MCT: Friday, June 21, 2019

• Newton Hospice
• Blue Meadow Farm
• Damme Potholes
• First Campaign
• Ed Notes
• Early Typesetter
• Sick Boy
• Lester Flatt
• Palace Cancer
• Molina Trial
• Yesterday's Catch
• Private Prado
• Scarecrow
• Shiva Trump
• Crow Delegation
• Clueless Joe
• Cruel Nation
• Hopi Woman
• Alaskan Salmon
• Nuns Prayer
• Orange Dress
• Cannabis Accommodation
• Pancake Breakfast
• Awfully Funny
• Born Rich
• Oligarch 18

LINDA NEWTON ENTERS HOSPICE

Hello Anderson Valley, I want to let those of you who have known my mother, Linda Newton, over the 40 years that she has lived in Anderson Valley that she is on Hospice care in Ukiah. If you would like to visit her or talk with me, please text (908) 303-3689.

Jenny Pfurr (Newton)

THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM

Walla Walla Onions, Sugar Snap Peas, Strawberries, Lettuce, Zucchin, Kale & Collards

And the rain water tank is full!

Blue Meadow Farm, 3301 Holmes Ranch Road, Philo (707) 895-2071

VAN DAMME BEACH PARKING LOT REPAIR

Van Damme Beach Parking Lot will be closed to vehicles Monday June 24th through the morning of Friday the 28th to fix the potholes at the entrance of the parking lot. Visitors that are scheduled for the sea cave tours with Kayak Mendocino can park in the park on the east side of Hwy 1 and walk to the beach. We appreciate the public' s patience and understanding as we make a safer entrance and exit to this very popular beach parking lot.

ED NOTES

GENERATORS were flying off Ukiah CostCo shelves the other morning, and I was there just after the doors opened. I saw three different persons buy 3-4 each, a hefty investment for the outages promised by PG&E for this summer. The generator buyers are taking PG&E at its dubious word, but how dubious are PG&E's announced plans? We'll find out, probably the hard way. The Northcoast is a low priority power area because there aren't many of us attached to their grid. So what's to prevent PG&E from turning us off simply to provide power in their more lucrative and secure markets?

---

WE'LL have a more comprehensive account of the Barbara Howe matter, but for now Wednesday's TRO hearing before Judge Nadel was uneventful. The order was sought by Tammy Moss-Chandler to prevent, Moss-Chandler alleged, Ms. Howe from murdering her. What? Did you say murder? Yes, that was the implied reason Moss-Chandler sought to keep Ms. Howe away from her.

MS. HOWE was head of the Mendocino County Public Health Department. Ms. Moss-Chandler was Ms. Howe's boss with overall responsibility for the County's Health and Human Services apparatus until one day, Moss-Chandler, in the now patented Mendo fashion, suddenly fired Ms. Howe, giving Ms. Howe only a few minutes to gather her things and leave the premises forever.

THE DISMISSAL of Ms. Howe apparently came from the County's chief executive, Carmel Angelo who, famously, has similarly non-personed other County employees who don't, and not to put too fine a point on it, approach her throne on bended knee, hence the shameless ass kissing we see at County meetings, always a given with, ah, frightened people of limited abilities who run government at all levels as late capitalism careens on into chaos. The stated reason for Ms. Howe's dismissal does not, by any rational standard, amount to just cause. She allocated generators that were stored for — you guessed it, allocation.

IN DISGUST at the non-reason for her clearly wrongful termination, Ms. Howe fired off a few intemperate but obviously advisory messages to the irredeemable Moss-Chandler, words to the effect that if Moss-Chandler continued to lash out on behalf of The Ogress she herself could get sick, that doing bad things against one's better instincts, can manifest itself in physical ill health.

