| Opinion | ||||||||||||||||||
| Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, October 31, 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
12 OPINION Mountain Views News Saturday, October 31, 2020 STUART TOLCHIN AN END TO ADDICTION MOUNTAIN VIEWS NEWS PUBLISHER/ EDITOR Susan Henderson PASADENA CITY EDITOR Dean Lee PRODUCTION SALES Patricia Colonello 626-355-2737 626-818-2698 WEBMASTER John Aveny DISTRIBUTION CONTRIBUTORS Stuart Tolchin Audrey Swanson 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 Katie Hopkins Deanne Davis Despina Arouzman Jeff Brown Marc Garlett Keely Toten Dan Golden Rebecca Wright Hail Hamilton Joan Schmidt LaQuetta Shamblee Yes it’s finally going to end! In just a few days it will be November 3 and it is my great hope that November 3 or soon thereafter will be the very last day of my addiction. For at least four years I have been addicted to viewing, listening, and reading news about –I even hate to say the name or even write it. Still the addiction haunts me and as soon as I can open my eyes after a disturbed and almost sleepless night, like any other addict I try to get a quick hit by checking my email to see if there is any new news that speak of you know who. You must know what I am talking about. The addiction had begun gradually enough. There was always something disgusting about he who shall not be named way back when he was simply an annoying reality show host. I recall hearing people say they enjoyed the guy say ”You’re fired” to losers, or whatever they were, on the show. Perhaps, this approval should have alerted me to potential future American problems. Remember this was before the election of Governor Jesse “the Body” Ventura who also was considered as a Presidential candidate. I wondered then if a large part of the American electorate had completely lost its mind. How could a completely inexperienced, uninformed publicity seeking TV character can actually be considered as a potential Presidential candidate? Today we know the answer. It was only a beginning. Prior to retirement I would daily appear in Courts from Lancaster to Long Beach and would by necessity spend many hours of every weekday endlessly driving. I would calmly listen to seemingly civilized, liberal, courteous, informative talk radio. I was doing my best to stay sane while working full time, worrying about money and not being late picking the kids up from after school programs. But now those Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton days in retrospect seem so tranquil. Oh, there were attacks against the President but now it definitely feels like President is trying to attack personally attack me. Does he really want to lessen the amount of Social Security Payments? Really, it’s not just Social Security payments. He continually and increasingly threatens my sense of what it is to be an American. Just a few years ago I was so proud to be an American presided over by a young, articulate, intelligent, well-informed, compassionate leader who only occasionally took action with which I did not disagree. Still I was proud of what it meant to be an American. Just a couple of weeks ago I was ashamed by my initial reaction to the news that the whole Presidential family had been infected by the virus. I wonder if you had a similar reaction and I wonder what many formerly proud Americans have become. Amazingly, as I begin to conclude this article an article popped up on my phone from the New York Times describing an addiction treatment. Strange coincidence or is the phone somehow monitoring what I am writing on the computer? Let’s not worry about that now. Anyway, the article describes a sure-fire cure for addiction called contingency management. The approach is to reward drug users with money and prizes for staying abstinent. There are moral objections to the concept but I certainly would have no moral objection to be awarded money or prizes for my writing an article about my addiction without mentioning by name the actual reason for my concern. As you can see I have not mentioned that name in this entire article. But money and prizes are not necessary here. Let us all vote by November 3 and succeed in being rid of ------you know who I mean. 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 A member of the California Newspaper Publishers Association DON'T FORGET.......YOUR VOTE COUNTS! JOHN MICEK DICK POLMAN DEMOCRATS KEEP HEALTHCARE FRONT AND CENTER 6 REASONS TO WAVE BYE BYE TO THE BIDEN FAMILY ‘SCANDAL’ Esther Wigley just finished paying off her medical bills – from 2017. Wigley, a Medicare recipient from Scranton, Pa., is now working to pay off bills from 2018 and 2019. And as she looks ahead to her 2020 tab, she fears she might be in for some serious and painful choices. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that my bills keep me up at night,” Wigley said last week during a conference call organized by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, as Democrats mount a two-front fight – one in a Capitol Hill hearing room, the other out in the field – to save the Affordable Care Act. “My health and ability to put food on the table is at stake in this election,” Wigley added. As messengers go, Wigley is a potent one. Current polling shows President Donald Trump losing to Biden among seniors in a trio of critical swing states, including Pennsylvania. Biden has targeted Trump’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacted a tragic toll among older Americans, as he’s made his pitch to the powerful voting bloc. Hundreds of miles away from the West Scranton senior center where Wigley was speaking, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee trotted out example after example of Americans who’d benefited from the Affordable Care Ac, and who might well end up suffering from its future repeal. While she strenuously avoided taking a position on almost everything, we do know that Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who now appears to be on the fast-track to confirmation to the Supreme Court, is hostile to the former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. That fact comes courtesy of her previous legal scholarship, as the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin pointed out. A future Justice Barrett could well be called upon to hear, and rule on, California v. Texas, a case backed by congressional Republicans and Trump’s Justice Department, that seeks to do what the GOP could not accomplish legislatively: topple the Affordable Care Act. Never mind the fact that, in the midst of the gravest public health crisis in a century, Republicans do not have a replacement for