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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 4, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2016 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor 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 OUR VIEW E ach week we recognize those people and organizations in the community deserving of public praise for the good things they do to make the North Coast a better place to live, and also those who should be called out for their actions. SHOUTOUTS This week’s Shoutouts go to: • Ivan Rone, 45, of Ocean Park, Wash., who recently saved a 74-year-old neighbor who was trapped in the bath- room of her fifth-wheel trailer for nearly 60 hours. According to the Chinook Observer, when Rone was out and about he often saw his neighbor sitting outside the trailer and he would wave to her. When Rone didn’t see her for a few days he decided to drive over and check on her well-being. Rone said he honked his horn and heard what he thought were screams from inside the trailer. After Rone determined his neighbor was trapped inside the trailer’s bathroom because of a bro- ken door handle, he went home and got the tools he needed to get inside. He said he returned and quickly freed his neighbor, who hadn’t had the strength to break the door down to free herself. • The United Way of Clatsop County and the Seaside Rotary Foundation, which each raised money in fun, well-attended events that will be used to help support com- munity organizations and worthy projects. United Way con- ducted its ninth annual Iron Chef Goes Coastal event ear- lier this week and had its largest-ever attendance, while the Seaside Rotary Foundation’s Halloween-themed Ghoulish Gala fund-raiser last weekend was also its largest of the year. • The Seaside High School boys soccer team for its excellent season that was capped by making the state play- offs and then winning a Regional Play-in game for the first time since 2011. The team won its first-round game by beat- ing Cottage Grove last weekend, but lost in the second round Wednesday to La Grande which ended their outstanding sea- son. Meanwhile, in high school football, the Astoria and Knappa teams begin their playoff runs this weekend. Astoria plays Gladstone tonight at 7 while Knappa faces St. Paul on Saturday at 2 p.m. Both games are at CHM Field. • Manzanita residents and others who honored first responders, utility workers, city employees and local con- tractors among others last weekend at a breakfast at the Pine Grove Community House for their efforts to help the area recover from an Oct. 14 tornado. The tornado tore through downtown Manzanita before causing damage along U.S. Highway 101. According to Manzanita Visitors Center Manager Dan Haag, the tornado damaged 128 buildings and six businesses, and fortunately nobody was injured. The cleanup, he said, has “progressed really well.” • The Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce, Remax Coastal Advantage, Martin Hospitality, Escape Lodging and city government for teaming up on a project to bring sand-friendly wheelchairs to the beach by next summer. The wheelchairs will allow beach access for disabled visitors who otherwise might not be able to experience the full wonder of the oceanfront. CALLOUTS This week’s Callouts go to: • Anyone who makes light of the minor earthquake that the region experienced on Wednesday. The quake was only a 3.5 in magnitude and didn’t cause any damage, but instead of being the punchline of a bad joke, it should serve as as an immediate wakeup call for emergency preparedness needs along the coast and how fast lives can change in the brief instance of an unexpected natural disaster. • Suggestions? Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about? Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a look. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. Letters should be fewer than 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to edit- ing for space, grammar and, on occasion, factual accuracy. Only two letters per writer are printed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. Discourse should be civil and people should be referred to in a respectful manner. Submissions may be sent in any of these ways: E-mail to editor@dailyasto- rian.com; online at www.dailyas- torian.com; delivered to the Asto- rian offices at 949 Exchange St. and 1555 N. Roosevelt in Seaside or by mail to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103 AP Photo/Andrew Harnik Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes the stage with Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, to speak at a rally at Pasco-Hernando State College in Dade City, Fla., Tuesday. Final days, awful choice By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Washington Post Writers Group W ASHINGTON — Rule of thumb for a presidential campaign where the two candidates have the highest unfavor- able ratings in the history of poll- ing: If you’re the center of attention, you’re losing. As Election Day approaches, Hil- lary Clinton cannot shake the spot- light. She is still ahead in the polls, but you know she’s slipping when she shows up at a Florida campaign event with a week to go accompa- nied by the former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado. The original plan was for Clin- ton to pivot in the final week of the campaign from relentless criticism of Donald Trump to making a positive case for herself. Instead, she reached back for a six-week-old charge that played well when it first emerged back then but now feels stale and recycled. Shift in momentum The setback and momentum shift came courtesy of FBI Director James Comey. Clinton’s greatest hurdle had always been the Comey primary, which the Democrats thought she’d won in July when he declined to rec- ommend