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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (March 6, 2019)
Wednesday, March 6, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 2 O P I N I O Spring Forward Jonah Goldberg Daylight saving will begin at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 10 “Does that mean we have more time to dig out our homes and cars?” Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: My wife and I have been part of running Three Sisters Backcountry for the past decade. We operate four ski huts stretched from Sisters over toward Mt. Bachelor. During this past storm we were trying to keep our guests safe by maintaining access and keeping roofs shoveled. This wasn9t an easy task, just getting around was extremely difficult. We want to express a sincere thank-you to all those who helped. Skiers and friends shoveled tons of snow, snowmobilers helped break trail, loggers plowed the road when it was almost shut down, and the Forest Service staff helped folks late into the evening hand- shoveling out their cars. Our rad community of Sisters extends up into the mountains as well. We are truly grate- ful. We hope you all are enjoying this magical winter as much as we are! Jonas & Anna Tarlen Three Sisters Backcountry s s s To the Editor: Being gay is not a <lifestyle,= <alternative= or not. Period. Kids cannot be influenced to be gay through <exploitation of a lifestyle (sic).= Regarding the book <George= (again): did the author of the opinion piece read the book or just <additional pages=? <Gender issues=? Most of those issues emanate from people who don9t accept that gay people are just that. People. People NOT in need of redemption because of their sexual- ity. The Bible says a lot about a lot and I con- tinue to be amazed at Christians who pick and See LETTERS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Rain/Snow Showers Partly Cloudy 37/19 36/17 Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Partly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy Partly Cloudy Mostly Sunny 36/19 36/20 37/21 43/27 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC 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. N Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen 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. ©2019 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. 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. A couple of years ago, opponents of Donald Trump9s presidential bid warned that a Trump presidency would be a crazy spectacle. Jeb Bush famously said that Trump was a chaos candidate who would be a chaos president. Some even conjured vari- ous wild scenarios that might unfold under a President Trump. They said it might look something like this: As tensions flared in some hotspot 4 the Middle East or maybe along the India- Pakistan border 4 or as the president conducted perilous negotiations with, say, North Korea, he would be distracted or bedeviled with some sort of domestic scandal. Well, I don9t know if any- body predicted the specific details of Wednesday9s cav- alcade of crazy, but if they did, they should collect their door prize. Michael Cohen, Trump9s former <fixer= and vice president of the Trump Organization, owed his career to the fact that he would happily be his boss9s pet snake. By his own admis- sion, Cohen proudly did the president9s <dirty deeds= (his words), likening himself to the Tom Hagen character in <The Godfather.= He threat- ened anyone who crossed Trump, paid off inconvenient women, and boasted with a loser9s false courage how he would take a bullet for his boss. He celebrated, with an alacrity rarely matched by Stalin9s henchmen, his employer9s near-superhuman genius and empathy. Then, on Wednesday, he stopped by Congress before he heads to prison, he shed his old skin, the way snakes can, and tried on a new role of martyr and moralist. It9s possible his professed redemption is sincere. It cer- tainly seemed like it at times. But one needn9t be a cynic to doubt it. Regardless, Cohen9s tes- timony seemed designed to simultaneously enrage the President in every way pos- sible and to ingratiate him- self with his left-wing critics. Cohen impugned the presi- dent9s character, his intelli- gence, honesty and wealth. He called Trump a draft- dodging racist and grifter. If I had to guess, his testimony was framed in the best way possible to compensate for the fact that Cohen could not corroborate the most extreme versions of the Russia- collusion theory, which is a political Holy Grail for Democrats and much of the media. Meanwhile, Trump was in Hanoi, Vietnam to negotiate with the murderous dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. The summit, like the first one, was ill-considered. It rested on the assumption that Trump, the world9s greatest dealmaker, could charm Kim and the North Korean regime out of its nuclear program. The worry from foreign-pol- icy experts across much of the ideological spectrum was that Trump would blunder into a deal just for the sake of being able to declare victory. Rumored concessions leaked out in the media as if through an open faucet. And then, it didn9t happen. The summit was a failure on its own terms, and ironically, that made it a kind of vic- tory for Trump. The political tumult in Washington gave Trump every personal incen- tive to come up with any deal he could in order to change the subject and have some- thing to boast about. I have long argued that the North Koreans can9t be talked out of their nuclear program because their nuclear program is central to the rationale for the regime9s entire existence. It would be like talking Hitler and the Nazi regime out of their desire for conquest and their obsessions with the Jews; it9s simply the nature of the regime. You cannot reason a leopard to abandon its spots. It9s doubtful Trump fully recognizes this yet, but that9s irrelevant. He recognized enough: Any deal he could have gotten with Kim would have been worse than doing what he did 4 walk away from the table. Whether he came to this conclusion on his own or was cajoled into it by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton is irrelevant, too. One can rightly bemoan or lament the fact that the Trump presidency made the Cohen spectacle possible. But that doesn9t change the fact that the president defied political temptation and did the right thing. © 2019 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.