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MCT: Tuesday, October 22, 2019

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CLEAR AND SUNNY in inland Mendocino County for next week. Highs in the vicinity of 80 degrees with Thursday being the warmest at around 85. Although areas east of Mendocino County look to be in the “red flag warning” area on Wednesday/Thursday, winds in the Highway 101 corridor are predicted to be less than 10mph through next weekend. Overnight lows in the 50s until the weekend when highs drop into the 70s and lows drop into the 40s. Coastal temps expected to be 5-10 degrees lower on average.

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DONALD HARRIS 58, of Philo drowned while surfing early Sunday morning off Point Arena Cove.

According to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department’s Shannon Barney, “Another surfer paddled out to check on him and found him floating in the water with his surfboard next to him. He brought him in to shore and began CPR.” Paramedics took over CPR but Harris couldn’t be revived and he was pronounced dead at 9:21 a.m.

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SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS WARNS:

Public should prepare for another PG&E shut off, potentially mid to late week. The County is doing its best to be transparent, but relies on PG&E for details which to date have been ambiguous. Be ready, plan for worst case.

“PG&E is monitoring a severe wind event later this week that could impact parts of 17 counties across Northern and Central California”


PG&E MIGHT SHUT IT DOWN AGAIN

“The latest weather forecast models remain aligned on a breezy northerly wind developing Monday into Tuesday, with gusty and dry offshore winds expected for Wednesday and Thursday. These dry and gusty winds will bring critical fire conditions for portions of the PG&E territory, especially the northern Sacramento Valley, the northern Sierra, and the North Bay areas.

Government agencies, including the National Weather Service and Northern Operations Predictive Services are also monitoring the event. Northern Operations Predictive Services is currently forecasting a period a high fire risk across northern CA and multiple National Weather Service offices are highlighting elevated fire potential and the possibility of Fire Weather Watches in their area forecast discussions.

PG&E Meteorology will continue to participate on daily interagency calls with federal forecast agencies to ensure alignment on the coming event. The latest PG&E PSPS forecast remains at a PSPS Watch for geographic zones 2, 3, 4 and 5 for Wednesday and Thursday and the PG&E Emergency Operations Center remains activated.

The primary focus for strong winds will be in the mid-elevations and foothills in the Sierra, elevated terrain on the west side of the Sacramento Valley and SF North Bay locations. Please note PSPS decisions are made at a much more granular level than zone. Weather forecasts are dynamic and may change so please stay closely tuned to further updates.

DETAILS: High pressure will build into the Great Basin and Pacific Northwest this week, bringing dry and warmer weather under light to locally moderate offshore winds with temperatures rising into the middle to upper 80’s for most, with 70’s along the coast. These breezy winds will also bring drier air to much of the territory, lowering relative humidity levels and allowing for some drying of fuels.

Stronger offshore (Diablo) winds will then develop on Wednesday and into Thursday, with gusts in the Sierra foothills potentially exceeding 50 mph with gusts to 35-45 mph possible across the elevated terrain of the North Bay and the elevated terrain on the western edge of the Sacramento Valley. Breezy to locally gusty winds are also possible in the East Bay and Santa Cruz mountains.

A ‘Santa Ana’ event may also develop across southern CA on Thursday and produce southeast winds over the Tehachapis into southern Kern as well. Lighter winds should return on Friday, although flow in the Sierra Foothills and Northern Sacramento Valley may remain offshore and keep dry air in place for another day.

Overall, the upcoming event is not forecast to be as strong as the October 9-10th PSPS event. Longer-range models also suggest a potential for a potentially stronger offshore wind event next Sunday into Monday but details are very unclear this far out in time. The fire potential continues to remain elevated with dead fuel moisture content and live fuel moisture remaining at or below critical levels; this will continue until significant winter precipitation reaches the territory.”

NOTE: “This forecast is based on weather conditions and fuel moisture content only and does not include other criteria used to determine whether a PSPS may be necessary.”

(MendocinoSportsPlus)


POTENTIAL PG&E PUBLIC SAFETY POWER SHUTOFF SCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER 23, 2019 THROUGH OCTOBER 24, 2019

The County of Mendocino has been notified by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) that power may be turned off in our area due to red flag fire hazard conditions. At this time, 15 counties and approximately 219,000 customers are anticipated to be effected, including portions of Mendocino County. At this time, potentially affected areas include Potter Valley and southeastern Mendocino County near the Mendocino/Sonoma County line. PG&E estimates that less than 1,000 customers in Mendocino County will lose power. This information continues to evolve and could change prior to the scheduled event.

The potential power shut off will be in three time periods:

Period 1 – Sierra Area: 10/23/19-10/24/19 – 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Period 2 – North Bay Area (Including Mendocino): 10/23/19-10/24/19 – 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Pheriod 3 – San Mateo Area: 10/24/19

Residents should be prepared with food, water, and any other necessary supplies for this potential extended outage. Residents can visit the County of Mendocino’s website www.mendocinocounty.org/community/public-safety-power-shutoffand PG&E’s website www.pge.com for power outage information, preparedness tips, lists of markets, grocery stores and fueling stations that may be open during the outage in your area. More information will be forthcoming as Mendocino County receives updates from PG&E.

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/home/showdocument?id=30687

For more information, please contact the Executive Office at 707-463-4441.

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PG&E: POWER SHUT OFF ‘SHOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED’ IN HUMCO

There was no risk of wildfire in Humboldt County during the recent PG&E power shutoff.

ukiahdailyjournal.com/2019/10/19/pge-power-shutoff-shouldnt-have-happened-in-humboldt-county/

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JACKSON FAMILY WINES has announced the purchase of Tim and Michelle Mullins’s Balo Vineyards winery, vineyard and tasting room on Highway 128 in the heart of Anderson Valley. The purchase includes the 14-acre property, with 6.5 acres planted to organically grown Pinot Noir, a winery with a 7,000-case production capacity, and a Philo tasting room. The purchase price was not disclosed, but the property had originally been listed at $4.6 million. Local wine people say Jackson wanted a tasting room/hospitality center because the former Edmeades place was not approved for one.

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A GOFUNDME campaign has been launched to help buy a new fire truck for the Greenwood Ridge Fire Department. According to the GoFundMe campaign, the department's current truck will need to be replaced at a total cost of $82,000.

To view the GoFundMe please visit: gf.me/v/c/4k5p/new-fire-truck-anderson-valley-volunteer-fd

Update: We have reached the $3,000 match! Thank you everyone!

We have been given a second match — if we raise $15,000, we will be given an additional $15,000. I know we can do this!

The Greenwood Ridge fire truck needs to be replaced. We're raising funds for that replacement - a total cost of $82,000.

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WHO KILLED MICHAEL PINA?

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THE BOARD MEMBERS of the Anderson Valley Historical Society are pleased to invite all AV Historical Society members, and all of our museum docents, to a Members and Docents Appreciation Party at the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum on Sunday, October 27 from 3:00 to 5:00. We’ll have food and drinks for you and a great assemblage of Anderson Valley folks who all share a love of our history and our beautiful museum.

Without our members, who contribute financial support that makes possible our physical upkeep, capital improvements, new exhibits and outreach, we would not be able to provide this great cultural resource to our community and to our county’s many visitors. And without our precious docents, who volunteer weekend afternoons to serve as such knowledgeable and gracious hosts, our museum would not be the welcoming, accessible spot that it has been for so many years.

Non-members who would like in on the fun are certainly welcome. All you have to do, of course, is to become a member as you come in the door, or sign up to be a docent. So to one and all, this is a chance to get fed and feted as an AV Historical Society supporter. That’s what we call immediate gratification!

That’s all for now. Hope to see you at the Membership and Docents party! For more information, please contact Sheri Hansen at 272-7248.

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DRIVE-BY IN BOONVILLE? A preliminary hearing into the shooting in downtown Boonville on August 7th was scheduled for last Thursday, the 60th (legal deadline) day since the alleged shooters, Marshall Leland Stillday, 19, and Alfredo Asher Knight, 18, both of Hopland, and both suspected gang-bangers, were arraigned on charges of attempted murder. However, some last moment complaint from one of the defense lawyers, public defender Douglas Rhoades, caused the hearing to be postponed until Monday at 10:00 — well past deadline for our beloved weekly newssheet. The reason for the delay was discussed in Judge Keith Faulder's luxuriously appointed chambers, and the only explanation given after they came out was that the judge found "good cause" to reset the hearing date — a 60-day time waiver had been taken earlier during the process, to give the lawyers time to prepare, but some lawyers need more time than others.

