Mountain View News Saturday, February 7, 2026 
1212 OPINIONOPINION Mountain View News Saturday, February 7, 2026 
1212 OPINIONOPINION 
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PASADENA CITY 
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Stuart Tolchin 
Harvey HydeAudrey SwansonMeghan MalooleyMary Lou CaldwellKevin McGuire 
Chris Leclerc 
Dinah Chong WatkinsHoward HaysPaul CarpenterKim Clymer-KelleyChristopher NyergesPeter Dills 
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STUART TOLCHIN PUT THE LIGHTS ON 


IS IT ALWAYS BEST TO GO ALONG TO GET 

A friend just gave me 

a book entitled FALL


OUT by Peter Watson 

who introduced me to 

the term "compartmen


talization.” The book 

deals with the American 
creation of the atomic bomb and its 
aftermath and consequences. The thesis 
of the book is that the Manhattan Project 
overseen by General Leslie Groves, a 
military man and James Robert Oppenheimer, 
a scientist was created for the 
purpose of defeating Germany during the 
Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 
Initially it was believed that the Germans 
were far ahead in the race to create the 
super-bomb that could vanquish the rest 
of the world.

 The book explains that General Groves 
became aware that Germany was far from 
creating a bomb and was no longer even 
attempting to do so but General Groves 
kept this information a secret. Why? The 
author speculates that he liked the importance 
of his job and if there was no need 
for the bomb, there would be no more 
job. Although Americans had been told 
that the dropping of the bombs upon Japan 
would save the lives of Americans 
who otherwise would be forced to go 
into Japan and fight. This was a lie. The 
bombs were dropped as a statement of 
potential American power to intimidate 
Russia, our ally at the time.

 Of course, this policy backfired as the 
Russians and others have now developed 
and threaten to use their bombs which 
may well start a probable destructive 
world conflict. The book emphasizes that 
the scientists were kept away from information 
that might probably have resulted 
in their leaving the project. Discussions 
of moral implications and consequences 
were suppressed. In retrospect explanations 
have been made that so much effort 
had gone into the creation of the 
bomb that scientists just wanted to see it 
through to the end like any other scientific 
problem and other questions were 
unnecessary. They just wanted to do their 
job which only involved science and not 
morality.

I am interested in this whole policy of 
“compartmentalization” because it clarifies 
what matters. Why are people starving 
when there is enough food for every-

HOWARD Hays As I See It 

"He’s a fire hose of impeachable and criminal offenses. The country is 
numb to it. His secret has always been to overwhelm the public with 
insanity." -journalist Jorge Gonzalez on President Trump, posted on X 


Another week that I’m 

unable to pick a single 

topic to focus on – so 

again I’ll share some favorite 
recent posts, mainly from X: 

To the remark, “Why did she freak out? All 
she had to do was comply”, Ace responds;
“This is genuinely what right wingers believe. 
The one held at gunpoint must remain 
completely calm and rational. But if 
the cop gets spooked by an acorn falling on 
the roof of a car, then he gets to unload on 
you because he ‘feared for his life’.” 

President Trump on Denmark’s claim to 
ownership of Greenland: “The fact that theylanded a boat there 500 years ago doesn’t 
mean they own the land.” Ash responds,
“So the same goes for white Americans then 
no?” 

Vice President JD Vance says, “Denmark 
hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland 
safe.” Mayra asks, “Just out of curiosity 
when was the last time that a Greenlander 
was shot dead by a masked agent of their 
own government?” 

Department of Homeland Security posts a 
warning; “Do not bring your baby to a violent 
riot.” Ace asks, “Why? Are you going 
to shoot them?” 

The White House posts a Make America 
Healthy Again message; “WE ARE ENDING 
THE WAR ON PROTEIN”. Micah 
wants to know, “Who the hell was waging a 
war on protein???” 

Neil Renic posts, “I miss the evil billionaires 
who’d try to buy their way into heaven byfunding massive public libraries.” 

JJ in NH reflects on Trump’s first term; “I 
preferred when his stupidest idea was the 
wall”. 

Andy Kim posts; “We here in Jersey know 
Trump’s track record of crash and burn 
property management. We can’t let him do 
to the Kennedy Center what he did to Atlantic 
City.” 

On that subject, JFK’s grandson Jack 
Schlossberg posts: “Trump can take the 
Kennedy Center for himself. He can change 
the name, shut the doors, and demolish the 
building. He can try to kill JFK. But JFK 
is kept alive by us now rising up to remove 
Donald Trump, bring him to justice, and restore 
the freedoms generations fought for.” 
The UFC match on the White House lawn 
is apparently still on, though. 

