MCT: Thursday, May 23, 2019

• May Rain
• Flea Market
• Open Studios
• Quiz Night
• Grunwalding
• Phone Scam
• Lighthouse
• Too Stupid
• Seen Buz?
• Chop Suey
• Short Shots
• Previous Catches
• Biden Loser
• Drive-Thru Dinner
• Chronic Absenteeism
• Hippie Bewitched
• Rail Fail
• Antisocial
• REOs
• One-Hit Wonderland
• Controlled Demolition
• Student Debt
• Magic Ranching
• Jeopardy
• Climate Science
• L.A. 1899
• Military Dissent
• Cayuse
• Sloth & Morphine

MAY RAINS: Three storms over seven days (May 15-21) dropped 6.64 inches rain on Yorkville and 5.37 inches on Boonville.

MILD AND DRY CONDITIONS can be expected throughout the interior today, with cool and breezy conditions along the coast. Chances for interior showers will gradually increase Friday through Monday, with isolated thunderstorms possible at times. A cooling trend is expected over the weekend, with a return to warmer but near-normal temperatures toward the middle of the week. (National Weather Service)

ANDERSON VALLEY SENIOR CENTER will again host The Community Flea Market On Memorial Day Weekend

14410 Highway 128, Boonville CA 95415, Veterans Building

May 24-27th, 2019, 9 AM to 6 PM

To Sell; $20 p/day or $40 for 4 days

This will be an open air, flea market, in the parking lot of the Anderson Valley Senior Center and Veterans Building.

Snack bar will be serving breakfast, lunch and homemade goodies 9:00 to 2:00 Friday through Sunday.

Antiques, household items, artist supplies, bird cages, tools, blacksmithing equipment, anvils, equipment, clothing, electronic equipment, and just about everything else you could imagine will be for sale.

ANDERSON VALLEY OPEN STUDIOS - a treat to look forward to on Memorial Day weekend

by Yoriko Kishimoto

Anderson Valley is known for its magical alchemy of redwoods, vineyards, goats, great food and wine— and of course artists!

On Memorial Day weekend, Anderson Valley Open Studios asks local artists to clean up their private studios a little (just a little) so you, the public, can find your way up windy roads, under green canopies of trees, across creeks and squeeze into the studios to see where they work, check out some of their new work, and connect with the creative process.

The yellow signs up and down 128 will lead you to the artists’ studios from 11 to 5 pm on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, May 25th-27th.

The artists this year are:

• Steve Wood - architectural renderings, models and photographs
• Charlie Hochberg - photography of “painterly” panoramas
• Judy Nelson -glass beads and jewelry inspired by the valley
• Xenia King - paintings in oil and acrylic, oil pastels and photographs
• Laura Diamondstone - paintings and drawings with mixed and upcycled media/materials
• Yoriko Kishimoto -oil and watercolor from the four winds
• Saoirse Bryne - scarves, wraps and fabric ottomans incorporating art of rope making
• Kate McEwen - printmaking, photography, art: time and the obsolete
• Marvin and Colleen Schenck - post-impressionist landscape painting, printmaking, jewelry, mixed media
• Jan Wax and Chris Bing - porcelain and stoneware art pottery
• Deanna Thomas - plein air paintings in oils and pastels with an expressive brush and tonal palette
• Michael Wilson and Susan Spencer - art assemblages in their Beat Gallery
• Nadia Berrigan - photography of landscape and light, composition and its abstraction
• Rebecca Johnson - a poetic and contemporary interpretation of place, painting and sculpture
• Doug Johnson - crystalline glazed and wood fired salt glazed ceramics
• Rachel Lahn - mixed media sculptural paintings and encaustics that capture the elemental rhythms and forms

In an era where we spend too much time on the computer and phone, connect with the part of you that is hungry for that hands-on, creative process. This is a free and a unique opportunity - I hope everyone will visit at least a couple studios if not all. Check out

https://andersonvalley-artguild.org/open-studios for more info on each artist and a map! We welcome you to visit, get inspired, and perhaps get an original piece of art!