WHAT WE ALREADY know from the Sheriff’s original presser is that the defendants, Stillday and Knight, followed the intended victim (un-named, so far) from the Boonville Pic’N’Pay to the last southbound street-light in Boonville — near the Pennyroyal Goat Farm — where the vic pulled over to let the tailgating silver Mustang pass. Rather than pass, the defendants allegedly pulled in behind the vic’s vehicle and fired a shot through the back window, barely missing the vic’s head, then sped away southbound on Highway 128. Video surveillance footage from the Pic’N’Pay was used to identify the defendants who were later, on the following Saturday, pulled over and arrested after a “routine” traffic stop. A handgun of the same caliber used in the shooting was found in the silver Mustang.

WE HOPE to provide more details next issue, after the prelim; unless, of course, the defendants elect to waive prelim and move directly to trial.

(Bruce McEwen)

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MICHAEL JAY SANER, 60, of Navarro, was found guilty of murder in the first degree by a Ukiah jury last week, meaning his shotgun murder of Willy Gonzales, also of Navarro, was willful, deliberate, and premeditated. The defendant will be formally sentenced on November 21st at 9 a.m. in Department B at the County Courthouse, Ukiah.

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ATTENTION, GUALALA:

We regret to report that there is a disappointing update regarding the future of the Gualala Streetscape Plan. Please click on the link below to read a detailed account of the most recent events that have put the Gualala Streetscape plan at risk of losing funding.

surfsuper.com/GMAC_Undermines_Important_Community_Compromise_On_Streetscape.pdf

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RESTORING STREAM FLOWS and Increasing Water Supply: Strategies for Farms, People and Fish in the Navarro River Watershed - Community Meeting at River’s Bend Retreat Center, Tuesday, October 29th, 6-9 pm. Potluck supper 6-7 pm, presentations begin promptly at 7:00 pm. Updates and strategies regarding water supply reliability and storage, fisheries restoration, soil and water conservation, flow enhancement and volunteer monitoring will be shared by the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District, The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, Mendocino Redwood Company and Shippensburg University.

Restoration Projects Tour, Wednesday October 30th, 9 am – noon. Tour will begin at the Anderson Valley High School parking lot. We will visit off stream water storage, large wood, rainwater catchment and stormwater projects. To RSVP for the tour call 462-3664, ext. 103 or email Linda.macelwee@mcrcd.org

These events are being paid for through funds from the CA Wildlife Conservation Board, Prop 84, and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

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CONCERNING AIRBNB RENTALS, Michael Turner comments: “We rent out our house part time via airbnb. We live in Ukiah which is probably very different from AV – less tourism, fewer long distance owners. But you overlook some of the ways communities benefit from airbnb. For example I was surprised to learn that most of our renters are out of area workers here on temp jobs: utility crews, medical locums, and legal professionals. For these people our place was much more affordable and comfortable than, say, a motel on State Street. Additionally we pay a fat 10% tax off the top to local government. As recent retirees we want to travel while we still can. We don’t want our home to sit empty and neither do our neighbors. Airbnb provided flexibility, a screening and feedback process, and other forms of help unavailable to us otherwise. The arguments against Airbnb center around greed, but that’s a broad brush. You would be surprised, shocked even, at how little we netted after renting our home for six months. But it was worth it to us to have our home lived in, appreciated and cared for. I would also point out how the anti-Airbnb arguments dovetail with the always popular anti-tourism bias. But looking back at our rental history every tenant had some connection to the community, either the aforementioned temp employees, or Ukiah expats returning for family events. So community benefits abound, and should be weighed against the counter arguments, which seem to me largely of the scapegoat variety.”

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METHODIST MINISTER AND HIS WIFE ADOPT CHILDREN OF ALL RACES

(Life Magazine – November 12, 1951)

Ten years ago, like many childless couples, Carl and Helen Doss began their family by adopting a boy. When they went back to the agency for more, they were told they would have to wait – unless they would accept an “unadoptable’ child, i.e., usually one of mixed racial parentage.

Carl Doss, a Methodist minister, and his wife Helen considered the idea carefully and today they have an international family consisting of: Donald, 10, first child to be adopted, who is English-Scottish-German; Laura, 6, Chinese-Japanese; Elaine, 6, Japanese-French-Irish; Teddy, 6, Filipino-Spanish; Diane, 5, Chinese-Hawaiian-German-Indian-French-Irish; Susan, 5, French-English-Swiss (“unadoptable” because of a disfiguring birthmark which has disappeared through treatment); Rita, 5, Mexican-Indian; Timmy, 4, Japanese-Mexican; and Alex, 2, Korean-Chinese-Japanese.

Carl Doss, 37, a successful painting contractor who turned to the ministry 10 years ago, gets $250 a month, plus a house, from his two small churches. Shrewd management keeps all the Dosses well fed and healthy. A vegetable garden and chickens supply one third of their food. Carl buys sacks of dried milk wholesale which, mixed with canned and fresh milk, cuts the cost to 8¢ a quart for their daily minimum requirement of 12 quarts. In the nightly ritual of bathing, the kids are dunked in an assembly line. Carl pops them into the soapy tub; they swish through the suds and emerge at the other end to be dried by Helen. This Christmas the tenth and final Doss child, a Mexican boy, is expected to join them in Boonville, Calif. Even with all her children to tuck in every night, Helen is completing a book with the unsurprising title of The More the Merrier. (Book is named “Family Nobody Wanted”)

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CLARIFICATION: AVA Reader Tom Madden — one of the Orr Springs Road/Comptche residents who appeared before the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) recently to request “detachment” from the Coast Hospital District, provided some important additional information regarding the reasons the detachers want to detach. Madden said 1) Only the “Comptche” residents with Ukiah zipcodes (95482) — which are closer to Ukiah than Comptche on Orr Springs Road — have requested to be detached, not the entire Comptche area (95427). And 2) the tax rate they object to — mysteriously not mentioned in the LAFCO meeting — for those residents has gone from a modest $15 per parcel to $180 per parcel under the newly increased parcel tax rate. Further, some of the Orr Springs road property owners have multiple parcels, meaning they may pay $1000 or more now in parcel taxes while they are in Ukiah’s zipcode and seldom use Coast Hospital. Madden also notes that since the big tax increase, they’ve all been following the Coast Hospital’s financial situation very closely and can’t help but notice how top-heavy Coast Hospital is with high paid administrators that seem be taking a disproportionate amount of that newly increased parcel tax. Madden agreed that maybe from the outside it might seem minor, but for those hit by such a large tax increase when they don’t use the Coast Hospital with its apparently admin-heavy costs much, it’s worth their effort.

(Mark Scaramella)

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SETTLERS CHANGED STORIES BEHIND FROG WOMAN ROCK

by Arthur Dawson

That’s both the latest and oldest name for a feature that’s also been called Lover’s Leap. You may know it as Squaw Rock, a moniker now widely recognized as derogatory. This imposing landmark was listed as a State Historical Landmark under that name in 1959. For many years the Hopland Band of the Pomo petitioned for the name to be changed to the translation of bi-tsin’ ma-ca ka-be, its Northern Pomo name. Bi-tsin’ ma-ca is the word for “Frog Woman” and ka-be means “cliff.”

Most of the tales about Frog Woman Rock reflect how poorly 19th-century settlers understood indigenous culture. Stories were reworked, or fabricated whole, given a tragically romantic sheen and passed off as authentic native lore. Just as the Pomo’s territory was overrun by the newcomers, so were the old stories co-opted.

One such story was written down by a white schoolgirl after it was supposedly told to her by a native servant. (Slavery of California’s native peoples was legal until after the end of the Civil War.) It related how a native woman, heartbroken by her unfaithful man, picked up a rock and jumped from the cliff. When she landed on him and his new lover, who were sleeping at the bottom, all three were killed. Hence, “Lover’s Leap.”

Another tells of two brothers, both vying for a beautiful woman. When one discovers he is not her chosen, he throws a spear at her, which misses and kills his sibling instead. The woman traps the evil-doer inside the rock and condemns him to spend eternity there. As a warning to others, she put his murdered brother’s profile high up on the cliff where it could be easily seen, visible on southbound 101 between mile markers 6.4 and 6.2. When a railroad tunnel was bored through Frog Woman Rock in 1889, a story circulated that the evil brother’s spirit had been released back into the world.

None of these stories have been verified as legitimately native in origin. But where some see a human visage, others see the face of a frog. Speakers of both the Northern and Central Pomo languages have verified that this location is known as Frog Woman’s dwelling — she’s an important figure in Pomo lore and the wife of the trickster Coyote. Bi-tsin’ ma-ca is described as having the face of a beautiful woman and the body of a frog. From her lair high on the rock face, she jumps onto unsuspecting men and has sex until she’s satisfied. Then, like a black widow, she devours them.

Frog Woman Rock looms above the Russian River and Highway 101 about 6 miles north of the Sonoma-Mendocino County line.