And the news last week: 

It’s reported that Trump and family pocketed 
$4 billion from his first year back in 
office. Abu Dhabi royals put $500 million 
into Trump’s crypto firm and then, months 
later, UAE is granted access to advanced US 
chips – despite being flagged for national 
security concerns. Deputy Attorney General 
Todd Blanche explains that money going 
to Trump ultimately benefits the American 
people.
Former DHS attorneys blasted the current 

ALONG? 

one? Why are disease rampant when there 
should be medical services available? 
Why are there continuing wars? Why inAmerica is there legalized gambling that 
impinges all sports, and why is there an 
epidemic of drug use and depression? 
Why are preventive medical procedures 
suppressed so that companies can make 
billions from continuing treatments?

 The answer for me is similar to the reasoning 
of General Groves. The people 
on top of the strong countries profit 
from what they are doing, and the less 
strong countries go along to get along to 
avoid problems. Prime Minister Carney 
explained that the weaker, less strong 
countries can no longer go along. He explained 
that this policy no longer works, 
and we can no longer cooperate in the 
name of security.

 All of this reminds me of my granddaughter’s 
sentence after attending her 
first day of pre-School. “I hate single file” 
she said. Do you understand the significance 
of that statement? From the verybeginning we are told to cooperate and 
to pretend that we want to do what we 
are expected to do. In a children’s book 
entitled ON A BEAM OF LIGHT, the 
behavior of the young Albert Einstein 
is described. He was always asking so 
many questions that some of his teachers 
told him he was a disruption to his class. 
“They said he would never amount to 
anything unless he learned to behave like 
all the other students.

 Well, I’m certainly no Albert Einstein 
but in elementary School I was called the 
“question man” and was skipped ahead 
two grades so teachers could get me out 
of their classroom. Now at almost 82 I 
keep asking questions and rarely cooperate; 
but my life has been fine. It is time for 
all of us who care to stop cooperating and 
protest and boycott and do whatever we 
can to let the ruling billionaires know we 
will not cooperate anymore. The myth 
that everything is going to be all right is 
just a myth. The truth is that things have 
never been all right. As prime Minister 
Carney said the power we have to combat 
the great powers is “honesty.” Honesty 
and a refusal to accept what should not be 
accepted is our weapon, a weapon more 
powerful than the atomic bomb and the 
hydrogen bomb which never should have 
come into existence. Honestly! 

DHS general counsel for allowing ICE to 
break into homes without a judicial warrant. 
They reminded him “rule of law” under the 
Fourth Amendment supersedes whatever 
concerns he had about a “deep state”. 

The administration is suing Harvard University 
for $1 billion. Trump is suing the IRS 
for $10 billion and the Justice Department 
for $230 million – agencies he controls as 
president, so in effect controlling both sides 
of settlement talks. He’s suing the Pulitzer 
Prize board. He’s threatening to sue Trevor 
Noah over a joke at the Grammy Awards. 

Lawyers for victims of Jeffrey Epstein say,
“There is no conceivable degree of institutional 
incompetence sufficient to explain 
the scale, consistency and persistence of the 
failures that occurred” in exposing “nearly100” victims in “thousands of redaction failures” 
– including names, addresses, phone 
numbers and some forty nude photos. Epstein’s 
“assistants”, those who brought the 
girls to him, had been cited as co-conspirators. 
In newly released docs, victims were 
identified while names of these co-conspirators 
were redacted. Mentions of Trump 
appeared and were then deleted. The president 
says, “it turned out I was innocent”. 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gab-
bard, responsible for overseeing the CIA,
Defense Intelligence Agency and National 
Security Agency, principal intelligence advisor 
to the president (responsible for his 
Daily Brief), the National Security Council 
and Homeland Security Council – was in 
Georgia taking whatever from 2020 out of 
the Fulton County elections office. She put 
her phone on speaker as the president gave 
a pep talk to those moving boxes. Trumplater suggested Republicans “nationalize” 
elections. 

So – we had news of the president enriching 
himself and family off bribes from foreign 
players, ignoring identified threats 
to our national security. Armed, masked 
federal agents assert exemption from Constitutional 
protections against warrantless 
forced entry into our homes. There were 
extortionate lawsuits targeting organizations, 
individuals and government agencies. 
Our Justice Department was used to cover-
up the president’s relationship with the most 
infamous child sex-trafficker of our time. 
The president moved to put his own supporters 
in charge of our country’s elections. 
And this is just last week. 