prosecuting her over clas- sified emails. This engendered an outpouring of Democratic encomi- ums about Comey’s unimpeachable integrity and Solomonic wisdom. When it was revealed last Friday that there had been a Comey recount and Clinton lost, Solomon turned into Torquemada. But, of course, Comey had no choice. How could he have sat on a trove of 650,000 newly discovered emails and kept that knowledge suppressed until after the election? Comey’s announcement brought flooding back — to memory and to the front pages — every unsa- vory element of the Clinton charac- ter: shiftiness, paranoia, cynicism and disdain for playing by the rules. It got worse when FBI employees began leaking stories about possible political pressure from the Depart- ment of Justice and about paral- lel investigations into the Clinton Foundation. At the same time, Clinton was absorbing a daily dose of WikiLeaks, offering an extremely unappealing tableau of mendacity, deception and the intermingling of public service with private self-enrichment. It was the worst week of her campaign, at the worst time. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Oversight Committee to explain his agency’s rec- ommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton in July. And it raises two troubling questions: • Regarding the FBI, do we really want to elect a president who will likely come into office under crim- inal investigation by law enforce- ment? Congressional hearings will be immediate and endless. A con- stitutional crisis at some point is not out of the question. • And regarding WikiLeaks, how do we know it will have released the most damning material by Elec- tion Day? A hardened KGB opera- tive like Vladimir Putin might well prefer to hold back whatever is most incriminating until a Clinton presidency. He is surely not above attempted blackmail at an oppor- tune time. Trump’s liabilities, especially on foreign policy, outweigh hers. There seems to be a consen- sus that Putin’s hacking gambit is intended only to disrupt the elec- tion rather than to deny Clinton the White House. Why? Putin harbors a deep animus toward Clinton, whom he blames personally for the anti-Pu- tin demonstrations that followed Russia’s rigged 2011 parliamentary elections. Moreover, Putin would surely prefer to deal with Trump, a man who has adopted the softest line on the Kremlin of any modern U.S. leader. In a normal election, the FBI and WikiLeaks factors might be disqual- ifying for a presidential candidate. As final evidence of how bad are our choices in 2016, Trump’s liabili- ties, especially on foreign policy, out- weigh hers. Unprecedented threat We are entering a period of unprecedented threat to the inter- national order that has prevailed under American leadership since 1945. After eight years of President Obama’s retreat, the three major revi- sionist powers — Russia, China and Iran — see their chance to achieve regional dominance and diminish, if not expel, American influence. At a time of such tectonic insta- bility, even the most experienced head of state requires wisdom and delicacy to maintain equilibrium. Trump has neither. His joining of supreme ignorance to supreme arro- gance, combined with a pathologi- cal sensitivity to any perceived slight, is a standing invitation to calamitous miscalculation. Two generations of Americans have grown up feeling that interna- tional stability is as natural as the air we breathe. It’s not. It depends on continual, calibrated tending. It depends on the delicate balancing of alliances and the careful signaling of enemies. It depends on avoiding self-inflicted trade wars and on rec- ognizing the value of allies like Ger- many, Japan and South Korea as cor- nerstones of our own security rather than satrapies who are here to dis- patch tribute to their imperial master in Washington. It took seven decades to build this open, free international order. It could be brought down in a single presidential term. That would be a high price to pay for the catharsis of kicking over a table. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Supporting trains R egarding “Port of Astoria asks city to shore up tracks for freight traffic” (The Daily Astorian, Oct. 20): I believe the steam loco- motive has some rights to the rail- road track, and I hear it is not much heavier than the trolley. Contact Ed Hauer or John Nieman of the Asto- ria Railroad Preservation Associa- tion (www.astoriarailroad.org) for information. They just need more money. During the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, those trains from Can- ada were a success. My parents sure loved it. They were light enough to get to Portland (the train, not my parents). With the traffic on U.S. Highway 30, it could be an option in the future, and help with parking. If the Big One hits and takes out the John Day Bridge, we should maintain the railroad bridge, so it can close, as that might be the only way to get to town on foot. EDWARD NIEMI Svensen and mercy. I hope the letter writer remembers to send her simple and effective prayers their way. PAT MILLER Astoria Send prayers R R egarding the letter “Thanks to God” (The Daily Astorian, Oct. 25): It was good of God to mitigate the weather in this area, but it would also be nice of him to do something beneficial for Syria. Letting over 300 drown recently in the Mediterranean was not too charitable of him, and the multi- tude of homeless refugees could use a lot of his protection, strength Sneak tops boob egarding the letter “What I’m getting” (The Daily Astorian, Oct. 26): A boob or a sneak? Think I’ll go for the sneak. At least she knows where the button is. Regarding another letter, “Join another party” (The Daily Asto- rian, Oct. 28): If everyone who voted for Bernie votes for Jill Stein, we will get Trump for president. ANNE MacGREGOR Astoria