Ethnographer John Hudson originally collected this story in the late 1800s. In 2011, the State Office of Historic Preservation officially changed the name to “Frog Woman Rock” as a way to honor and respect the still-living heritage of the region’s First Nations. Hudson noted that “the rock is avoided because of bi-tsin’ ma-ca living there.” Unlike 101, the old trail detoured to the west of Frog Woman Rock. Best to take no chances.

(Courtesy, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat)


Then there's this written by Tony Phillips.

"The 6th December 1891 Sunday Morning Star newspaper published a legend written by Dr. J.C. Tucker from the recollections of an elderly native American woman. This legend of Squaw Rock may have metamorphosed in retelling: A native American woman who died in the 1850s was said to have lived with a daughter, known as Pancha, fathered by one of the Russians stationed at Fort Ross. Pancha fell in love with a gold prospector identified as Archie Henderson. Henderson had broken his leg in a fall and was nursed through recovery by Pancha and her mother. Pancha became despondent after Henderson was later found dead. A man identified as Concho was believed responsible for Henderson’s death. Concho was expelled from his tribe and the bereaved Pancha jumped or fell to her death. When people observed rocks falling from the cliffs through the following years, some said Pancha’s spirit was casting stones down at some passing person she thought to be Concho." So perhaps that's where the original story was born. Spanish conquerors enslaved the California Indians. By the time American settlers came, the original population of the native peoples was almost completely decimated by European diseases, mistreatment and enslavement. Never heard of the white girl and her story but that plays well today too.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, OCTOBER 21, 2019

Carlsson, Cremo, Hammond

KURT CARLSSON, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

CHRISTIAN CREMO, Willits. Domestic abuse, protective order violation.

MICHAEL HAMMOND, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

Holm, Hurd, Joaquin

ELIZABETH HOLM, Redwood Valley. Stolen property.

JOSHUA HURD, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SAMSON JOAQUIN, Covelo. Burglary, vandalism, conspiracy.

Ladd, Lucas, Martinez

CODY LADD, Ukiah. Parole violation.

JESSIE LUCAS, Ukiah. False ID, community supervistion violation.

JENNIFER MARTINEZ, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

McDonald, Monday, Murray, Ray

MATTHEW MCDONALD, Valley Village/Calpella. DUI.

GABRIEL MONDAY, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, criminal threats, false imprisonment.

JEFFREY MURRAY, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

JASON RAY III, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

Reynolds, Simpson, Zambrano

LINDA REYNOLDS, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

MARK SIMPSON, Ukiah. Under influence, resisting, probation revocation.

JOSE ZAMBRANO, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, false imprisonment, damage to power connecting lines.

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NICK TOSCHES, Music Journalist and Novelist, Dead at 69

“Noise Boys” rock critic penned famed Jerry Lee Lewis biography Hellfire, infamous Rolling Stone reviews and seven novels

rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nick-tosches-music-journalist-novelist-obituary-901445/

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PETE BUTTIGIEG IS A SHARP CORPORATE TOOL

With the mutual alignment of Buttigieg and his corporate healthcare-industry donors, Mayor Pete's approach seems to be a case of a flimflamming candidate who poses as a forthright leader.

by Norman Solomon

Pete Buttigieg burst on the national scene early this year as a new sort of presidential candidate. But it turns out he’s a very old kind—a glib ally of corporate America posing as an advocate for working people and their families. That has become apparent this fall as Buttigieg escalates his offensive against Medicare for All.

A not-funny thing has happened to Buttigieg on the campaign trail. As he kept collecting big checks from corporate executives and wealthy donors, he went from being “all for” a single-payer Medicare for All system in January to trashing it in the debate last week as a plan that would kick “150 million Americans off of their insurance in four short years.” The demagoguery won praise from corporate media outlets.

Those outlets have often lauded Buttigieg for his fundraising totals this year without scrutiny of the funding sources. They skew toward the wealthy—and toward donors with a vested interest in protecting the status quo.

“Of course, from a voter’s point of view, what really matters is not how much financial support a candidate is getting, but who they’re getting it from—because those supporters may not have the same interests as the voter,” Jim Naureckas at the media watchdog FAIR pointed out this summer. “In the case of Buttigieg, the two main sources of funds seem to be the tech industry . . . and the financial industry, that traditional source of funds for corporate-oriented Democrats.”

So far this year, Buttigieg has reported $27 million in contributions of $200 and above—accounting for 52.5 percent of his total dollars raised. Compare that to Elizabeth Warren at 29.6 percent and Bernie Sanders at 24.9 percent.

And major sources of Buttigieg’s funding are in harmony with his recent hostility toward Medicare for All. “Pharmaceutical, health insurance, and hospital industry donors have flocked to Mayor Pete all year,” journalist Alex Kotch reported last week. “As of mid-2019, he was second only to Donald Trump in overall campaign cash from donors in the health sector. Among Democratic candidates, he was second to former Vice President Joe Biden in terms of pharmaceutical and health insurance donations.”

Reporting for the investigative website Sludge, Kotch wrote: “Over 100 individuals in leadership, legal, consulting, or financing roles in health sector donated $200 or more to Pete for America between July and September. These donors include pharmaceutical industry leaders such as the chief corporate affairs officer at drugmaker Pfizer, the president of Astex Pharmaceuticals, a state lobbyist for Biogen, a vice president of public policy at Novartis, and the deputy vice president at the nation’s largest pharmaceutical trade association, PhRMA, as well as attorneys for AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck.”

Buttigieg’s reversal of avowed support for Medicare for All is classic opportunism. In early 2018, he was unequivocal via Twitter: “I, Pete Buttigieg, politician, do henceforth and forthwith declare, most affirmatively and indubitably, unto the ages, that I do favor Medicare for All.”

Eight months ago, as The Hill noted, “Buttigieg also appeared to defend single-payer [Medicare for All] health insurance in a February 2019 interview on MSNBC's ‘Morning Joe.’” But now, on its website, the Buttigieg campaign is engaged in a herculean pretzel effort at doubletalk, declaring that his “affordable public plan will incentivize private insurers to compete on price and bring down costs. If private insurers are not able to offer something dramatically better, this public plan will create a natural glide-path to Medicare for All.”

Left unexplained is how Buttigieg is providing any sort of “glide-path” to Medicare for All by now deploying insurance-industry talking points to denounce Medicare for All. Buttigieg is trying to poison the well by conjuring up an effort to precipitously dump people off of health coverage and deprive them of “choice”—deliberately confusing the current “choice” of predatory for-profit insurance plans with the genuine full choice of healthcare providers that enhanced Medicare for everyone would provide.

“The efficiencies of a single-payer system would make universal coverage affordable and give everyone in the United States their free choice of doctors and hospitals,” David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler wrote this month in The Nation. “But that goal will remain out of reach if private insurers are allowed to continue gaming the system.”

Himmelstein and Woolhandler, who are professors of public health and cofounders of Physicians for a National Health Program, assessed the healthcare scenarios being touted by the two most prominent candidates now attacking Warren and Sanders: “Some proposals, including those by Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, would offer a Medicare-like public plan for sale alongside private plans on the insurance exchanges now available under the Affordable Care Act. These buy-in reforms would minimize the need for new taxes, since most enrollees would be charged premiums. But tens of millions would remain uninsured or with coverage so skimpy, they still couldn’t afford care.”

The sordid story of Buttigieg’s about-face on Medicare for All was well-documented and deftly analyzed days ago by Jezebel writer Esther Wang under the headline “A Brief History of Pete Buttigieg Faking It on Medicare for All.” She observed:

Buttigieg is not the only Democratic presidential candidate who has switched positions on supporting Medicare for All, or is just generally using the public and political confusion around the issue to undermine real efforts to move to a universal system. Kamala Harris, who co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’ Senate bill, has consistently waffled, and has settled on a plan that continues to let private insurers play a role. But Buttigieg is the only candidate who is now making opposition to the Sanders- and Warren-backed Medicare for All a central focus of his campaign.

With the mutual alignment of Buttigieg and his corporate healthcare-industry donors, Mayor Pete’s approach seems to be a case of a flimflamming candidate who poses as a forthright leader. For the general public, instead of “Mayor Pete,” a more apt nickname might be “Mayor Elite.”

As for Buttigieg’s slippery slogan of “Medicare for all who want it,” Rep. Ro Khanna pointed out that such a setup “won't bring the administrative costs down of private insurers or maximize negotiation with Big Pharma and hospitals.” And: “This means higher premiums, higher drug costs, higher deductibles, and more denied claims for the middle class.”

An in-depth report from the Political Economy Research Institute—“Economic Analysis of Medicare for All”—concluded that “Medicare for All has the potential to achieve major cost savings in its operations relative to the existing U.S. health care system. We estimate that, through implementation of Medicare for All, overall U.S. health care costs could fall by about 19 percent relative to the existing system.”

Yet Buttigieg has joined with Joe Biden to open up a well-funded, double-barreled assault on Medicare for All.