Under Trump, Watergate and Iran-Contra 
would be nothing more than unremarkable, 
another-day-at-the-office affairs. And then 
recall the relentless performative outrage 
over Benghazi and Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

Steve Bannon (who himself has extensive 
presence in this latest Epstein drop) called 
it “flooding the zone . . .”. Jorge Gonzalez 
puts it another way, to “overwhelm the public 
with insanity”. 

In other news, Billboard reports the highest-
selling song in the country last week was 
“Streets of Minneapolis” by Bruce Springsteen. 
Still the Boss. 

RICH JOHNSON 


ON BEING A ROCKSTAR & A COLUMNIST 

If you ever get the op


portunity to risk mak


ing a fool of yourself, 

seriously consider 

taking the chance. No,

I’m not suggesting you 
attempt something incredibly stupid or 
dangerous. Just funny.
Seriously into my seventh decade, I 
couldn’t be happier writing a weekly 
newspaper column and performing in 
a rock and roll band. 

The secret to success? Finding a need 
and filling it. We rarely hear about failures 
in figuring out what the public 
wants. And we don’t often hear about 
major blunders. And there are blunders 
out there. Let me share a few big 
ones. 

In 2013 Burger King introduced a 
menu item that was a healthy alternative 
to traditional French fries. The 
product was marketed as “Satisfries”. 
In other words, healthy fries. Clever…
but! More expensive and much less 
tasty. Lasted all the way up until 2014. 

In 2016, Keurig coming off the success 
of single use pod coffee systems introduced 
the Keurig KOLD. A pod based 
soft drink version of the Keurig coffee 
making system. Initial problem was it 
cost several dollars to make one 8 oz 
drink. Still, Coca Cola invested $1 billion 
dollars into the idea. Oh, and by 
the way, the machine made a lot of 
noise, was massive in size, tended to 
overheat and was over $300 per unit. 

Do you remember when McDonalds 
introduced their Mozzarella Sticks. 
One problem: There was no cheese in 
the Mozzarella Sticks. They first came 
in 2016 and left in 2016 Mama mia!! 

The New Coke: Rule here is don’t tamper 
with success. Someone at Coca 
Cola thought making a sweeter Coke 
would be a good idea. Didn’t work 
and 77 days after New Coke’s release 
the company quietly brought back 
the original Coke, now called “Coke 
Classic”. 

Ever hear of diet beer? Lol. In 1941 
Coors began selling a diet beer. Lasted 
about a year. No one was interested 

FLOWERS Christine 


ICE has been 

out of control 

over the past few 

months, and par


ticularly since the 

beginning of this 

year. Over the 

three decades I’ve 

been practicing

immigration law,

I’ve never seen 
the level of chaos and division, fomented 
by the rhetoric of Donald Trump’s 
DHS and front woman Kristi Noem 
and the Dark Prince of D.C., Stephen 
Miller. 

The lies about “domestic terrorists” like 
Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse. It should repel 
everyone who saw the videos of his 
murder. They shot him while he was 
facedown, immobile, likely taking his 
last breaths. 

If you are capable of justifying that, 
you should skip over the rest of my column 
because I write in a language you 
don’t understand. Yes, he had a gun, 
with a license to carry. Foolish of him 
to bring it to a volatile situation, one 
where other people also had guns and 
the legal authority to use them. 

And there is another video of him 
engaging with ICE agents in a violent 
manner, attacking their vehicles 
and screaming expletives. That bit of 
phone camera verite shows us that he 
was not a martyr. He was not an angel. 

He was far from perfect, and clearly 
a man with anger issues. The people 
who leaked that video have the same 
sort of agenda as the activists who film 
ICE, hoping to catch them in these 
moments of unrest. Everyone has their 
motives, and don’t be fooled by the 
folks who turn these Anti-ICE stalkers 
into patriots. 

They are people exercising a constitutional 
right to place their philosophical 
enemies in a bad light. This talk of 
transparency and “keeping them honest” 
is cover for people who, in their 
homes use expletives that rhyme with 
“Duck? Nice!” 

I am someone who has been very busy 
these past months, heading to court to 
represent clients who, by every metric, 
deserve to be granted asylum but 
who, because of Trump’s manipulation 
of due process, are being ordered deported. 
Under Biden, Obama, Bush,
Clinton and even in some cases Trump1, they had a chance to avoid the hell 
they’d fled. 

I have represented women who have 
had their private parts butchered out 
of tribal custom, who have been shot at 
by their husbands, children who have 
been sexually abused by their grandfathers, 
young evangelical preachers 
who were threatened with death by 
gangs, young Catholic women beaten 
into a miscarriage by their boyfriends, 
angered that they would not get an 
abortion. 

