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OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2016 Donald the dove, Hillary the hawk By MAUREEN DOWD New York Times News Service Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager We live here Social media doesn’t check facts; journalists do eople who blithely talk about revolution seldom under- stand what they are asking for. Winston Churchill said that it takes 200 years for a nation to recover from a civil war. When the Bundys and are vetted. The editorial con- their followers occupied the cluded: “Opinions are one Malheur National Wildlife thing. Facts are another. In Refuge headquarters, the modern era of informa- southeast Oregon endured tion technology, a journalist social-political trauma that that can tell the difference is lasted 41 days. Long after more important than ever.” the occupation ended and Writing in The Oregonian the national media departed, last Wednesday, Samantha a residue of anger and mis- Swindler offered a useful per- understanding endures. It spective on the small-town is especially noticeable in journalists who live with the neighboring Grant County, fallout from the Malheur where Sheriff Glenn Palmer occupation. Wrote Swindler, gave tacit support to the ref- “I spent most of my career in uge occupiers. small, rural newspapering and Sheriff Palmer himself has I consider it, perhaps, the high- become the object of investi- est form of journalism. You gation by state law enforce- are truly accountable to the ment regulators. people you write about. You While the Malheur occu- never write something about pation becomes yesterday’s a person you wouldn’t say to news, the media that serves that person’s face — because Grant and Harney counties in a small town, you’ll be see- must live with the aftermath, ing that face again. It doesn’t day in and day out. Our sis- mean you can’t write pointed ter newspaper, the Blue things; it just means you’d Mountain Eagle, last week better stand by them.” addressed community ten- That’s the nugget of why sions in an extraordinary edi- news organizations like the torial. It described the gap Eagle, The Daily Astorian between social media and and the Chinook Observer journalism, in which facts matter. We live here. P Speak now on coal exports upriver Already more than 200,000 comments on coal-export proposal owlitz County and the Washington Department of Ecology received more than 217,500 public comments on the $600 million Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview coal-export proposal. The agencies’ draft envi- ronmental study, now in a 45-day comment period, says the terminal for up to 44 million tons a year of coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin would have positive economic value for the Longview- Kelso area. It would cre- ate jobs for about 135 peo- ple and generate a variety of taxes. (See tinyurl.com/ Millennium-draft.) The terminal would cre- ate numerous environmen- tal risks. While past prac- tice in our region has been to minimize the importance such impacts in the interest C ASHINGTON — It seems odd, in this era of gender luidity, that we are headed toward the most stark X versus Y battle since Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. W Donald Trump exudes macho, wearing his trucker hat, retweeting bimbo cracks, swearing with abandon and bragging about the size of his manhood, his crowds, his Maureen hands, his poll Dowd margins, his bank account, his skyscrapers, his steaks and his “beautiful” wall. He and his pallies Paul Manafort and Roger Stone seem like a latter-day Rat Pack, having a gas with tomatoes, twirls and ring-a-ding-ding. The beauty pageant impresario’s coarse comments to Howard Stern, rating women on their breasts, fading beauty and ability to take the kids off his hands, reverber- ate through the campaign. In Indiana, Trump boasted that “Iron” Mike Tyson and “all the tough guys” had endorsed him. The chair-throwing Bobby Knight backed Trump with the brass-knuckles enco- mium that Trump, like Harry Tru- man, would have the guts to drop the bomb. When his rallies become Fight Club, Trump boasts that it adds a little excitement. Hillary Clinton’s rallies, by contrast, can seem like a sorority rush recep- tion hosted by Lena Dunham, or an endless episode of “The View,” with a girl-power soundtrack by Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato. The ultimate insider is portraying herself as an outsider because she’s a woman, and the candidate who is considered steely is casting herself as cozy because she’s a doting granny. Her website is chockablock with empowerment gear, from a hot pink “woman’s card” to a “Make Herstory” T-shirt to a “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-damental Rights” tote bag to “A Woman’s Place Is in the White House” throw pillow. She says her favorite shows are “The Good Wife,” “Madam Secretary” and “Downton Abbey,” and she did a guest shot on “Broad City.” Trump’s most ardent supporters, white men, are facing off against Hil- lary’s most loyal supporters, black women. Clinton and Trump have moved on to their