“I am tired of seeing Democrats defend a dysfunctional healthcare system where 87 million people are uninsured or underinsured and 30,000 people die every year because they lack adequate coverage,” Bernie Sanders wrote last Friday in an email to supporters. “So I was disappointed this week to see that Joe Biden used the talking points of the health insurance industry to attack Medicare for All and our campaign.”

While Buttigieg is not strong in national polls right now, he’s polling notably well in Iowa, where the first voting for the Democratic presidential nomination will occur in early-February caucuses. And with $23.4 million in the bank, he’s got much more money in hand than Biden ($9 million). The only rivals with more money than Buttigieg are the two he’s assailing for their resolute support of Medicare for All—Sanders ($33.7 million) and Warren ($25.7 million).

While I personally support Sanders, I’m equally appalled by Buttigieg’s attacks on Warren. As part of a campaign strategy that aims to undermine both of his progressive opponents, the mayor continues to falsely characterize Medicare for All—no matter how much confusion and disinformation he creates along the way.

Whether or not Pete Buttigieg can win the nomination, he has certainly emerged as a sharp corporate tool.

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THE CENTRALITY OF—Stories from the oldsters

by Pebbles Trippet

The cannabis plant is the center of a living culture, a way of life for millions of people in the underground for generations, shaping shadow economies and experimental genetics under conditions of prohibition since 1937. As stewards of the whole plant and protectors of the natural environment, these are the stories of the people who got us this far over decades, the cultural and economic rewards being greater than the risks.

Original pioneers set the stage for who we are today. Due to the dedication of back-to-the-landers and waves of hippies from the 60s-90s, we are growing cannabis hemp at this moment on the very trails they blazed decades ago. Five of those elders are on a program telling their stories Sat Oct 26 3:30-5:30pm Kelley House Museum, Mendocino, behind Moody's.

Cannabis on the Coast: Stories from Old Timers Jen Procaccio, moderator

Douglas Fir

Long time Humboldt County chronicler, author of Hippies & Weed in 'chronic freedom', Douglas Fir made an historic 1979 journey to Afghanistan seeking landrace seeds for enhanced weed based on short seasons of northern California's climate rather than seeds from tropical countries with long seasons (Mexico, Columbia). That paradigm shift is known as the arrival of Indica, a body high, mixed with Sativa for psychoactivity -- a blend bred over generations formed the basic genetics of the Emerald Triangle today.

Cecile Cutler, aka Ananda

Masseuse, yoga teacher, herb maker, teacher of Tai Chi at Marin College for 25 years, author of a TaiChi sourcebook picked up by Harper & Row, and a book designer for Simon & Schuster. Ananda was always searching for a 'magic formula for a healing massage to relieve pain as well as soriasis'. So she created her own culinary blend of 9 herbs including cannabis, a concentrate 'made from whole hemp plant'. On her 90th birthday, she described herself as "a citizen who loves herbs."

Fred Gardner

Publisher of 'O'Shaughnessy's'since 2003, a former editor at 'Scientific American' and 'Synapse,' the UCSF weekly and press secretary for the district attorney of San Francisco. Dr. Tod Mikuriya urged him to bring out a journall in which cannabis clinicians could share findings with each another and with patients. O'S has covered the medical marijuana movement in all its aspects —science, medicine, politics, law, history, you name it. Gardner has written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser since 1985.

Pebbles Trippet

Pebbles Trippet helped integrate public lunchrooms in Tulsa OK in 1960 and expanded toward peace internationally, against the draft locally, for women's and all people's equal rights including cannabis people. After 10 arrests in 11 years, prosecution in 5 counties, jail in 4, P v Trippet (1997) won 3 things on appeal after conviction: 1) right to transport medicine you can legally possess or cultivate 2) 'reasonably related' quantity standard: based on one's medical condition, including an annual supply 3) retroactivity.

Pebbles co-founded Medical Marijuana Patients Union 2000; grew working relationships with Sheriff Tony Craver and DA Norm Vroman for years. Currently senior editor and columnist at Skunk Magazine, based in Canada. Calling for proliferation of Elders Councils to guide/protect cannabis culture and policy.

Richard Jergenson

Two Willits brothers Richard and Phil Jergenson, co-founders of Proto Pipe, are known for inventing, producing and distributing the unbreakable all-in-1 brass pipe with long community roots and patent updates in its 50th year. A 1986 paraphernalia law sent Tommy Chong to prison for Chong's bongs and made it a federal crime to export metal smoking pipes. They explain how they got the inspiration to create an unbreakable brass pipe and regained control from the copyright thief who stole millions from the inventors.

Richard is also an archivist with a vast museum of marijuana artifacts and publications "telling the story of the 100 year demonization of the cannabis plant with emphasis on back-to-the-land movement and how they jump started sales of solar technology in the Emerald Triangle." One of the most treasured museum pieces is a 1000-page encyclopedic book known as 'chronic freedom', packed with color art, posters, articles, soil bags, personal stories from inside the southern Humboldt '40-year long insurgency' as dubbed by Scott Holmquist, author of chronic freedom.

* * *

A BLACK CAT HOLIDAY, 1905 Taken from The Black Cat Book, written by Walter Copeland, and illustrated by Charles Robinson.

* * *

A BEHAVIORAL HEALTH FORUM FOR OUR COMMUNITY

(presented by the League of Women Voters)

Tuesday OCTOBER 29, 6PM @ Caspar Community Center

Please join us for this important conversation

Learn where we are going with MEASURE B and with Mental Health Services in our community.

The participants:

  • Dan Gjerde - Mendocino County Supervisor, District Four
  • Ted Williams - Moderator / Mendocino County Supervisor, District Five
  • Tammy Moss-Chandler - Director, Mendocino County Health & Human Services Agency
  • Dr. Jenine Miller - Director, Mendocino County Behavioral Health Services & Measure B Committee Member
  • Emily Strachan - Vice Chair, Mendocino County Behavioral Health Board
  • Camille Schrader — Chief Program Officer, Redwood Quality Management
  • John Wetzler — Former Chair of Mental Health Board & caretaker for SMI family member

* * *

VINTAGE FRENCH POSTCARD, 1913

* * *

A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR ALL

Join us for a hope inspiring presentation on the spiritual evolution of humanity, the way forward through our current crises, and how we will save our planet.

Justice, Co-operation and Peace are assured!

Friday, Oct. 25, 7:00 pm at the MCSL Gathering Place in the Fort Bragg Company Store

Free Admission

Presented by: the Sharing for Peace Network (a group of volunteers) in co-operation with Share International USA

For information: 895-3134, www.share-international.us

Without sharing there can be no justice. Without justice, no peace. Without peace no future.

Bill Allen, nancybill@mcn.org

* * *

ENTER, THE DRAGON

by James Kunstler

You’d think Hillary Clinton might come up with a better zinger than “Russian asset” when she flew out of her volcano on leathery wings Friday and tried to jam her blunted beak through Tulsi Gabbard’s heart. Much speculation has been brewing in the Webiverse that the Flying Reptile of Chappaqua might seek an opening to join the Democratic Party 2020 free-for-all. Wasn’t “Russian asset” the big McGuffin in the Mueller Report — the tantalizing and elusive triggering device that added up to nothing — and aren’t most people over twelve years old onto that con by now?

It’s not like Tulsi G was leading the pack, with two cable news networks and the nation’s leading newspapers ignoring her existence. Tulsi must have been wearing her Kevlar flak vest because she easily fended off the aerial attack and fired back at the squawking beast with a blast of napalm:

“Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies…”

Ouch! The skirmish does raise the question, though: is the Democratic Party so sick and rotted that it would resort to entertaining Hillary Clinton as the 2020 nominee? Fer sure, I’d say. The party has been on suicide watch since the Mueller Report blew up in its face. At this point, it’s choking to death on its current leaders in the race. Apart from his incessant hapless blundering on the campaign trail, Joe Biden will never survive assisting his son Hunter’s grifting adventures in foreign lands. It’s just too cut-and-dried and in-your-face. The kid scammed millions out of Ukraine and China and it’s all documented. Mr. Biden will soon announce his retirement from the field — to spend more time with his family, or for vague health reasons.

Mrs. Warren has been on a roll since August — with Joe B foundering — but she has two big problems: 1. She seems incapable of telling the truth about her personal “story.” For decades she pretended to be a Cherokee Indian for the purpose of career advancement on various college faculties (including Harvard), and lately she told a whopper about being fired from a teaching job years ago on account of being pregnant, apparently unaware that a tape recording existed of her telling a totally different story — that she quit the job to do something else, even when they offered her a new contract. How many times would those bytes be replayed in 2020? And 2. She’s retailing a cargo of economic policy bullshit that would turn the USA into Venezuela with sprinkles on top, and she’s already hard-pressed to explain all the numbers that don’t add up in her Medicare-for-all package. Over the weekend, she demanded that transgender illegal border jumpers “must” be released into the United States. There’s a winning issue in the Rustbelt states!