THERE'S a rather large medico-physio oeuvre alleging that very fact. More specifically if, say, you live your life amid bad feeling, bad food, bad materials, bad architecture — in other words, if you live and work in Ukiah in a job that compels you to do bad things to other people, many of them fast food-fattened and unhappy in the first place, you are likely to short out your own psycho-physio apparat. Ms. Howe was simply stating the obvious, warning Moss-Chandler for her own good that a life of cringing butt-nuzzling could kill her!

SOUND advice by any standard, but the literal-minded Moss-Chandler… Well, this poor thing, raised in the frightening context of contemporary America with lunatics seeming to be coming in the windows, victimized by the Ukiah schools and therefore unable to realistically contextualize her experience, stumbling on into County employment out of pure proximity of home and employment, working her way upwards in a bungling bureaucracy that rewards fealty to the next incompetent up the ladder, and now this!

LONG STORY SHORT, although it's shaping up as a fairly long story thanks to the legal system, a system that's an exact psychic match for the doomed society it reflects, the two sides to this only-in-Mendo tale worked out a compromise of sorts, with Ms. Howe, never having intended harm to Ms. Chandler-Moss anyway, agreeing to stay away from the poor dear, which Ms. Howe, who remains shocked that anyone could possibly think otherwise, would have done anyway as everyone who knows her would have testified if Ms. Howe been granted anything resembling due process before she was fired in the most humiliating fashion possible. There is no permanent restraining order in effect.

---

A LOCK STEP PC thumbsucker appeared in a recent Chron by a guy who identifies himself this way: "John Briscoe is a Distinguished Fellow of the Law of the Sea Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law and an adjunct professor at UC Hastings College of the Law." I've extracted these few lines from the distinguished fellow's editorial: "Serranus Clinton Hastings was promoter and financier of Indian-hunting expeditions in the 1850s. Hastings later founded Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, now the oldest law school in the state, and a part of the University of California system."

(HASTINGS arranged for and promoted but didn't fund Indian hunts, and he didn't found the school of law named after him; he gave U.C. a million bucks and its trustees named the law school after the mass murderer in gratitude for the money.)

THE EDITORIAL by the distinguished fellow appeared the same week Governor Newsom, the penultimate empty suit second only to Biden, "apologized" to Native Americans for the attempt to exterminate them. (The libs are great ones for symbolic posturing — anything but actually funding meaningful recompense. The distinguished fellow's Chron piece, in that lib tradition, thinks it's time to re-name Hastings law school.)

ANYWAY, and as the Boonville weekly has pointed out at length but hopefully not ad nauseum, Hastings maintained a ranch in a little valley southwest of Willits which he called Eden Valley, which of course, he'd ripped off from the Indians who had lived there for the preceding ten thousand years. An absentee landlord who lived mostly in Benicia, Hastings managed his ranch via a murderous, 6'7" psychopath of a ranch foreman called Texan Boy Hall. Hastings soon became this state's first state supreme court justice. He left a million dollars to U.C. when he died, a lot of money at the turn of the century, and in gratitude U.C. named Hastings Law School after the old lawyer, a thief and a killer all his days.

IN THE EARLY DAYS of Hastings' appropriation of the whole valley for himself, Hall, the giant psycho, hired some of the Indians still living in the now much less edenic Eden Valley, to carry some furniture Hastings had bought for his new ranch house, a primitive affair by today's standards but still in need of basic furnishings. Hall promised the Indians canvas shirts they much coveted if they carried the off-loaded goods from Mendocino back to Eden Valley, a long slog the Indians duly carried out via what is now the Branscomb Road, through Long Valley, now Laytonville basically, and on to Eden Valley, which is damn near to Covelo.

WHEN THE INDIANS arrived with the goods, Hall said, "Thanks boys, but no shirts." In retaliation, the Indians killed a stallion that Hastings claimed was worth ten thousand dollars. His Honor had hoped to create a herd of fine animals with the stallion so, in his own retaliation, the judge persuaded his pal, the governor, and his pals in the first state legislature, to pay mercenaries to kill all the Indians in the entire Eel River Basin of Mendo and Humboldt counties. The state paid per scalp. One of the primary Indian killers was a fellow named Jarboe, who became Mendocino County's first badged lawman based in Ukiah.

