Valley Courier

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Valley Courier

Thursday, July 19, 2012

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Humorous commentary HOLLYWOOD--God bless America, and how’s everybody?

Charlie Sheen pledged the USO a million dollars of profits from his new series Anger Management. He’ll build an entertainment facility for wounded veterans in Maryland.

It’s no surprise because he’s always made an effort to work with the morphine community.

The British Open begins today at the seaside Royal Lytham Golf Club in England. It’s got over two hundred bunkers, high rough, daily rain and cold winds off the Irish Sea. When waterboarding didn’t work, Dick Cheney sent terrorists there to play 18 holes.

The Mississippi River was dredged and deepened by the Corps of Engineers Tuesday so the drought-stricken river can carry traffic. It’s really bad.

The country is so dry the Justice Department is advertising a water pistol buy-back program in Mexican newspapers.

Universal Studios dropped plans to build Argus thousands of homes Hamilton on its Studio City

backlot. They decided to expand their theme park. Universal stockholders like a thrill ride as much as anybody, but waiting for Americans to pay their mortgages is just too exciting.

President Obama saw the Olympic basketball team win a game Monday. He loves the Olympics for deep-seated reasons. The best people in the country work for free, every country is equal, and for once everyone’s invading Britain instead of the other way around.

Brooklyn bus driver Steven St. Bernard caught a seven-year-old girl in mid-air who’d fallen three stories Monday from a ledge where she’d perched. The crowd erupted in cheers after he caught her. She’d be doing just fine if he hadn’t spiked her after the catch.

President Obama enjoyed himself on the campaign trial in Ohio Monday. He’s had to adjust his speech with the times. His big applause line used to be that health coverage should be mandatory in a nation that’s as rich as America, but now it gets his biggest laugh.

President Obama refused to pull attack ads in Ohio saying Mitt Romney outsourced jobs at companies while he was with Bain Capital. No one’s paying attention to politics. All they care about is that the Ohio State Buckeyes football team not be prosecuted simply because Sandusky is a town in Ohio.

The U.S. Navy launched mine-sweeping operations in the Persian Gulf Tuesday, using underwater drones to destroy them. The administration said the computer-guided drones are made in Germany. That’s the international hint that you’re not kidding around.

The Pentagon claimed Syria’s Bashar Assad has a large supply of chemical weapons Tuesday. You know what that means. The Republicans haven’t even taken the White House back and already Halliburton’s won the contract to rebuild schools for girls in Syria.

Canadians were deemed richer than Americans for the first time in history Monday in a wealth survey. However, in Canada they measure wealth by the real estate you own plus liquid assets minus your debt. In America we take the highest value that our house has ever been and then add the money we’re going to make when we sell the screenplay.

NASA reported Monday the Mars Curiosity Rover is positioning itself to land on Mars this week. One arm of the rolling robot is a drill and one arm is a scoop. Democrats feel that the one sure way to save the earth is to do all our dirty work on the other planets.

San Francisco Bay officials began rerouting incoming ships to protect whale schools Sunday. It’s tough on ship crews.

Between the whales in the water and all the realtors jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, they spend half their time aboard ship repairing dents.

Johns Hopkins researchers said Monday women who use nail polish and hair spray increase their chances of getting diabetes. It’s not because of the chemicals. It’s just that women who look like that can’t go anywhere without men buying them sugary rum drinks.

LETTER Savory salutes livestock Regarding Tuesday’s article by Lauren Krizansky, entitled “Pardon Me” said the cow. I would like to suggest that she also explore the ideas of the Savory Institute to balance her knowledge on the effects of ruminant animals on the world’s ecosystems.

Savory believes that livestock are not only sustainable but are indispensible for healthy grassland in the arid environment of the San Luis Valley.

Martin Shellabarger

news@alamosanews.com sports@alamosanews.com

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Why tell lies?

Have you ever been lied to? Have you ally know why.

Love can hurt, but it can also be the source ever lied?

There are certain moments in life that of great joy.

It’s not easy looking back at the past, with you will remember forever, mostly because when that memory was created, it was ac- its ups and downs, but understanding the companied by extreme emotions. Often these past is the key to a better future.

Perhaps trying to understand another perare moments that you would rather forget.

One such moment is when you are either son’s reasons for telling lies would make the situation better. Perhaps trying found out in a lie, or the truth to put yourself in their shoes, and about being lied to is revealed. see things from their perspective I’ve heard the saying, “that would be helpful. You could try to little white lies never hurt forget it ever happened, or maybe, anyone,” and “what they don’t forgiving the person who lied to know won’t kill them.” Perhaps you is the best course of action. these sayings are based in some In my experience, you can’t facts, but it doesn’t make them forget, no matter how hard you true. While these little lies may try, so I went the route of trying not cause much damage, the big to forgive the liar – not an easy ones can. task, I can assure you. The fact Everyone lies from time to time. No one is perfect. There that the liar showed no remorse over the lies made forgiveness are even occasions when you that much harder to give. But I may have told yourself it was a POTLIGHT have said it before, “forgiveness is kind thing to do, and that you

By Tori Vigil for you more than it is for them.” were sparing someone’s feelings.

One of my favorite quotes says, Those are not the kind of lies I am talking about. I am referring to the “Forgiveness is setting a captive free and life altering lies that break up marriages, realizing the prisoner was you.”

Eva Kor, a Jewish woman who survived the cause you to lose friends, and forever alter Holocaust and was a prisoner of Auschwitz, the course of your life.

Lying may be difficult, but being lied to is captured the concept of forgiveness perfectly painful; even more so when it’s by someone when she said, “Forgiveness is a gift to youryou love and trust. People closest to you self. You cannot know real peace without are the only ones with enough information it. Until you release your resentments, the about you to hurt you, which makes every external world will always remain a threat.

