THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2016 FRIDAY EXCHANGE 5A Taking reponsibility have been teaching my son the meaning of responsibil- ity by comparing how boys may hide from responsibility, but adults step forward to take responsibility for their actions. So, Donald Trump was caught on audio tape expressing sur- prise and delight that celeb- rities could molest women without consequences. Days after this story broke, the first of 12 women stepped forward to state that Trump had molested them, and propositioned some of them. “Lies! Conspiracy! The media!” cried boy Trump. So 62 million people voted for a sexual predator to become our president? Were Hillary Clinton’s emails more egregious? Gen. Colin Powell also used a pri- vate server at home for gov- ernment business when he was secretary of state. Where’s the outrage there? Want change in govern- ment? Republican speaker Paul Ryan’s 10-year budget two years ago proposed cut- ting social spending $93 bil- lion per year, but increasing military spending $44 billion per year. Our military already spends more on defense than the next 25 nations combined. Sounds like a bloated bureau- cracy than needs to go on a diet. Republicans can’t be trusted to practice fiscal responsibility. Bill Clinton achieved a balanced bud- get toward the close of his administration. Barack Obama turned the economy around with the help of the Federal Reserve, but with only inter- ference from Republicans in Congress. George Bush, using faulty CIA intelligence, wasted $2 trillion and 4,500 American lives on the point- less Iraq War, which continues 14 years later. I predict that in two years you won’t be able to find a person who admits to vot- ing for Trump. Trump will be impeached for mental illness. And why is Trump so ner- vous and defensive about vote recounts? DAVID FITCH Astoria in those states, would Stein still have filed a petition for a recount in them all? America is not politically innocent. Like a Greek solil- oquy, we have heard this sort of thing before — “I did not have sexual relations, with that woman, Monica Lew- inski” and “Saddam Hus- sein has weapons of mass destruction.” Legend has it that a young George Washington refused to deny chopping down his father’s cherry tree. Hil- lary Clinton, in an infamous leaked speech, reportedly said that achieving political vic- tories requires you to hold a public, and a separate private, position on every issue. Some say that Jill Stein has fulfilled the first requirement of con- temporary political office: lying to the people. THEODORE THOMAS Astoria I Daily what? aturday, Nov. 26, Astoria celebrated the opening of the holiday season with Santa, the North Coast Chorale, com- munity singing and the fes- tive lighting up of our beauti- ful downtown. It was magical. Monday’s Daily Astorian front page featured a huge brilliant display of Seaside’s festivities of the same nature; not a word about Astoria’s; not even four days later. Tuesday, Nov. 29, the com- munity of Astoria celebrated Giving Tuesday, with seven local great local causes, all nonprofits, garnering a stupen- dous amount of money, gen- erously donated by citizens of this caring, beautiful com- munity. I was moved to tears by the level of generosity. Wednesday, Nov. 30, The Daily Astorian chose to high- S Stand up to bully e should have declared ourselves a sanctuary city (“Astoria will not pursue sanctuary status,” The Daily Astorian, Dec. 6). We are a small town and know that Trump is a gigantic bully. I understand how the Asto- ria City Council could be fear- ful of the bully’s fist, and the portion of local voters who sadly agree with this bully. But this bully’s ugly prom- ises have frightened minori- ties across the nation, and all I feel the City Council did by not adopting the language of a sanctuary city demonstrates how white we are. If we really felt the fear many immigrants are experi- encing as if it was our own, we wouldn’t, for a moment, consider the language of sanc- tuary city as mere “window dressing.” It isn’t window dressing to boldly say no to a bully. It isn’t window dressing to express solidarity with the cities standing up to this bully. To state that the laws are already in place preventing local law enforcement from acting as federal immigration officers seems at least a little cowardly. If we are, by Ore- gon law, a sanctuary state why hesitate to declare ourselves a sanctuary city? We built the Garden of Surging waves to honor and recognize the injustice done to the Chinese immigrants who once filled Astoria’s canner- ies, but is our racial injustice in the past? It certainly will not be if we miss any oppor- tunity demonstrate our firm commitment to the value, dig- nity and right of all people when it matters, and it mat- ters now. To prevent another Amer- ican moral tragedy, like the internment of Japanese Amer- icans or the Red Scare, the first thing we have to defeat is fear, and that’s not what I feel the City Council did. I feel they rationalized instead of making a strong moral statement. M. ALEX “SASHA” MILLER Astoria W The freedom of expression was