QUIZ TONIGHT: Yes, folks, we're on the eve of another night of fun, frivolity, good food, fine wine, thirst-quenching beers, and furrowed brows as the General Knowledge and Trivia Quiz takes place tonight at Lauren's Restaurant in Boonville - that's the 4th Thursday of May, the 23rd… It all gets going at 7pm and I hope to see you there. Cheers, Steve Sparks - Quiz Master…

THE GRUNWALD REPORT: Things are very confused at the courthouse today. Short of judges, and due to a fire at the jail this morning, there's been lots of delays in transporting prisoners to court. My neighbor, Michael Grunwald, was supposed to have a prelim yesterday, but he walked off instead, saying he was going to the hospital. But when I got home the cops had Grunwald's place surrounded and I could hear him down the street yelling at everybody, saying the usual stupid things, like he's suing the police for running a child prostitution ring, and he tried to tell me all about it later when I went out for something to eat, but I ignored him and went on my way. Judge Behnke had issued an arrest warrant yesterday when Grunwald failed to appear for his prelim, that he would hold the warrant until this morning, and Grunwald's lawyer, Daniel Moss, said Grunwald would be there this morning, but he wasn't; and Moss later heard that his client had lit the fire in the reception room at the jail, and so, he's now under arrest with new charges. (Bruce McEwen)

PHONE SCAM IN FORT BRAGG

On May 22, 2019, The Fort Bragg Police Department began receiving reports of a new telephone scam being conducted in the Fort Bragg area.

From reports, the scam begins with a supposed “family member” or “friend” calling from an unknown number and being in some type of trouble. This has ranged from being kidnapped, to being involved in a traffic collision and being detained against their will. The family member or friend will be extremely distraught to the point where the person receiving the call cannot understand them.

At this point another person will take the phone and explain what has occurred. They will then provide instructions that the police not be notified, and demand payment in order to have their family member or friend released. If the person receiving the call requests to speak with the family member or friend, the second party will oblige, but again, the receiver will be met with an inconsolable person screaming and shouting. The second party will then again pick up the phone and demand payment be sent to him via western union.

After the money has been sent, the caller will provide a location to pick up their family member but never arrive. It is later determined the family member or friend is safe and sound, unaware of the scam.

The Fort Bragg Police Department is requesting that the public report this type of activity immediately to law enforcement. If you receive one of these calls and want to verify someone’s wellbeing, please utilize their telephone number or contact them in person. Do not allow the caller to hand them the phone or provide you with a number to call.

Anonymous tips may be left on the Crime Tip Hotline at (707) 961-3049.

POINT ARENA CABRILLO LIGHTHOUSE STATION

REMEMBERING LAST SUMMER

by Janie Sheppard

I found this on my I-pad just now; I don’t know why I didn’t send it to you when I wrote it, but I thought it relevant today when all we can think about is the damn rain.

REMEMBERING SUMMER 2018: Eastern Mendocino County

Fire Report Monday July 30th with update as of Sunday afternoon, August 5, 2018.

California is disappearing in smoke and flames. Global warming sits on us like a smothering blanket. Out my window I see two fires and there are at least seventeen ongoing fires in the state. Triple digit heat is unrelenting. Leaves are falling from the trees ahead of schedule as a result of a six-year drought with only one year of significant rainfall.

Above, right over my house helicopters sound like tanks rumbling on some stairway to heaven. They pick up buckets of water from irrigation ponds and drop buckets full of water on a fire that is at least 6,000 (later 40,000) acres with very little containment. Compared to the amount of burning acreage the helicopters seem like noisy little mosquitoes. There are two huge fires: the River Fire and the Ranch Fire, together becoming The Mendocino Complex Fire. We really need several firefighting 747’s to put out the two fires.

