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Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021

Dry Breeze | 13 Cases | Free Testing | Grange Sprucing | Drewry Homicide | Comment Period | Khadijah Investigation | Sarah Greer | Navarro Greeter | Drought Fishing | Support Marcia | My Melissa | Chinese Year | Hotel Take-Out | Kalevala Hall | Vaccine Signup | Mendo Vaccinations | Covid Death | Motorized Cart | Willits Bender | Su Nomination | Rocky Shore | Patent Investment | Pox Misinformation | Second Doses | Grim Realization | Grant Arrest | Marigold Man | Ed Notes | Wyoming Crowd | Streetscape Update | Yesterday's Catch | Disgruntled Scribe | Good Discussion | Knaves Instead | Freeville 1900 | Perverse Genetics | Relief Caucus | Chemical Warfare | Liquid Chicken | Booster Effects | Windfall | Heroes Patriots | Working Dead | Dem Zoom | Trans Ban | Centerfoolery | People's Party

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A DRY WEATHER PATTERN will persist across the region through at least the weekend. Breezy winds are expected during the afternoon and early evening hours across the area. (NWS)

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13 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County on Wednesday bringing the total to 3487.

TOWNS WITH MORE than five current cases: Ukiah 81, Fort Bragg 36, Willits 19, Covelo 17, Redwood Valley 9, Laytonville 6, Philo 6

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FREE COVID TESTING TOMORROW - Friday Feb 5th from 2 to 6 pm at the Fairgrounds in Boonville - from what I understand you don't need to make an appointment but you should register with OptumServe in advance (or when you get there on your smartphone) and have your PatientId handy: https://lhi.care/covidtesting

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HELP NEEDED @ THE GRANGE: Friday 2/5 in AM

Andy is working on the dining room floor to spruce it up before the Food Bank activities start. We have removed broken tiles, and completely stripped the floor. He plans to be at the Grange again on Friday starting at 10am to continue the work, left to do is:

* Move all furniture out of the dining room - that should be a quick process with a few strong backs
* Possibly replace some wheels on a rolling table
* Replace the rest of the broken tiles.
* Put the sealer on the floor

In a few days there will be a need to put the heavy furniture, piano, refrigerator/freezer back in place. He is asking for 4 people to help. If you are available and willing please contact him by text or phone at (707) 895-3020. Leave a message if you call and he doesn't answer, as he is not always in cell range or has his phone on him.

Thanks for your help in making the Grange a welcoming venue. The Grange
Board of Directors: infoavgrange@gmail.com

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BELL SPRINGS MURDER MYSTERY. Two weeks ago, on Tuesday the 26th of January, 85-year-old Dick Drewry was found dead from a gunshot wound on Bell Springs Road at its junction with Island Mountain Road. On Tuesday, Feb 3rd, the Sheriff's Department of Humboldt County announced, “Based upon autopsy findings and a thorough evaluation of the scene, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division has determined Mr. Drewry’s manner of death to be homicide.

“We understand the community’s safety concerns and while we can never guarantee someone is 100% safe at any given time, we can confirm that no other random acts of violence have been reported as occurring in the Bell Springs area around Mr. Drewry’s time of death,” spokesman Karges stated. “That being said, we have not yet identified a suspect and are actively working on this case, following up on all leads.”

“We continue to ask for the community’s help to share any information they may have regarding Mr. Drewery’s whereabouts prior to his death or any other information that may be of assistance in the investigation. Anyone with information about this case can contact our office at 707-445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip Line at 707-268-2539.”

APART from these terse announcements from the Humboldt authorities posted by Kym Kemp, little has been revealed about the case, which has now been confirmed as a homicide, but was first thought to be a suicide until a search of Drewry's truck and the surrounding area failed to turn up a gun. He was discovered by “a couple” slumped over the wheel with the passenger door open.

THE DREWRY FAMILY first homesteaded in the remote Bell Springs region at the northern tip of Mendocino County in the middle of the 19th century. The Drewry ranch sits on the border between Mendocino County and Southern Humboldt, his remains just over the county line into Humboldt. Dick Drewry was a highly respected life resident of the North County who had no known enemies.

kymkemp.com/2021/01/26/one-person-reported-to-have-a-gunshot-wound-near-island-mountain/

kymkemp.com/2021/01/26/shooting-in-southeastern-humboldt-county-fatal-says-sheriffs-office/

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THE COMMENT PERIOD IS CLOSING SOON for the Mitchell Creek & Little North Fork Timber harvest plans in Jackson State Forest. Tell Cal Fire to reform their forest management plan and not to log the western end of JDSF which hasn’t been touched in 90 years!

Mendocino Trail Stewards

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MENDO MISSING PERSON: Khadijah Britton

The Sheriff’s Office was contacted in early February of 2018, about a missing person, Khadijah Britton. During the initial investigation Sheriff’s Deputies’ investigation revealed that Khadijah was possibly kidnapped several days before from a friend’s house. Sheriff’s Deputies spoke to witnesses who advised that Negie Fallis arrived at the location, armed with what appeared to be a small derringer pistol, and demanded his girlfriend, Khadijah Britton, exit the residence and speak with him. Witnesses indicated Khadijah exited the residence where a physical altercation occurred between them before they both entered a black Mercedes sedan and left the location. Khadijah has not been contact with family since that time.

There is a community Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1911095978933042/ hosted by Khadijah’s family members.

Anyone with any information relating to Khadija’s disappearance or whereabouts is urged to contact the Sheriff’s Office Tip Line at 707-234-2100.

Khadijah Britton

At time of disappearance, Khadijah was:

23 years-old

Height: 5 feet 8 inches

Weight: 180 pounds

Hair: Brown

Eye color: Brown

MCSO #: 2018-04245

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FACEBOOK LIVE EVENT FOR KHADIJAH BRITTON INVESTIGATION

Location: Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Facebook Live

https://www.facebook.com/MendocinoSheriff/

Mendocino County Sheriff Matthew Kendall, in corroboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), will be hosting a “Facebook Live” announcement on Friday February 5, 2021 at 11:30 A.M.

This virtual event is being held regarding the disappearance of Khadijah Britton of the Round Valley Indian Tribes. Khadijah disappeared three years ago in Covelo, and the investigation remains active and unsolved. Sheriff Matthew Kendall and Scott Schelble, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Violent Crime in the San Francisco Division of the FBI, will be present during this virtual livestream event.

Updates to the status of this ongoing investigation will be provided during this live event, hoping to encourage a renewed effort to seek information from the public about this case.

As time permits during this virtual event, the Sheriff’s Office intends on answering questions from the Facebook livestream chat.