OVER THE YEARS, we have taken calls and letters, one batch from Native American law students, asking if our version of their school's patronymic was true. Yes, it is, and for the school's faculty, nevermind the university, to pretend ignorance of its etymology seems from here either naive beyond belief or simply the kind of posturing we see from "liberals" of the Newsom type these days.

LEAVE the name in place, I say, as an ongoing reminder of the true history of the state and a name also consistent with the practice of law in the state ever since.

EARLY CONSOLE TYPESETTER - Mark Twain Museum - Virginia City, Nevada

A SAD DAY FOR THE COAST CAT PROJECT…

There are some days working with the project where things don’t go great and today was one. We’ve been trying hard to get a very sick feral boy that belonged to a woman that had been feeding him for many years. It took us a week to trap him, and his elderly caregiver actually did it herself this morning. He had not been cleaning himself for a long time, had been having trouble eating and drinking water. He was in really bad shape. Alanna went in an hour after I dropped him off to consult with the vet. He’d been knocked out in order for the doctor to be able to examine his mouth and his throat. We thought he had something wrong with his teeth. It turned out that his mouth and throat were swollen and full of sores that made it incredibly painful for him to swallow. After consulting with his caregiver and the vet, it was determined that the best thing for him was to let him go.

Most of our days are filled with sweet kittens, hissing/spitting/scratching but still adorable kittens, catching fixing and returning feral cats to stop the cycle of breeding, or placing ferals with new barn homes where they will live out their lives as working cats being well cared for. It is such amazingly satisfying work. But some days are really hard. Today was really hard. The kitty that was lost today was not loved by his neighborhood. People thought he was a nuisance. But someone cared for him every day, and loved him very much, and her heart broke today.

Thank you so much to those of you that take care of the kitties that nobody else wants and that other people may think of as a problem. They deserve to be loved and cared for too.

— Shelley

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

FLATT BIRTHDAY. Remembering Lester Raymond Flatt (June 19, 1914 – May 11, 1979). Born in Duncan's Chapel, Overton County, Tennessee. Photo courtesy of Jim Mills.

THE PALACE HAS TO GO

To the Editor:

My name is Bernard Kaplan, MD. I am a cardiologist and heart surgeon at a local hospital. I would like to speak for a moment about symbols and symbolism. We are all keenly aware of what our flag represents. America. Freedom. Democracy. It is a symbol of what we have collectively achieved as well as representing ouf hopes and dreams. Our future. Some symbols represent positivity. Others can symbolize negativity, like a swastika, or a raised middle finger. Yes, the latter is merely a gesture, but this gesture can invite violence or violent behavior.

I mention both positive and negative symbols, as symbols can be very powerful entities. Many lives have been lost in defense of the American flag. Men and women were and are willing to stand proudly for what they believe. The Berlin Wall was a symbol. It stood for separation. It stood for division. Ronald Reagan’s strength was revealed when he said, “Mr. Gorbechev, tear down that wall.” The wall stood in the way of progress and unity. It stressed the hearts and the souls and the spirits of the people. Tearing down the Berlin Wall removed a physical as well as mental barrier. Peoples hearts were freed. Healing was able to begin. The wall was a disease, a tumor in the body of the German people that had to be removed.

The citizens of our fair city have a tumor in the heart of our community. A cancerous symbol that represents decay. Degradation. It slowly, day by day, etches away at the pride that all have worked so heard in achieving. It symbolizes a lack of caring. It symbolizes a lack of concern. It is a sharp stone in the shoe of every child that is forced to look at this symbol causing blisters and festering. Indeed, this symbol represents a disease that, if left as it has been for years, will eventually cause death.

