PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Isn’t outrage exhausting?
The default emotion
in American politics
seems to be outrage. You
can fi nd it all over social
media, cable news and
talk radio.
The vitriolic re-
sponses at Trump rallies
is scary—Clinton’s re-
mark about deplorables
is hard to refute when one views
unedited video from rallies where
attendees’ anger is whipped to new
heights that has led to violence.
Outrage knows no ideology and
is not limited to any one issue—
Trump’s positions on immigration
and Muslims; Clinton’s emails and
supposed health issues; Colin Kae-
pernick’s kneeling during the play
ing of the National Anthem before
a football game—all elicit outrage
from the populace and pundits alike.
It would seem that all that outrage
would quickly become exhausting.
It takes a lot of energy to muster up
the emotion to spew anger at the
fi rst sign of a slight or at what one
might consider unAmerican.
All this anger and outrage staves
off any serious decision of impor-
tant issues that the nation faces now
and in the future. Is it prudent to be
outraged at Kaepernick’s response
to the National Anthem more
than allegations of Russian hacking
and interference in a U.S. election?
More prudent to be outraged over
an Olympians’ dance with the truth
in Rio than presidential candidates
who demean minorities
and women or is deemed
untrustworthy and dishon-
est.
Outrage is a reaction for
those who feel they have
no other way to express
themselves. It is fl amed by
incidiary comments on
social media and by candi-
dates themselves. The First Amend-
ment gives the right for people to
any speech they wish. The Con-
stitution also gives the right of the
vote—voting in an election has a
must more lasting effect than being
outraged.
Our fragmented political land-
scape has given rise to opposing
sides that want to win at all costs.
Compromise is treason to many
members of Congress. Disagree-
ment has been part of the American
discourse from day one; not all the
Founding Fathers were in complete
agreement on all issues of the day.
Government of the people, for the
people and by the people has given
way to ‘government as I see it and
nothing else will do.’
We may feel a bit insulated from
the current angry political climate
here in our little corner of the world,
but we are exposed via media, social
and otherwise. Outrage expressed
by violence, threats and verbal as-
saults defi nes our politics today. We
can become part of it, ignore it or
choose to rise above it and speak
with our vote.
—LAZ
editorial
Candidate’s health fair game
By DON VOWELL
I plumbed the depths
of my soul to bring you
this piece. Actually the
plumbing was hired out
to professionals. It was
a common maintenance
project with which many
of you are familiar.
The homeowner’s responsibili-
ties are simple enough. You have only
to restrict yourself to drinking clear
fl uids for a day chased by three small
bottles of a fairly nasty pseudo-soda.
Then you just wait.
After one of the longer nights
you’ve experienced, researching the
practicality of sleeping in the bath-
room, the rest is easy as the experts
take over. You just visit a clinic or
hospital and peacefully sleep while
every last vestige of your perceived
personal space is shredded.
If any reader in Keizer is still read-
ing this by now you would sensibly be
wondering why in the hell I would
think you need to hear about this.
Exactly. So, why is it we feel enti-
tled to know intimate detail of a pres-
idential candidate’s complete medical
history? A populace with any sense
of decorum would simply expect
persons running for president of the
United States to appear before a panel
of, say, three respected doctors from
Walter Reed National Military Cen-
ter. If, after studying his/her medical
history and judging results of a thor-
ough examination this panel agrees
that the candidate is in good enough
health to serve for four years as presi-
dent and is not insane, that should be
all we have a right to expect.
For my part I suggest only that all
candidates are treated the same. Hill-
ary Clinton’s health will be subject to
screaming demands for her most per-
sonal medical records until some more
lurid faux crisis jolts the news cycle in
a new direction. Donald Trump gets a
pass. He released a statement from his
doctor oddly similar to his
own syntax: “If elected, Mr.
Trump, I can state unequiv-
ocally, will be the healthiest
individual ever elected to
the Presidency.” The au-
thor of this report got his
ego from the same tailor as
The Donald.
Mr. Trump initially tweeted that he
was proud to share this report writ-
ten by the “highly respected Dr. Jacob
Bornstein of Lenox Hill Hospital.”
When it was noted that Dr. Bornstein
died in 2010 the tweet was quickly
withdrawn. If Hillary Clinton had
done this it would have been further
proof that she lies, is untrustworthy.