Anyone interested in watching this Facebook livestream event can do so by visiting the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/MendocinoSheriff/

This event is being held in a virtual format to comply with current COVID-19 regulations, local public health orders, and social distancing protocols. Due to these circumstances, members from the public and press will not be able to attend this event in person.

Members of the media can contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officers if they have inquiries that are not addressed during the virtual Facebook livestream announcement.

Public Information Officer Contact Information:

Captain Gregory L. Van Patten - vanpatg@mendocinocounty.org

Lieutenant Quincy Cromer - cromerq@mendocinocounty.org

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A READER REMINDS US: "I would like to add one more person to the unsolved cold cases. Sarah Greer, aged 13, was sexually assaulted and strangled in an alley in Cloverdale in 1982. Her murderer remains at large. Anyone having information about this horrible crime is urged to contact the Sonoma County Sheriff’s department investigation unit at 707-565-2185. May she rest in peace."

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Navarro Greeter (photo by Annie Kalantarian)

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4REEL FISHING: IT’S LOOKIN’ LIKE THERE WILL BE NO STEELHEAD FISHIN’ THIS YEAR

The Upper Mill Creek Pond is the happening place to go trout fishin’. We are very blessed to have this fishery in our backyard. 

by Don Moir

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has closed some waters to fishing in order to protect native salmon and steelhead from low water flows in California streams and rivers that have been significantly impacted by drought. CDFW is also recommending that the Fish and Game Commission adopt emergency regulations on other rivers. “We fully understand the impact these closures will have on California anglers and the businesses related to fishing in California, and we really feel for them,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham. “However the science is clear. Two-thirds of the wettest part of winter is now behind us and conditions are looking increasingly grim. Under these extreme drought conditions, it is prudent to conserve and protect as many adult fish as possible to help ensure the future of fishing in California.” 

CDFW has the authority under Title 14, Article 4, Section 8.00(c) to close south central coast streams to fishing from Dec. 1 through March 7 when it determines that stream flows are inadequate to provide fish passage for migrating steelhead trout and salmon.

As a result, the following streams are closed to all fishing until stream flows are sufficient to allow fish passage for returning adult steelhead and salmon (CDFW) will announce any lifting of the closures): The main stem Eel River from the paved junction of Fulmor Road with the Eel River to the South Fork Eel River. The South Fork of the Eel River downstream from Rattlesnake Creek and the Middle Fork Eel River downstream from the Bar Creek.

There are still plenty of opportunities for California anglers to catch fish in the state’s rivers and streams outside of the closures. Additionally, California’s coast offers substantial ocean fishing.

Both are subject to current regulations already in place. For more on fishing in California, please visit http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fishing/.

Blue Lakes - The trout fishin’ on the upper Blue Lake has been fair. Both trollers and the gang on the shore have been catching some nice trout. But, I’m savin’ the best for last. The word is that the Upper Blue Lake is going to receive a trout plant. Blue Lakes will probably get more than it’s fair share of trout stocks, due to so many lakes at such low water levels.

Clearlake - I know of some very good anglers that are having a difficult time hooking into bass right now. Fishin’ on Clear Lake is still very slow. Even fishermen that have been trying their luck with live bait (minnows), are reporting that you have to cover a lot of water to find bass that willing to bite. With the lake water temperature still running in the mid to upper 40’s the bass are shivering. They are not willing to use much energy to chaise after lures and bait. Once the water temperature kicks up just another 4-6 degrees the bass will start to go into their pre-spawn mode. It could be a matter of just a few weeks before the #1 rated bass fishery in the United States will get goin’.

Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn. Chuck Clark

Thanks for reading, and remember to keep it reel! Don 4reelfishin.com

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

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INSIDE THE POST OFFICE

Dear AVA,

Long time no write. My subscription expiring provides me a good excuse. It will be 16 years for me with the Postal Service in April and isn't our Postmaster General some piece of work! Between the insane pre-funding of retiree benefits 25 years in advance unlike any other federal agency and the deliberate dismantling of processing machines, it's a miracle the Postal Service did as well as it did during the election. Thanks to Darryl Issa and W. for passing the pre-funding law.

In our facility (San Francisco Processing and Distribution Center) some of the machines that were taken apart were added on to existing machines to make them 50% longer. The bottom line is that the computerized sort plans that end up sorting letters for carriers in the order they deliver them have been condensed. This causes trays to fill up faster. This also allows them to run more mail. 

San Mateo, for instance, has four zip codes. Previously it was run on two machines with two people staffing each machine. Now on the larger machines they can run San Mateo on one machine. Twice as much work for the two people on the longer machine is a setup for Worker's Compensation and disability cases. I have worked on the longer machines and it is hell. Trays are filling up left and right. If the stackers that hold the mail before I put it in a tray fill up, an alarm goes off which affects how your performance is viewed by management.

I am asking everyone who supports the Postal Service and does not want it privatized to lean on our representatives to have our president fill the vacancies on the Postal Service Board of Governors and fire an obvious political appointment. Unlike our token secretary of war (it's not defense people!) Who “only” has $500,000 in Raytheon stock, which is a war contractor, our Postmaster General has $25 million invested in our two main competitors, UPS and FedEx. Dejoy has to go — why hasn't he been fired already?

And don't get me started on the 611 children still in concentration camps, longing to be reunited with their families. If you are a parent and this doesn't make you angry, well I'm sorry for your children because you have no heart. Don't give me “they deserve it.” We as a nation have done this hideous violation of human rights and decency whereas before Chump we didn't do this to families. Leave the immigration debate for another day because we have families to rebuild from our foul actions. Got humanity?

I am not optimistic about my fellow Americans. Cute Bernie Sanders memes instead of advocating for the many things that need to be changed. Fawning over token appointments instead of demanding Medicare for All. On and on. It doesn't look good for us to ever bring the war budget home. Why is this still the third rail of American politics? Does anyone think someone wants to invade us?

The money is there in Daddy Warbucks’ pocket to pay the landlords and tenants, to institute Medicare for all, and rebuild America with enough change left over to turn our armed forces into those rebuilders. Make them all into Seabees (construction battalions) and expand the Corps of Engineers to aid in rebuilding this country's infrastructure. I can dream, can't I?

Let's save small businesses, the engine of our consumerist economy while were at it! That we can't be helped by our own government when millions don't know how they are going to pay for food and shelter, while they scheme to play Star Trek in space sickens me.

Unlike most people in America I like to read from histories. I came across a quote from Buenaventura Durruti, a Spanish anarchist who died in defense of Madrid:

“We are not afraid of ruins, we are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin their world before they leave the stage of history. But we carry a new world in our hearts.”