I have represented young gay men,
brutalized by the police, political dissidents 
from Albania, Muslim men who 
built schools for girls and were shot at 

in “diet” beer. Failed miserably. Then,
in 1973 Miller Brewery experimented 
with Miller Lite. Didn’t say a word 
about the low calories. Instead, it was 
marketed as great tasting and LESS 
FILLING”. 

I have some history with this topic. I 
married an Australian in 1985. Made 
my first trip down under in 1989. Met 
the “Rellies” (relatives) for the first 
time. Let’s just say you don’t show up 
empty-handed. We had to make the 
mandatory stop at the local “Bottle-
O” (liquor store) and pick up a case 
of “bevvies”. I went to the counter and 
asked if they had “light” beer. “What’s 
that…for children?” chimed the cashier. 
No such thing as light beer in 
Australia back then. I later found out 
from “me” father in law there were two 
kinds of beer: “Good and better”! 

If you ever go down under (and you 
should, its wonderful), surprise your 
hosts and ask where the nearest “Maccas” 
is. That’s the nickname for McDonald’s. 
A “servo” is a gas station. We 
might call a overly curious person as 
being nosy, the Australians would call 
them a “stickybeak”. 

Guys, don’t put your foot in your 
mouth. If a pretty lady wants to meet 
you at the beach and tells you she’ll be 
wearing her thongs, don’t show up ina “speedo”. “Thongs” down under are 
what we call “flip-flops”. 

An “ankle-biter” is a small child, “Choc 
A Bloc” means full. This is really important: 
A toilet is called a “Dunny”
down under. “Good on ya mate” means 
good work. 

If you want to be perceived as a good 
communicator let me leave you with a 
few suggestions. First, in any conversation 
you should be listening as much if 
not more than you are talking. 

When you are listening, LISTEN. Do 
not sit there quietly preparing your rebuttal 
to what’s being said. Your mental 
absence and distraction shows. 

The less you say in a conversation the 
smarter your conversational partner 
will think you are. 

by the Taliban. 

I have represented Lebanese police officers 
tortured by Syrians, Iranian dissidents, 
victims of torture in Guinea, and 
so many others they blend together in 
a fog of anguish before my eyes. These 
are the ones who won asylum, before 
Noem and Miller and Bondi and the 
judges started shutting the gates. 

I write this so you know that I am not 
the sort of person who thinks Alex 
Pretti caused his own death, or that 
Renee Goode aimed for Agent Ross. 

I write this as someone who watches 
in horror as people paid to pick up the 
criminals instead target little children 
with backpacks while their fathers run 
in justifiable fear. 

I write this as someone who taught 
herself how to file habeas petitions 
at the ripe old age of 64 after years of 
never having to, because immigration 
judges used to follow the law. 

Now, they make it up and higher authorities 
need to correct their tragic 
errors. 

But I also write this as someone who is 
tired of the canonization of people who 
deliberately insert themselves into law 
enforcement operations. 

Alex Pretti and the women he was defending 
frustrated Border Patrol agents 
who were trying to apprehend a man 
credibly accused of domestic violence 
and allowed that criminal to escape. 
And this is not an isolated incident. 
I have had to thread my way through 
protesters to accompany clients into 
ICE check-ins. These protests do nothing 
to calm the fears of people who are 
trying to comply with the law. 

The singers, and the women and men 
with arms linked and whistling may 
think they are like the brave men and 
women who crossed the Edmund 
Pettus bridge, but they are not. They 
can protest. That is their constitutional 
right. But obstruction, trespass, 
threats, kicking the tail lights of cars 
and other narcissistic expressions of 
protagonism add to the climate of fear 
already ginned up by the bigots in the 
White House. 

It is simply the same form of hostilitydisplayed by incompetent Noem and 
arrogant Miller, just directed at different 
targets. 

ICE needs to stop terrorizing immigrant 
communities with their raids and 
their lack of professionalism. 

These are not the agents I have known 
and respected for decades. These are 
untrained amateurs playing with their 
shiny toys and the power they’ve been 
given to the tune of billions of dollars.
But the people who hate ICE need a 
reality check: They’re not as righteous 
as they’ve been told they are by CNN. 

Christine Flowers is a Philadelphian who 
loves the Eagles but can leave the cheesesteaks. 
She writes about anything that will 
likely annoy the majority of people, and in 
her spare time practices immigration law 
(which is bound to annoy at least some 
people.) 

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