And of course, there are questions a’plenty about the DNC itself and the peculiar mix of race hustlers, Wall Street catamites and war-hawks currently running the outfit. Sounds like a Hillary quorum to me. The DNC handed off the whole operation to the Hillary campaign in 2016 and fixed the nomination with super-delegate hugger-mugger. Is it possible that Hillary still controls the leadership? My guess is that a big chunk of the loot assembled into the Clinton Foundation over the years has enabled HRC to buy the tattered remnants of the DNC lock, stock, and barrel. All that funny money bought a whole lot more, too, including all the predicating bullshit that kicked off RussiaGate, UkraineGate, and now ImpeachGate.

The next gate to go through will be the wholesale prosecution of a whole lot of government officials, elected, appointed, and retired, for the malicious shenanigans that led to the current administrative civil war between the branches and agencies of the government itself. It may prove to be a gate too far for the existence of constitutional government as we’ve known it. All that rot leads to the heads of the big fish: Barack Obama and Hillary. When they are officially implicated, that will be the last roundup for the old donkey. Perhaps something new will organize around the stalwart Tulsi G. She is not alone out there.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

* * *

* * *

THE WOLF AT THE DOOR: Adventures in Fundraising with Alexander Cockburn

by Jeffrey St. Clair

CounterPunch went online 20 years ago, just in time for Clinton’s war on Serbia. Clinton’s war was premeditated, our transit to the World-Wide Web was reluctant, at best. Cockburn’s relationship with computers was hostile. Mine was indifferent. I surfed the web, like anyone else, but had no idea how it would be useful for us. At the time, CounterPunch was a 6-page newsletter that we published fortnightly. We called it “fortnightly” because the word had a nice ring to it and no one was precisely sure how many days or even weeks a fortnight encompassed. But if we ran pieces online, who would pay to receive our newsletter? We remained stubbornly committed to print and our 5,000 or so subscribers. Still do. Where will the web be when the electromagnetic pulse wipes the slate clean?

The fact that we even had a domain name we owed entirely to the foresight of one of our tech-savvy donors, who told me that even though we were both too dumb to realize it now, we’d thank him for it one day. He reserved the CounterPunch domain in 1997. We didn’t start using it for another year, when the cruise missiles started shattering the night in Belgrade. The war went on for 78 days and nights, roughly four fortnights. The web allowed us to cover Clinton’s war in real-time. Cockburn said he was willing to try it as an “experiment,” fully expecting it to fail. He had just one condition: that he never had to learn how to post a piece. Thus management of the CounterPunch website fell into my hands by default. I used a primitive software program called Pagemill for the first few years and it looked primitive, like scribblings by Cy Twombley. There was no time to take any classes or seminars. “Just get it up as fast as you can, Jeffrey,” Cockburn said. “And no complaints.” I knew nothing then about html, hyper-links, analytics or even how to load a photo. I still don’t know much. I’d loved my archaic Pagemill program. It was web-design for simpletons. I threw a tantrum the day I was forced to give it up for the damnable Dreamweaver, which was far too complex for my sophomoric skill set.

Nevertheless, people came. Came by the thousands and then the 10s of thousands. They came from all over the world: Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, Iceland, South Korea, India. By the 2000 presidential elections, CounterPunch had gone global. Even so, we had no idea how to make the website pay for itself or to help support CounterPunch. For years, we didn’t have a shopping cart or any way to take credit card orders or sell subscriptions online. We simply asked people to mail in a check to the office in Petrolia. In a couple of years, our readership had grown from 5,000 print subscribers to 15,000 viewers a day on the website.

But the funding base had remained pretty much the same. We were supported by our subscribers and by the extra money we raised from hitting them up once a year through a direct mail letter usually sent in November. Alex enjoyed writing the letters.

He told me once, he thought he could have enjoyed a great career in advertising or public relations, a fantasy fed by our friend and counselor Ben Sonnenberg, the longtime editor of Grand Street, whose father nearly invented the seductive art of public relations. And they were successful. Or successful enough to keep us afloat, though the coffers had usually been drained to a shallow tidepool by the time October rolled around.

Alex told me once that he was good at raising money, because he’d spent so much time avoiding debt collectors. He said he learned the finer points of this art from his father, Claud, who like most writers of radical journalism lived close to the margin most of his life. It was from Claud that Alex inherited some of his favorite phrases: “the wolf at the door,” “pony up,” “begging bowl.” (Of course, Alex loved all canids, wild and domestic, and would have gladly left out a shank from one of his pal Greg Smith’s lambs for any wolf on the prowl.) We used to joke about Alex’s six phone lines, one for each creditor. He also had a different accent for each creditor, once pretending to be his brother Patrick, who was reporting on the siege of Mosul at the time. Listening to these calls was hearing a master at work, like a character from one of his favorite novels, The Charmer by Patrick Hamilton.

DONATE TODAY

In those days, the CounterPunch staff was so small we could all squeeze into Alex’s Valiant, when it would start. After Ken Silverstein left for greener pastures, it was largely down to Alex, Becky Grant and me. We worked 11 months out of the year, taking August off, and a weeklong holiday during Christmas usually highlighted by a New Year’s Eve party at Alex’s house along the Mattole River. Those years can seem idyllic in hindsight. We worked hard and drank harder, often hard cider brewed by Alex and CounterPunch’s board chair Joe Paff. Still, we were fairly productive by almost any standard. We wrote three books together in four years, two of them (‘Whiteout’ and our scathing biography of Al Gore) were substantial works requiring months of research. We both wrote a column a week separately and one together (Nature and Politics). We wrote most of the copy for CounterPunch, 10 to 12 stories a month. We both had weekly radio shows, Alex in South Africa and mine on KBOO in Portland. We both wrote for the Anderson Valley Advertiser and occasional pieces for New Left Review, The Progressive, the New Statesman, and City Pages. I wrote for the Village Voice and In These Times and Alex had a bi-monthly column in The Nation. But CounterPunch was home base. It’s the journal that we felt the closest to and saved our best writing for.

Sometimes the bank accounts would evaporate even earlier. On September 11, 2001, for example. I was jolted from bed by an early morning wake-up call from Cockburn. “Jeffrey, turn on your TV and describe what you see.” He hadn’t paid his cable bill and they’d shut off his service. I spent the next several hours narrating the fall of the Twin Towers, the crash at the Pentagon, the panicky peregrinations of George W. Bush and Cheney’s tightening grip on the throat of the Republic. Our lives as journalists changed profoundly that day as well. From September 11 onward, we published nearly every day of the week, week after week, month after month, year after year. At first, we ran only two or three stories a day. (And to fill in those blank hours on the clock, we insanely decided to start a book publishing venture!) Now we publish 12 to 14 each day and 40 to 45 every Friday for our Weekend Edition. We were online for good, like it or not. No vacations, no holidays, no sick days. The web, we soon found out, waits for no one.

We were online, but we still had no idea how to make our web-based journalism pay for itself. We tried running Google Ads for a few months, but got banned for what Google imperiously declared was “clicker fraud,” even though we hadn’t been the culprits. Apparently, some over-enthusiastic CounterPuncher had repeatedly clicked on Google text links, for which we received a return of a nickel a click. We think it was a CounterPuncher. Of course, it might have been Alex’s cockatiel, Percy, who in addition to whistling the Internationale, took a fancy to Cockburn’s keyboard, battering it with his beak four or five times a day. At the time, a close friend of ours was dating a top Google lawyer, who to prove his devotion to her swore that he would have the ban reversed. He failed. She dumped him. But the verdict of the corporate algorithm is absolute. It tolerates no appeals.

Alex, a Luddite to the core, believed that every new feature of the cyberworld was an evil manifestation to be shunned, shamed and exorcized. Thus he continued to refer to CounterPunch as a “Twitter-free Zone” for nearly a year after Nat had set up the CounterPunch Twitter account, which now has more than 65,000 followers. No one had the heart to tell him the news.

Early on we tried writing a few grant proposals, but never got one we actually applied for — our position on Israel proving fatal to our aspirations for funding. It’s just as well. We weren’t going to dance to any master’s tune or be constrained by anyone else’s ideological strings. We weren’t going to saddle ourselves with ads, either. Partly this was owing to my own incompetence. I had no idea how to use Flash or any of the other plug-ins that ad companies demanded we deploy. But we also both deplored the way online ads intruded on our own reading experiences and didn’t want to inflict that on our readers, if we could help it. And so far, so good.