I pray that may come to pass, but the destructive capability of the ruling class has multiplied since the 1930s. What or who can stop this madness? Will the New World in our hearts be enough? End of Sermon.

Personally, I've been diminished by losing my friend of 50 years, my lover for 17 years and my wife of over seven years, Melissa McChesney Jackson. One person who was so many things to me. We met in high school and although we had a moment together, we remained friends. In college we were an item for two years or so. She took me to the Santa Cruz Poetry Festival to see two of my poetic heroes, Ken Kesey and Bob Kaufman read. I took her to the Paramount Theater to see Bob Marley. In October 2019 we finally went to our beloved Jamaica and spent 12 days in paradise.

Melissa had a hard life. Abused by her mother, bullied by her peers, she sought solace in drugs as I did when I was younger. We were beatniks turned hippies turned punk rockers. She survived meth use, being a junkie, and hepatitis C. She dealt every day with PTSD, having been kidnapped and was this close to dying when she was 19. We met again in 2004 when attending my oldest friend Tom Edminster's birthday party. Sparks flew between us, a blaze was kindled. I will miss her until I see her on the other side. She died instantly of an apparent cardiac arrest, falling into my arms one last time. The date was January 11, 2021, a day that symbolizes many things to me. That day in 1987 my only child Paloma was born. In 2001 my divorce became final that day and was that ever a twist of the knife. A day that will delight and haunt me forever. Damn it! Joy and suffering are supposed to alternate in this life, not coalesce on one date. What's done is done, and I am powerless.

But I am not alone, with my friends and my family and those of my faith supporting me. I will seek love and companionship like Melissa always told me to do when she's gone. Her health was fragile for years and we knew it was inevitable (as it is for us all).

They say God never gives us more than we can carry. I didn't know I was that strong.

In closing, I pray that you and yours are well and aloha to all my Valley friends. A Luta Continua! (The struggle continues.)

One love, one heart.

Mark Jackson

Hercules

ED NOTE: Mr. Jackson once was a resident of Navarro in the Anderson Valley.

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SUPERVISOR MULHEREN: 

Thank you to the City of Ukiah and the Instilling Goodness-Developing Virtue Schools and the Ukiah Main Street Program for continuing this tradition. 

While there will not be an in person event this year (and we will miss the beautiful dancing dragon and drummers) it’s still important to recognize that there are many cultures in the Ukiah Valley and they all deserve to be celebrated #DowntownUkiah #LoveLocalMendo #YearOfTheOx

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BOONVILLE HOTEL & RESTAURANT:

The sun is starting to peak through those clouds, supposedly coming our way for the weekend. Perry's take-out menu this week is calling... orders placed online @boonvillehotel.com. Take good care people!

2.4.21 Thursday Dinner - WOOD FIRED PIZZA! SUNCHOKES, PROSCIUTTO, GREEN GARLIC, PENNYROYAL CHEESE, ROSEMARY (1 pizza per person) - served with a creamy potato soup-something sweet too! $36 per person. Pick up from 4:30 to 6:00pm

2.5.21 Friday Dinner - CLASSIC CHICKEN PARMIGIANA over HEIRLOOM POLENTA for TWO - served with an Winter Garden Salad. Something sweet too! $64 (serves 2). pick-up from 5:30-6pm.

2.6.21 Sunday Dinner-CHICKEN POZOLE ROJO with all the TOPPINGS. AVOCADO, LIME CREMA, SHAVED CABBAGE, CILANTRO - served with a winter citrus, radish and garden mint salad - something sweet too! 5:30 to 6:00pm pick up

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Finnish Kalevala Hall, Fort Bragg

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TO HELP INFORM and make the process easier for the community to get notified of vaccine opportunities around the county, Adventist Health hospitals has created an email notification on its website. By going to http://bit.ly/ahmendo_notify, community members can register on the website to be notified when Adventist Health is holding a vaccination clinic around the county. Once signed up, they will receive an email notification announcing an event, with a sign-up link to make an appointment, as well as the age group or tier that is qualified.

“We recognize the great need in our community for accurate and timely information around where or how to get vaccinated. One of our challenges has been reaching out to the general public, within the qualified tiers to inform them about vaccination opportunities. There is not one database that exists that includes this demographic and contact information. The goal is to be able to reach as many people as possible so we can vaccinate and protect our community and get one step closer to the end of this pandemic,” explains Judson Howe, president for Adventist Health in Mendocino County which manages the hospitals and clinics on the coast, Ukiah and Willits.

Adventist Health has been holding mass vaccination events around the county and have administered over 5,000 vaccines since December 18. “We continue to improve our processes to make it efficient and safe for everyone. It takes a lot of work and planning, but I’m extremely proud of our teams for stepping up to do this very important work of vaccinating the community, in addition to their regular roles of providing patient care for our community” shares Bessant Parker, MD, chief medical officer for Adventist Health. Anyone can sign up for the email notification and get alerts when there are events and find out when it’s their turn for a vaccine. But for now, the hospitals are focused on vaccinating individuals 75 and older due to limited vaccine supplies and following prioritization guidelines from the California Department of Health and Mendocino County Public Health.

“Our challenge is that the vaccine supplies don’t match the demand. Our teams are eager and determined to do more of these mass vaccination events, but we are dependent on the supply allocation that we receive from the state. We are encouraged with the great interest from our community to get vaccinated. But we must continue prioritizing those who are most vulnerable and are disproportionately dying from COVID-19 in our community,” explains Dr. Parker.

Proof of age and ID will be required for every tier getting vaccinated. As Adventist Health gets more allocations from the state as a Multi-County Entity, more mass vaccination clinics will be scheduled. Vaccine clinics will also be announced through the media, the three hospitals’ social media pages as well as through radio.

(Adventist Health Presser)

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MENDO PUBLIC HEALTH said they’d vaccinated 7500 or so Mendo residents as of last Friday. The Adventists say about 5,000 themselves as of recently. Some number of Mendo nursing home residents (numbers unreported as far as we know) have been vaccinated via pharmacy chains.

According to the census about 85% of Mendolanders are over 18. And about 22% of Mendolanders are 65 or older.

So: 

7500 + 5000 + a few hundred = around 13,000

85% of 90,000 = about 76,000

13,000 / 76,000 = about 17% vaccination rate so far. 

We don’t know what percentage of the approximate 13,000 vaccinatees are over 65. Nor do we know what percentage of the over-18 will refuse to be vaccinated. The over-under bet here is 40%. Any takers?