The symbol to which I refer is called the Palace Hotel. A rat infested tumor that continues to ooze puss, year after year into the streets. The patient is still alive but dies a little more each and every day it exists. This symbol, this disease must be removed from the heart of our city. This must happen if we are to grow, much less survive. So, in the words of President Reagan…Mr. Adams, Miss Laines, TEAR DOWN THIS BUILDING! Tear it down for the children. Tear it down for the benefit of the community. Tear it down for our future. Ukiah will only prosper once this symbol of horror that you have allowed to remain and persist is leveled to the ground. Only then will the city, the businesses, and State Street begin to heal and prosper.

Dr. Bernard Kaplan, MD
Ukiah

ACCUSED KIDNAPPER FRANKLIN MOLINA TO STAND TRIAL ON CHARGES THAT COULD EARN HIM LIFE IN PRISON

by Rhonda Parker

An El Salvadoran native accused of a home-invasion robbery in Southern Humboldt will stand trial on charges that could put him in prison for life.

Judge Kaleb Cockrum held Franklin Antonio Molina to answer on numerous charges filed after Molina and another man allegedly robbed, kidnapped, imprisoned and assaulted Adam Owen at his 40-acre property about an hour’s drive from Garberville. Some of the charges also apply to Owen’s 23-year-old daughter Emmalaya, who was visiting her father at the time.

Owen lives in Geyserville but has owned the Humboldt property for 25 years. He said he’s been growing marijuana there the entire time, hiring a few seasonal workers every year. He believes one of the suspects, not Molina, had worked for him a few months before the home invasion.

On Dec. 21 Owen and his daughter were sitting on the couch watching TV when a vehicle pulled up outside. Owen, testifying about his ordeal, said he thought it was probably his brother-in-law coming to visit. But after a few minutes he headed to the door to see who was there.

“I didn’t make it to the front door,” Owen said under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Luke Bernthal. “Two men walked in with ski masks with big smiles on the face. At first I thought it was a joke.”

Then the masked men pointed what appeared to be semi-automatic pistols at him.

“I put my hands up and told my daughter to get on the floor and do what they said,” Owen recalled. One man, whom he identified as “the defendant,” did most of the talking. He was loud and very angry, speaking some Spanish and some English.

“He kept repeating the word ‘down’ over and over,” Owen said. He also warned ‘Don’t look at my face.’ ”

Owen’s hands were bound as he lay on the floor. The suspect doing the talking wanted to know where Owen’s brother was. He said he didn’t know.

Then “He said ‘money’ in a long, drawn-out voice.”

Owen replied there was money in a garage about 100 feet from the house.

“Before I got up,” he testified, “he hit me in the back of the head three or four times, I believed with a pistol. I believe it was the defendant, from his voice.”

The robbers took Owen and his daughter to the garage, where Owen opened a safe. He was ordered to the ground again. He could feel blood seeping from the back of his head.

In the safe was $30,000 in cash, three rifles and “a couple of pistols,” Owen said. Then he was struck in the head four or more times with what felt like the butt of a rifle. The other suspect was with his daughter at the front door of the garage. He could hear Emmalaya pleading with him.

Back in the house and lying on the living room floor, he heard the other man asking his daughter where Owen’s brother was.

“She said she doesn’t know, she doesn’t live here. She’s just visiting.”

Meanwhile, “the defendant” issued a command.

“More,” he told Owen.

He also said something about Owen’s daughter: “She’s ripe. I’m going to have her.”

Owen and the robber went to a bedroom upstairs, where there was another safe containing gold coins and four more guns. He was again ordered to get down.

“He’d been hitting me harder on the back of the head,” Owen said. “I pretended to be knocked out.”

He said the suspect nudged him with his foot, “then left me alone and ransacked the bedroom.”

During the ransacking the robber found yet another small safe, which he had Owen open. He emptied the safe and then yanked Owen’s wedding ring from his hand.

“I was worried that he might break my finger, but it came off easily enough.”