mano a womano ight, leaving behind “the leftovers,” as Trump labels delated rivals. Already, it’s unlovely. “It’s going to be nasty, isn’t it?” says Obama Pygmalion David Axel- rod. “Put the small children away until November.” A peeved Jane Sanders called on the FBI to hurry up with the Hillary classiied email investigation. A des- perate Ted Cruz cut a deal with John Kasich, who then put a bag over his head and acted as if he didn’t know Cruz. Then Cruz latched onto Cruella Fiorina, accomplishing the impossi- ble: inding a Potemkin running mate who’s even more odious. We can only hope that Cruz, who croons Broadway show tunes, and Carly, who breaks into of economic development, the draft study is a clear- eyed look at an inherently dirty industry. Handling and eventu- ally burning all this coal would equal about 8,100 additional passenger cars City torn apart on the road inside Cowlitz am alarmed. This wonderful residen- tial community of Gearhart is being County each year, and torn apart by people using it for pure the equivalent of about investment purposes. These are peo- 672,100 more cars when ple who don’t live here. For the most the coal is burned to pro- part, they don’t work here. They are not interested in preserving the liveability duce electricity, mostly in and character of Gearhart. They only Asia. The study calls these seem to care about the “cold, hard cash” in it for them. impacts “significant and — what’s I know this phenomenon of Airbnb is taking the world by storm, but people unavoidable.” residential towns. Havens to come Coastal citizens on the need home to. Comfort for our souls. Gear- front lines for sea-level hart has these residential zones desig- increases and more violent nated. The zones, unfortunately, have not been respected. storms should speak up. People have been purchasing homes Comment online at www. in the residential zones with the sole of turning them into com- millenniumbulkeiswa.gov, purpose mercial businesses. Owners of gro- or via mail to Millennium cery stores are trying to turn them into Bulk Terminals EIS, c/o ICF brew pubs. We need housing and gro- cery stores for residents. Not dormito- International, 710 Second ries that sleep 12 and bars. PENNY SABOL Ave., Suite 550, Seattle, WA Gearhart 98104. song at the lectern, will start doing duets maiden foreign policy speech in Wash- from “Hamilton.” ington last week, adding, “A superpower In one of the most gratifying understands that caution and restraint are moments of an unhinged campaign, really truly signs of strength.” former Speaker of the House John These Kumbaya lines had the neo- Boehner told Stanford University stu- cons leaping into Hillary’s muscular dents that Cruz was “Lucifer in the embrace. lesh.” Satanists immediately objected, If the neocons get neophyte Repub- saying it was unfair to their deity. licans on the presidential ticket, they Even though Trump is the one who prefer ones like Dan Quayle, W. and has no governing experience, he will Sarah Palin, who are “educable,” as Bill suggest that the irst woman at the top Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Stan- of a major party ticket is unqualiied by dard, once said of Quayle. charging that she lacks “strength” and Trump may have a lot to learn about “stamina” and claiming that if she were the issues, but he’s not malleable. a man, she would not get even 5 percent In his new book, Alter Egos, New of the vote. York Times White House correspon- During his unburdening at Stanford, dent Mark Landler makes the case that Boehner imitated Clinton, saying, “Oh, the former Goldwater Girl, the daugh- I’m a woman, vote for me.” ter of a Navy petty oficer and a staunch But such mockery merely plays into Republican, has long had hawkish ten- Clinton’s hands. As former Jeb Bush dencies, relected in her support for super PAC strategist Mike Murphy told military action in Iraq and Libya and a MSNBC, “Her big judo move is play- no-ly zone in Syria. ing the victim.” And as former Jeb aide “It’s bred in the bone,” Landler told me. Tim Miller noted to CNN, Trump’s “There’s no doubt that Hillary Clin- numbers with women are so bad that ton’s more muscular brand of Ameri- the only way he can win is if he man- can foreign policy is better matched to ages to repeal women’s suffrage before 2016 than it was to 2008,” Jake Sulli- November. van, Hillary’s policy adviser both at the Once you get beyond the surface State Department and in her campaign, of the 2016 battle of the sexes, with its told Landler. chest-thumping versus maternal hug- But Hillary never expected to meet ging, there’s a more intriguing gender this mix of dove, hawk and isolation- dynamic. ist. She thought she would On some foreign pol- Marco Rubio, a more Trump face icy issues, the roles are traditional conservative who reversed for the candidates seems would out-hawk her. Instead, and their parties. It’s Hillary she’s meeting Trump, who less the Hawk against Donald the is “a sheep in wolf’s cloth- Quasi-Dove. ing,” as Axelrod put it. Like Just as Barack Obama macho a free-swinging asymmetric seemed the more feminized Trump can keep