(Mark Scaramella)

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MENDOCINO COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH Attributes Incarcerated Covelo Man’s Death to COVID-19

“Ransome Anderson’s passing evokes a question that has dogged COVID reporting: how does public health differentiate between death ‘from’ and death ‘with’ COVID-19?”

mendofever.com/2021/02/03/mendocino-county-public-health-attributes-incarcerated-covelo-mans-death-to-covid-19/

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Early Motorized Cart

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THE NEW WILLITS CITY MANAGER

He bought a house, he’s planting a garden, and he’s here to stay. Brian Bender has lived all over the nation, but prefers small towns and welcoming communities. “What I liked about Willits, was that there’s an energy here. There’s a willingness to do something different to improve the community,” said Bender.

willitsnews.com/2021/02/01/brian-bender-new-willits-city-manager-making-himself-comfortable/

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ON MONDAY, JULIE SU, a veteran labor union leader who heads the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, publicly acknowledged that EDD, one of the line departments she oversees, had failed miserably to stop rampant fraud in the distribution of pandemic-related unemployment insurance (UI) benefits.

“There is no sugarcoating the reality,” Su told a news conference. “California did not have enough security measures in place.”

At least 10% of the $100-plus billion in state and federal benefits EDD paid out were fraudulent, she said, adding that the final total could be much higher. She laid some of the blame on shoddy rulemaking by federal officials but said those failings “do not excuse EDD for being under-prepared.”

As Su spoke, political media reported that President Joe Biden has chosen her for the No. 2 spot in the U.S. Department of Labor. They also predicted rough sledding in her Senate confirmation hearings due to the fraud scandal and EDD’s truly monumental failures in processing legitimate unemployment insurance claims and causing needless stress to jobless workers and their families.

(Dan Walters, CalMatters)

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PATENT ASSISTANCE PLEASE

Editor,

My name is James A. Lee Jr., proud owner of a United States patent titled: The Bucket Handle Retainer. For all you readers who take interest, Google The Bucket Handle Retainer. My invention was invented off Boonville Road on Robinson Creek Road. I was building two cabins for my customer. He knows how to write patents. He actually wrote my patent. At this time I am looking for investors up to 40%. The tentative sale of my patent is still in the process to a friend of mine for the price of $3 million. He wants to keep me involved with the marketing and distribution. My son and I googled The Bucket Handle Retainer after I received the patent in the mail. The results were utterly amazing. I also made the front page of the Ukiah Daily Journal in 2016. We were in the talking stages with Leaktite Corp., a large manufacturer of 5 gallon buckets. Linktite supplies their products to Home Depot, Ace Hardware, True Value hardware, Rainbow Ag, Friedman Home Improvement Centers and many other businesses coast to coast. 

I would really like to retain ownership of my patent. It took me three years to obtain it. My product is inexpensive, helpful, reusable, a back saver, and made from recycled plastic. Kelly Moore paints based in San Carlos California has 149 stores nationwide, mostly in California. Kelly Moore paints in Ukiah on Gobbi St. is where I met Jeff, their buyer, and demonstrated my product with the Kelly-Moore 5 gallon bucket. Jeff as well as the store’s staff were very impressed with The Bucket Handle Retainer. Jeff stated that when I obtain the patent he would want my product in every store. 

Now that I have the patent, my son e-mailed Kelly Moore paints over the holidays. We have not heard back as yet. Anyone interested in investing please call Aiden Lee or text him at 707/510-9896. You can also e-mail him at lee17@i.cloud.com. My other son Ryan Lee can be contacted at 707-367-7858 or you contact him at the same number.

You can also respond by mail to the owner/inventor: James A Lee Jr., 705 North State St. # 613, Ukiah, CA 95482-3797.

Please help us make my patent a household and business must. Buckets are everywhere -- restaurants, orchards, dairy farms, etc.

For example, Home Depot sells 500,000 buckets a week nationwide. The possibilities are endless. My patent is good for 18 more years so the investor, big or small, will be receiving an extra income for many years to come. I have many other ideas that are helpful and could become patents. I also have three youtube videos. All parties interested in investing in The Bucket Handle Retainer, please contact me at the above address or electronically.

James A. Lee Jr.

Ukiah

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FROM SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS: A couple of weeks ago, aiming to reach 1 million COVID vaccinations, California sent us an extra ~2400 first doses with commitment to follow through with supply for second doses. The second doses became a problem. County CEO Carmel Angelo has been in continuous discussions with the state and we now have confirmation that they’re able to make good on the commitment. It wouldn’t have happened without her perseverance to ensure rural counties are not left behind.

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OUT FOR A 1AM WALK AND…

On Wednesday, February 3, 2021 at approximately 12:55 A.M. a Deputy from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office saw Joseph Grant, 42, of Windsor in the 1300 block of North State Street Ukiah.

The Deputy was able to identify Grant from prior law enforcement contacts and had knowledge Grant had an active Mendocino County felony arrest warrant.

Joseph Grant

The Deputy confirmed the arrest warrant with Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Dispatch and Grant was arrested without incident on the warrant and for Unlawful Possess/Use Tear Gas or Tear Gas Weapon by Convicted Felon.

Grant was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail.

(Sheriff’s Presser)

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ED NOTES

BEV DUTRA sends along copies of photos of large-scale Ku Klux Klan gatherings in Berkeley's Tilden Park, the Oakland Auditorium, and Richmond, all of them from 1924. The Klan also convened rallies here in Mendocino County about the same time, one of them in an open field between Boonville and Philo. 

HISTORY is irony on the move, as E.M. Cioran memorably wrote, and with history seeming to move more rapidly and certainly more ironically than ever, a huge irony is the fed's placing the Magas as public enemy numero uno, moving Middle East terrorists into a distant second place and, for us nostalgics of a certain age, removing communists from the primo national boogeyman list altogether, although Antifa has a good shot at least of being infiltrated.

WHOEVER would have thought the fascisti would be so bold as to move on the Capitol, and what will they do for Act Two? Impossible to say from our distant-from-the-action command center here in Boonville, but if they start picking off libs…

THE FEDS have their hands full with the Magas. Back in the day when, max, thirty thousand communists occupied J. Edgar's bulletheads, the old joke was that half the Communist Party USA were federal agents or snitches for federal agents. But with some 70 million Magas to keep tabs on, the feds, even with a million snitches, will be putting in a lot of OT monitoring… Well, monitoring crazy talk from remedial readers, an untold number of whom are armed and dangerous.