Owen’s hands and feet were then bound and he was told to sit up, which he did with difficulty. The suspect kept motioning for Owen to climb down the stairs, “which I could not physically do.”

“At that point he pushed me down the stairs. I rolled down about three-quarters of the way and then he grabbed the back of my sweatshirt and drug me the rest of the way and into a closet under the stairs.”

In the dark closet he heard a voice: “Dad is that you? Are you OK?”

The two robbers barricaded the closet door with a couch. They could be heard loading up the stolen goods, and Owen heard his truck start up outside. He had left the keys in the ignition. Both vehicles drove away.

“My daughter told me she had her cellphone in a pocket,” Owen said. Although her hands were tied, she was able to get the cellphone out of the pocket. Owen managed to dial 911, and a sheriff’s deputy arrived about an hour later.

A “Be On The Lookout” alert was issued to law enforcement, and Mendocino County sheriff’s Deputy Timothy Delfiorentino spotted the stolen GMC Denali truck on southbound Highway 101 near Ten Mile Creek Road. Delfiorentino, testifying during the hearing, said he followed at a distance.

To avoid a high-speed pursuit, Mendocino County officers used “Onstar” to remotely disable the truck. The driver pulled into a turnout, the deputy said, but when officers arrived “the vehicle took off at about 75 miles per hour.”

Ultimately there were “no less than 15” officers on scene, Delfiorentino said. The stolen truck was disabled again and this time stayed that way. The driver remained in the vehicle and ignored commands to get out.

Mendocino County Sgt. Luis Espinoza, a Spanish speaker and leader of the county’s Crisis Negotiation Team, arrived to speak with the suspect. Officers gave Molina Espinoza’s cellphone number, and Molina called him.

The 21-year-old Molina had one demand: He wanted to be released or bad things would happen.

Espinoza testified Molina claimed he had three people in the vehicle with him and “20 people in the area,”

“He was pleading with me to let him go,” the sergeant recalled. Molina said if he wasn’t freed, “his people would attack.”

He also said “I will leave here alive or I will die, and I won’t be the only one,” and “If in 10 minutes this vehicle is not unlocked and you let me leave, you will all die.”

Eventually Molina exited the vehicle and tried to run. He was finally taken into custody after a SWAT member shot him with a rubber bullet and a police dog chased him down.

Espinoza said Molina told him he had been told to run, and that he had family members in El Salvador who would be killed if he was caught.

The other suspect, the one Owen believes once worked for him, got away with the stolen property and remains at large. Owen valued the property at $60,000. He said it took about six weeks for his head to heal, and his elbow hurts to this day. He believes the elbow was injured when he was pushed down the stairs.

When the stolen truck was searched, officers found a pellet gun that appeared to be a real firearm.

During cross-examination of Owen, Deputy Public Defender Casey Russo pointed out inconsistencies between what Owen initially said about the incident and the suspects and what he is saying now. Owen acknowledged he was influenced by seeing pictures of Molina, the gun found in the truck and the ski mask Molina was wearing. But he said it was just that seeing those photos jogged his memory.

Owen initially said nothing about seeing part of the robber’s face when his mask was briefly lifted. Now he thinks he may have gotten a glimpse.

At the end of the hearing, Judge Cockrum held Molina to answer on one count of kidnapping with intent to commit robbery, a charge that could mean life in prison. He did not hold him to answer on the same charge relating to Emmalaya Owen because no property was taken from her.

“They didn’t even pat her down,” the judge said. “She still had her cellphone.”

Molina also was held on charges of first-degree residential robbery, false imprisonment, kidnapping and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury. Cockrum did not find evidence for the charge of carjacking, as there was no force involved and the keys were in the ignition.

Cockrum said he believed there was also enough evidence for Molina to be charged with firearms allegations, kidnapping Emmalaya Owen, auto theft, possession of stolen property and making criminal threats against both Adam and Emmalaya Owen.