disturbed to learn in Lyra Fon- taine’s article, “Art is not here to make friends” (The Daily Astorian, Dec. 5), that a provocative painting by Billy Lutz in the window of the T. Anjuli Salon and Gallery prompted a visit by the police. Any person who reads Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black’s views of the First Amendment will rec- ognize that Billy Lutz’s painting, “Rape of Mother Earth,” is a form of free I light a couple of great char- itable organizations’ good works in Seaside; no mention of Astoria’s. And, on the front page, a very nice article about Cannon Beach’s new brewery; no word of Astoria’s brand- new such enterprise. I don’t for a second begrudge the kudos for our deserving neighbors; but this is the Daily what? Do we not deserve at least a paragraph, when great things emanate from Astoria? ELAINE BAUER Astoria Competing views found the letter by Gwen- dolyn Endicott, “Sued for our trees” (The Daily Asto- rian, Nov. 25), informative and challenging. As a new- comer to Oregon, I have been troubled by the immensity of the visual impacts of tra- ditional logging practices in Oregon and Washington — at least from the obvious bla- tancy of the vast clear-cutting in evidence. Her recommen- dation is an aggressive politi- cal approach, in one instance, to a proposed state logging management plan. This seems I expression covered by that amendment. In a well-known and often quoted interview, Justice Black gave voice to his total and unconditional belief in the absolute freedom of expression. He believed that all people should have the right to say what they please, in any manner of expression, and be free of libel laws, obscenity statutes or other man-made restraints. Therefore, Lutz’s painting is protected under the First crucial, to me. The argument stirs an appreciation of a number of sometimes competing forces that, as opinions driving the current political mood in the country, seem difficult to rec- oncile. Some would view for- ests as limited and precious resources worthy of numer- ous public and environmental considerations. Others, no doubt, see a vast resource that is under-utilized and damaging to the economic health of the areas, as well as the powerful family-centered and corporate logging tradi- tions — traditions that are held as self-justifying of the expansion of what seem to be deforestation practices. Disarming to me is the resources at issue here are largely sold off and shipped out to answer some global market demands that have lit- tle to do with the needs of the states, other than for cash flow. What seems apparent to me is that the need for com- prehensive and courageous regulation of this industry, and others, is essential if only because market forces, be they couched in terms of recent history and traditions or the Amendment, as are the comments of the detractors who think Lutz’s painting is “shocking” and “in poor judgment.” That the police should be involved in the matter of Lutz’s painting is chilling, considering the political climate that is emerging from the election of Don- ald Trump, a man who thinks the First Amendment should be revisited. REX AMOS Cannon Beach sanctity of faceless corpora- tions, will continue to devas- tate until nary a twig remains standing. It’s just who we are and how we behave, it seems, without significant restraints, regardless of what view we may have of America when it was “great.” GREG LAVIN Astoria Stein’s recount lthough there have been no specific com- plaints of hacking or elec- tion fraud in Michigan, Wis- consin, or Pennsylvania, Jill Stein, citing concerns for the integrity of our elections, filed three recall petitions in those states at the last possible moment. Stein requested, and is suing to obtain, hand recounts which will have the likely effect of delaying the count past the transpiration of the Safe Harbor provision’s dead- line of Dec. 13. The sum of the electoral votes of those states are sufficient to change the outcome of the 2016 pres- idential election only in favor A of Hillary Clinton. If those states have not cer- tified a recount vote by the deadline, their electors are suspended and their state’s electoral votes shall be dis- posed of by a simple major- ity vote of the U.S. House of Representatives, who may ascribe them to any can- didate including, Hillary or Donald. If Hillary can obtain 29 “Never Trump” Repub- lican House votes, depend- ing on abstentions and Dem- ocratic support, she could be determined to be the next president. If it was exclusively elec- tion integrity, then shouldn’t Stein have filed in states where there were allegations of election fraud, or at least in states that Hillary prevailed in by comparably small margins, like Nevada, New Hampshire or Minnesota? If she did not because she anticipated that she could not obtain the con- tributions to do so, then what assurances convinced her that she would get sufficient con- tributions for the three recount states? Ask yourself, honestly: If Hillary had prevailed in the election by a similar margin President-elect Trump is just starting to warm up By GAIL COLLINS New