Forgiveness means to me that whatever was relationship in life a risk.

This is why some people avoid any kind done to me is no longer causing me such pain of relationships, why others are extremely that I cannot be the person I want to be.”

No lie is so big that you can’t escape its careful who they allow to get close to them, and why some people experience extreme web. It just takes a little time, some patience, pain in certain relationships and never re- and the desire to clear away the cobwebs.

S

Web of lies Poem, by Tori Vigil

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Never was this saying of old truer than now as my story unfolds.

A web of lies in secret did dwell, in the corners of darkness it slumbered well.

But time eventually reveals all things, for the light conquered darkness and the cobwebs we did see.

Yet I wonder, if this pain is worthwhile.

Perhaps in darkness they should have remained - for the truth can be painful and hard to explain.

The teller of lies, the maker of this web thought he was sly, clever, and sneaky – but now he is trapped like a bird in a cage, a victim himself of the games that he played.

Thought he was better than others who’ve played, wrong was he and now he will pay. And what can be changed once the damage is done? Nothing at all for the web of lies is already spun.

Like a spider who sneaks by unseen, was this liar of wonder as his web he spun, but like most spiders their days eventually will be done – for when they are seen they are soon on the run.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

And what’s the moral of this tangled tale?

Don’t tell lies – for eventually they fail…

Romney finally has to explain Here’s the thing about privileged characters as a “regular guy,” signal a certain discomfort like Mitt Romney: they’ve never really been with life inside the force-field. His life strategy, vetted, indeed rarely challenged. Say you’re a however, has been to amass ever more money and senior at a posh prep school in Michigan, for power, by almost any means technically legal. example, and you think it’d be fun to pick on the Being Mitt Romney means never having to weakest kid in your class. So you get a bunch of explain. guys to hold the gay kid down while you cut off So when somebody actually calls his bluff, a his offensively long hair. guy like Romney tends to react badly What happens? Well, if your father’s -- first with a clumsy, easily refuted lie. the governor of Michigan, nothing Then with foot-stamping indignation happens. A scholarship student from that anybody’s allowed to question Detroit might have been expelled, but his word as a gentleman. My dear not somebody whose daddy ran an fellow, it’s simply not done. auto company. Years later, you can’t The sheer political stupidity of even recall the event, although none the Romney campaign’s attempts of the others ever forgot. Meanwhile, to distance him from his career at the tax-deductible endowment funds Bain Capital can’t be overstated. keep rolling in to the old alma mater.

Never mind that his entire case for It’s the way of the world. the presidency rests upon the “jobThis is not to deny that Mitt Romcreating” credentials his success at Gene ney’s a talented and enterprising Bain supposedly give him.

Lyons fellow. Country club bars everywhere The problem is that record is disare decorated with well-born failures, tinctly mixed. And Romney definitely cursing the IRS and muttering about doesn’t want to talk about it. the moral failings of the poor. Mitt could have Stung by the Obama campaign’s focus on GS been one of those. Instead, he’s a striver.

Industries, a Kansas City steel company Bain Nevertheless, for a man like Romney, the drove into bankruptcy in 2001, the Romney cammoney functions like some sci-fi force field, paign sent out a debunking press release, Slate’s protecting its owner, if not from the snares and David Weigel noted, with bolded sentences in vicissitudes of life, then definitely from everyday all caps: “The Bankruptcy And Layoffs At GS inconveniences.

Industries All Occurred AFTER Governor RomPeople laugh at your jokes, funny or not. No- ney Had Left Bain Capital in February 1999.” body says what they really think. Subordinates Down at the county courthouse, this is known kiss your posterior 24/7. Consequently, you as the some-other-dude-done-it defense. Never never really know who you can trust. Are they mind that Bain had acquired GS Industries for deferring to you, or your money? $8 million in 1993, leveraged the investment It can be a significant weakness. Romney’s with debt equaling more than 10 times the strained affect, his awkward attempts to be seen company’s yearly income (paying itself a nifty

Keith R Cerny

Ruth Heide

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$36 million dividend in 1994), then eventually walked away from a $554 million debt -- stiffing creditors, leaving 750 workers jobless, and sticking the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation with $44 million in unfunded liabilities.

Writing in Bloomberg.com, private equity banker Anthony Luzzatto Gardner dissects Bain’s “casino capitalism.”

“Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for [Bain] investors,” he explains. “He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain.

Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses.”

Heads he wins, tails you lose. That’s how Wall Street rolls.

So anyway, every GOP pundit on every cable TV talk show repeated Romney’s bogus alibi.

Hey, all that dodgy stuff -- the bankruptcies, the mass firings, the factory closings, the investments in companies specializing in offshoring American jobs -- none of that happened on Mitt’s watch.

He had retired to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Cue patriotic music.

Except guess what? There’s no need to quibble over exactly when Romney “retired retroactively,” as campaign advisor Ed Gillespie memorably claimed after the Boston Globe found the Mittster’s signature on stacks of SEC documents filed by Bain up to three years after he’d supposedly cleaned out his cubicle and returned his restroom key.

The documents not only listed Romney as president, CEO, and board chairman, but -- here’s the best part -- “sole shareholder” until 2003.

So who cares what day-to-day managerial decisions Mitt did or didn’t make during his sojourn in Utah? He OWNED Bain Capital, lock, stock and hedge funds. It was the principal source of his personal fortune.

Anybody who believes that evil trolls had somehow seized control and were making decisions about Mitt’s money without Mitt’s knowledge...

Well, what won’t such persons believe?

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and coauthor of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). You can email Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.

Editor's Note: The views expressed in individual columns on this page do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Valley Courier.