Outside the courtroom Bernthal said he would file a firearms charge that would add 10 years to what already is a potential life sentence. He said he would consider whether to add the other charges the judge suggested.

Molina is scheduled for arraignment on July 2. He listened to the proceedings with help from Spanish interpreter Carlos Santana.

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com)

CATCH OF THE DAY, JUNE 20, 2019

JUAN ARMAS, Ukiah. DUI-drugs&alcohol.

REGINALD AZBILL, Covelo. Parole violation.

CHRISTOPHER BROCKWAY, Albion. Controlled substance, vandalism, stolen property, burglary tools, paraphernalia, county parole violation.

AARON GRIFFIN, Ukiah. Suspended license, no license, probation revocation.

COREY HEINE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent Flyer)

MICHAEL LOCKETT, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

BLEU OWENS, Redwood Valley. Reckless driving, evasion.

GABRIEL SCHOONMAKER, Ukiah. Controlled substance, stolen property, resisting, probation revocation.

JESSE VINCENT, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

OUTSTANDING TRAINEE

by Jim Luther

Cassidy went on sick call that morning, talked like he had laryngitis, so Prado had to take the platoon. Prado had been waiting for a day like this. He knew exactly what he needed to do, and he figured it would take him only one day.

In the RFA training platoon, besides the Regular Army sergeant, McCune, there were the trainee non-commissioned officers. There were four trainee squad leaders. Cassidy was the trainee platoon sergeant, and he always took the platoon in the field. Prado was the trainee platoon guide which meant he carried the guidon at the head of the platoon, on the right, keeping the distance between his platoon and the one ahead. Being platoon guide also meant reports, paperwork, and making unpopular decisions. Everything had to be assigned daily: Four men for fire watch and four men to the mess hall every night to start their next day’s KP, and every fifth week when the platoon had Charge-of-Quarters duty, four men in three-hour shifts every night to the orderly room. There were only 42 men in the platoon and the assignments took a lot of juggling and justification to the men.

He had been nominated to be platoon guide at the beginning of the Basic Unit Training cycle. He had accepted because he knew he wouldn’t pull KP, fire watch or CQ duty, and because he wouldn’t have to sleep in the platoon bay but in a room that he shared with Cassidy. Also because he knew he’d get a pass every weekend.

The day wasn’t going to be easy. The training was Platoon Combat Formations. Besides taking the platoon out and bringing them back in, he’d have to lead them through formations all day.

It was more than four miles out to the training area, so they weren’t supposed to double-time. Just a nice brisk pace. Prado walked at the side of his platoon, which was in the middle of the column. Every so often he yelled at them to line it up. When they got off the paving, onto the dirt, they had to work a little harder to keep up. It took effort to walk fast in the sandy loam. Being in the middle, they started falling behind. That was always the way, the platoon in front had it easy while the platoons to the rear had to do a lot of running to stay caught up.

Prado started bitching at them, yelling at them to get up to within three paces of the leading platoon. They stumbled forward and got caught up, and then he yelled at them to guide right and line it up. They looked over at the man on their right and covered on the man in front, and then they got behind again and Prado told them to get caught up and they stumbled forward again. He was on the right side, running up to the first man, telling him to keep three paces distance, then walking backwards, moving with the column, yelling at the rest of them to stay caught up and to line it up and to guide right, and then running up again, his rifle at sling arms, crossing in front of the platoon and yelling at them from the other side. Pretty soon he started jumping in among them and running up through and around them, yelling at them, then standing at the side and watching them go by, and then running ahead of them and bitching some more, stay caught up, guide right, cover on the man in front of you.

“AW FUCK YOU PRADO!”

He had wondered when it would start. He looked over at Max on the other side of the platoon, and then ran up ahead of the men, jumped over across, and ran alongside of Max, they were all running now, they’d fallen way back, and shouting in Max’s ear, what’s the matter can’t you take it? You’re a big boy now, you haven’t long to go, what’s the matter, too tough for you Max boy? He was sure Max was about to try to hit him, but then they all started in.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, PRADO!”