IN MY YOUTH, I affiliated with CORE, the Congress On Racial Equality. I went to a lot of meetings with a lot of mostly white people outraged at racial discrimination in the San Francisco Bay Area and determined to do something about it. The first demo I ever attended was at the Palace Hotel where, like all the Frisco hotels of the time, refused to place “a person of color” in any visible position. Ditto for Auto Row on Van Ness. We forget how intense the racism of that time was because these days everyone in The City is a liberal, or at least claims to be. I did demonstrations and I did endless meetings, where I first met the late great Terrance Hallinan, a fightin' man for sure. I turned up often enough in the company of the wrong people to earn an FBI file of my very own which, when I joined the first wave of Peace Corps Volunteers, almost got me washed out because the Corps thought I might be a commie rather than the half-assed liberal I was. And am. But even at a young age I had a carefully nuanced position on race relations — “Screwing over black people is really, really chickenshit” — a minority opinion at the time. Adding to the suspicion of my democratic bona fides in the early 1960s, my younger brother and a first cousin, to protest the war on Vietnam, were among the first "subversives" to refuse to register for the draft and were packed off to the federal prison at Lompoc. The federal government used to be able to keep tabs on everyone to the left of the Democratic Party, and lots of people inside the Democratic Party, but with the millions of these apeshit Magas running around with their home arsenals, the government just might not be up to the task.

BIDEN'S climate czar, John Kerry, took a private jet to a climate conference in Iceland in 2019 and told a reporter it was "The only choice for somebody like me."

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Wyoming

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UKIAH STREETSCAPE PROJECT CONSTRUCTION UPDATE - February 3rd

At the time of email, providing the weather forecast holds true, we’re expecting to be able to resume construction activities on Wednesday, February 3rd

The project is really going to take shape over the next few months. Curious about what that will look like? For detailed plans (including landscaping), please visit www.cityofukiah.com/streetscape/businesses/. 

Perkins to Mill Street 

Wahlund Construction (Clay – Seminary): 

Monday-Tuesday: No work likely, due to rain. 

Wednesday-Friday: Wahlund Construction will trench across State Street between Master Cleaners and Bank of America and will work on undergrounding the electric utilities from Seminary to the south. 

Construction hours: 6am – 5pm 

Ghilotti Construction (Perkins – Clay): 

Beginning Wednesday, Feb. 3rd, Ghilotti will be saw-cutting pavement and removing trees between Clay and Perkins on the east side of State Street, moving from south to north. Parking/sidewalks will be impacted on the east side during this period of construction, but access to all businesses will be maintained during business hours. Saw-cutting is noisy and may generate some dust. 

Construction Hours: 7am – 5pm 

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

PS. Rain has persisted into Wednesday, obviously. Therefore, the work that was scheduled to begin today (see below) has been pushed to tomorrow. Wahlund will likely work on Saturday of this week near Seminary/State Streets.

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager, City of Ukiah, w: (707) 467-5793

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CATCH OF THE DAY, February 3, 2021

Beal, Campbell, Dorman

RODEWICK BEAL, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, appropriation of lost property without trying to return it.

ALAN CAMPBELL SR., Willits. Criminal threats. 

DAVID DORMAN, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

Grant, Simon, Vasquez

JOSEPH GRANT, Windsor/Ukiah. Tear gas, controlled substance.

MIGUEL SIMON-CRUZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, disobeying court order.

ADAM VASQUEZ, Hopland. Burglary, probation revocation.

* * *

WHY I WRITE

Editor,

I've been a subscriber to the AVA for almost 20 years now and a regular letter to the editor writer for several years.

In the mid-and late 90s into the early 2000s I used to regularly write letters to the Coastal Post, a monthly alternative newspaper out of Bolinas. That paper went out of print in about 2006.

My motivation for writing letters to alternative papers for the last 26 years is primarily to express things that I feel are not safe to share with other Americans. Very few of my letters over the years have been political. In most of my letters I object to things about Americans and life in the society that bother me. I certainly do not consider myself anywhere near radical in my views. As a matter of fact I consider most of my complaints to be reasonable, angry but not anything extreme.

At this point after averaging writing at least one letter a month over the past year and a half or so, I feel perhaps I said about all I have to say. I've been grateful to have papers like the AVA and Coastal Post to share my complaints about the society with readers. 

But the rewards seem to be waning for me. I've never received payment for anything I've written in my life and other than one reply in the letters section by an AVA columnist a few months ago to one of my letters about one of her articles, I've never had a letter replying to any of my letters in the AVA. 

It's interesting to me that the extremist letter writer from Comptche gets letters printed in response to him but I've never received one. I think that's very representative of America in 2021, that letters with a harsh, judgemental, reactionary tone like the guy from Comptche gets responses but never my letters which I would classify as sober and reasonable.

Keith Bramstedt

San Anselmo

* * *

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

With the extensive financialization of our economy, money is becoming more and more abstract. It’s not as abstract to the guy sloshing around in the car wash, but on the Wall Street and big bank levels its representations are becoming as untethered to reality as a Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko painting might seem to be.

The US attitude towards the dollar has always been rather flippantly smug, as evidenced by the former US Secretary of the Treasury, John Connally, back in 1971 declaring, “The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” There are trillions and trillions of them out there, and so far the American people still have faith in these piles of paper and delusional digital bits.

I’ll take a silver Athenian Owl (yes, if only), a US silver dollar, or even a US Liberty Standing half dollar any day of the week. I wouldn’t want to use them for payment, but it would be nice to hear the precious metal’s musical ring, announcing my substantial presence, as I drop them on the bar top to pay for my boilermakers. Sure you can pay with your manifestly muted, mousy paper, but where’s the fun in that?

There’s metal and then there’s mettle, as in the mettle of men, a characteristic of men/women that has recently come into question concerning the members of the Republican Party in particular, and the nature of our citizenry in general. We now have a situation in which both the nature of our money and our men are seriously suspect. Here is something wonderful from Aristophanes’ play ‘The Frogs’, equating money of high value with men of the same:

I’ll tell you what I think about the way

This city treats her soundest men today

By a coincidence more sad than funny

It’s very like the way we treat our money

Coins that rang true, clean stamped and worth their weight

Throughout the world have ceased to circulate

Instead the purses of Athenian shoppers

Are full of shoddy, silver-plated coppers

Just so, when men are needed by the nation

The best have been withdrawn from circulation

Men of good birth and breeding, men of parts

Well schooled in wrestling and in gentler arts

These we abuse, and trust instead to knaves

Newcomers, aliens, copper-plated slaves.

* * *

Freeville, New York, 1900

* * *

PERVERSE GENETICS

by Hugh Pennington

Covid-19 is not only a new nasty virus, but the techniques used in its discovery, monitoring and medical management are also new, particularly from my perspective as someone old enough to be in the highest priority group for vaccination. If the prime minister had suffered from the virus when I was a junior doctor at St Thomas’s Hospital, he wouldn’t have been treated in the Intensive Care Unit, because there wasn’t one. Residents of Lambeth with severe respiratory problems – and there were many because cigarettes were cheap and sulphurous smogs were common – were given oxygen on thirty-bed Nightingale wards, with tracheostomies if they were really sick. Monitors didn’t bleep. There weren’t any.

