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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain Views-News SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2025

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

SALES

Patricia Colonello

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John Aveny 

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Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Lori A. Harris

Michele Kidd

Stuart Tolchin 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

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

RICH JOHNSON

 LIFE GOES ON

STUART TOLCHIN

PUT THE LIGHTS ON


A PLAN OF INACTION

 My transition from “young kid” to “teenager” occurred precisely on 
February 9, 1964 at 7:00pm. I was one of 73 million people whose 
eyes and ears were fixated on the “Ed Sullivan” show. (By the way, Ed 
Sullivans show typically drew about 21 million viewers.)

 Why the bump in viewership? America met the Beatles for the first 
time that evening. If you’re taking notes, the Beatles performed two 
songs at first: “All My Loving” and “Till There Was You”. They came 
back at the end of the broadcast and performed “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I 
Want to Hold Your Hand”.

 Two days later I was playing the guitar. And I haven’t stopped since. I mention 
this because we lost a phenomenal musician and creative genius this last week. Brian 
Wilson, co-founder and primary musical force behind the magnificent Beach Boys 
passed away. Because of the musical genius of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys surpassed 
the mono dimensional sound of most surf bands at the time. Brian added surprising 
texture and depth to Beach Boy music. Intricate and mesmerizing vocals. ”California 
Girls”, “Good Vibrations”, “God Only Knows”, “Don’t Worry Baby”, and Brian’s and my 
favorite “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”.

 Paul McCartney wrote the following about Brian: “Brian had that mysterious 
sense of musical genius that made his songs so achingly special”. McCartney first met 
Brian Wilson in 1966. Paul said the Beach Boy’s album “Pet Sounds” had a huge influence 
on what is arguably the Beatles greatest album, “Sgt. Peppers”. Ironically Brian 
Wilson said the Beatles album “Rubber Soul” had a huge influence on the making of 
the “Pet Sounds” Beach Boys album. Apparently, what comes around goes around.

 Elton John and Bob Dylan also offered glowing tributes to the genius of Brian 
Wilson. I’m reasonably certain Brian has graduated and is now improving the sound of 
angelic choirs. Fortunately, Brian’s two daughters, Carnie and Wendy, have reteamed 
with Chynna Phillips to resurrect “Wilson Phillips” a wonderful vocal trio. 

 Now, where were we? Ahh yes, I was going to amaze and delight you with 
strange origins of words.

 Sandwich: Sir Edward Montagu was given a noble title in 1660’s England. A 
successful naval commander he became the first “Earl of Sandwich” (Sandwich is a 
town in southeast England). Sir Edward was a compulsive gambler and on one occasion 
he had his lunch served to him while playing cards. So as not to get the playing 
cards greasy he asked the waiter to put his meal between slices of bread. Apparently, it 
had never been tried before so people started referring to a meal served between slices 
of bread as a “sandwich”. 

 Muscle: Comes from the Latin word “musculus” which literally translates to 
“little mouse”. People of that era thought the movement and shape of many muscles 
looked like mice running underneath our skin. Go figure!

Jumbo: Meaning very large; the word was actually the name of a very large gigantic 
African elephant in the London Zoo during the 19th century.

 Nice: It’s not what you think. Nice comes from the Latin nescius which means 
“ignorant” or “unaware”. So, for a hundred years or so nice described a “foolish” or 
“stupid” person. Nice! 

 “Clue” Original meaning was “a ball of yarn”. In old English it was called a 
“clew”. Comes from the ancient Greek story of the minotaur. The creature lives in a 
labyrinth or maze and the hero gets out of the maze tracking his steps with a ball of 
yarn.

 “Sinister” Right wingers play close attention. The word “sinister” translates in 
Latin to mean “on the left”. The Romans adopted the definition saying if you were left-
handed you were untrustworthy and had bad character.

 “Mortgage” This is a weird word. In old French, “mort” and “gage” meant 
“death oath” or “death pledge”. Back then you were promising to do something or die 
trying.