York Times News Service W hat do you think the theme for Donald Trump’s appointments has been so far? Generals, generals, generals? Climate change deniers, climate change deniers? Those seem to be the leading con- tenders, although there’s always the ever-popular Give Chris Christie a job. While still cooling his heels as governor of New Jersey, Christie made his- tory when a recent Quinnipiac poll showed him with a 77 percent job disapproval rating. None of his pre- decessors had managed such a feat. We knew he had it in him. When I want to be cheered up, I always think about Christie, who’s currently lobbying for head of the Republican National Committee. (Next week, the Surface Transporta- tion Board.) On the downside, we had the heartbreaking saga of Al Gore, who happily emerged from a meet- ing with Trump this week, telling reporters about the “lengthy and very productive session” he’d had with the president-elect on climate change. It was, Gore added hope- fully, a conversation that was likely “to be continued.” Then Trump turned around and named Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. From Gore’s perspective, this would be like the judge in a divorce case naming the aggrieved husband as marriage counselor. Pruitt is best pals with the oil and gas industry, and he knows the EPA mainly as an entity to be sued. Under his watchful eye, his state has allowed so much natural gas frack- ing that Oklahoma now has way more earthquakes than sunrises. Why do you think Trump went to so much trouble to set Gore up for heartbreak? The most likely answer is that he was only pretending to lis- ten to what Gore was saying about climate change, while he waited for the chance to break in and talk about how tremendous, enormous, historic and stupendous his elec- tion victory was. This seems to hap- pen a lot. Also, it’s perfectly possible that by the time Trump sat down with Gore, he no longer remembered who he was appointing to the EPA. Perhaps he didn’t remember that Gore cared about the environment. The key to this man’s success, you understand, is failure to recall any- thing that happened before his most recent meal. Mesmerizing The selection of a Trump admin- istration has been sort of mesmeriz- ing in its own awful way. Ben Car- son will be running Housing and Urban Development — Ben Car- son, whose associate recently said he wouldn’t be taking any Cabinet job because “he’s never run a fed- eral agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.” And our new national secu- rity adviser is going to be Michael Flynn, a very creepy retired gen- eral whose son/former chief of staff has been promoting stupendously false stories about Hillary Clinton’s involvement in a child sex ring at a pizza restaurant. Nicknames Trump says he’s discussed his talent hunt with President Barack Obama, who thinks “very highly” of some of the people on his list. Who do you think they are? Probably not the general with the son who tweets about Democratic child abuse. Maybe retired Gen. James Mattis, who Trump wants to make secre- tary of defense? Mattis is a pretty popular choice, possibly because his nickname is “Mad Dog.” Do you think if Christie had a nickname, it would help his chances? What about “Growling Gerbil”? And then there’s secretary of state. Trump seems to be looking at 9 million possibilities. By next week you may be in the mix. Think about it. You’re far better qualified than Rudy “Rabid Rabbit” Giuliani. And unlike David Petraeus, I’ll bet you are not currently serving out proba- tion after pleading guilty to sharing highly classified government infor- mation with a lover. Lately, it appears Trump has gone back into the field to drag in a whole new bunch of State Depart- ment contenders. My favorite is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Cali- fornia, a person you have proba- bly never heard of even though he’s been in Congress since the 1980s and is currently head of the pres- tigious Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. Rohrabacher is also a surfer and former folk singer who once claimed global warming might be connected to “dinosaur flatulence.” He’s told transition officials that if he gets the nod, he’ll make the terri- fying John Bolton his deputy, so the nation can get a crazy warmonger plus a guy who knows how to play old Kingston Trio music. Also in the running: Rex Til- lerson, the CEO of ExxonMo- bil. Unlike Rohrabacher, Tiller- son seems to believe that humans have had an impact on the climate; he just doesn’t care. (“What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?”) Another name being bandied around is Democratic Sen. Joe Man- chin III of West Virginia, who first ran for the Senate with a famous ad in which he shot a hole in federal environmental legislation. Do you see a pattern here? Apparently the next secretary of state will be somebody who likes smog. Perhaps this is an opening for Christie. New Jersey has had a lot of environmental problems. Maybe he could invite Trump to a football game for some bonding. They could talk foreign affairs, and then pollute something on the way home.