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| Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, January 26, 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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B3 OPINION Mountain Views News Saturday, January 26. 2019 TOM Purcell Mountain Views News PUBLISHER/ EDITOR Susan Henderson PASADENA CITY EDITOR Dean Lee EAST VALLEY EDITOR Joan Schmidt BUSINESS EDITOR LaQuetta Shamblee PRODUCTION Richard Garcia SALES Patricia Colonello 626-355-2737 626-818-2698 WEBMASTER John Aveny DISTRIBUTION Lancelot CONTRIBUTORS Mary Lou Caldwell Kevin McGuire Chris Leclerc Bob Eklund Howard Hays Paul Carpenter Kim Clymer-Kelley Christopher Nyerges Peter Dills Rich Johnson Lori Ann Harris Rev. James Snyder Dr. Tina Paul Katie Hopkins Deanne Davis Despina Arouzman Jeff Brown Marc Garlett Keely Toten Dan Golden Rebecca Wright Hail Hamilton RELAX, PEOPLE! THEY’RE JUST COOKIES Just as my annual diet has begun showing promise, my greatest obstacle to success is upon me: Girl Scout Cookie season has begun. My problem with Girl Scout Cookies is personal. But, like everything else in our culture, some people have moral or political problems with them. Some nutritionists say the cookies are unhealthy, so it’s immoral for Girl Scouts to promote these sugary, fatty treats to a nation struggling with an obesity epidemic. Some conservatives say Girl Scouts openly promote progressive values and praise prominent progressive women, so purchasing Girl Scout Cookies is tantamount to supporting progressives’ politics. Some progressives are still smarting because Girl Scouts marched in President Trump’s inaugural parade - even though Girls Scouts have marched in every presidential inaugural parade. And some particularly anti-capitalist progressives are unhappy that cookie sales teach Girl Scouts the art of commercialism. Hey, people, relax! They’re just cookies! Still, these cookies present two primary challenges to so many of us. First, they’re addictive. I’ve been known to consume entire sleeves of Thin Mints in one sitting, washing them down with a bucket of ice-cold whole milk - none of that 2-percent nonsense! Second, everywhere we turn, someone, often a Girl Scout’s parent, is pressuring us to place an order. This has become the season to “hide” from friends and relatives on Facebook, sneak out of church extra early (et tu, Deacon Brown?) and dodge multiple colleagues at work. The best story about Girl Scout Cookie pressure in the workplace that I’ve heard happened last year at the Pentagon. An Air Force general was reprimanded, reports USA Today, “for encouraging a subordinate to retrieve boxes of Trefoils and Tagalongs from the general’s car for a display in the office.” I can imagine how it went from there: “Sergeant, I’d consider it a personal favor if you ordered a dozen boxes from my daughter,” said the general. “Sir, yes, sir!” the sergeant replied. Look, the Girl Scouts organization was founded in 1912 to help girls develop physically, mentally and spiritually. The annual cookie sale, which originated in 1917, was designed to help teach girls new skills and responsibilities - not to have parents micro-manage those responsibilities for them. I understand that we live in a time when parents are afraid to allow children to sell cookies door-to-door or to leave them unattended at a booth in front of a supermarket. While it’s OK for parents to assist, Girl Scout leaders recommend that parents not sell cookies on their daughters’ behalf. Here’s why, according to the Girl Scouts website: “Every time you buy a box, you help girls learn five essential skills - goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics - all while helping them better themselves and their communities.” So long as you buy that box directly from a Girl Scout. Some Girl Scouts have mastered new skills quickly. One enterprising young lady, reports The Huffington Post, sold 117 boxes in two hours by setting up shop outside a legal medical-marijuana dispensary in San Francisco. Some Girl Scouts in Los Angeles persuaded actor Tom Hanks to use his social media platforms to promote their cookie stand. And in 2014, one young lady in Oklahoma City broke the record for Girl Scout Cookies sold in a year: more than 21,000 boxes. During her Girl Scout career, she sold more than 100,000 boxes. The regrettable part of her success? I was her only customer. - Copyright 2019 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures of a 1970’s Childhood,” a humorous memoir available at amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune- Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. For info on using this column in your publication or website, contact Sales@ cagle.com or call (805) 969-2829. Send comments to Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.com. Mountain Views News has been adjudicated as a newspaper of General Circulation for the County of Los Angeles in Court Case number GS004724: for the City of Sierra Madre; in Court Case GS005940 and for the City of Monrovia in Court Case No. GS006989 and is published every Saturday at 80 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., No. 327, Sierra Madre, California, 91024. All contents are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the publisher. All rights reserved. All submissions to this newspaper become the property of the Mountain Views News and may be published in part or whole. Opinions and views expressed by the writers printed in this paper do not necessarily express the views and opinions of the publisher or staff of the Mountain Views News. Mountain Views News is wholly owned by Grace Lorraine Publications, and reserves the right to refuse publication of advertisements and other materials submitted for publication. Letters to the editor and correspondence should be sent to: Mountain Views News 80 W. Sierra Madre Bl. #327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Phone: 626-355-2737 Fax: 626-609-3285 email: mtnviewsnews@aol.com JOHN L. Micek GRAHAM West TRUMP’S FAKE PHOTOS MASK A LARGER TRUTH Of course, it had to happen. The news this week that President Donald Trump’s handlers may have digitally altered his photographs to make him appear not only slimmer and younger, but with… wait for it… longer fingers, is the perfect metaphor for a White House the repeatedly bends the truth to suit its own ends. This particularly odd turn comes courtesy of The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who’s become sort of the Polybius of Trump’s Washington, chronicling every twist and turn of the chaotic 45th president’s equally chaotic White House, with a kind of forensic glee. According to Milbank, the tech website Gizmodo reported this week that it had found at least three retouched photographs on Trump’s social media pages since last October. Those included two recent pictures in which the fast-food favoring chief executive’s face and body were slimmed down, his wrinkles were smoothed, his cotton-candy textured coif was smoothed, and, weirdly, that his “fingers were made slightly longer.” According to Milbank, Gizmodo compared original photos to the retouched ones and concluded that the digital gnomes had given Trump a fresh coat by using either Photoshop or FaceTune, and