In the end, we’ve largely depended on the kindness of our readers to survive. And, though there have been some close calls, this simple and direct approach of appealing to those who know us best hasn’t failed in 26 years. Not yet, anyway. After Alex died, a woman approached me at the funeral and said rather smugly, “Well, I guess this is the end of CounterPunch.” I was angered at her remark and Alex would have been, too. This woman was part of the Nation magazine’s delegation to the funeral. She was married to a multi-millionaire and neither of them had ever given CounterPunch a dime. They even asked Alex to provide them a complimentary subscription to the magazine. My irritation with NationLady was only in part about how dismissive she was over my own contribution to CounterPunch, which had been substantial since Ken’s departure.

It stemmed more from the flippant disregard for our writers and tens of thousands of readers. CounterPunch was no longer merely a platform for our voices. It was now the home base for hundreds of different writers from across the country and around the globe. I checked this morning. Since going online, we’ve published more than 5,500 different writers. CounterPunch belongs to them, as much as it does to us. Still, Mrs. MoneyBags was right about one thing. We were more broke than we’d ever been the week that Alex died. But we published the day Alex died, the day he was buried and every day since. The readers came through, again and again and again.

We’ve grown in the seven years since Alex passed. The online readership is probably twice what it was in August 2012. We’re publishing more pieces each week and adding new writers every day. The website has been completely revamped into a more efficient and flexible WordPress design that even a Luddite like me can’t screw-up too badly. It even works on smartphones, where the analytics say nearly half of the site’s visitors read CounterPunch. To keep up, our staff (still tiny by most standards) has doubled in size, from three to six: Becky, Deva and Nichole in the business office and me, Josh and Nat on the editorial side.

That means our costs have nearly doubled. What hasn’t doubled, however, is the number of print magazine subscribers who used to be (and in many ways remain) the primary funders of CounterPunch. Everywhere, print is in decline, even here at CounterPunch. So we’re depending more and more on the community of online readers who utilize CounterPunch for free: no clickbait, no ads, no paywalls.

I remember a conversation Alex and I had on the night before the last fundraiser we did together in October 2011. He was sick then, sicker than any of us knew, but not showing it. He was impish, excited and anxious, as he always was this time of year.

“Are you ready for another shot in the dark, Jeffrey?” he asked.

“What if we fail this time?”

“Well, we can always do something else.”

“Do we know how to do anything else?”

“Of course, we do. We know how to make cider, go trout-fishing and listen to Chuck Berry. What more do we need?”

And now another October has rolled around and the old wolf, perhaps loping past the spirit of Cockburn in the pepperwood grove in the Mattole Valley, is back at our door. We humbly put forth our begging bowl, confident that CounterPunchers will once again pony up.

Onward,

Jeffrey St. Clair

Donate today (PayPal accepted) or mail a check/call us at:

(707) 629-3683

PO Box 228

Petrolia, CA 95558

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent books are Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution and The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (with Joshua Frank) He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JSCCounterPunch.)

(Courtesy: CounterPunch.org)

* * *

* * *

FOX ‘NEWS’ & THE UGLY AMERICAN

Editor,

Some time in the recent past this idiot Jerry Philbrick proclaimed as though it were a virtue that Fox “news” was one of his sources for hysterical bullshit. This back woods fool is a classic example of a failed education system and the terrible success of state propaganda. Anyone who can still deny the fraudulent nature of this asshole in the Oval Office is a prime example of Taliban style fundamentalist blindness. So it goes for idiots and fools who can’t deal with facts because they are cowards and useless feeders. To hell with the anti-Americans!

If you’re a journalist who wants to report the abusive reality of what actually happens out there in the real world, you won’t be getting hired by Fox News or NPR for that matter. Following is an employment ad for a journalist/infotainer at Fox or any other mainstream media outlet, and how it would read if honesty and sanity were part of our society; ‘Journalist Position Open at Fox News Factory, Must Have The Following Skill Sets and Traits:'

A- an overwhelming and slavish reliance on official sources

B- an overweening interest in the utterances of experts and specialist

C- a highly developed degree of self censorship not corruptible by civilized attributes such as empathy, humility, compassion, or any other Christian values

D- a thoroughly seared conscience with a long track record of enmity towards any annoying virtues such as honesty, integrity, sanity, morality, or ethics

E- a Hollywood worthy appearance and style that’s heavily informed vanity, pride, bigotry, in short the seven deadly sins

F- an absolute loathing of truth and facts, it helps to be delusional and a practiced sociopathic liar as well

O’Riley and Hannity are psychopaths who should be locked up and silenced for their sadistic cheerleading for death and destruction in Persia as they’ve done with Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and all too many other victims of US criminal foreign policy. These two bottom readers have the blood of millions of innocents of their hands.

Anyone careless enough to place themselves in front of the TV to be lobotomized by state and corporate propaganda is a poor excuse for a citizen. They’re either a fool or a media critic doing a hazardous job. Fox News is a toxic waste site that’s anti-democracy and anti-American. Fox News helps our evil Pentagon and State Department insure national insecurity and global hatred of Americans.

The extreme level of brainwashing conducted on Americans is matched by the brutal global dominance of US imperialism. In terms of Cold War history and US foreign policy, Americans are by necessity the stupidest people on the planet. The dumbed down citizen tax slave is an accomplice to US international lawlessness, crimes against humanity, war crimes, treaty violations, biological warfare, economic warfare, nuclear warfare, ecological devastation, and the disruption and ruination of much of the world for the sake of US global corporate capitalism.

I can just hear the brainwashed fools telling me to love-it-or-leave-it! I can hear the confused small minds calling me anti-American! Sorry folks, I refuse to be driven from my country of birth by thieves and liars, and degenerates. And in case you haven’t noticed I don’t have to leave it, it already left me by being off shored by greedy capitalist freaks. My fellow Americans who worship militarism, consumer capitalism, bigotry, and national supremacist delusions of exceptionalism, are the enemies of America and the world.

Any American who doesn’t think they’re living in an empire is clueless. If you don’t know where you are then you are lost. If you’re lost you can’t notice the massive non-stop propaganda and mind control being done to you. To hell with corporate mass media, turn the mind rotting garbage off, guard your mind or lose your soul! Honor the many journalist and scholars who’ve committed their lives to that endangered species called truth! To hell with all bigots, sadist, and warmongers who get off on the killing of innocent civilians and the destruction of their homes and countries!

Good Luck,

Ross Dendy

Elk

* * *

YOUTH FOOTBALL APPEARS TO BE SAFE

Adolescents who play contact sports, including football, are no more likely to experience cognitive impairment, depression or suicidal thoughts in early adulthood than their peers, suggests a new University of Colorado Boulder study of nearly 11,000 youth followed for 14 years.

medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-link-youth-contact-sports-cognitive.html

* * *

IT'S NOT ALL LOSS--hair, hearing, muscles, sex drive--when you get old. If you keep your marbles, that heady sensation of dots connecting in your mind, in your understanding, increases. As your physical vitality dribbles away, your intellectual vitality will, if you see to it, increase at a satisfying pace. It doesn't make up for those nights of lovemaking when you were at that age, but it's a pretty damn fine consolation prize. Not that you were stupid in your salad days or become sexless later. The ratio changes. I recommend continuing to breathe in and out (and pay attention to it; slow breathing rules!).

Not Mitch:

— Mitch Clogg

* * *

SANCTUARY FOREST SAYS VAN ARKEN COMMUNITY FOREST BECOMING A REALITY

Sanctuary Forest’s plans to protect 75% of the Van Arken watershed and create a community forest in Whitethorn are nearly complete. Galen Doherty, Director of Sanctuary Forest’s Lands Program, explained that the organization entered a partnership with Lost Coast Forestlands, an impact investment group, to make this possible. Escrow closed October 10th. The land is now owned by Lost Coast Forestlands and Sanctuary Forest has negotiated a draft Conservation Easement on the Van Arken property now owned by Lost Coast Forestlands. Doherty says Sanctuary Forest should be able to fully execute their contract for that Conservation Easement within the next 18 to 24 months.

kymkemp.com/2019/10/21/sanctuary-forest-says-van-arken-community-forest-becoming-a-reality/

* * *

ROAD DIALOGUE

CHP Tactics

Rudy Redwood wrote: If you have been noticing more CHP than usual in our area, it is because CHP is using our area to train their rookie officers. Here are a few of the tactics that I’ve noticed them using in order to write violations…


Marco McClean responds: Thanks for the tips. On the other hand, here's a statistic that I recall whenever I see a cop car and get all paranoid about every little thing until they go away: When you get pulled over, whether it's for something trivial or really dangerous and stupid of you, that's the 400th time you did that; you just got caught this time. It sucks that the cops have to play tricks to make money; but most of the time you really deserve the ticket.

Here's another thing, especially in this season: Keep it under the speed limit and you'll never hit a deer. When somebody behind you wants to go faster, find a safe place to pull over and pull over. Don't just turn into the turnout lane and marginally slow down and cut back in front of the other cars after the first person goes by. Pull over and stop. Let them all go by. Let them hit all the animals and fuck up their cars and get all the tickets. Let that be the evil scheme you get away with. The turnout lane is not the slow lane on the freeway to go just a little slower in. It's not long enough for that. It's a place to turn out and wait.