The state has two such firefighters but they are likely deployed to Redding, a city of 40,000 situated at the head of the Central Valley, where the summer’s triple digit heat accumulates and mixes with strong winds to produce what one scientist likens to a microwave oven, or, to my thinking, a blast furnace. At least one 747 was finally deployed to the Mendocino Complex Fire.

This hell is California’s foreseeable future.

We were warned. Science nerds and policy wonks knew what would happen if we failed to act. They tried to come to agreement for all of us. Out of a conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 came the Kyoto Protocol, under which countries agreed to separately determine targets to reduce greenhouse gases. That was all the best minds could do, human nature being what it is. So what if global warming was global? Apparently, the people running the US and some other governments could not conceive of the global nature of the problem, nor the corresponding need for a global solution.

Even if the Kyoto Protocol had been based on a realistic appraisal of the situation, the US Senate would never ratify it anyway. It’s puny targets were never adopted because the US was unhappy about the fact that third-world countries were not made to share the pain; instead, they were to be compensated for all the years of exploitation by rich countries and that seemed unfair to the American powers that be.

Ordinary citizens and politicians alike got another chance to understand what was at stake when, in 2006, Al Gore explained the science behind global warming so that all of us could understand it. He made it easy in the Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Again we rejected the science and the truth.

In 2009 President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton negotiated the United States into the much-ballyhooed Paris Climate Accord. Every country in the world signed. All countries would be singing off the same sheet of music — at least until President Trump decided it “wasn’t good for the United States.” No climate agreement ever “could be good for the United States”; that’s the point. World-wide climate agreements are good for the world. They offer a way for humans to save themselves.

So, the real inconvenient truth turns out to be that we are too stupid to save ourselves.

ANYBODY SEEN BUZ?

IN OTHER NEWS, I'm trying to get in touch with R. Buzby, who about 25 years ago lived in a leaky greenhouse on E Road in Albion, was a surfer and a musician, looked enough like the most common Germanic fantasy Jesus Christ paintings so that I put a cross-your-eyes 3D photo of him dressed in a sheet and bloodily crucified on the cover of /Memo/, and who with his brother composed, staged and recorded a full-length rock opera about a hapless caffeine-injecting junkie world savior with a big featureless white dodecahedron for a head, including a xeroxed cartoon book outlining the story. The main character's name was Harry Whole Bean. I really want to talk with R. Buzby and maybe get another set of the Dodecahead materials for the radio. I've lost them and it's a disaster.

(Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org)

LOS ANGELES, 1933

SHORT SHOTS

GOT A TIP that the spectacular screw-up, Mr. Blahut, did not report to the County Jail to do his one year for, among other things, terrifying a Coast family at a drive-thru restaurant in Ukiah by deliberately ramming their car. Blahut is also wanted in Iowa for assault.

Flip Out At McDonald’s

Justice for Blahut

Mr. Nice Guy Goes Away

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THE SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISORS have given themselves a 12% raise, although The City has never been in worse shape, with the unattended walking wounded everywhere, rents unaffordable for working people.

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A COAST MAN called to report he'd beaten back the Big C, and wants everyone in Mendo to know that our local Cancer Society was of enormous help to him in his hours of multiple needs. He said the national Cancer Society did nada for him.

---

MORE GOOD NEWS: 7 in 10 persons flunked the California Bar exam back in February. Way back, I took the Graduate Record Exam when I thought I might want to go to graduate school. I was 22, I think, and shamefully knowledge-deficient. But I could read, and that's basically what was tested — reading comprehension. Lawyers tell me the Bar Exam is also basically a matter of preparation and reading comprehension. That so many young people fail it is not surprising, given today's low standards from kindergarten through college.

CATCH OF THE DAY, MAY 21-22, 2019

PAULINE BARAJAS, Gualala. Probation revocation.