Mr. Trump?
Few of us in Keizer have had any
personal dealings with either candi-
date. Everything we know about ei-
ther candidate has come from what-
ever media we have chosen. When I
was young we all got news from Wal-
ter Cronkite or the Huntley-Brinkley
Report and trusted it. Now we can
learn about the candidates by choos-
ing whatever news source fi ts our
pre-conceived notions and distrusting
those that don’t.
So be it. All I ask is that everybody
plays by the same rules. I fear that a
candidate named Harold Clinton
would have advantage over a Hillary
Clinton. Nothing else explains to me
the ignoring of Donald Trump’s rou-
tine lying, factual error, shady busi-
ness ethic, and bullying while Hillary
Clinton is viewed as dishonest.
If you feel you must choose a can-
didate by knowing them personally
then judge them by their document-
ed records rather than accusations
against them.
In other news the billion dol-
lar diet industry will be destroyed if
people fi nd the effi cacy of a 98 cent
bottle of magnesium citrate.
a box
of
soap
(Don Vowell gets on his soapbox
regularly in the Keizertimes.)
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The unhealthy political climate
By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
Is a presidential candidate with
Hillary Clinton’s health problems—
pneumonia now, but also for some
time deep vein thrombosis and a his-
tory of blood clots—healthy enough
to be president? Most probably, yes,
but her weekend health issues make
you wonder if Clinton is covering up
bigger health problems than her team
has revealed to date. After all, her cam-
paign initially told the press Clinton
left a 9/11 ceremony early because
she “felt overheated.” Only after a
video revealed Clinton’s legs buckling
as secret service agents spirited her
into a van, did Camp Clinton release
a statement that revealed she had been
diagnosed with pneumonia Friday.
You can’t watch the video of the
back of Clinton’s head as others tried
to prop her up and not feel for the
former secretary of state and fi rst
lady. She’s always been an all-out
campaigner, and even the healthiest
politicians get sick. But as you think
about the campaign’s attempt to gloss
over this incident, you start to won-
der what her team is not telling you.
You recall Clinton’s many misrepre-
sentations—that she was told her use
of a home-brew server was “allowed,”
that she had handed “all my work-
related email” to authorities, that she
other
views
was cooperat-
ing fully with
offi cials when
she refused to
talk to the Of-
fi ce of Inspec-
tor General—
made before
the Democrat-
ic primary was settled.
Clinton, 68, doesn’t just mislead
others about herself. During an in-
terview with NBC’s Matt Lauer last
week, Clinton said, “we are not put-
ting ground troops into Iraq ever
again, and we’re not putting ground
troops into Syria. We’re going to de-
feat ISIS (Islamic State) without com-
mitting American ground troops.”
Surely Clinton is aware of the more
than 4,000 U.S. troops risking their
lives in a bid to defeat the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria as I write this.
Yet she talks as if there are no boots
on the ground.
Critics pounced on Libertarian
Party nominee Gary Johnson—a fi t-
ness buff, who says he runs two to
three hours every day he does not
campaign—for fumbling when asked
what he would do about Aleppo.
Johnson didn’t think immediately
“Syria” when he heard the name
Aleppo, as one steeped in foreign af-
fairs would. He said he thought Alep-
po was an acronym. What’s Clinton’s
excuse for her off-the-mark answer
on ISIS?
This would be an ideal time for
Donald Trump, 70, to release compre-
hensive medical records. (The rushed
letter in which his doctor wrote that
Trump could be “the healthiest indi-
vidual ever elected to the presidency”
was more a stunt than the result of
close examination.) Trump now says
he will release detailed records Thurs-
day on The Dr. Oz Show. And yet, I
remain skeptical—because one always
should be skeptical when Trump says
he will do something. Donald Trump,
after all, repeatedly told the press he
would release his personal tax returns.
I appreciate how Clinton’s drive
led her to push herself to attend the
9/11 memorial event on Sunday.
But after she collapsed, I think she
should have gone to a hospital, where
given the state of her health that day,
she could be given diagnostic tests.