Nobel Prizes are meaningful milestones for medical advances. My longevity, and hence increased susceptibility to Covid, has been helped by cardiac catheterisation (André Cournand, Werner Forssmann, Dickinson Richards: Nobel Prize, 1956) and the placement of stents into my left circumflex and right coronary arteries. My wife broke her hip on 21 December 2020, had a total hip replacement on the 23rd, and was discharged from hospital after physiotherapy on the 31st. A CT scan was needed to make the definitive diagnosis of the fracture (Allan Cormack, Godfrey Hounsfield:; Nobel Prize for the development of computerised tomography, 1979).

CT was used to diagnose pneumonia in patient number 1, admitted to hospital in Wuhan on 27 December 2019. Traditional virology – cell culture using human airway epithelial cells – showed that there was something infectious in lung washings, and electron microscopy (Ernst Ruska: Nobel Prize, 1986) showed coronaviruses. The electron microscope technique used was negative staining, invented by Sydney Brenner (Nobel Prize, 2002) and Bob Horne, and used by June Almeida at St Thomas’s in 1966 to discover the first human coronavirus. The polymerase chain reaction (Kary Mullis; Nobel Prize, 1993) was used to rule out 22 known pathogens. The results of genome sequencing (Frederick Sanger; Nobel Prizes, 1958 and 1980) were published on the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data website on 12 January. The coronavirus was new. The Wuhan lockdown started on 23 January.

In the mid-1980s, Brenner said that for ten years biology had been in a new epoch, AD, ‘after DNA’. Covid exemplifies its progress and application. In the olden days a virological diagnosis would be made by looking for the causative virus by growing it in susceptible cells, or directly by immunological tests or electron microscopy, or by measuring antibodies induced by the infection. Coronaviruses don’t grow well in cell cultures and antibodies take a couple of weeks to appear. The gold standard and commonly used test for the causative virus in Covid cases is RT/PCR, in which virus RNA is converted into DNA by the reverse transcriptase enzyme, discovered by Howard Temin and David Baltimore (Nobel Prize, 1975).

Brenner was a big advocate of the Human Genome Project. It started in 1990, took ten years, and cost $2.7 billion. But in 2008 genome sequencing costs started to fall like a stone, outpacing Moore’s Law, and by 2015 enabling the $1000 human genome. Sequencing a bacterium or virus genome costs twenty times less than that, giving a massive boost to genomic epidemiology.

The UK Covid-19 Genomics consortium (COG-UK) was established in March 2020 with a £20 million grant from the Department of Health and Social Care, UK Research and Innovation and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. So far it has sequenced more than 100,000 genomes and identified hundreds of variants. Of particular concern are B117, first seen in England in autumn 2020, and 501YV2, identified in South Africa. Mathematical modelling has calculated B117 to be more transmissible than its precursors. Directly measuring the transmissibility of a virus spread from person to person by the respiratory route could be done experimentally by infecting immunologically virgin volunteers. It is very unlikely that any ethical committee would give its approval. So such a measurement is trans-scientific; a question that can be asked of science but cannot be answered by it.

The hypothesis of increased transmissibility would be supported by evidence if individuals infected with B117 excrete more infectious virus, or are infectious for longer, or cause bigger outbreaks, or cause them more often; or if virus particle infectivity lasts longer in the air or on fomites. Information about these things is awaited. Another possibility is that the number of virus particles needed to start an infection is smaller – another question that could only be answered accurately by volunteer studies. Seventy years ago, the infectious dose and pathogenicity of Salmonella were established after ‘human volunteers were secured at a nearby penal institution’ in Chicago. That example is unlikely to be followed.

Brenner called the traditional hunt for mutants ‘forward genetics’: mutations were precisely identified by their effects before the genes containing them were identified. ‘Reverse genetics’ is done the other way round. Brenner also described a third form, ‘perverse genetics’, in which everything is done by sequencing and computers without much recourse to biology. Covid-19 mutant hunts haven’t moved far enough away from this for my liking, yet.

* * *

AN LRB Reader comments:

One wag used to pull up people who waxed lyrical about the good old days and golden ages with one word. Dentistry. This piece is a timely reminder of just how fortunate we are to be living in the age we do. When this pandemic is done, and it still has a long way to run, one hopes that the experience will encourage more to take up scientific careers and governments to invest more in scientific education and research.

* * *

* * *

CHEMICAL WARFARE’S HOME FRONT

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Since World War I we’ve been solving problems with dangerous chemicals that introduce new problems.

What is often called “the first use of weapons of mass destruction” took place on April 22, 1915, near the town of Ypres, in western Belgium. Six months earlier, Germany’s hopes for a quick victory in World War I had been dashed on the banks of the Marne, and the country had enlisted some of its top scientists to break the stalemate. One of them, Fritz Haber, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, had suggested releasing chlorine gas. Since the gas is heavier than air, Haber reasoned, it would sink when released; this would allow it to infiltrate the trenches of the French and English forces.

The Germans had signed the Hague Convention of 1899, which forbade the “use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” Nevertheless, by interpreting this clause literally—the chlorine would be released not from projectiles but from canisters—the country’s military commanders managed to convince themselves that the move was permissible. In any event the French, they complained—accurately—had already been releasing “deleterious gas” in the form of grenades filled with ethyl bromoacetate, a skin irritant that can be fatal. Just a few months after Haber proposed his idea, he personally supervised the placement of nearly six thousand canisters of chlorine along the front. Ten canisters were attached to a single spout, to minimize the number of men needed to release their contents.

Haber, a Jew who had converted to Christianity, was self-critical, ambitious, and restlessly brilliant. His work ranged from the electrolysis of solid salts to the thermodynamics of gas reactions. A few years before the start of World War I, he devised a method for converting ordinary nitrogen into ammonia. The Haber-Bosch process, as it became known, allowed for the production of synthetic fertilizers and fundamentally changed the world: without chemical fertilizers, it is estimated, some 3.5 billion people—almost half the globe’s population—wouldn’t be alive today.

During the war the Germans, cut off from supplies of saltpeter, which is both a fertilizer and an ingredient in gunpowder, used the Haber-Bosch process to generate a substitute. This enabled them to continue to produce explosives and, according to Haber himself, prolonged the war for three years.