HEATHER DEWOLF, Fort Bragg. shoplifting, more than an ounce of pot, resisting, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

DAVID GOSSELIN, Leggett. Gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

DANIEL GRIFFITH, Eureka/Ukiah. Vandalism, probation revocation.

MICHAEL GRUNWALD, Ukiah. Arson.

RICHARD HANSON, Vallejo/Ukiah. DUI-drugs&alcohol, suspended license.

LARRY HARVEY, Rowland Heights/Laytonville. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JAMES JOHNSON, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER LOPEZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JOHN LOPEZ, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

ISAAC LUNDELL, Clearlake/Ukiah. DUI.

DORIS MCCONNELL, Fort Bragg. Suspended license.

SUNEE MITCHELL, Calpella. Second degree robbery, probation revocation.

RAYMOND PADILLA, San Jose/Ukiah. Suspended license.

DAYNICE SHILLINGS, Ukiah. Resisting, probation revocation.

AMBER SMITH, Willits. Disobeying court order.

HERIBERTO SOLIS-OLIVAREZ, Calpella. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, no license, offenses while on bail.

SALVADOR YANEZ, Ukiah. Robbery, false imprisonment, domestic battery, failure to appear.

JOE BIDEN IS THE LEAST ELECTABLE DEMOCRAT

by Ted Rall

As one of the few pundits who correctly called the 2016 election for Donald Trump, it would be wise to rest on my laurels rather than risk another prediction, one that might turn out wrong.

But how would that be fun? Let the 2020 political prognostications begin!

The arithmetic of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries is repeating itself on the Democratic side in 2020: a big field of candidates, one of whom commands a plurality by virtue of name recognition—which implies higher “electability”—while his 20-or-so opponents divvy up the rest of the single-digit electoral scraps.

The Trump 2016 dynamic will probably play out the same way when Democratic delegates are counted at the 2020 convention. But the outcome in November 2020 is likely to be the opposite: Trump gets reelected.

Here’s how I see it playing out.

In 2016 there were 17 “major” (corporate media-approved) GOP presidential candidates. Famous and flamboyant, Donald Trump consistently polled around 30% throughout the primaries. That left his 16 relatively obscure rivals to fight over the remaining 70%. Considering that 70% divided by 16 comes to 4.4%, his runner-ups Ben Carson (14%), Ted Cruz (9%) and Marco Rubio (9%) outperformed the field. Yet they Trump’s lead was too big. They couldn’t catch him.

Twenty-four Democrats are running in 2020. Here again, we have one really famous guy—it’s hard to get more famous than former vice president of the United States—plus the rest. In this contest, the odds of an upset are even longer. Joe Biden polls at around 38%, significantly better than Trump did. The remaining pie slice is smaller than Carson, Cruz, Rubio, etc. and gets chopped up into even more pieces.

Next comes Bernie Sanders—the early frontrunner, now number two—at about 18%, with Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg each getting about 8%. (62% divided by 23 equals 2.7%.) Although Sanders is suffering from his failure to follow my advice to move left, it’s also easy to see why progressives suspect another DNC conspiracy to screw him.

“Having many candidates is a standard Democratic Party tactic to draw down support for any insurgent candidate,” writes Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, a candidate for Congress from south L.A. “When it was just Bernie vs. Hillary, all the anti-Hillary Democratic voters had to go somewhere, and they all went to Bernie. But now Bernie’s votes will be split with progressive icons like Warren and Gabbard, as well as with progressive-sounding corporate politicians like Buttigieg, Harris, and Biden.”

Here I will insert my standard disclaimer that the elections are an eternity away, that things can and will change, you never know what will happen, blah blah blah.

But as things stand at this writing, Biden will probably take the nomination unless he dies or there’s a new scandal.

After the summer 2020 conventions, the 2016 scenario diverges from 2020.