Instead, she went to her daughter’s
home for enough recovery time to
stage a comeback photo op with a lit-
tle girl. Not for the fi rst time, Hillary
Clinton’s fi rst instinct was to cover up
the basic facts of her situation.
(Creators Syndicate)
Saga of Cylvia Hayes continues
Which metaphor seems best-
suited to describe Cylvia Hayes’ life?
Among possible choices are wreck-
ing yard, destruction derby, train
wreck, hurricane-force and man-
eater; although it’s possible no one
of these fi ts her, perhaps, all of them
do. Whatever the case, The Orego-
nian in its Sept. 3 edition reported
that “Eighteen months after Oregon
fi rst lady Cylvia Hayes left the gov-
ernor’s mansion, she’s in the thick of
a career reboot and image overhaul
that include regular blog and website
postings.”
I’m mainly a pedestrian in the mat-
ter of Cylvia Hayes. Nevertheless, as
a lifelong Oregonian, I continue my
interest in a woman who, with direct
help from former Oregon Governor,
also her fi ancé, John Kitzhaber, was on
her way, it appeared, to taking con-
trol of the governor’s offi ce before
the loudest of whistles was blown.
Then, after he resigned, the two of
them slunk away, into a disappearing
act that now presents actions on her
part to rehabilitate herself. Then, sud-
denly, Kitzhaber himself is scheduled
to deliver a speech during a Sept.
28 health convention in Portland
while he is also known to be provid-
ing consultation services to Oregon
health care organizations.
A bit diffi cult, it would seem, for
her to simply assume that a couple
of years out of the limelight will
make her return on an obstacle-free
path. Personal reaction: It will always
be diffi cult for me to trust Hayes or
Kitzhaber again. There remain so
many allegations against her, so many
like the one month in her life where
she divorced her second husband,
married an Ethiopian, Abraham B.
Abraham, so he could obtain a green
card while she received $5,000 for
doing so, and bought a pot farm in
Washington when pot growing up
there was still against the law.
Those who have written compre-
hensive stories about Hayes depict
her life story as a kind of fairy tale:
poor girl struggles to make her way
to success, poor girl falls in love with
powerful man, poor girl and strong
man get together to bring new life
and opportunity to earthlings. How-
ever,
some
have observed
that her story
is more like a
Greek
trag-
edy: She’s de-
scribed as a
woman with a
desperate long-
ing for recognition and status, always
searching for another opportunity at
others’ expense. As a result, she’s per-
ceived as a person who lacks insight
as to how she turns others off, car-
ing only for herself and willing to do
anything to realize wealth and power.
Getting Kitzhaber to grant her free
reign to govern as Oregon’s governor
more and more often in his place, she
apparently intimidated staff to the
point where only the most intrepid
among them had enough where-
withal to call her on her actions.
Staff was further driven into what
looked like abject subservience when
Kitzhaber’s communications director,
Nkenge Harmon Johnson, was fi red
in 2014 for standing up to Hayes
who, without holding offi ce in Or-
egon government, got Johnson fi red.
Based on what was known by indi-
viduals like myself, other taxpayer-
paid staff were apparently willing to
let everything against law and order
pass without protest in order to keep
their jobs.
Johnson, just one among the al-
gene h.
mcintyre
leged many abused, charged that
there were “myriad improprieties”
and “abuse of authority” by Kitzha-
ber and staffers who directed oth-
er staff to help with his re-election
campaign. Johnson says she was or-
dered to manage then-fi rst-lady
Cylvia Hayes’ communications and
appearances which was outside her
duties. Johnson now seeks damages
for lost wages and benefi ts as well as
undetermined punitive damages and
attorney fees. Presumably, much of
the cost of all this will end up paid by
taxpayers but was caused by the no-
restraints status Kitzhaber allowed
Hayes.
The bottom line on the two of
them is that they continue to face
state criminal and ethics inquiries
while nausea befalls me whenever I
think of either one of them in charge
or having even a modicum of control
over public money in any form or in
any place. I have a hunch that, if their
fate is left to Gov. Kate Brown, she
will pull a Gerald Ford and pardon
them. Without experience outside
oncology, I have no idea how well
Bud Pierce would do as ‘top gun’ in
Oregon government, but I harbor
hope that he would not just slap their
wrists and give them jobs where tax-
payer money pays their way.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)