that the changes to the president’s hands suggest that the image-obsessed Leader of the Free World “had some input in these alterations.” This may seem a relatively trivial blip in the midst of the longest-running government shutdown in American history, in which more than 800,000 federal employees are going without pay, including TSA officers at the airports and Coast Guard sailors at sea. But there’s a larger truth here: As is the case with everything else, Trump has made this story all about himself, about his duel with the Democrats and his promise to deliver on a wall - the effects on the long-term stability and credibility of our institutions be darned. So, the fact that he’s altering photographs to make himself look better in the eyes of the public - and posterity - shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. And that fits right in with Trump’s barely glancing relationship with the truth in his barrage of his public utterances. Remember, as of Jan. 21, Trump had made 8,158 false or misleading claims during his two years in office, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler. By the time most of you read this, you can pretty much bet the ranch that the tally will have increased. Indeed, the entire government shutdown is premised on the provably false claim of a crisis at America’s southern border with Mexico. Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican whose district includes 800 miles of the border, has said, according to Fox News, that the border crisis is a “myth,” and Trump’s push for a wall is a “3rd century solution to a 21st century problem.” So, it must be galling for a president so obsessed with image-control to know that, 33 days into the shutdown, he’s losing the argument for his policies. A pair of polls released Wednesday, one by Politico/Morning Consult, the other by CBS News, find Trump’s approval ratings at new lows, and voters fleeing from the border wall as a cure for the shutdown. That Politico poll found Trump’s disapprovals at a staggering 57 percent. The poll of 1,996 voters, conducted from Jan. 18-22, had a margin of error of just 2 percent. In the CBS poll, 71 percent of 1,102 telephone respondents didn’t think the “issue of a border wall is worth a government shutdown, which they now say is having a negative impact on the country.” That same CBS poll gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi higher marks than Trump for her handling of the crisis. And a clear majority of respondents to the Politico poll, 54 percent, blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the roadblock. So you kind of can’t blame Trump for trying to control the only thing he has any control over in this instance - the face he presents to the public. But, like Dorian Gray, however Trump might try to smooth out his public wrinkles, all he’s doing is papering over the damage he’s doing to the country. And you can’t fix that with Photoshop. - Copyright 2019 John L. Micek, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek. CLIMATE CHANGE REMAINS A THREAT AT HOME At the tail end of last week, the Department of Defense released an overdue report on the effects of climate change on military bases in the United States. The report, required by law under the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (that was passed by the Republican- controlled Congress and signed by President Trump), was intended to provide a full accounting of “vulnerabilities to the military resulting from climate change over the next 20 years.” What we got fell short, to say the least. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that the report was not initially released to the public and only saw the light of day thanks to environmental groups’ activism. The document mentioned only 79 facilities, failing to consider all military bases or include any Marine Corps installations. It was also missing key portions it should have included as directed by law, like a list of the top ten installations threatened by climate consequences for each military branch or a cost mitigation plan for dealing with these problems. These failings and more have earned the ire of some lawmakers: Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, called the report “an alphabetical list” and said it “reads like an introductory primer and carries about as much weight as a phonebook.” Yet despite its reduced form, the report was astounding in its own way. Because even the Trump Administration - stubborn as a mule about accepting climate change, let alone fighting it - could not hide the truth: Climate change is having an impact on our military readiness and operations here at home. Those effects, of course, go far beyond the flooding, droughts, and wildfires that are (however reluctantly) cited in the report. Rising sea levels are already costing our coastal installations, and the damage will only increase as flooding damage increases in the decades to come. Extreme heat stresses our power grid and leads to outages, which can in turn cut off critical support for ongoing missions in the field. And increasingly powerful natural disasters that strike our cities, destroy our infrastructure, and kill our citizens necessarily sap military resources when it comes time for recovery efforts. To be clear, the report is far from enough - such a halfhearted effort hardly deserves praise. It fails to go into the depth specified by Congress, and it is dangerously light on proposed solutions or even a ranked-by-urgency assessment of the (incomplete) list of problems it does identify. Worse, there is little hope that the president himself will react appropriately; he has continuously disregarded climate reports, from his own administration and international organizations alike, as inconsequential to his worldview and his policymaking. Nonetheless, the report it is a sobering reminder that climate change poses a national security threat not just abroad, but here at home at well - whether our lawmakers choose to acknowledge it or not. Such a reminder seems hardly necessary given the death and destruction we’ve seen from superstorms and wildfires over the past year. And of course, there’s the fact that national security leaders have been making these same arguments in a nonpartisan manner since the Bush Administration. Some folks in the Trump Administration, it seems, are still a little slow to come along. Here’s hoping they figure out how to lead, follow, or get out of the way - before the rest of us suffer the consequences of their negligence. - Copyright 2019 Graham F. West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Graham F. West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at gwest@trumancnp.org. Mountain Views News Mission Statement The traditions of community news- papers and the concerns of our readers are this newspaper’s top priorities. We support a prosperous community of well- informed citizens. We hold in high regard the values of the exceptional quality of life in our community, including the magnificence of our natural resources. Integrity will be our guide. www.mtnviewsnews.com 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 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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