I tend to discount “blue no matter who” and “anyone but Trump” chatter from centrist Democrats who argue that this president is such a threat to everything good and decent about the world that everyone must set their personal preferences aside in order to vote the bastard out. Besides, many of the people who urge unity have no credibility. They voted for Hillary but if Bernie had been the nominee they would not have turned out for him. Progressives weren’t born yesterday. Tired of 40 years of marginalization, they turned a deaf ear to the Clintonites’ self-serving unity pleas, boycotted the general election and denied Hillary her “inevitable” win.

And here’s the thing: they don’t feel bad about it.

If anything the schism in the Democratic Party between the progressive majority (72%) and corporatist centrist voters has widened and hardened over the past three years. Both sides are intransigent: Hillary’s voters accuse Bernie’s boycotters of handing the White House to Trump; Bernie’s supporters point to polls that consistently showed he, not Clinton, could have beat Trump.

Progressives are still angry that the Democratic establishment cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination last time. News that they’re doing the same thing now has enraged them.

That includes progressives who plan to vote for one of the other progressives or progressives-come-lately. By any measure, Joe Biden is not progressive. He’s number one in the polls but far behind the aggregate total of his progressive opponents. (I omit zero-policy candidates like Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg and centrists like Amy Klobuchar from my back-of-the-envelope calculations even though their support includes some progressives.) The party is ramming Biden the corporatist down the throats of Democratic primary voters using classic divide-and-conquer.

It will work. The Democrats will emerge from this nomination fight even more divided than the last cycle. Like the Mad Queen at the conclusion of “Game of Thrones,” Biden will inherit the ruins of a party he destroyed.

Trump goes into 2020 stronger than ever. Republicans are unified. Democrats look like fools for the debunked Russiagate fiasco and like wimps for refusing to try to impeach him. The economy looks strong. If the president lays off Iran, we’ll be relatively at peace. In the Rust Belt swing states it’s not just Republicans who like his trade wars. Abortion will not motivate as many voters as liberals hope.

At the same time, Joe Biden is the worst candidate in the Democratic field, even worse than Hillary Clinton. Some progressives voted for her because of her history-making potential as first woman president and her role trying to make healthcare policy. Biden offers nothing like that for progressive voters. He’s a warmonger who voted to kill a million people in Iraq. He’s against Medicare for all. He undermined Anita Hill, pretended to apologize years after the fact, and then took it back. And he’s just another old white man. No one is excited about him.

Only one thing can defeat Donald Trump: a unified, enthusiastic, progressive front. Biden’s rivals should pick one of their own, drop out and pledge to campaign for him or her. OK, two things: Biden should quit for the good of his party. Of course neither of these will happen.

I currently predict that Trump will win bigly.

(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower.)

PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATION: GIVING STUDENTS THE BEST CHANCE TO SUCCEED

by Michelle Hutchins, Superintendent, Mendocino County

When I was the superintendent of Anderson Valley Unified School District, it was clear to me that a certain percentage of families really struggled to get their students to school every day. I began researching the impacts of chronic absenteeism and how Mendocino County stacked up against other California counties. That’s when I discovered that our chronic absenteeism rates are almost double the state average. I began talking with Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman and District Attorney Dave Eyster to see what it would take to create a county-wide approach to the problem. What I discovered is that the problem could be solved if someone with the knowledge and expertise were willing to dedicate enough time and energy to it. I knew I cared enough to be that person, so I decided to run for county superintendent of schools.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of getting students to school every day. It is a critical building block of academic success. Studies prove what common sense would have us believe—if students aren’t in the classroom, they fall behind. What you may be surprised to learn is how little school students have to miss for the results to be devastating to their academic futures. When students miss just two days a month (which represents about 10 percent of the school year), they are statistically less likely to graduate. And it starts as early as kindergarten. In fact, the biggest detrimental effects often occur in the early grades when students are learning the fundamentals of English and mathematics.

There’s a great website called absencesaddup.org that goes into why attendance is so important and the reasons students skip school. To be clear, chronic absenteeism includes both truancy (unexcused absences) and excused absences. Whether students have a good reason to miss school or not, when they are not in the classroom they are not benefitting from the teacher’s instruction and interactions with their peers.