The canisters Haber had had installed near Ypres were supposed to be opened on April 22, at 4am. But there was no wind that morning, so the attack was delayed. Finally in the afternoon, a breeze came up, and at around 5am the Germans turned the valves. The chlorine — some 300,000 pounds of it — drifted across the landscape in a billowing cloud. Within a few minutes it had reached the French lines. A Canadian soldier who was stationed in the north of the French recalled seeing a “queer greenish-yellow fog that seemed strangely out of place in the bright atmostphere of that clear April day.” A German soldier who had helped release the gas and then witnessed the results reported:

“When we got to the French lines the trenches were empty. But in a half mile the bodies of the French soldiers were everywhere. You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get their breath. Some had shot themselves. The horses, still in the stables, cows, chickens, everything — all were dead.”

The Germans were unable to press the advantage Haber had given them, because front-line commanders hadn’t put much faith in the plans of a civilian and so hadn’t prepared to push through the opening the gas attack created. “I was a college professor and therefore not to be heeded,” Haber later complained. But once again using chemistry he had altered the course of history. The attack at Ypres initiated a ghastly cycle, as each side sought — and deployed — ever more potent chemical weapons. After chlorine came phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, diphenylarsine chloride, cyanogen chloride, and bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, otherwise known as mustard gas. In 1919 Haber was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on ammonia synthesis. Not surprisingly, given what he’d done in the interim, the award is one of the most controversial in Nobel history.

(New York Review of Books)

* * *

* * *

THE SECOND COVID-19 SHOT Is a Rude Reawakening for Immune Cells

At about 2 a.m. on Thursday morning, I woke to find my husband shivering beside me. For hours, he had been tossing in bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, nursing chills, a fever, and an agonizingly sore left arm. His teeth chattered. His forehead was freckled with sweat. And as I lay next to him, cinching blanket after blanket around his arms, I felt an immense sense of relief. All this misery was a sign that the immune cells in his body had been riled up by the second shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and were well on their way to guarding him from future disease.

theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/second-vaccine-side-effects/617892/

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* * *

HEROES AND PATRIOTS RETURNS THURSDAY, FEB 4, 9-10 A.M. PST ON KMUD COMMUNITY RADIO 

Lev Golinkin and Max Moran Join Hosts, John Sakowicz and Mary Massey. Listener Questions Welcome. The program will be archived at the show website: www.heroespatriots.org

Why Are There Monuments to Nazi Collaborators?

This year, January 27, marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 76th anniversary of the Soviet army liberating Auschwitz in 1945.

LEV GOLINKIN

Golinkin just wrote the piece “ How many monuments honor fascists, Nazis and murderers of Jews? You’ll be shocked,” in the Forward, launching the The Nazi Monument Project.

He writes: “The most curious thing about last year’s protests that toppled statues of slavers and colonizers is that the monuments of Holocaust perpetrators didn’t even make headlines.”

Golinkin documents — with a map — “320 monuments and street names in 16 countries on three continents which represent men and organizations who’ve enabled — and often quite literally implemented — the Final Solution. … 

“The Nazi collaborators honored with monuments on U.S. soil represent governments, death squads and paramilitaries that murdered a half million Jews, Poles and Bosnians. …

“Even more worrying than the sheer number is the overall trend. The vast majority of these statues were erected in the past 20 years. Wherever you see statues of Nazi collaborators, you’ll also find thousands of torch-carrying men, rallying, organizing, drawing inspiration for action by celebrating collaborators of the past.”

Golinkin provides a country-by-country breakdown. These include:

In the Ukraine, which is where a quarter of the Jews killed in the Holocaust came from: “In 2016, a major Kyiv boulevard was renamed after [Nazi collaborator Stepan] Bandera. The renaming is particularly obscene since the street leads to Babi Yar, the ravine where Nazis, aided by Ukrainian collaborators, exterminated 33,771 Jews in two days, in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust.”

In Belgium, in 2018, a monument titled “Latvian Beehive for Freedom” was erected. The Latvian prisoners of war commemorated “were none other than the Latvian Legion, a unit in the Waffen-SS, which was the military wing of the Nazi party.”

Golinkin adds that “a disturbing number of Nazi collaborators documented in this database resettled in the West after the war.”

He is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, a memoir of Soviet Ukraine, which he left as a child refugee.

Leading Big Tech Lawyer May Head Biden Antitrust

January 29, 2021

The Intercept and The American Prospect are reporting “Renata Hesse, who has worked for Google and Amazon, is the leading candidate to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division.”

MAX MORAN

Moran is a researcher at the Revolving Door Project and said today: “In 2010, Renata Hesse worked alongside Ted Cruz to persuade the Texas Attorney General not to sue to break up Google’s monopoly over the online search market. As recently as 2018, Hesse publicly stated that she thinks people mostly use Google Search ‘because they like it better’ (not because of its fiercely-defended priority status in most internet browsers) and that it would be wrong to punish Google ‘ because they did a great job.’

“And yet if appointed assistant attorney general for antitrust, Hesse would inherit a DOJ case joined by almost every attorney general nationwide to break up her former client. Moreover, Hesse’s deputies might find themselves arguing against their boss’ spouse: her husband, Joshua Soven, is a fellow antitrust lawyer representing Google and employed by its go-to law firm Wilson Sonsini.

“Just as concerning is that in 2017, Hesse assisted Amazon in its acquisition of Whole Foods. While the federal government has not yet announced plans to sue to break up Amazon, activist coalitions have called for antitrust action against the firm. Under Amazon, moreover, Whole Foods has engaged in unprecedented mass surveillance of employees to deter unionization.

“Notably, when Hesse served at the DOJ in 2005, she protected TurboTax-creator Intuit from the threat of a competitor offering free tax filing to all taxpayers, by deploying a tortured reading of antitrust law. If not for Hesse, Americans might not need to pay to file their taxes this year.

“Hesse’s past work defending Google and enabling Amazon’s acquisitions create irresolvable conflicts of interest that must disqualify her from serving in a Biden administration’s DOJ antitrust division or Federal Trade Commission.”

See past accuracy.org news releases on Biden’s cabinet.

* * *

* * *

ATTENTION MIDDLE OF THE ROAD EXTREMISTS!

www.coastdemocraticclub

ZOOM CLUB MEETING Thurs. FEB 4, 6-7:30 PM

Talk with DISTRICT 5 SUPERVISOR, TED WILLIAMS

Topic: Government Accountability

Public Safety Advisory Board

Measure B

Cannabis

Your questions

Karen Bowers is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85064389075?pwd=SmREekI3bzVxNTY5MmxsUHZtQ1ZUQT09*

Meeting ID: 850 6438 9075

Passcode: Dem2021One tap mobile+16699009128,,85064389075#,,,,*8048518# US

(San Jose)+13462487799,,85064389075#,,,,*8048518# US (Houston) 

Dial by your location

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US (Tacoma)+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington

DC)+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)Meeting ID: 850 6438 9075Passcode:

8048518Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbBlpCWSAy

* * *

* * *

THE WORST MISTAKE THE DEMOCRATS COULD MAKE IS TO SEEK THE ’CENTER’ AGAIN.

