Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, June 15, 2019

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Mountain Views-News Saturday, June 15, 2019 

MY REMARKABLY 
‘UNREMARKABLE’ FATHER

 

My dad turns 86 next month. He never thought he’d live 
so long - or see as many Father’s Days as he has - because 
his parents both died far too young. 

A stroke claimed his mother when she was 69 - the 
same night Pittsburgh Pirates great Roberto Clemente’s 
hurricane-relief plane went missing. It was the first time 
I’d ever heard my father sob.

My dad’s father was only 34 when he died in 1937. My 
father, then just 3, lost half of his universe. His dad had 
a great job as an accountant for the Mellon family. His 
early death greatly altered my father’s future. 

My dad’s mother had to work full-time to make ends meet, leaving him to fend 
for himself on city streets. Often unsupervised, he got into some trouble - once, 
a stone he set on the tracks nearly derailed a trolley car - but sports saved him. 

His high school football coach shaped him into a championship running back - 
while serving as the father figure he ached for. And then, after a baseball game 
he’d played, my father met my mother. When their eyes met on that afternoon 
68 years ago, it was lights out for him. 

Their 1950s courtship was not unlike those in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days.” 

When football scholarship offers rolled in, my father couldn’t bear the thought of 
four long years away from my mother.

Not even Chuck Noll, then captain of the University of Dayton football team - 
who’d coach the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl wins - could persuade my 
dad to leave her behind.

My dad never desired great fortune or fame. He didn’t need to be a corporate 
executive or public figure. All he wanted was to be with my mother, start a family 
with her and build a life. 

He worked hard for Bell Telephone for nearly 40 years. He and my mother would 
be blessed with six children, 17 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren - 
and counting! - amid the many ups and downs that a long marriage and a large, 
extended family bring.

He’d tell you his life is unremarkable - that lots of men made the choices he 
made. But I disagree.

Never a man big on words, his actions always have spoken loudly.

He worked long hours to support us, but never kept more than $5 a week for 
himself - to buy a couple of cups of coffee.

He made clear his devotion to our mother, and to us. He and my mother gave us 
a deep sense of security that he never had as a child.

His five daughters all married men with the same sort of character and integrity 
that still guide his existence, and their children have embraced these important 
traits, too.

My dad still pays his bills and his taxes on time. He never took a loan he didn’t 
repay. He coached baseball and served his church. 

And all along, he desired only his family’s love and well-being - and a few ice-
cold Pabst Blue Ribbons - as rewards.

Fathers like my father make magnificent contributions to their families and our 
world. Great civilizations are built on their shoulders.

Yet they see their selfless support, guidance and nurturing of their families as 
“unremarkable” - which makes them all the more extraordinary. 

That’s why, this Father’s Day, I want my father to know just how remarkably 
“unremarkable” he is.

TOM PURCELL

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

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WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

Lancelot

CONTRIBUTORS

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Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

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Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

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Rev. James Snyder

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Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

MICHAEL REAGAN

H L. Mencken, 
the famed crusty 
commentator, 
said one century 
ago: “A politician 
is an animal 
which can sit on a 
fence and yet keep 
both ears on the 
ground.”

I thought of that 
quip the other day when former Vice 
President Joe Biden magically declared 
that he supports federal Medicaid funding 
for poor women seeking abortions. 
Biden had staunchly opposed such funding 
for decades - and had restated his opposition 
as recently as last Wednesday. 
But then, on Thursday, he suddenly 
announced his support, because, in his 
words, “circumstances had changed.” 
You bet they had.

Biden is a front-running candidate for 
president, and even though polls show 
him beating Donald Trump by margins 
that exceed those of his Democratic rivals, 
he still needs to hose down liberals 
who think he’s too much of an old-school 
moderate. Most urgently, he needed last 
week to get himself in sync with a party 
base that supports abortion access for all 
women regardless of income - especially 
now, with Roe v. Wade under attack 
as never before. So, in response, Biden 
made the decision to speedily flip-flop 
on federal Medicaid funding. All Democratic 
presidential nominees since 1992 
have supported that funding.

In recent days, liberal activists and pundits 
long hostile to Biden have been 
quick to pounce on the guy, painting his 
policy reversal as a sign of weakness. But 
all politicians - indeed, often the most 
successful ones - are wont to be flexible 
from time to time, recalibrating their 
views for reasons of political expediency 
or exigent circumstances.

Some of our biggest flip-floppers are lionized 
on monuments. Thomas Jefferson 
hated public debt so much that he 
called for a constitutional provision that 
would strip the government of its power 
to borrow money. Then, as president, he 
reversed himself. He bought the Louisiana 
Territory from France with borrowed 
money, and justified it by saying, 
“Is it not better that the opposite land 
of the Mississippi should be settled by 
our own brethren and children than by 
strangers of another family?”

Abraham Lincoln campaigned for president, 
and marked his 1861 inaugural, by 
promising that the feds would not force 
existing slave states to free their chattel. 
He initially defended “the right of each 
state to order and control its own domestic 
institutions according to its own 
judgment exclusively.” We know what 
happened to that promise.

One of the most notorious flip-floppers 
was Franklin D. Roosevelt, known back 
in the day as a chameleon of no particular 
fixed convictions. He stumped for 
the White House in 1932 by promising 
fiscal conservatism and a balanced budget; 
after he won, he launched the New 
Deal. He often shifted leftward only 
when liberal activists (including the First 
Lady) pressured him to do so. Frances 
Perkins, one of his Cabinet members, 
said that FDR was guided by “his feeling 
that nothing in human judgment is final. 
One may courageously take the step 
that seems right today because it can be 
modified tomorrow.”