“COME OFF IT, MAN!”

“WHAT’CHA TRY’IN TO DO, MAN?’

“CHINGA TU MADRE, PRADO!”

“FUCK YOU, PRADO!”

He jumped through them over to the right side and started in, smiling his words at them, asking if they were getting tired of it, maybe they’d like to stop and rest, candy asses, pussies. Even after they grew quiet and sullen he kept it going, shouting at them to stay caught up, guide right, cover. He ran back to the last men, struggling, and told them to get caught up and they mumbled for him to get fucked as they fell forward into a run.

By the time they got to the training area they wouldn’t even look at him.

The rest of the day was the same; he never stopped riding them. When they’d move from one formation to another, he ran them as fast as they’d go, staying on top of them, keeping them tight. Of course they wanted him to ease off, but he wouldn’t; he just smiled through his teeth and kept it up. He never stopped.

They had to wear their ponchos going back because it looked like rain and the lieutenant didn’t want to stop on the way. It was hot under the ponchos. Prado had to carry two rifles—a man had passed out in the field—and he carried them on his shoulders, slung butt up under his poncho. The pace was a half run all the way. Wolters wasn’t keeping up and when he complained about the weight of the machine gun, Prado took it from him and carried it on his shoulders over his poncho and told Wolters to stay caught up. He was beginning to feel pretty good; Wolters was a lot bigger than he was.

Chogying along, Prado felt a pleasure from the feeling of his feet plunging deep into the sand with each step. He knew now that he wouldn’t let the weight of the machine gun and the rifles slow him down. Wolters had to stay caught up now; they both knew it. He almost sensed that Wolters wanted the gun back, but he left Wolters and moved up the platoon, yelling at them to stay caught up. They were all silent now, panting and slogging and shuffling along at a half run. Prado felt good, in charge, running along with them on the right. He didn’t have to yell at them much anymore. He let himself slow down and as the rear of the platoon went by, Wolters asked for the gun back and Prado gave it to him and told him to get caught up. Wolters took the gun and ran up to the man in front of him and stayed there. Prado didn’t have to say another word to any of them all the way back to the barracks.

That night, McCune came to his room and told him that the officers were impressed and to keep up the good work.

Cassidy was OK the next day and from then on everything was easy. The training cycle lasted five more weeks and Prado concentrated on his reports and the detail assignments and keeping his boots and belt buckle shined. When they gave him a police detail to lead around the barracks, he let the men go through the area quickly and then told them to disperse and go hide somewhere. In the field, he let them smoke and sleep whenever the coast was clear. Once, when they had to stand for inspection before getting to go on leave for the weekend, he went through the ranks in fifteen minutes and passed them all including three with filthy weapons. It wasn’t long before he was playing poker and blackjack with them again. They got back to trusting him and there was hardly any complaining about the detail assignments.

Two days before the end of the cycle, he was told to report to the orderly room. When he got there, the First Sergeant handed him a letter commending him on being the Outstanding Trainee of the Company. The attached citation read:

“Fort Ord, California, 3 February 1961 — Private Miguel E. Prado has been selected as the outstanding National Guard Trainee during the Basic Unit Training Cycle of the RFA training program of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battle Group, 1st Brigade (RFA Training) because of his excellent attitude, military bearing, willingness to cooperate with his superiors and contemporaries, enthusiasm in training, and his constant demonstration of leadership ability.”

It was signed by the Company Commander.

He’d been right. And it had taken only one day.

NOW WHAT?

Editor,

It’s sunrise, the supermarket is about empty and I push my shopping cart into the produce department. I see a weathered old wisp of a gal decked out in Levis and leather leaning on her stalled cart and listening as the produce department stock boy—young, earnest and handsome, clean and cut, starch-collared and neck-cinched—wholeheartedly agrees that Jesus did indeed love people and truly did want them to take care of God’s Earthy Paradise. But then Evil came into the world so now Jesus must destroy it.