The reality of the current crises—not a single crisis but many intersecting ones—make it absolutely clear that Biden and the Democrats must learn from the past seventy-five years of Democratic missteps and adopt a boldly progressive approach capable of meeting the challenges of the moment and capturing the imagination of a battered and beaten-down American electorate. 

commondreams.org/views/2021/02/03/worst-mistake-democrats-could-make-seek-center-again

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PEOPLE'S PARTY

I’m thrilled to share that we just registered the People’s Party in the biggest state in the country. Announcing the People’s Party of California!

If you’re in California you can be one of the first to register with the People’s Party. We need to register 80,000 voters in the state to get our ballot line and run candidates. We want to celebrate and register as many people as possible today, so after registering, head to social media and share the news that you officially joined the #PeoplesParty! 

Click here to navigate to California’s voter registration website, register with the People’s Party, and get us on the ballot. If you’re already registered to vote, you will need to register again to change your party affiliation. Once you navigate to the website, click “Register to Vote Now” and fill out the form. At the bottom of the form, you’ll see a place to mark your political party preference. In the drop-down menu select “Other Party” and then type in “People’s Party”. Here’s what you’ll see.

This is a huge step for our movement, and the first two weeks of Biden’s presidency have emphasized why our work is so important. The Democrats won the Senate by promising that “$2,000 checks will go out the door immediately.” That quickly became $1,400 or less by March, with means-testing, if we’re lucky. Biden’s Covid relief plan also walks back his already-paltry campaign promises to lower the age of Medicare and pass a public option, choosing instead to give billions of dollars in new ACA subsidies to health insurance corporations who are already making record profits. We needed Franklin Roosevelt and we got Reagan.

Because of your work, the People’s Party is becoming a major threat to Wall Street and the corporate parties, and powerful interests will do almost anything to stop us. We were just featured on Soledad O’Brien’s weekly news show, Matter of Fact, which is syndicated on NBC, CBS and ABC and broadcasts to hundreds of cities and towns across America. Our movement is growing and our case is resonating. That’s why we’re seeing Democratic Party loyalists like Ryan Grim and MSNBC correspondents like Sam Seder stepping up their attacks on our movement. We are challenging those who have become comfortable in the Democratic Party.

— Nick Brana, National Coordinator, Movement for a People’s Party

11 Comments

  1. Craig Stehr February 4, 2021

    “Instead of going on to infinity relying on the alt.right Republicans, and the visionless Democrats “seeking the center” and accomplishing the minimum at best, instead, embrace a political stance of Divine Anarchy, and associate with others participating in direct action.” ~Craig Louis Stehr, Redwood Valley, CA

  2. George Hollister February 4, 2021

    Keith Bramstedt never gets a response because he is speaking to his quire. The man from Comptche is rudely crashing that quire, so what should one expect?

    • Bob A. February 4, 2021

      Webster’s defines quire as “a collection of 24 or sometimes 25 sheets of paper of the same size and quality : one twentieth of a ream”, so it’s difficult to imagine a person speaking to one let alone crashing one. Perhaps the word you were looking for is choir? If so, that old saw goes …preaching to the choir…, although why or how one would crash a choir remains a mystery.

      • George Hollister February 4, 2021

        Well, I am not known for spelling, and never have been. In fact I have only gotten worse with the help, and corrections from spell check. So if anyone wants to offer free editing, I won’t turn you down. Meanwhile, as long as you understand my point, good enough.

        • chuck dunbar February 4, 2021

          I once was a pretty fair speller, but not so much as I get older. And spell check is good and bad. I used to have a boss named Margot. Spell check always wanted to turn that into “marmot,” so I had to be careful not to call her by an animal’s name. And she was a decent boss so did not want to offend her…

        • Harvey Reading February 4, 2021

          Gimme a break, George, you just like the attention.

    • Harvey Reading February 4, 2021

      From you, George? Not much.

  3. Harvey Reading February 4, 2021

    INSIDE THE POST OFFICE
    Excellent, true, and touching.

  4. Kirk Vodopals February 4, 2021

    RE: Golinkin… My grandparents were native Latvians. They fled the Soviet invasion in WW2. My father was born July 31st, 1945 in a refugee camp in Gunzburg Germany. The three of them made to the United States in 1950, by way of Venezuela then New Orleans. I’ve got a photo somewhere of my grandfather in a Nazi uniform, so we assumed that he was conscripted. He wasn’t soldier material. No one knows what happened. They never spoke a word about it. All I know is that he had horrible nightmares till the day he died. I can recall my grandmother talking about how beautiful her country was before the Russians arrived and then spitting on the ground every time Russia was mentioned.

    • George Hollister February 4, 2021

      My brother-in-law’s late father had a similar background, though he was not from Latvia. I tried to encourage him to talk about his WW2 experience, for the benefit of his future family descendants Absolutely not. Nothing.

  5. Michael Koepf February 5, 2021

    Tom Brady
    We both played football at Serra High. He was a six four two-hundred-pound quarterback, I was a five-eleven linebacker at one-ninety-five. Division champs in our respective years, which, full discloser, in Brady’s case was about thirty years after me. What’s the connection other than Serra’s locker room and playing field? My locker in the locker room. Number 39. I’m certain that’s the one he used. I left an inspiring message pasted up inside…which I can’t divulge. I like Brady. Always have. His record is impressive and he’s been a great teammate to all who’ve played with him no matter what their race was, religion or athletic ability. Unlike a lot of football players today, who quickly appear and fade, Brady has kept his politics, whatever they really are or aren’t, off the playing field. But, leave it to a mini, make-believe Marxist, in this case, Dave Zirin, to clip him from behind. Full disclosure again: editor and master cut-and-paster, both-ways Bruce has always been shy from whence his paste-ups come, but in this case, Zirin writes for the Nation, a spider hole for mini, make-believe Marxists with intensions of tearing this country apart. Currently, they’ve taken their campaign onto the playing field of sports, which sports fan previously thought, was a place to escape all political crap on the couch with chips and beer. So why this illegal hit on Brady with the Super Bowl only days from now? Only the Stasi and a so-called progressive would know. Zirin is in favor of boycotting Israeli sport teams. That probably has resonance here. Zirin also believes that any criticism of Barry Bonds (Serra High again) is racist, even though Bonds was juiced; ignoring the obvious fact that Barry’s home run record (if sports history lets it stand) disrespects the great Hank Arron, who hit his homers fair and square. Zirin is an empty, athletic supporter, an envious creature of the far, far left.

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