 “Boudoir” Describes a woman’s dressing room or bedroom. The closest 
French word is the verb “bouder” which literally means “to pout”. Today it also means 
“private”

And on that note, we can all go to our rooms and pout. 

Please stop pouting long enough on July 19th to come to my band’s next major rock 
and roll concert. JJ Jukebox at Nano Café on Saturday, July 19. 6:30 to 9:30. Come for 
a fun evening of dining, drinking, dancing amongst good friends.

 This coming Saturday, in response to Trump’s 
display of military might in Washington many of us 
will be protesting on “No Kings Day” in events across 
the nation. A lawyer friend told me that he has a rule 
not to engage in protests at all. This came about because 
of his leading a protest at Cal State LA about 60 
years ago. As a result of his protest which involved 
trashing an office art Cal State he was sent to jail for thirty days and that 
was enough protesting for him. I understand his feelings, I’m sure we 
all do but that does not help us to make any kind of decision now. Of 
course, my preference would be to do absolutely nothing. This would 
be the most comfortable, the safest, and the easiest. I imagine just rolling 
over and playing dead allowing Trump and his authoritarian régime 
overreach and perish on their own.

 In conversation with another friend I was told that there would 
obviously come a time when normal citizens would simply refuse to perform 
the clearly illegal and reprehensible tasks required of them and that 
eventually there would be no one willing to do Trump's dirty work. I 
said that I wished the inherent nobility and clarity and whatever of individuals 
would prevent people from doing what was obviously wrong and 
harmful to others and themselves.

 Privately I continued the conversation with myself and thought of 
my time subject to the draft during the Viet Nam war. I could not accept 
that many young men I knew simply accepted their “obligation” to allow 
induction into the military and potentially risk their lives for reasons that 
no one understood. There was the popular chant of “Hell no, we won’t 
go”—but many went and many died. 

 While at UCLA I went to a counselor who asked, “How can you 
justify your ‘cowardice’ (Maybe she did not actually use that word, but 
it felt like she did) when so many boys your age are willing to give their 
lives for their country?” I fled from her office in disgust and over sixty 
years later I still remember the incident. Every day I ask myself how can 
there still be wars? Old powerful rulers declare wars and young innocent 
people willingly go and die. It seems crazy to me. After the Russian 
incursion into the Ukraine, I was totally against the Ukrainians need to 
fight a war. Everyone I knew disagreed. My father was born in the 
Ukraine, then a part of Russia, and I imagined, and still imagine, young 
men like he and I, fighting and dying just because they thought they had 
to. 

 I argued then that the war would result in the death of hundreds 
of thousands of innocent Russians and Ukrainians. I said that the war 
was a sign of Putin's own political weakness, and the war was just a convenient 
way to prolong his own political survival. Maybe I was right, but 
it makes no difference now! The war and the dying continue. I long for 
a society wherein the health and well-being of everyone is uppermost. 
Rulers should be like boat Captains who have the responsibility to ensure 
the safety of their passengers and if the ship goes down, they should go 
down with their ship.

 Well back to the question of what action or inaction should you 
and I take on Saturday? What is the purpose of protests and is there an 
overall strategy to combat Trump's illegality? What I know is that I am 
opposed to violence and equally opposed to indifference. I will join the 
protest on Saturday and hope to see you there. Right now, we are in the 
same boat piloted by a lunatic. I just hope we can all stay afloat until 
someone, or something arrives to rescue us. It would be nice to have an 
overall plan of action or inaction. In the midst of confusion and an unforeseeable 
future. I guess that's what life has always been. As Edward R. 
Murrow said yesterday and echoed today by George Clooney, "Goodbye 
and good luck" at least until next week when I hope we can talk again. 

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HOWARD Hays As I See It


“Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” 
– Donald Trump on de-ploying the military at Black Lives Matter 
protests in 2020

 

The above quote, cited by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, is from the 45th 
President of the Unit-ed States. Let that sink in.

