expect an expansion of Trump’s 
hallucination theme. Much time will be spent discussing ghosts and leprechauns 
and sprites and phantoms and pixies and the vast legions of his invisible enemies.

 Turns out Donald Trump doesn’t just have a vision for this country, he has an 
X- ray vision for this country. He’s like Clark Kent only less buff and way blonder. 
It was bound to happen: America finally has its first super hero President. Erratic-
Man.

 Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comedian 
and former short haul truck diver of plaster molds. For a calendar of personal 
appearances, visit willdurst.com.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN


JOHN L. MICEK

MAKING SENSE

MICHAEL REAGAN


TRUMP’S BAN A WIN FOR ISIS

 During her second debate with Donald Trump, Democrat 
Hillary Clinton took some serious heat for warning that the 
Republican’s then-proposed ban on Muslims may well have 
found its way into terrorism recruiting material.

 Clinton was right at the time - but she was also prescient.

The new administration’s ham-fisted executive order 
restricting travel from seven, majority-Muslim nations is now 
being praised by jihadist groups as a victory.

 For them.

 “[Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi has the right to come out and 
inform Trump that banning Muslims from entering America is a ‘blessed ban,’” 
The Washington Post reported Monday, citing a posting to a pro-Islamic State 
channel on a social media platform called Telegram.

 According to The Post, the author compared Trump’s executive order issued 
Friday to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Islamic militants hailed at 
the time as a “blessed invasion”

 The Post further reported that other postings suggested that Trump was 
“fulfilling the predictions of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American born al-Qaeda leader 
and preacher who famously said that the “West would eventually turn against its 
Muslim citizens.” Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.”

 As I read those words, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a young Muslim friend 
who took to Facebook Monday in a heartbreaking post giving voice to her fears 
about the place her adopted country had become:

 “I haven’t had immigrant struggles for a while but being a green card holder 
right after 9/11 was not easy. I’ve been detained at an airport when I was eleven. I 
threw a fit and basically just wailed until they let my family out,” my friend, who 
asked that her name not be used for this piece. “I’ve spent four hours in Customs 
trying to get back home from Canada. And I’ve spent countless hours standing in 
early morning lines in the cold ... just to get my visas.

 “But I’ve never been afraid that I won’t be able to get back to my home,” she 
wrote. “And I am crushed, absolutely crushed for all of the little Muslim children 
feeling like they’re second-hand citizens in their own country.”

 Trump jumped on Twitter on Monday to defend his travel ban, writing at one 
point that “if the ban were announced with a one week notice, the “bad” would 
rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad “dudes” out there!”

 Like my friend, an accomplished professional woman, who’s smart and poised 
and exactly the kind of immigrant our nation should welcome?

 But, right, she’s Muslim. So roll up the welcome mat. 

 In his executive order, Trump also falsely claimed that his action was similar to 
one undertaken by President Barack Obama “when he banned visas for refugees 
from Iraq for six months.”

 In fact, Obama did no such thing. The former administration slowed down the 
processing of visas, but never stopped accepting them.

 As The Post’s Glenn Kessler reported, the Obama administration’s action also 
came in response to a hostile act, while Trump’s blanket action came without any 
provocation from the affected governments.

 The claim came amid a growing outcry from some members of Congress, 
including U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as well as U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, 
R-Pa., who called the ban “unacceptable,” and demanded a “more thoughtful and 
deliberative policy,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

 But we already know that such niceties scarcely matter to Trump and his personal 
Richelieu, White House counselor Stephen K. Bannon, who have spent the last 10 
days marching blindly across the countryside, leaving chaos and growing protests 
in their wake.

 Because only in Trumplandia would this kind of chaos and division be hailed as 
a “massive success story.”

 And with that, the new administration finds itself in the unlikely position of 
being in absolute agreement with the nation’s sworn enemies.

Strange bedfellows, indeed. 

MR. TRUMP, DON’T 

BUILD THAT WALL

 President Trump’s new get-tough attitude on immigration 
has already stopped one Mexican from coming to the United States.

 Trouble is, the Mexican who stayed home was President Enrique Pena Nieto.

President Nieto wasn’t coming here illegally, and he wasn’t captured in Jeff Davis 
County, Texas, by one of Trump’s friends in the Border Patrol.

 But the Mexican leader and President Trump decided to scrap their planned 
summit next week after trading some testy tweets about whether or not Mexico was 
going to pay for a new wall along the U.S. southern border.

 Don’t worry.

 There won’t be another Mexican-American war.

 President Nieto will be back in good time and he and Donald will make their deal.

But before the two leaders meet face-to-face – and before Trump starts spending his 
weekends in Texas pouring concrete footers on the border -- Trump should get his 
busy staff to dust off, update and improve the Bracero program.

 Most Americans – especially the politicians in Washington – have no idea what 
the Bracero program was.

 But from 1942 until 1964, when the federal government’s program was eliminated, 
it made illegal immigration from Mexico largely unnecessary by allowing the free 
flow of Mexican agricultural workers into and out of the United States.

 Over 22 years about 4.5 million Mexican nationals worked temporarily on the 
vegetable and fruit farms of California and the Southwest.

 The braceros were poor peasants. They were seasonal workers. They did hard 
agricultural work that not enough Americans were willing to do.

 They were greeted and processed by U.S. officials at collection stations at the 
border.

They signed contracts with the farmers and companies that employed them, then 
worked long hours for low wages.

 It was far from perfect. The braceros weren’t treated as well as they should have 
been by their bosses or the government. They often suffered discrimination.

 But they were free to come and go as temporary guest workers of America, not 
illegal invaders.

 They could work, save their money and, unlike illegal immigrants today, could 
then easily return to Mexico.

 The United States and Mexico both benefitted from the Bracero program, which 
in the long run had a huge impact on American culture, the agriculture business and 
the northerly flow of illegal immigration.

 The program was ended in 1964 in part because of President Kennedy’s concerns 
that the cheap labor of braceros was hurting American workers and because of 
political pressure from self-interested farm labor unions.

 By ending it and replacing it with nothing, the federal government and Congress 
essentially created the illegal immigration issue in the United States.

 It turned good men from Mexico who wanted to come here to work into 
criminals.

They had to break into the United States to find work and then break out of America 
if they wanted to see their families again.

 Many Mexican immigrants here illegally had little choice but to stay and then 
have their families sneak across the border to join them.

 Fifty years and millions of illegal immigrants later, the Southern border is closed 
in both directions and President Trump is looking to waste billions on a wall he 
thinks will keep it that way.

 But before he starts construction, he should get rid of the government regulations, 
laws and red tape that have created our illegal immigration problem.

 Then he should come up with a new version of the Bracero program, so that the 
Mexicans who want to work in America can come in legally through a gate, not over 
a wall.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and 
the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of 
the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit 
his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to 
Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. 

 

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