And I'm not saying it's you, but if a person is always late because the speed limit is not fast enough for them, that's not the cops' fault. We all have a whole weirdly large part of our brain to figure out, among other things, when to leave in the first place. It's not like you're always about to have a baby and you need to get to the hospital before it squirts out.

I met a woman once with the unlikely but real name of Mary Christmas. They named Christmas disease after her; you can look it up. It's a blood condition where something like leukemia is always ready to grab you and start to kill you and the only thing that keeps you alive is if you're pregnant all the time, so whenever you're not pregnant you're dying. That might be an excuse, either for speeding to the hospital or to the bar to get pregnant right away every time right after, but it's extremely rare.

And now I'm late for work, and I don't care. I'll get there when I get there.

* * *

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

It really is interesting times that we live in. I knew Trump would be the man to drive this country off the cliff at full speed while blowing off his mouth about his own greatness. However, at the time of his election I didn’t realize he would get so much help in reaching that destination from the corrupt system itself. Now we have two competing teams of corrupt, incompetent people fighting each other over who gets to press the pedal to the floor. On one side we have team Trump opening his mouth and removing any ounce of respect or dignity this country once had in the world. On the other side we have team The System on full display showing us that corruption is its standard operation procedure and destroying its credibility. Decline and collapse aren’t measured purely in monetary units.

* * *

ACCOMPLISHED SURFER DIES OFF MENDOCINO COUNTY COAST

Donald Harris surfed all over the world, from Huntington Beach in Southern California to Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz to Queensland, Australia, to Bali and the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia.

The final session for Harris, a 58-year-old resident of Philo, came Sunday morning. After making the hourlong drive from his home to Point Arena cove, Harris paddled out 100 yards or so, then told another surfer he wanted to go out further, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Lt. Shannon Barney said. 

Five minutes passed and no one had seen Harris.

“Another surfer paddled out to check on him and found him floating in the water with his surfboard next to him. He brought him in to shore and began CPR,” Barney said.

Arriving paramedics took over CPR, but couldn’t revive Harris. He was pronounced dead at 9:21 a.m. An autopsy is scheduled for Tuesday to determine the cause of his death, Barney said.

Waves at Point Arena, a popular break, were well overhead Sunday morning at about 9 feet, according to Surf-Forecast.com.

With the rocks, lack of lifeguards and long paddles to reach the point breaks, the area presents a surfing challenge and definitely is not recommended for beginners.

Nor was Harris a beginner. He grew up surfing Huntington Beach, in Orange County. After moving to Sausalito “to chase my heartthrob,” he wrote on a surfing website in 2003 — he was referring to his wife, Bonnie — he became a regular in the lineup at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, one of the most challenging waves on the West Coast.

“He was really well respected,” said his friend and fellow surfer, Jack Beresford, of San Diego. “Not only for his surfing ability, but for his generosity and willingness to give back.”

After moving to Philo, just north of Boonville, Harris had spent the last seven years as the technology manager for the Anderson Valley Unified school district. His daughter, Lana, is a freshman at Anderson Valley High School.

After describing Harris as “a godsend” to the district, for the expertise he brought to all matters technological, interim superintendent Michael Warych said that “unquestionably the greater loss is that he was a wonderfully good guy who was loved and respected not just in the school district, but throughout the Anderson Valley area.”

Also feeling his loss is the community of “kneelos,” or kneeboarders, a subset of surfers who enjoy a different, more retro riding experience. By kneeling on the board, some claim, they can ride higher and tuck back further in the tube of a wave.

A kneelo dating back to his boyhood days at Huntington Beach, Harris almost singlehandedly sparked a kneeboarding comeback in this country in 2003, when he launched the website KSUSA.org.

“At first, I registered 15 of my friends,” he told the Marin Independent Journal in 2007. “They were the only members. But through word of mouth it kept growing and now we have a little over 1,100 members.”

“He had a vision for how our community could come together,” said Beresford, a six-time winner of the U.S. Kneeboard championships. “He was someone who brought a lot of folks together. He had friends around the world.”

(courtesy The Press Democrat)

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FOUND OBJECT

32 Comments

  1. James Marmon October 22, 2019

    RE: FOX ‘NEWS’ & THE UGLY AMERICAN

    “This back woods fool is an classic example of a failed education system and the terrible success of state propaganda.”
    -Educated Idiot

    “Maybe you have heard of it, or seen it. You should be aware of it, since its affecting how college campuses are viewed by the public. It’s a branded Fox News segment, “Campus Craziness.” The segment has some variation – snowflake students, liberal professors, deplatformed speakers – but the core message is the same: conservatives face a hostile environment on college campuses.”

    https://heterodoxacademy.org/academic-freedom-campus-craziness/

    How C. S. Lewis Predicted Today’s College Campus Craziness—in 1944

    “Modern education, Lewis warns, aims to produce “Men without Chests,” by which he means men and women with a deformed understanding of morality. Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine argued that the goal of education was to grow a young person’s conscience, so his moral understanding conformed to reality.”

    https://www.theaquilareport.com/c-s-lewis-predicted-todays-college-campus-craziness-1944/

    James Marmon MSW
    Personal Growth Consultant

    ‘don’t just go through it, grow through it’

  2. Cotdbigun October 22, 2019

    Hey Ross,
    thanks for clearing everything up for us!

    Now I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to appreciate all the positive and awesome things that we are privileged to enjoy by living in the USA, that of course includes working to making it a better place.

    Wishing you all the best and may you find a sliver of positivity and happiness amidst all this misery. (Maybe a puppy?)

    God Bless Hillary

  3. James Marmon October 22, 2019

    Hey Ross,
    Something more for you to be offended about this morning, Trump compared the so called Impeachment inquiry to a “Lynching”. Already CNN, ABC, NBC and others are freaking out. Get on board, you’re falling behind.

    “Lynching?! Sir, don’t you DARE invoke the darkness of America’s viciousness toward black people to defend your corruption. How dare you?!…”

    James

    • James Marmon October 22, 2019

      Dear snowflakes.

      Lynch law

      noun

      “the administration of summary punishment, especially death, upon a suspected, accused, or convicted person by a mob acting without legal process or authority.”

      https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lynch-law

      • James Marmon October 22, 2019

        Flashback: Top Dems, including Nadler, called Clinton impeachment ‘lynching’

        “Even as top Democrats rushed to condemn President Trump’s comparison of their impeachment inquiry to a “lynching,” footage and news reports have emerged showing top Democrats referring matter-of-factly to Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings as a “lynching” in 1998.”

        Among those Democrats are two African-American representatives still serving in the House, as well as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.”

        https://www.foxnews.com/politics/flashback-top-dems-including-nadler-called-clinton-impeachment-lynching

  4. H.H.Heller October 22, 2019

    A better word would be ‘ethnic’.

    The word ‘race’ is inaccurate, lacking in scientific fact.

  5. Lazarus October 22, 2019

    FOUND OBJECT

    Apparently, the crossing gates malfunctioned.

    As always,
    Laz

  6. Susie de Castro October 22, 2019

    Found in Akaska

    Eager beavers disappointed climate warming hasn’t set.

  7. Michael Koepf October 22, 2019

    “SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS WARNS:” that soon, very soon, Mendocino county may hire a satellite imaging company, at tax payer’s expense, to scrutinize every square inch of taxpayer’s back yards to weed out un-licensed weed. No backyard, no tax payer is exempt. The eye in the sky sees all. Supervisors McGowen and Williams promise to remain up all night perusing the images as they flood in, while CEO Angelo brews coffee and Gjerde takes a nap.

  8. chuck dunbar October 22, 2019

    Paul Theroux, world traveler now in his 70’s, made a solo road trip up and down the length of Mexico, at times traveling through perilous areas of the country. His tale of the trip begins with these instructive thoughts:

    “In the casual opinion of most Americans, I am an old man, and therefore of little account, past my best, fading in a pathetic diminuendo while flashing his AARP card, a gringo in his degringolade. Naturally, I am insulted by this, but out of pride I don’t let my indignation show. My work is my reply, my travel is my defiance.”