 

White House advisor Stephen Miller had gotten frustrated with the pace of deportations, 
with numbers lagging behind those under President Biden. Miller berated ICE staff, letting 
them know it’s either 3,000 deportations a day or their jobs. When told this would mean going 
be-yond simply targeting criminals, Miller responded it was time to round up people at 
the Home Depot and 7-Eleven.

 

From the start, the White House was in full spin cycle - blaming whatever problems on local 
offi-cials. When LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell held his press conference Saturday, the first 
thing he did was reject the White House charge it had taken his department two hours to 
respond when ICE called for help (it was more like 38 minutes).

 

The problem, according to the chief, was no advance coordination between the feds and local 
authorities. He explained that although our cops don’t make immigration arrests, it might 
have allowed for pre-positioning so that the LAPD could better protect ICE, community 
members and its own officers. But this was never about conducting a professional operation.

 

As L.A. Mayor Karen Bass put it, “Let’s not pretend this is about public safety. It’s political 
ret-ribution - plain and simple” - and about maximizing the spectacle. It’s subjecting viewers 
nation-wide to an endless loop of those burning Waymo taxis, spray-paint graffiti and looting. 
Never mind the tens of thousands of peaceful protestors, or that this “riot” took place in 
maybe a square mile of a 500 square mile city. (That same weekend, thousands had a great 
time at the 55th an-nual Pride Parade in Hollywood.)

 

President Trump again used the men and women serving in our military as props. Those 
4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines were unneeded and unrequested – but served 
Trump’s purpose of fanning the flames as he portrays himself as savior to a once-great city on 
the verge of destruction. Whatever the rioting, it was brought under control by the LAPD 
with help from CHP and police of neighboring communities. 

 

Trump got ahead of his skis by posting, “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles” 
and “Thank you to the National Guard for a job well done!” – posted hours before they’d even 
ar-rived in town. He said he’d instructed relevant agencies to "take all such actions necessary 
to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion”. He later explained his decision to 
send in the National Guard; “If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely 
obliterated.”

 

Trump continued using our military as props at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Soldiers used as backdrop behind him were pre-screened to eliminate those deemed 
“fat” and those with non-MAGA views. Trump led our soldiers in booing their former Commander in Chief, Joe Biden, booing the “fake news” covering the event 
and cheering Robert E. Lee (a traitor who fought for human enslavement and killed more American soldiers than Hitler). He also reminded them that the 2020 election 
was rigged

 

At that rally (intended as a celebration of the Army’s 250th anniversary), the president described California as being “destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness”. 
He called Los Angeles a “trash heap” and the protestors “animals”. He made a vow to the troops, "We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe 
again", because "We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. That's what they are".

 

As for Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass, Trump told our soldiers, “they’re incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists, they're engaged 
in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders”. 

 

The ultimate military-as-props event will happen June 14, as Donald Trump celebrates himself (and 250th anniversary of the Army) by spending $45 million of taxpayer 
funds on the parade he’s longed for all these years. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser figures it might take another $16 mil-lion to repair the streets afterwards. In 
case anybody gets any ideas, the president warns that “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force”, noting that “this is people 
that hate our country”.

 

Authorizations that Trump used to deploy the National Guard and Marines last weekend had no specific mention of either California or Los Angeles. The presumption 
is he’d use them to cover any future deployments as he saw fit. Already, there have been protests in solidarity with Los Angeles in Seattle, San Francisco, New 
York, Sacramento, Houston, San Antonio and Chica-go. And there will be protests blanketing the country as Trump watches his parade.

 

There might be elected officials concerned about staying in Trump’s good graces, regardless of whatever protest actions taken by their constituents. For them, they 
might heed what Trump suggested Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass “should be saying” to him (and I’m not making this up) – “THANK YOU, PRESIDENT 
TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR”.

 

The above quote, posted by Donald Trump on his Truth Social account, is from the 47th Presi-dent of the United States. Let that sink in.


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