More recently, Barack Obama reversed 
himself on same-sex marriage. He had 
opposed it as a senatorial and presidential 
candidate, but as president he 
endorsed it and explained his change 
of mind: “Attitudes evolve, including 
mine.” 

In fact, Obama - the only Democrat since 
FDR to be elected twice with a majority 
of the vote - had a string of reversals. He 
vowed as a candidate to close the Guantanamo 
Bay prison, but as president he 
kept it open. He vowed as a candidate 
that he would not appoint lobbyists to 
help run his administration, but then he 
did. He campaigned against extending 
the Bush tax cuts that favored the rich, 
but then signed legislation extending the 
cuts. He said early in his tenure that secret 
campaign donations were “a threat 
to democracy,” but his 2012 re-election 
bid was buoyed by Democratic groups 
that took secret donations.

But John Kenneth Galbraith, the renowned 
economist who served four 
presidents, once said that the best chief 
executives typically made “pragmatic accommodations 
to whatever needed to 
be done.” Joe Biden’s Democratic critics 
are predictably condemning his reversal 
on federal abortion funding in a bid 
to lower his poll standing (much to the 
Trump team’s delight, because they’d 
love to run against someone else), framing 
his pragmatism as rank opportunism, 
but one can easily view this episode 
as evidence that he’s willing to be flexible, 
that he’s responsive to the views of 
his constituents.

And isn’t that what we want from a 
politician?

IN DEFENSE OF JOE 
BIDEN’S SWITCHEROO

DICK POLMAN

TRUMP THROWS DIRT IN 
HIS OWN EYE


What the heck was President Trump 
doing?

What was he thinking when he told ABC’s 
journalist George Stephanopoulos on 
Wednesday that if a foreign adversary offered 
him dirt on a political opponent he’d 
take a look at it before calling the FBI.

That was an incredibly stupid thing to 
say. And all day Thursday in the media we 
heard a bipartisan chorus of everyone but 
his wife Melania saying exactly that.

But what was Trump even doing giving 
a professional Clinton apologist like 
Stephanopoulos unlimited access to him 
for two whole days? Has he forgotten that 
his chief enemy is Fake News, Inc.? And 
can’t the president restrain his ego for a 
few days and let the news media focus on 
something else but him?

 How about the total collapse of the Mueller 
Report, the impending investigation 
into the corrupt origins of the Russian 
Collusion Hoax, the southern border 
crisis or the latest bumblings of old Joe 
Biden? No chance.

For better or worse, Trump is still Trump 
- and always will be. But that’s no excuse. 
His statement was not just wrong, it was 
politically dumb.

What he said to Stephanopoulos didn’t 
merely provide several days of fresh free 
ammo to the Democrats on the House 
committees who want to impeach him.

It also may have tested the loyalty of the 42 
percent of MAGA Americans who so far 
have been willing to support him no matter 
what crazy thing he says or does.

In this case, most hard-core Trump supporters 
probably will say, “So what? Hillary 
Clinton didn’t just accept Russian dirt 
on Trump during the 2016 election.

“She and her corrupt campaign actually 
paid someone to get fake dirt on Trump 
from Russia and put it in a dossier to give 
to her soulmates running the FBI.”

Stephanopoulos and his liberal pals in the 
mainstream media conveniently forgot 
what Hillary’s gang actually did with Russian 
dirt because they were so busy beating 
up Trump for what he said he might do if 
he were offered dirt on an opponent.

But the media’s blind liberal bias doesn’t 
absolve Trump of his stupidity or his mistake. 
And it doesn’t absolve his die-hard 
supporters of their 
hypocrisy.

Imagine if President 
Obama or any 
other Democrat had 
made that statement 
to Stephanopoulos. 
Talk radio and the 
conservative media 
world would have 
gone nuts - justifiably.

Meanwhile, what’s happening in Washington 
on important problems like health 
care reform and border security? Nothing 
- not even gridlock.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress 
can agree on just one thing, and we’ll see 
what it is when they vote for it in a few 
days - a pay raise for themselves.

In our upside-down Trump World of 
Washington, Democrats and Republicans 
have flipped 180-degrees on issues like immigration 
and the national debt ceiling.

Today Democrats want open borders and 
Republicans don’t.

And remember how Republicans were always 
worrying about the soaring national 
debt, even before Obama nearly doubled it 
to $20 trillion?

Now, after Trump has added about $2 
trillion more to the federal debt, all we 
hear from Republicans on the subject are 
crickets.

The only person left who consistently 
warns us about our rising national debt 
these days is William Devane in those Rosland 
Capital gold commercials on TV.

You’d think that after what happened in 
last fall’s election you’d see some action in 
Congress on health care or immigration, 
but there’s been nothing.

That’s because it’s been clear for more 
than three decades that Democrats and 
Republicans would rather have both issues 
as political weapons than come up 
with the bipartisan answers to fix them. If 
they fix them, they lose the issue.

Which is why the 2020 election is going to 
be about health care and immigration, the 
2024 election is going to be about health 
care and immigration, the 2028 election is 
going to be about health care and immigration, 
the 2032 election is…

Mountain Views News

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Integrity will be our guide. 

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