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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 28, 2019)
Wednesday, August 28, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 2 O P I N I O Find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life. — Harvey Mackay Jonah Goldberg The Nugget will be open Monday, September 2. All Monday deadlines remain unchanged. Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer¾s 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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 those of you who live in our great community, Recently there has been a lot of talk about the amount of crime and/or vandalism in our town. Unfortunately the tone is one that sug- gests that Sisters has changed. Well of course communities do change as they grow, and we certainly have been growing. I9d like to share a recent personal experi- ence. My wife and I own a long-time business here in Sisters, and on a recent Saturday night when we closed up we inadvertently neglected to lock the front door. We are closed on Sunday but a customer came to our door unaware that we were not open. When she opened the door she saw the lights out and quickly realized we were closed. She then looked around for some way to let us know our door was not locked. There was a flyer posted on the front door for an upcoming event in the store. There was a phone number for the person putting on the event on the flyer. She called that number and left a message that our door was open. The person she called was on the pass and did not receive the message till she got closer to Sisters. The person who received the message went to the store and tried to find a home phone number for me. She found a number but when she called I did not have my phone so it went to voicemail. At that time another customer showed up who knows me and real- ized what was going on. He helped her find a key to the door here in the store and the two of them locked the front door. Then he also called me and left a message. Later that after- noon I checked my messages and saw what was going on. I went to the store and found See LETTERS on page 16 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday N Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Mostly Sunny Partly Cloudy Mostly Sunny Mostly Sunny Sunny Sunny 97/64 88/56 89/57 87/54 82/51 80/49 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. 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. Last week there was a sharp uptick in speculation that President Trump is a few fries shy of a Happy Meal. Whether it was his tweet declaring that American companies <are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative= to doing business in China, or his decision to cancel a trip to Denmark because the Danish prime minister didn9t have a <nice= reaction to his desire to buy Greenland, or his suggestion that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell might be a greater enemy than China9s premier- for-life, it did seem as if the West Wing9s nurse might have accidentally switched Trump9s meds for M&Ms. <This is not normal. And I don9t mean that as in, »Trump is violating the shib- boleths of the Washington establishment,9= wrote the Washington Post9s Megan McArdle. <I mean that as in, »This is not normal for a functioning adult.9= CNN media correspon- dent Brian Stelter said over the weekend: <He9s getting worse. We can see it. It9s happening in public but it9s still a very hard, very sensi- tive story to cover. I9m talk- ing of course about President Trump, about his behavior, about his instability.= I9ve long thought that Trump was a perfect illustra- tion of the old observation that rich people are never crazy; they9re just <eccen- tric.= But I am skeptical that the president9s mental state has gotten worse. Instead, his situation is getting more precarious and that is making Trump9s Trumpiness more obvious. Specifically, I think the fiz- zle of the Mueller probe was a grievous blow to the presi- dent, for the simple reason that it removed an extremely useful political and psycho- logical bogeyman. Robert Mueller9s inves- tigation allowed Trump to give voice to his persecu- tion complex. In his mind, at least, the <witch hunt= was an all-purpose excuse to whine about <fake news= and distract from other con- troversies. But it also served the same function for much of the right-wing media, giving them a ratings-and- clicks-rich topic to focus on. In a sense, Mueller was a substitute for Hillary Clinton. Trump9s 2016 opponent was such a reviled figure on the right, she gave many Trump- skeptical voters the excuse they needed to overlook his shortcomings. After the elec- tion, Mueller and his <angry Dems= of the Deep State served as a serviceable alter- native to imposing cohesion and message discipline on the right. With Mueller gone, Trump is left scrambling to find a replacement. The <squad= 4 the four left- wing Democratic first-term congresswomen 4 are, col- lectively and individually, candidates. And they cer- tainly have their political uses, given their radicalism, hostility to Israel, etc. His base is happy to go all-in against them. But attacking four women of color has its limits as a political strat- egy, especially given that Trump9s electoral Achilles9 heel is suburban moderate women. Also, they pose no serious threat to Trump9s presidency the way Mueller seemed to, so they do not focus Trump9s mind the way the special prosecutor did. Right now, the lead- ing candidate for Trump9s Mueller replacement is Powell. And that dog won9t hunt. Trump is clearly con- vinced that the Fed chair is trying to destroy his re-elec- tion chances by not lowering interest rates to goose the economy past the 2020 fin- ish line. Some will think this is bat-guano bonkers, oth- ers won9t, but the political reality is that this storyline is just too complicated to replace the Mueller narra- tive. It doesn9t attract allies the same way, and the talk- ing points required to sustain it are just too convoluted. Whether or not he9s a stable genius, the Trump on display now is the same one we9ve always seen. What9s changed are the circum- stances. Like an unsteady man long held upright by pushing on a locked door, he9s tumbling now that the path is suddenly open. He needs some new enemy to brace against, and he9s flail- ing around in search of one. © 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.