Don's Tuesday column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   9/24/2013

Back home; discouraging words; fair week

Happy 4^th birthday, Tehama Tea Party Patriots; let’s enjoy some pizza tonight.

Coming back home to stay (until the snow flies, anyway) after almost 3 months of summer traveling can require some adjustments. Our “camping” (parking the motorhome in various beautiful water front locales) ended literally where we started: East Lake in the Newberry Caldera National Monument, near La Pine, Oregon at over 6,300 feet elevation. While Red Bluff scorched some new records, East Lake’s early July highs got into the 80s; by September those highs in the sun had dropped to the 70s, making for delightful boat trips around the lake and idyllic outdoor book reading.

Thank Mother Nature and the meteorologist for a delightful Tehama Fair week. With near-wintry weather returning to the mountains and lakes of Oregon, I’m glad for warmth back home. Everyone should make a point of supporting and enjoying the fair—be sure to drop by the Republican booth in the Jelly-Tyler building for camaraderie with your fellow political travelers.

Having written weeks worth of columns either before leaving town or on brief returns to collect mail, I was chagrined to read discouraging words directed my way in my accumulated papers. Mr. Minch has apparently been providing both sides of an imaginary debate over my position on same-sex (whatever). He first attacked me by name (bad etiquette for columnists, no?), insisting that I formulate a response to his hypothetical scenario of children I never had who turned out with made-up sexual preferences. Having rightfully concluded on his own that “It’s none of your business,” he has nonetheless failed to respond to a reasonable request that he state his position on real life instances of persecution and punishment of business owners who decline to commercially participate in the “celebration” of same sex ceremonies. Quips about party hats are inadequate.

I don’t mind being kept on my factual toes by attentive critics. However, when they make a broad-brush attack, “Whenever (Polson) veers from bombast to reality he invariably trips over the facts,” if I am factually correct, the pity’s not on me (D. Janott, “Pity Polson” 9/20). Look up “Party in Power,” use the uspolitics.about.com link; look up “Composition of Congress Since 1867,” use the arts.bev.net link. I provided a quote from Truman advocating that “the benefits of (America’s) production (be) distributed among all its citizens.” Marxist rhetoric, I think. It is indisputable that 1) FDR and Truman were cut from the leftist/progressive mold, 2) Democrats controlled Congress from 1931 through 1946 and 3) The Congressional election of 1946 delivered a massive victory of 246 Republicans to 188 Democrats in the House of Representatives. Subsequent return of the House to Democrat control with Truman’s reelection, and the election of Dwight Eisenhower with a 2 year Republican Senate, do not refute the popular vote for the Republicans in 1946, which was a rejection of the FDR/Truman/Democratic agenda.

While catching up on quotes relating to the respect due President Obama, three items stood out: 1) Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan reported that White House staffers have adopted a new and unflattering nickname for their boss—“Obam-me”—which she overheard in chats with a few senators (Dan Weil, Newsmax, 9/20). Why? “Because it’s all about him and his big thoughts” as well as a “second-term team not quite as adoring as the first.”

2) Obama resumed his gun control advocacy after the mass murder at the Naval Yard in Washington and the mass shooting at a park in Chicago. He said that “for the sake of our children” (naturally) “we’ve got to get back up and go back at … those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun…” In the case of the Naval Yard murderer, Seattle authorities had it in their hands to convict and imprison Mr. Alexis for shooting a car over perceived disrespect by construction workers. That would have given him a criminal record sufficient to deny him a security clearance as well as a job in a company that placed employees in military facilities.

Likewise, police reported that the Chicago shootings, which would have rivaled the death toll at the Naval Yard had the shots killed their victims, were part of a gang turf war. Gangs have been around for over 150 years but are greatly exasperated by single parent, fatherless homes, depriving young boys and men of necessary discipline.

To Obama, slandering gun control opponents, who “make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun,” is par for the course—disrespect, castigate and lie about us to an audience that laps up character assassination and demonization of “their enemies,” to use another Obama phrase.

3) Speaking about the attempts to de-fund Obamacare while funding the rest of government, Obama said, “they’re trying to mess with me,” verbiage that would normally be heard from the mouth of a street thug, union tough or bare-knuckled Chicago ward boss.

The way I see it, Mr. Obama has so personalized and identified himself with the office of the President; is so thin-skinned, narcissistic and vindictive over the normal back and forth of issue advocacy; and is so incapable of the most basic level of honorable disagreement with his opponents—that the greatest purveyor of disrespect for the President is … Barack Obama himself. He can barely go a day or an utterance without insulting the office that he holds.