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Wednesday, June 14, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Jonah
Goldberg
Letters to the Editor…
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ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
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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
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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.
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.