The data on this are so clear. Students who can read at grade level by third grade are about three times more likely to graduate from high school and go on for post-secondary education as compared to their peers to do not make the transition in third grade from learning to read to reading to learn. Authors of another study followed a cohort of students through high school and were able to correlate a lack of graduation back to their sixth-grade attendance, behavior and course failure.

School builds on material taught the year before. When students get behind in the early years, it can be incredibly difficult for them to catch up. Unfortunately, students who live in communities like ours with high levels of poverty are far more likely to be chronically absent than others because of factors out of their control such as unstable housing, unreliable transportation and a lack of access to health care.

So how do we address this problem? The answer varies because the reasons for chronic absenteeism vary. Our large school districts—Ukiah Unified, Willits Unified and Fort Bragg Unified—have put considerable time and resources into helping families get their students to school every day. Ukiah Unified, for example, added family-community liaisons to their staff and hired an additional school resource officer to work with families whose students are chronically absent. Our smaller districts rarely have the resources to hire additional staff, so school employees do their best to follow up with struggling families between other responsibilities. To help them, the county office of education provides training on how best to use their limited resources to combat chronic absenteeism.

Whether districts can afford more staff or not, at some point there need to be legal consequences for chronic absenteeism. I worked in a county with a successful school attendance review board (SARB). Both Tom Allman and Dave Eyster support the reduction of truancy, but they are pragmatists. Schools are not the only organizations with limited funding and stretched resources. Dave told me, “If I have to choose between prosecuting a murder case and prosecuting a parent whose child isn’t attending school, I’ll prosecute the murder case.” Who can blame him?

However, both he and Tom have said that if we created a family court system that only referred a small fraction of cases—the most egregious ones—to the D.A.’s office, that might work. So, that’s what I’m working on right now.

TRUMP ISN'T ALWAYS WRONG

Derailing this train would be a big gift

by Dan Walter

At last count, California’s Democratic political leadership had filed four dozen lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s administration, reflecting differences on policies large and small.

For the most part, California’s legal allegations have been on target. However, Trump is on solid legal and logical ground in the latest conflict over the state’s disastrous foray into high-speed rail transportation. Nine years ago, the Obama administration gave the state a $3.5 billion grant to finance a big share of the initial bullet train segment, more than 100 miles of track from a point north of Fresno to the outskirts of Bakersfield.

The federal money was to be matched by state funds from a $9.95 billion bond issue passed by California voters in 2008 and the San Joaquin Valley stretch was to be completed by 2017. Later, before Trump became president, the feds gave California an extension to 2022, but only tiny portions have been built.

Late last year, the state’s auditor, Elaine Howle, told the Legislature that meeting the 2022 deadline would be nearly impossible, citing the High-Speed Rail Authority’s “flawed decision making regarding the start of high-speed rail system construction in the Central Valley and its ongoing poor contract management for a wide range of high-value contracts.” Howle said the problems “have contributed to billions of dollars in cost overruns for completing the system.”

A couple of months later, Gavin Newsom succeeded bullet-train booster Jerry Brown as governor and told the Legislature in his first State of the State address, “Let’s be real. The project as currently planned would cost too much and take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.” He said he would concentrate on finishing the San Joaquin Valley segment and extending it on both ends to piece together a three-system pathway for traveling between San Francisco and Bakersfield.

After Newsom’s address, President Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars. They owe the federal government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a 'green' disaster!”

Last week, the Federal Railroad Administration, in a 25-page letter, formally rescinded about $1 billion not yet given to California and hinted again that it would claw back the other $2.5 billion.

“It is now clear that California has no foreseeable plans, nor the capability, to pursue that statewide High-Speed Rail System as originally proposed,” wrote Ronald Batory, the federal railroad administrator, adding that the state “is chronically behind in project construction activities and has not been able to correct or mitigate its deficiencies.”