Hil- than boxer, candidate in 2008 because of lary off balance by punch- his talk-it-out management Hillary. ing from both the left and the style, his antiwar platform right. and his delicate eating habits, always You can actually envision a for- watching his igure, so now, in some eign policy debate between Trump and ways, Trump seems less macho than Clinton that sounds oddly like the one Hillary. Obama and Clinton had in 2008, with He has a tender ego, pouty tweets, Trump playing Obama, preening about needy temperament and obsession with his good judgment on Iraq, wanting an hand sanitizer, whereas she is so tough end to nation-building and thinking he and combat-hardened, she’s known by could have a reset with Russia. her staff as “the Warrior.” Despite gossip when she was irst lady The prime example of command- that she did not like people in uniform, the er-in-chief judgment Trump offers is truth is the reverse: She gravitates toward the fact that, like Obama, he thought the “nail-eaters,” her aides told Landler, and invasion of Iraq was a stupid idea. loves the gruff, Irish, bearlike demeanor He can sound belligerent, of course, of Jack Keane, a retired four-star general saying that he would bomb the exple- and the resident hawk on Fox News who tive-deleted out of ISIS and that he helped deine her views on military issues would think up new and imaginative and is still in touch. ways to torture terrorists and kill their As secretary of state, she hit it off families. with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and But he says that in most cases he David Petraeus. And she loved to have would rather do the art of the deal than a stiff drink with Bob Gates and John shock and awe. McCain. “Unlike other candidates for the She has a weakness for big, swag- presidency, war and aggression will gering, rascally he-men. not be my irst instinct,” he said in his Like Donald Trump. Open forum I Terrorism’s roots Editorials that appear on this page are written by Publisher Steve Forrester and Matt Winters, editor of the Chinook Observer and Coast River Business Journal, or staff members from the EO Media Group’s sister newspapers. The New York Times In a two photo combination, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, left, in Iowa on Jan. 30, and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in Washington on March 21, at right. The Clinton-Trump battle of the sexes is already getting ugly and is only going to get worse as November approaches. aith/religion is the conduit in which terrorism inds its roots. I often hear from the faithful that these hei- nous crimes are not faith-based. But I say faith brings to the fold the mystical F imaginary, whose existence can in no way be substantiated, and is, in fact, the catalyst for terrorism. Men and women around the world preach speciics about what the hereaf- ter is like. Not only do they not know what the hereafter is like, they can’t know. On the other hand, believers accept their depiction as fact, thereby bring into the equation a third party, god. So when a young Muslim decides to become a suicide bomber, god is his guiding light. The hereafter promises him 35 virgins at his disposal, so he will spend eternity in a perpetual orgasm. The Ku Klux Klan, a Chris- tian-based organization, as a group lynched blacks; each was convinced he was actually promoting justice and doing god’s work. George Bush lied the country into killing thousands for god and country. People believe that their life is self-owing to the generosity of god, which personally relieves them of being responsible for their action and life’s decision — it’s god’s will. Individuals were imprisoned or exe- cuted for defying god’s rule, which declared the earth is lat. A conclusion that earth was, in fact, round and orbited the sun, derived by observation and mathematical ciphering, was ignored for millenniums by religion — a belief that hasn’t altered the facts. The zealot Christian individual who murdered Dr. George Tiller — the abor- tion doctor from Wichita, Kansas, who was killed while attending church that infamous Sunday morning — declared on the witness stand during his trial that god would welcome him with open arms. We need desperately to hold religion accountable. We could start by requir- ing a disclaimer following sermons (like the drug companies side-effect declaration), that what you just heard is not supported in fact. Above all we need to address, and hold accountable, the very root of terrorism — religion. MURRAY E. STANLEY JR. Astoria Great job, Port think the Port of Astoria is doing a great job at trying to keep the sea lions off of the docks. After the new rails that Knappa High School stu- dents are building get put on, we’ll see how effective the rails actually are. I believe the rails are the solution to the problem. I know some people don’t want to see the sea lions leave, but if they’ve see what kind of damage is inlicted, then they would understand the problem with the sea lions. Great job to the Port of Astoria and the Knappa High School students. Keep up the good work. JAMES HENDRICKSON Astoria I