Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   9/27/2016

           Camping over--the contest starts  

Being back in Red Bluff for the fair can be a mixed blessing. It’s always fun to greet folks who come by the Republican booth, all of whom are friendly, though often a little perturbed in election years over their choices and prospects for victory. A number of them were, like me, less than thrilled with our presidential nominee, Donald Trump, having thought one or another candidate closer to our brand of beliefs.

However, I forthrightly encouraged them to be “happy warriors,” rather than “sad sacks,” for Trump. The prospect of even four more years under a Democrat president, even more so with Hillary Clinton picking Supreme Court, and lesser court, judges, and thousands of federal appointees—that prospect, not unlike the proverbial “prospect of hanging,” can focus one’s attention. Yes, about 3 out of 5 Tehama county voters will vote for Trump, no matter what anyone says about him; 3 out of 5 Californians will vote for “crooked” Hillary, oblivious to facts.

The reality of triple-digit heat, however, does also focus my attention on, or at least my fond memories of, sunny 60s for highs in Newport, Oregon, breezy 70s and 80s along the MacKenzie River east of Springfield, and immensely pleasant lakeside lounging at Suttle Lake near Sisters. That’s not far from our Bend home, where they call highs in the 90s “scorchers.” A Verizon Internet card kept us supplied with weak but serviceable signals for keeping up with happenings in the news. There was also generally decent reception for a C. Crane radio to pull in AM news stations for welcome reports and commentary from the usual talkers.

I was aware of a line of anti-Trump argument going around, even on this page, that seemed to suggest that accusations of race-based rental policies for Trump’s father’s apartments, involving a settlement with the federal government, was sufficient to tar Donald as a racist. I found it unpersuasive when put in the context of many common, though disreputable, efforts by property owners to preserve the hard-earned values of their homes and rentals from what they perceived, rightly or not, as undesirable, often minority, buyers and renters.

There were “red lining” practices, and scare tactics by some in the real estate profession, intended to capitalize on “white flight” from areas where minorities were moving. While understandable, and at the same time condemnable for the blatant use of race as a disqualifying (or alarming) factor, such practices were rightfully outlawed to allow African Americans escape from the ghettos and access to safer neighborhoods and better schools.

What I consider to be the definition of hypocrisy and double standards is that those same people, liberal ideologues, have no problem with race-based admission standards in colleges, etc. What they refuse to consider and accept is the reality that when, as is often the case, objective achievement standards are lowered for minority black and brown students for the purpose of racial diversity in a student body, such practices must necessarily result in qualified, even over-qualified, white and Asian applicants being refused entry to many of the better universities.

If race-based housing policies were racist, so are thinly-veiled race-based admission standards that allow poor performing blacks preference over higher achieving Asian and white applicants. Those same liberals also have no problem with legal and social/criminal justice advocates who insist that an all-white jury can’t possibly render a fair verdict for a minority defendant. They should be ashamed of such duplicity but liberals have not the capacity.

Here are a few items from the news and how they bear on the candidates: In Charlotte, NC, a black man with a long criminal record is seen with a gun by a black police officer who, after issuing numerous lawful commands to drop the weapon, shoots the man out of an abundance of caution for his and bystanders’ lives. Trump will stand up for such reasonable law enforcement conduct; Hillary Clinton will, like her boss and president, Barack Obama, always side with the rabble, the race-hustlers and violent anti-cop “black lives matter” activists. Trump will call them “riots” when appropriate while Clinton won’t.

Faced with Islamic terrorism perpetrated by immigrant offspring bomb makers (who spent time with radicals in Pakistan) in New York, or by a refugee immigrant shooter from Turkey (as just happened in the Seattle, Washington area), Trump will advocate for immigrant and refugee restrictions from that part of the world. He will not flinch from deporting those who break our laws by entering, and continue their criminal activity once here. Clinton won’t change a thing other than increased resettling of Middle Eastern (often anti-American) refugees.

Trump will not, I believe, fall for “criminal justice reform” that is designed to reduce the numbers in jails and prisons by lowering the bar for the release of drug dealers, many of whom committed their crimes while armed with weapons. Nor will he appoint judges likely to give shortened sentences that put the criminals back on our streets to kill, maim and destroy again. Hillary simply will flood our courts with coddling, “soft on crime,” judges who won’t have to live with the threat of harm posed by such vicious thugs, as do the rest of us

Those are just a few recent news stories that spring to mind when considering “what difference, at this point, does it make” to put Trump or Clinton into the presidency. Trump’s foibles and malapropisms fade in comparison to Hillary Clinton’s serial corruption, lies and ideological alignment with our racial divider-in-chief and Saul Alinsky-ite, Barack Obama.