“The Trump administration is trying to exact political retribution on our state,” Newsom responded in a statement. “This is California’s money, appropriated by Congress, and we will vigorously defend it in court.”

That’s not really true. The money was part of an overall appropriation by Congress for rail projects, and California was given a piece of it by the Obama administration under a contract.

It has not met its contractual obligations and cannot, as Howle said late last year, meet the 2022 deadline because of poor management during Brown’s administration.

The bullet train utterly lacks a rational purpose, has been ill-managed from the onset and is a black financial hole. If the Trumpies strangle it, they would be doing California a big favor.

(Dan Walters is a columnist for CALmatters, a public interest journalism venture.)

TWEET OF THE DAY

I asked Secretary Ben Carson about REOs - a basic term related to foreclosures - at a hearing Monday. He thought I was referring to a chocolate sandwich cookie. No, really. (Congresswoman Katie Porter)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

IMO the Trump presidency bought some time. Time for what? To try to make reforms to an unworkable global trade and investment regime. The economy we’ve got now is unsustainable, with huge trade deficits supported by immense twin-towers of public and private debt. And a massively squanderous MICC. The numbers just don’t scan.

It will be a case of dismantling – or controlled demolition – which is what Trump is apparently trying to do with these trade negotiations. Barring that, it will be a case of uncontrolled collapse, the financial tremors of 2000 and 2009 being dress rehearsals for the Big One.

Trump is no conservative and no Republican. In his behavior he looks more to me like a New York City liberal. But he’s no Democrat either, both the Democrats and Republicans being different factions of the Party of Davos. Given the monied interests arrayed against him I doubt that Trump will make much headway.

What the present-day system has against it is logic, the laws of nature and the survival imperative. One of these things will bring it down, Trump or no Trump, Fed or no Fed, the machinations of Wall Street notwithstanding. David Brooks can deplore, the New York Times can condemn, but people need to eat and find a way forward in life with some dependable and adequate way to marry and raise a family.

An economy based on debt, precarious employment, “apps”, “gigs”, glorified taxi driving or room-letting is no way forward.

CRAIG HAS A FEW DRINKS AND…..

Going Upward

It has been an enjoyable experience living with friends recently at the Magic Ranch in Redwood Valley, CA. On Sunday May 19th, we sat up all night drinking beer and Mackinlay's Shackleton scotch whiskey, and watched an assortment of videos. It was a lot of fun! The resulting hangover lasted for a day and a half, and was ameliorated only by the passage of time. I will NEVER do that again.

However, that profound evening led to a serious facing of current earthly reality. The three of us realized that this world is nothing but a great illusion, and that if one goes beyond it, one then knows one's true Self. In addition, it is now my only wish to leave this world at my earliest convenience and go up, taking nothing here with me. To that end, I've been sitting comfortably in front of a fire place today, coffee cup in hand, mentally repeating the Catholic Hail Mary prayer continuously. This is after decades of frontline peace and justice work with a number of groups, particularly Catholic Worker and Earth First! Being able to do that, and routinely writing about it all, has made being here on planet earth make sense.

At this time, it is simply not worth it to me anymore to struggle for survival, beginning with obtaining housing in Washington, D.C. to return there for the 16th time. I have no idea why the political left didn't offer me much ever. I have no offers anywhere for housing, and the community environment which goes with it of course is nowhere seen.

So, I sit in a chair at my friend's place silently repeating Hail Mary prayers, and giving my ego up to God. Maybe this is where I needed to end up. At this point I just want to go to heaven. I want to go home! Thanks for listening, and I have enjoyed sharing this honest spiritual message with you.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

ATTENTION TRUMPERS!

