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2 Wednesday, June 14, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor, Hayden Homes should be ashamed and embarrassed by their lack of concern, lack of communication and lack of following their own building design at the Village at Cold Springs. When I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint, their canned response was to shift blame to the homeowners and the man- aging HOA. The irony exhibited here is that Hayden Homes markets themselves as members of the community, giving back and according to their website, “building strong communities together.” Nothing is farther from the truth. Hayden Homes clearly has little concern for the communities where they build. If they did, they would acknowledge this community was not built according to their own design and step forward to rectify the situation. Multiple residents hold copies of their original plans which not only show the City of Sisters requir- ing an ice shield but Hayden Home’s drafted plans showing the same design. In other words, Hayden Homes’ own plans indicate an ice shield would be installed on all valleys and eaves but they didn’t follow through. The cost would have been minimal. This is an example of a company placing profit, albeit minimal, before completing the job correctly. Realize that Hayden Homes is a Redmond, Oregon-based business. They are literally in our backyard yet they refuse to acknowledge their mistakes and correct them. Every day I observe construction occurring on the next phase of Hayden Homes’ Village at Cold Springs. I noticed they are install- ing ice shields on these new homes. Before I climb into bed, which has become an air mattress in my master closet for the last four, going on five, months due to the damage and subsequent reconstruction, I remind myself of Hayden Homes advertisement which states “don’t just live the good life, live the great life!” It is hard to imagine what this great life is when the Village at Cold Springs has been See LETTERS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednedday Thurdday Friday Mostly sunny Slt. chance showers Chance showers 68/44 67/48 67/45 Saturday Sunday Monday Mostly sunny Sunny Sunny 74/45 80/46 84/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Karen Kassy Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. For those who hoped that former FBI Director James Comey was going to provide some bombshell evidence — or any evidence at all — that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, his Senate testimony had to be a major letdown. Of course, that was a foolish hope in the first place, since even if such evi- dence existed, Comey was never going to divulge it in an open Senate hearing. For Trump’s most ardent supporters, Comey’s tes- timony exonerated the president. Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, responded to Comey’s written testi- mony: “The president feels completely and totally vin- dicated.” And in a sense he should. Comey confirmed what Trump had said when he fired the FBI director last month: Comey had told the president on three differ- ent occasions that he wasn’t the target of a criminal investigation. What drove Trump nuts was that Comey wouldn’t say that publicly. Now he has. But there’s a problem. After the hearing, Kasowitz denied all the damning parts of Comey’s testimony. The president never told Comey “I need loyalty, I expect loy- alty,” Kasowitz insisted, and Trump never asked Comey to drop any investigation into Flynn. In short: Comey’s a liar and Trump isn’t. Given the pains to which Comey went to write down his version of the meeting with Trump, not to mention Comey’s immediate con- versations with colleagues and the utter plausibility of his account, Trump’s deni- als seem thoroughly uncon- vincing to me. But more to the point, if Comey were inclined to lie, he would have — and certainly could have — invented a far, far more damning story. If your defense is that Comey is a liar, you can’t cherry-pick the helpful bits and shout, “Vindication!” Ultimately, the most obvi- ous lesson of this unprec- edented political fiasco should be the same for both Democrats and Republicans. Many Democrats want to believe in a stolen-election theory that would reveal Trump as an evil genius. The president’s most vocal supporters, starting with the president himself, still insist that he’s not evil, but that he is a genius. Indeed, the presi- dent says so himself. “I know what I’m doing. I’m a smart person. The highest level of smart,” he told People magazine. “People are saying Donald Trump is a genius,” he told The New York Times. When asked by MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski in 2016 which experts he speaks with, Trump replied, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain ... My pri- mary consultant is myself, and I have, you know, I have a good instinct for this stuff.” When it comes to how the presidency works, Trump is an amateur, a bumbler and, very often, his own worst enemy. If Trump hadn’t fired Comey, or possibly if he’d just fired him in a sensible and professional manner, Comey might not have tes- tified at all. There almost certainly wouldn’t be a spe- cial counsel in the form of another former FBI director, Robert Mueller. According to Comey, Trump believed the Russia investigation was a “cloud” over his presidency, pre- venting him from making great “deals” for America. Democrats and the media, desperate to explain away Hillary Clinton’s humiliat- ing defeat, surely deserve their fair share of blame for that cloud. But no sensible person can deny that Trump — with his obsessive tweet- ing and aphasic outbursts — has done almost every- thing he can to make that cloud thicker and darker than necessary. And now the harsh- est irony is that, as Comey intimated, it may no lon- ger be a myth that Trump is being personally investi- gated. Mueller is now look- ing at whether the presi- dent obstructed justice. I’m inclined to think he didn’t. But Mueller wouldn’t be looking at all were it not for Trump’s super instincts. © 2017 Tribune content Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.