    “Sometimes, a single person, met casually on a journey, can be a powerful inspiration. I happened to be in Nogales, Mexico, to talk to migrants — and on that visit I saw a middle-aged woman praying before her meal in a shelter. She was Zapotec, from a mountain village in Oaxaca state, and had left her three young children with her mother, intending to enter the United States and (so she said) become a menial in a hotel somewhere and send money back to her family who were living in poverty. But she had become lost in the desert, and spotted by the Border Patrol, seized and roughed up and dumped in Nogales. The image of her praying did not leave my mind and it strengthened my resolve to take a trip throughout Mexico, but concentrating on Oaxaca, one of the poorest states; and on my trip whenever I felt obstructed or low, I thought of this valiant woman, and moved on…”

    (“His Mexican Journey,” Paul Theroux, New York Times, September 29, 2019)

    I

  9. Bruce McEwen October 22, 2019

    Journalism 101

    This seemingly irrefutable truism, which has been making the rounds on Facebook for quite some time now, is yet another instance of the all-out war on journalists, masquerading as helpful instruction for pseudo-journalists, that is cub reporters, or hacks who don’t fully understand their duty. It presumes, in its indignant tone, that journalists are not only some kind of public servants, but lavishly paid servants who have been caught slacking, too lazy to go look out the window to see if it’s raining, and the sanctimonious use of the f-bomb invites the reader to share in the writer’s contempt for any such shiftless persons as would style themselves “journalists.”

    The vehicle for the indignant contempt being flung at the profession actually comes from the courts and invokes the metaphor lawyers use to explain circumstantial evidence to jurors, wherein a person comes in wearing a raincoat, a wet raincoat, and it is used to imply that it is raining outside. The prosecution maintains that the wet raincoat proves it’s raining; the defense insists that there’s a reasonable doubt that it is actually dry outside. In J-School 101, you are taught to quote both sides and let the jury decide: What Fox News calls “fair and balanced” reporting.

    But, of course, the lawyers are not talking about whether it’s raining or not. They’re using that as a metaphor. What they’re talking about is whether someone committed a crime or not; and so it’s not quite so simple as it seems, “to go look out the fucking window and see if it’s true or not.” Not so simple because you can’t go to the scene of the crime and watch it happen and, thereby, ascertain the “truth.” The defendant will tell you he’s innocent, or minimize at the very least; and the prosecutor will exaggerate to the point of incredulity – so it’s no good to go ask either side. There is a presumption that an investigation would ensue, that the journalist would delve into the matter by canvassing opinions from both sides, leaving no stone unturned, no matter the obstinacy of the parties importuned for information; and this implies an open checkbook with an expense account and unlimited time; whereas, in truth, the pay is niggardly, there’s no expense account, and the deadline is pressing.

    So in essence this seemingly irrefutable truism is nothing more than another source of contempt and violence aimed at journalists, not quite as repugnant as the President naming journalists Public Enemy No. 1, but right up there in the overall war, and a nasty, a very nasty weapon in its disguise as helpful instruction.

    • James Marmon October 22, 2019

      Wow! that’s some pretty heavy shit Mac, but I’m offended by your use of the word “niggardly”. It sounds racist to me. What if Trump ever used that word?

      James

      • James Marmon October 22, 2019

        I hope I didn’t offend anyone by bringing up the “niggardly” conversation again.

    • Michael Koepf October 22, 2019

      A thoughtful summation. I have longed believed that without McEwen and Scaramella, I would be blissfuly ignorant of what attempts to pass for news in this county. Of course, old Bruce, gets a big pat on the back for providing the platform on which they write.

      My unsolicited advice: Before journalists receive their sole source of income from political parties and pacs, McEwen might consider writing a book about what it’s like to be an old school, crime reporter…for, there are hardly any left.

    • Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

      Thanks anyway, I’ll stick with the assessment of Chomsky and Herman (Manufacturing Consent). The press in the U.S. has been rotten to the core from its beginnings. All the apologetics in the world won’t change that.

  10. Michael Koepf October 22, 2019

    Harv, having full knowledge of myself, I’ve always been reluctant to call anyone a fool.

    McEwen and Scaramella and others that often write for this paper, for instance, Marylyn Davin, are amongst the dwindling ranks of honest journalists who remain in the USA. They are not “rotten to the core.” Thus, Harvey, you are a fool. A fool alone, a fool awash in hate, a fool without a clue, and, worse, a fool who lives unloved. Harvey, you have passed beyond the outer ring of hope.

    • Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

      Save it for the suckers Koepf. You obviously do NOT have, “…full knowledge…” of yourself. I stick with my comment. Like it or lump it.

      • Bruce McEwen October 22, 2019

        Presumably, your contemptuous dismissal of the press in the U.S. includes all those on CounterPunch; along with any who came before, such as Lewis Lapham, Alexander Cockburn, Seymour Hersh et al; but let’s keep in mind your ability to assess any comment for its veracity is compromised, as so succinctly delineated in this instance, to the point of absurdity by your complacent impudence, your immutable sanctimony, your stubborn stupidity, your humorless self-righteousness, your smugly pugnacious ignorance, and the self-delusionary conviction that your feeble and flimsy reason, based on your mediocre reading, will stand you in good stead in any and every situation; and in the event of a contradiction your apoplectic fits of temper will answer any argument, no matter how cogent, with volcanic eruptions of fury which, comical to behold by those of us who are used to your spurts of spleen, must necessarily alarm your cardiologist.

        • Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

          Quit being an ass, Sad Sack. Read the book. Open your consevativsm-blinded eyes

        • Louis Bedrock October 22, 2019

          “Presumably, your contemptuous dismissal of the press in the U.S. includes all those on CounterPunch; along with any who came before, such as Lewis Lapham, Alexander Cockburn, Seymour Hersh…”

          These are a few exceptions to the dismal reality of a corrupt,
          ass-licking press in a decaying empire.

          Do you consider yourself a peer of the illustrious three journalists you’ve mentioned? Do you even have the temerity to call yourself a journalist? Most of the time you’re too drunk to find a window, much less look out of one.

          You are a pathetic delusional sot who has a job as AVA butt-boy thanks to the charity of Bruce Anderson. If you ever fall out of his favor, you will spend the rest of your life in the gutter.

          • Bruce McEwen October 22, 2019

            “Listen here, Sonny, it ain’t no disaster,
            there ain’t no shame in being beaten by a master.”

            — Johnny Lang

      • Michael Koepf October 22, 2019

        I’d love too have a picture of this clunky clown. What does Harvey Reading look like? He often forwards dull roadside pictures of arid Wyoming landscapes…austere, dull and empty, as if a pile of roadkill had taken the shot.

        • Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

          I see from the tone of your comments that the coalition of the idiotic in Mendocino County is breaking up, having gone over the edge with their stupidity and conservatism (which is actually a redundancy). With them out of the picture, maybe there is hope for the place. You and your fellows in idiocy won’t be missed, Koepf, much as you may think you have everyone cowed with your tough-guy talk.

          And, Mikey, if you don’t like the pix, don’t look at them, though I keep forgetting that idiots cannot think clearly enough to reason out such simple things on their own.

          For what it is worth Mikey boy, I have no desire to see a photo of you. Perhaps you are gay and like to view photos of guys?

          • Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

            Also, regarding the pix, tough guy, take it up with the editor. I don’t hold a gun to his head and make him print them.

          • Michael Koepf October 22, 2019

            What if I was gay? So, gays are on your hate list too? Harv, you are running out of hateful categories. But, speaking of the growing list of categories you hate, one my best friends in Montana is gay. Combat veteran of Vietnam. Tough as they come. Six foot three. If you met him you’d keep your gay-hate in your tiny, dark heart.

            • Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

              You really are an idiot, Mikey boy.

  11. Harvey Reading October 22, 2019

    FOX ‘NEWS’ & THE UGLY AMERICAN

    Thank you, Mr. Dendy. A nice antidote to the lunatic raving.

  12. Jack October 22, 2019

    The first inflatable mattress advertising as an Airb&b was in Fort Bragg, CA.

    Not long after…corporate powers copied the idea, negotiated empty houses available on the market (worldwide), imposed their corporate suit&tie mentality, inhumane practices, and even displaced the very people who invented it.

    Because Mendocino County is a tourist’s destination year-round…these corporate powers provide work to local Housekeepers and Maintenance personnel.

    Since Mendocino is a rural county the corporate high-end jobs like Brand (Creative Director, Sr. Brand Copywriter) Corporate Development (Acquisitions, Homeowner Experience Specialist, Customer Experience (Growth Managing Specialist…), Digital (Engineers), Photographer, Payroll Specialist do not seem to be filled here.

  13. chuck dunbar October 22, 2019

    One response to Trump’s “lynching” rant:

    “You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?” tweeted Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), a civil rights activist who co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. “Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you. Delete this tweet.”

    • James Marmon October 22, 2019

      When I hear the word lynching I think about western films. A lot of cowboys were lynched back in the day by lynch mobs.

      Hang ‘Em Higher! (Hangings in Western films)

      https://www.imdb.com/list/ls032375871/

      • James Marmon October 22, 2019

        What English word has the most meanings?

        The word with the most meanings in English is the verb ‘set’, with 430 senses listed in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989. The word commands the longest entry in the dictionary at 60,000 words, or 326,000 characters.

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