it, nor have they evinced much interest in formulating one. And while there’s reason to believe the high court may rule against the challenge, that does not mean that Barrett does not pose a long-term threat to the law’s future viability. Democrats retook control of the House in 2018 largely on the back of voters’ dissatisfaction with Trump, generally, and his attacks on healthcare more specifically. Recent polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that most Americans have a favorable impression of the healthcare law overall, and broadly support some of the law’s specific provisions, including its protections for people with preexisting conditions. Biden, meanwhile, supports expanding and strengthening the existing statute, while his allies on the progressive left are looking for universal healthcare. And at the moment, it looks like Democrats are on track to expand their House majority, and might even end up flipping the Senate. “So many Americans are concerned by one issue – and that’s healthcare,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said during that press call with Wigley. “So much of that healthcare is in mortal danger right now.” Casey has already said he’ll vote against Barrett’s confirmation, and has declined to meet with her. Like every other Democrat, Casey is still smarting from the GOP’s stymying of Obama’s 2016 high court pick, Judge Merrick Garland. And he’s made no secret of his disdain for the credulity- straining justifications that Republicans have offered in defense of Barrett’s pre- election confirmation. Casey, who does not sit on the Judiciary Committee, credited his colleagues on the panel for their efforts to keep the healthcare debate front and center during their turns at the microphone. “They’ve been resolute and determined about what is at stake,” Casey said, speculating that the “majority of Americans did not know there was a case before the Supreme Court on Nov. 10. “Im sure that an even a larger number did not know that if Judge Barrett was not Justice Barrett,” by Nov. 10 that “she could not make a decision,” Casey continued. “Now, more Americans know. And now, armed with that knowledge they are contacting their members of Congress.” They’re also voting in such crucial swing states as Pennsylvania, where Trump eked out a narrow, 44,000-vote victory in 2016. National polls show Biden leading Trump by an average of 9.2 percent. In must-win Pennsylvania, also Biden’s childhood stomping ground, the ex-Veep is up by an average of 7.1 percent, according to RealClear Politics. Democrats may not win the battle over Barrett’s nomination, but they could end up winning the war. No matter what happens in this presidential election, it has been deeply satisfying to watch the Joe and Hunter scandal hooey explode on the launch pad. Republicans have long been adept at smearing the opposition with lies. In 1988, they said that Michael Dukakis polluted Boston Harbor and unleashed black rapists in the white suburbs. In 2000, they said that Al Gore boasted of having invented the Internet. In 2004, they said that John Kerry’s Vietnam medals were phony. And in 2016, they said that Hillary Clinton was an existential threat to national security because her emails blah blah you know that story. This time, the gist of the GOP’s purported October surprise – concocted by Donald Trump’s hacks and hyped by the right-wing echo chamber – was that Hunter Biden ginned up business in Ukraine and cut his father in on 10 percent of the profits. Or something like that. I won’t bother to detail the claim lest I risk dignifying it. What interests me is why the smear on Joe never got traction with the general public that lives outside the MAGA bubble. 1. There’s no proof that Joe ever took a dime. Two Republican-run Senate committees, Homeland Security and Finance, delved into the claims but found zero evidence that Joe had taken any money, committed any misdeeds, or compromised American policy toward Ukraine while he was vice president. On the contrary, the Republican Senate’s investigators spoke with witnesses who said Joe was clean. 2. The story about how Hunter left an incriminating laptop in a Delaware computer repair shop surfaced in the right-wing New York Post, and it was so dubious that reporters wanted their names removed. Not even Fox News was able to verify it. Nor could The Wall Street Journal; in the end, that newspaper declared, in a headline, that “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.” 3. The main characters seeking to flog the Hunter-Joe malarkey were tainted Trumpists Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani. ‘Nuff said. 4. Yeah, Hunter Biden drummed up some business for himself by leveraging his father’s famous name – a routine form of legal corruption. That’s a legitimate story, as far as it goes. But in the words of sane conservative commentator Matt Lewis, Hunter’s deed is the equivalent of “being told there is gambling taking place at Rick’s Cafe. Heaven knows, the Trump kids and their spouses do this, and more… In the context of what happens in Washington, (Hunter) is small potatoes. Donald Trump is guilty of much, much worse.” 5. Speaking of Donald, the guy wasn’t even capable of hyping the faux Hunter- Joe narrative with any semblance of coherence. Maybe the MAGA cultists could decode the gibberish he spouted during the final presidential debate, but the average person could not – and didn’t care to. 6. Hunter is not on the ballot, and whatever he did has nothing to do with the lives of voters. Nearly 230,000 Americans are dead and 8 million more are infected while Trump brays about how we’ve “rounded the turn.” That’s what voters care about. Even Trump toady Ted Cruz has said of the Hunter narrative, “I don’t think it moves a single voter.” Erick Erickson, the Trump- leaning conservative pundit laments that the Hunter narrative is “obscure” and “a distraction at this point.” Meanwhile, on Thursday Tucker Carlson was blathering on the air about how he’d possessed damning Hunter materials, but that they’d mysteriously vanished in the mail – but wait, the USPS finally found the materials, so they hadn’t mysteriously vanish after all… or something like that. Then he did a 180-degree turn and told viewers: “Probably too strong to say we feel sorry for Hunter Biden, but the point is pounding on a man, jumping on, and piling on when he’s already down is something we don’t want to be involved in.” Seems about right. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com 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. 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 | ||||||||||||||||||
| |
