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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 14, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Friday, July 14, 2017 OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Tip of the hat; kick in the pants A tip of the hat to the quick-thinking teenagers who doused a porch fire in Ukiah before it spread to the attached house. The Umatilla and Union county teens Ben Combs, Austin Kendall, Tovias Niel, Quinton Orr, Khai Robertson and Colton Schock are part of the Youth Conservation Corps crew working on environmental projects in Eastern Oregon. They spotted the fire while building a greenhouse at the Ukiah school and rushed over to put it out with a garden hose before it spread to the house. Inside were a young child and babysitter. The teens’ quick actions likely saved a building and possibly two lives. We’re glad they kept their wits. A tip of the hat to the renewed effort to launch a Pendleton fireworks show in 2018. It was a shame to leave the sky dark this year on our nation’s birthday, and rather than waiting around for someone to make it happen, people are stepping up all over town to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Age isn’t a factor. Devan Driskell, a 13-year-old newspaper carrier, immediately put his money where his patriotism is. He offered to put up $1,000 of his hard-earned cash (schlepping papers around hilly Pendleton is no small task) to be matched by local businesses toward a new show. Jerry Imsland, a local real estate agent and former Jaycee, has also volunteered to coordinate the fundraising and planning efforts, and has asked both his Pendleton Rotary Club and former event coordinator Becky Marks for help. And there are others who have committed time and money to the cause. The disappointment from a month back when we learned there would be no show has given way to excitement that this community can do better next year. We hope to remember that these events don’t happen by themselves, and each year it will take time, effort and money to make sure the Fourth of July is spectacular. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS The danger of leaving children alone in cars The (Maryville, Tenn.) Daily Times Y ou may have seen prints of “The Scream.” It’s kind of unforgettable, those compositions of modern art by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. The artwork displays a wavering human being with open mouth, wide eyes, hands placed to the side of the head — all together a vision of a person seeing an object of horror. Just imagine the horrified face a parent would see reflected in a car window when returning to a parked vehicle where they had left a child behind in the hot sun. Heatstroke kills. Charges levied against a Chattanooga couple Sunday in the death of their 11-month-old daughter serve as a reminder that such events do happen and all too often — more than 800 times since 1990. KidsAndCars.org has made it their mission to warn of the danger of forgetting to look before you lock. The site offers a few facts about the greenhouse effect in vehicles: ▪ The inside of a vehicle can reach 125 degrees in minutes. ▪ Eighty percent of the increase in temperature happens in the first 10 minutes. ▪ Cracking the windows does not slow the heating process or decrease the maximum temperature. ▪ Children have died from heatstroke in cars in temperatures as low as 60 degrees. ▪ A child’s body overheats three to five times faster than an adult’s. In more than 55 percent of cases when caregivers leave children in vehicles where they later die, the adults did it absolutely unawares. It can happen to the most loving of parents. Nobody’s perfect. Prevention and safety tips are mainly common sense. Here are a few: ▪ Get in the habit of always opening the back door to check the back seat of your vehicle. ▪ Create a reminder to do so, like putting in the back something you’ll need such as your cell phone, handbag, employee ID or briefcase — even your shoe. ▪ Another mental reminder is to keep a large stuffed animal in the child’s car seat. When placing the child in the seat, move the stuffed animal to the front passenger seat as a visual reminder that the child is in the back seat. There are devices of various sorts on the market that are designed to alert a caregiver about to leave a child in a vehicle. A check of internet sites will turn up several of those. If you do see a child alone in a vehicle, get involved. Call 911. If the child seems hot or sick, get the kid out of the vehicle as quickly as possible. And always, always, always: Look before you lock! A conspiracy of dunces H ere is a good rule of thumb for to subvert American democracy than dealing with Donald Trump: the average foreign government. So Everyone who gives him the taking their oppo has a gravity that benefit of the doubt eventually regrets should have stopped a more upright and it. patriotic campaign short. This was true of clients and Second, if the Russians had been contractors and creditors throughout dangling some of Hillary’s missing his business career. It was true of 30,000 emails, those, too, would had to the sycophants and opportunists have been hacked — that is, stolen — Ross before whom he dangled Cabinet Douthat to end up in Moscow’s hands. So Don appointments during the campaign Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner Comment and then, oh, never mind. It has should have known going in that if the been true of his Cabinet members offer was genuine, the oppo useful, it and spokesmen, whose attempts to defend might involve stolen goods. and explain their boss’ conduct are gleefully But on the basis of the emails, the younger undercut by the boss himself. And it should be Trump went in not skeptically but eagerly (“if true — for the sake of their it’s what you say I love it”), souls, I sincerely hope it’s ignoring or simply accepting true — of the Republican the weird formulation about leaders whose reputations Russian support for Trump’s for probity and principle campaign. And then of course he has stomped all over everybody lied about or since winning their party’s “forgot” about the meeting, nomination. repeatedly and consistently, And now it’s true of me. right up until the emails The