Might I suggest a science and geology course so you can understand models are not needed as there is sufficient evidence for both greenhouse and glaciation effects though billions of years of history prior to humans appearing on this planet. Total global carbon is on the rise thanks to unrestrained human population growth with 1st world levels of consumption of natural resources. Now at 415ppm and rising.

https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-atmospheric-co2-just-exceeded-415-ppm-for-first-time-in-human-history

It should be noted that in recent human history mini ice ages have occurred due to population reduction associated with disease which brought the level below 300ppm with only a drop off ~10ppm.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261

Here’s NASA explaining it so a 5 year old can understand the scientific evidence for the carbon cycle.

https://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/

So in five hundred years of human industrial evolution accounted for still you don’t believe 115ppm increase and rising in carbon won’t make the planet hotter?

Please don’t run for elected office. We got enough problems. Rejecting scientific evidence just dooms the rest of us plus all the other species on this planet to the 6th Extinction.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150623-sixth-extinction-kolbert-animals-conservation-science-world/

WAR WITH IRAN MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS

"So let me propose something seemingly ludicrous. It’s this: since Americans only trust the military among various branches of government, and since that military is both over adulated and ultimately responsible for waging these insane wars, it is within the military that active dissent must begin. That’s right, to stop the war America needs clean cut, seemingly conservative, all-American soldiers and officers to start refusing to fight. The people will back them; trust me. These guys are heroes after all, right? I mean few will pay attention to some aging hippie protester – even if he or she is correct – but even Republicans might tune in to here what a combat vet has to say.

Remember, we soldiers take an oath not to a particular president or a certain government but to the Constitution. And that constitution has been violated time and again for some 75 years as US presidents play emperor and wage unilateral wars without the required, and clearly stipulated, consent of Congress, I.e. the people’s representatives. Thus, one could argue – and I’m doing just that – that a massive military “sit-down-strike” of sorts would be both legal and moral."

War With Iran Must Be Stopped at All Costs

CAYUSE CHIEF UMAPINE. 1900. Oregon. Photo by Lee Moorhouse. Source: University of Oregon Libraries.

BE AS THE SLOTH

Other than my very imperfect memory and the inevitable consequences of its daily lapses, my kids are nearly free of daily responsibilities for this weird creature their father has become. I have just watched a TED talk about the many strangenesses of sloths, surprisingly the largest land animal in its natural ecosystem. For most of my adult life I have held the sloth in high regard. It is, surprisingly, the most successful large mammal in its ecosystem.

Although their brain is approximately the size of a walnut, they have clearly mastered the art and science of survival. Their brain, although different physically, contains 97% the same package of molecules that ours does. They have time to measure small changes in their environment.

Kids do this naturally. It is built in to the structure of our brain. The sum of small changes charts the course of our history. Clearly, then, we must be like the sloth. Good still. Be silent. He aware of small changes. Sharpen the knives. Prepare the nooses. The lampposts are waiting . . .

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MORPHINE

Well, if that don't beat all, as my mother used to say, often while darning a sock next to her four-foot high stack of True Detective magazines. I have just taken morphine for the second time in my life, the first being right after triple-bypass heart surgery almost twenty years ago. In a different lifetime, it seems.

The swelling sense of well-being is easy to like. Nurse said it would likely make me sleep. I will no longer need to get up every hour through the night to pee. Not likely to cause nightmares. This might be ridiculously easy to get used to. I can increase the dosage, although the effect will be cumulative. Train wreck dope. The stuff that memories of helplessly drooling in the corner are born of.

I no longer recognize large chunks of my life. Morphine? A student from the beginning of my teaching career is coming from Laytonville tomorrow. He will be calling around six. He is with a friend called Badass. Like I said, I don't recognize much of my life any longer. I love on June first. I guess I am now taking morphine every day. My lover is on an Air France jet to Heathrow. I am just beginning a film about becoming a hippie in England. My best friend from high school will be coming in a few days, with his wife, whom I haven't met. Even now, near its end, I love my life. It feels fine just to say it. And looking forward to some solid sleep. Indeed. Eh?

(Bruce Brady)