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Wednesday, January 10, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Editorial…
“States’ Rights!” (note exemptions)
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a federal-
ist who believes in states’ rights and local con-
trol. Except when he doesn’t.
Last week, as reported in the New York
Times, AG Sessions “rescinded an Obama-
era policy that had discouraged federal pros-
ecutors from bringing charges of marijuana-
related crimes in states that have legalized
sales of the drug.”
Attorney General Sessions is a proponent
of states’ rights and an opponent of federal
overreach. Except, apparently, when states
take action that he doesn’t like.
Sessions has a big problem with marijuana.
In his worldview, “good people don’t smoke
marijuana.” He certainly has the right to his
opinion, though Willie Nelson and millions of
others might disagree. His Justice Department
should not, however, seek to impede or sub-
vert the will of the voters in the states that
have approved marijuana use.
That is a textbook case of federal overreach.
The Attorney General is not on the same
page as the President on this issue. President
Trump is on the record stating that marijuana
policy “should be up to the states, absolutely.”
It’s always hard to know how seriously Donald
Trump takes his own policy pronouncements,
but he’s right.
There are many thorny issues associated
with legal weed, including compatibility issues
in rural/residential areas regarding agricultural
production of marijuana. Deschutes County
has been wrestling with those issues, and the
Sisters City Council is poised this Wednesday
to discuss in a workshop its approach to mari-
juana production and distribution.
And that’s exactly where these decisions
should be made — at the state, county and
local level. With respect, Attorney General
Sessions, the feds need to butt out.
Jim Cornelius
Editor
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:
We are so grateful for the respect, kindness
and generosity that the Sisters community has
shown for our service men and women who
are serving throughout the world.
Just yesterday I saw a woman approach a
soldier and thank him for his service. As he
was buying some tea, I offered to treat him
and another customer had already stepped up
to purchase him his beverage. As I went to
the grocery store, I noticed that he was there
buying some lunch. So I offered to buy his
lunch and the storekeeper said that someone
had already stepped up to buy his lunch. It
was so humbling and impressive to see peo-
ple stepping up to support and express their
gratitude to this young soldier. He must have
felt so loved and appreciated. He, along with
other local soldiers and American soldiers, has
stepped up to serve and protect our nation and
other countries.
This same love and generosity has been
shown to my son-in-law and daughter who
are presently deployed to different parts of
the world. A local organization called Military
Parents has united to support local families
who have children or family members who are
deployed. They have sent wonderful packages
filled with goodies, healthy snacks and heart-
warming cards to our son-in-law and daughter
and to other deployed soldiers of local fami-
lies. These packages are shared with many
other deployed soldiers in their platoons.
When you touch one soldier’s heart, you can
touch many more. All of these soldiers are so
grateful for this support and we would like to
See LETTERS on page 22
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Jonah
Goldberg
There are plenty of
shocking bombshells in
Michael Wolff’s new book,
“Fire and Fury: Inside the
Trump White House,” but
is there anything actually
new?
I haven’t read it yet, but
I have been following the
crowdsourced effort by other
journalists to recount every
salacious tidbit. The quotes
from staffers and Cabinet
secretaries are indeed shock-
ing by the standards of your
typical ‘inside account’ of an
administration’s first year. I
don’t recall so many White
House luminaries competing
to out-insult the commander
in chief before.
“For [Treasury Secretary]
Steve Mnuchin and [then-
Chief of Staff] Reince
Priebus, he was an ‘idiot,”
Wolff writes. “For Gary
Cohn, he was ‘dumb as s’t.’
For H.R. McMaster he was
a ‘dope.’”
Wolff’s sourcing methods
leave much to be desired,
and it seems likely that
some of the quotes and inci-
dents were fed to him at best
secondhand. Some flatly
deny saying what Wolff
ascribes to them. Others do
not dispute their damning
statements. Former White
House chief strategist Steve
Bannon doesn’t dispute the
myriad statements he made
about Trump, his family
and — his word — the cam-
paign’s “treasonous” meet-
ing with a Russian emissary.
As for Trump himself,
Wolff describes the presi-
dent as an easily bored nar-
cissist with a hair-trigger
attention span and a thin-
skinned ego.
But this has been reported
countless times already. Last
month, The New York Times
described a president who
spends, daily, somewhere
between four and eight
hours ‘in front of a televi-
sion,’ albeit sometimes with
it muted.
If you’ve watched or read
virtually any interview with
the president — never mind
listened to him at a rally —
you’ve observed how the
president struggles to com-
plete a line of thought with-
out being distracted.
In short, even discount-
ing for hearsay and exag-
geration, the Trump in “Fire
and Fury” seems utterly
plausible save for those who
have chosen not to believe
their own lying eyes.
Trump has benefitted
from a tendency among both
his biggest fans and his big-
gest foes to see more than
meets the eye. For the true
believers, there must be a
method behind the mad-
ness. The Trump we see on
Twitter and TV conceals a
strategic thinker who keeps
his enemies off balance by
“controlling the narrative”
or some such treacle.
When Trump says he
understands tax policy “bet-
ter than anybody. Better than
the greatest CPA,” his fans
want to believe that’s true,
or at least that there’s some
truth to it. Likewise all of
his other bizarre boasts (“I
know more about renew-
ables than any human being
on Earth”; “Nobody in the
history of this country has
ever known so much about
infrastructure as Donald
Trump”; “Because nobody
knows the [immigration]
system better than me. I
know the H1B. I know the
H2B. Nobody knows it bet-
ter than me”).
And yet, not once in hun-
dreds of speeches and inter-
views has the president ever
slipped and actually talked
expertly for more than a
minute on any public policy
without the benefit of a tele-
prompter. For a president
not known to avoid showing
off, it’s a remarkable accom-
plishment to keep his policy
chops so well hidden.
Trump’s biggest enemies
have something of a mirror-
image delusion. In order
to justify perpetual “resis-
tance,” they must believe
that the president has some
long-term evil scheme in
mind for overthrowing the
democratic order. When you
want to dedicate your life
to opposing some villain,
it’s only human to want to
believe the villain is worth
the effort.
The truth may not be
as horrifying as Wolff and
others describe, nor as ter-
rifying as “the resistance”
fears. All it takes is a will-
ingness to see the obvious:
The president is a man out
of his depth, propped up by
a staff and a party that needs
to believe more than what
the facts will support.
© 2018 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.