benefit of the doubt themselves made their way to I extended to Trump was the press. limited, but on a rather So while this is not direct important subject: I thought evidence that the president that direct collusion between of the United States was his inner circle and Russian complicit in a virtual burglary officialdom during the 2016 perpetrated against the other campaign was relatively party during an election unlikely and the odds of ever finding proof season, it’s strong evidence that we should of such a conspiracy vanishingly low. A lot drop the presumption that such collusion is an of weirdness around Trump and Russia, I extreme or implausible scenario. argued, had a more normal explanation — he Instead, the mix of inexperience, incaution had made business deals with Russians, he and conspiratorial glee on display in the emails still harbors a 1980s-era vision of superpower suggests that people in Trump’s immediate cooperation, and as a foreign-policy neophyte family — not just satellites like Roger Stone he clutched the idea of détente like a security — would have been delighted to collude if blanket even as the Russians separately made the opportunity presented itself. Indeed, if the moves to help him win. Russians didn’t approach the Trump circle My argument is no longer operative, about how to handle the DNC email trove, it because we know now that Donald Trump’s was probably because they recognized that son, his son-in-law and his campaign manager anyone this naive, giddy and “Burn After all took a meeting in which it was explicitly Reading”-level stupid would make a rather promised that damaging information on Hillary poor espionage partner. Clinton would be supplied as “part of Russia Then keep in mind, too, that all of this has and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” come out (relatively) easily, thanks to digging The meeting’s existence does not carry us by New York Times reporters and leaks from all the way to the maximal collusion scenario, the various factions in and around the White in which Trump himself was aware of Russia’s House, without the subpoenas and immunity role in the hack of the Democratic National deals that the formal investigations have at Committee and ordered his aides to conspire their disposal. That means there is probably with WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence to more and worse to come, and the more there time the drip-drip-drip of hacked emails and is, the worse the president’s dealings with maximize their impact. James Comey look. Even if the president As the hapless Don Jr. — the Gob Bluth himself is innocent of Russian collusion, or Fredo Corleone of a family conspicuously protecting your family from exposure is a short on Michaels — protested in his own pretty strong motive for obstruction. defense, the Russian rendezvous we know In the end, impeachment is political, not about came before (though only slightly legal, and House Republicans probably won’t before) the WikiLeaks haul was announced. impeach for anything short of a transcript of So the Trump team presumably assumed that a call between Trump and Putin in which the it involved some other Hillary-related dirt words “yes, I want you to hack their servers — some of the missing Clinton server emails big-league, Vladimir” appear in black-and- that Trump himself jokingly (“jokingly”?) white. And even then ... urged Russian hackers to conjure and release, But right now, the 2018 congressional or direct evidence of Clinton Foundation elections promise to be a de facto referendum corruption in its Russian relationships. on impeachment. There are enough sparks With that semi-exculpatory explanation in in the smoke; there will probably be fire for hand, you can grope your way to the current some of Trump’s intimates before another anti-anti-Trump talking point — that Don year is out. Jr. and company were just hoping to “gather And as for the president himself — well, oppo” to which a foreign government might to conclude where I began, anyone presuming happen to be privy, much as Democratic his innocence at this point should have all operatives looked to Ukraine for evidence of the confidence of Chris Christie awaiting his the Trump campaign’s shady ties. Cabinet appointment, or Sean Spicer reading But even if accepting oppo from a over the day’s talking points. Keep an eye on foreign government is technically legal — it that Trump-monogrammed rug under your probably is, but I leave that question to feet; it may not be there for long. campaign finance lawyers to work out — this ■ talking point takes you only so far. I am not Ross Douthat joined The New York a particularly fierce Russia hawk, but the Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Russians are still a more-hostile-than-not Previously, he was a senior editor at the power these days, with stronger incentives Atlantic. There is strong evidence that we should drop the presumption that collusion is an extreme or implausible scenario. YOUR VIEWS Pendleton mayor should know, support city’s businesses Send letters to the editor to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. Seems to me our mayor, John Turner, has a bad case of foot in mouth. On June 28 he made an announcement that “Pendleton would once again have a car rental service.” He had made arrangements with Boutique Air at the airport — something Pendleton has not had since Seaport Air left. Well, newsflash, Mr. Mayor: My Own Auto Sales has offered auto rental service since 1989 when we opened our car lot on Southgate. We have since moved to Westgate and have been servicing the community with rental cars. We have accommodated the airport passengers when they have a late flight. We make sure their car is there when they need it. A few months back the city needed rental cars for some “dignitaries” coming to town. A lady representing the city came to us for rates and to see if we could accommodate at least 11 people. We got the cars ready, called to let her know and were told “someone else had made arrangements.” They had gone to Walla Walla for the car rentals. Now does that make any sense? Our mayor knew at that time we had car rentals and now he says we need a car rental service. Figure that out. Ron, Don and Betty Dirkes Pendleton