“What about the animals?” the woman snarls, straightening up. Before the earnest young man can explain that animals have no Everlasting Souls and so are, like Unbelievers, newborns and future generations, expendable, she pulls her cart up into a little wheelie and then nearly runs over the spit-shined toes of his dress shoes on her way out of there.

Witnessing that little “exchange” was so refreshing I thought I’d share it with AVAers. Now there’s a woman who knows wickedness when she hears it. Jesus as Shiva the Destroyer? Sure thing, boy. Tell it to my backside while I’m getting myself away from your blasphemous ass.

Then I remembered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring “impeachment” verboten while justifying her refusal to acknowledge the obvious, and gone were my rosy feelings. Talk about a summer soldier and sunshine patriot. Does she truly believe she’s the third most powerful person in the Free World (ha!) and so the rightful arbiter of what’s real and what’s not?

Trump has surrounded himself with a posse of Rasputins are trashing institutions, stealing money and playing musical chairs. The whole posse is a walking, talking High Crime and Misdemeanor. These guys are not just a clear and present danger to domestic tranquility, world peace, the dream of liberty and our sacred Standard of Living, they’re habitual liars and kleptomaniacs, earth rapists, mercenaries and sociopaths. I wouldn’t trust one of them to take care of my housecat.

Yet here’s our Queen Nancy, and the rest of the Democratic Party’s Palace Guard, tottering up and down their greasy Halls of Power, wanting to leave the solution to us whiplashed voters and, of course, our stinking Electoral College come the next election. An election that’s so far off there may a real National Emergency by then.

These network shills on the “news” seem to think Trump can start a war anywhere on earth at any time all by himself—no need for Congress, the people, the opinions of the military, the United Nations, International Law, treaty obligations—war as nothing more than a favor done for Himself the Stable Genius and Greatest President who has ever lived. If that’s the case, then the next step will be to gather up all of the printed copies of the US Constitution and throw them in our bonfires made of burning books.

In a crisis like this, courage is the virtue that makes all of the others possible. Since those doing the damage are living on our tax dollars, and because American law and American tradition are on our side, acting courageously should come easy for us. Everybody believes in self-defense.

Bruce Patterson

Prineville, Oregon

APSÁALOOKE (Crow) delegation to Washington. 1880. Front row, left to right: King Crow; Medicine Crow; Long Elk; Chief Yshidiapas or Aleck-Shea-Ahoos, called Plenty Coups; Pretty Eagle. Back row, left to right: Addison M. Quivey (interpreter); Two Belly; Augustus R. Keller (agent); Thomas Stewart (interpreter). Photo by C.M.Bell. Source - National Museum of the American Indian.

CLUELESS AND SHAMELESS: JOE BIDEN, STAGGERING FRONTRUNNER

by Norman Solomon

Joe Biden just put a spotlight on his mindset when he explicitly refused to apologize for fondly recalling how the Senate “got things done” with “civility” as he worked alongside some of the leading racist lawmakers of the 20th century. For Biden, the personal is the political; he knows that he’s virtuous, and that should be more than good enough for African Americans, for women, for anyone.

“There’s not a racist bone in my body,” Biden exclaimed Wednesday night, moments after demanding: “Apologize for what?” His deep paternalism surfaced during the angry outburst as he declared: “I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career, period, period, period.”

Biden has been “involved” in civil rights his “whole career” alright. But at some crucial junctures, he was on the wrong side. He teamed up with segregationist senators to oppose busing for school desegregation in the 1970s. And he played a leading role—while pandering to racism with a shameful Senate floor speech—for passage of the infamous 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration.

Such aspects of Biden’s record provide context for his comments this week—praising an era of productive “civility” with the virulent segregationist Dixiecrat Senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia and James Eastland of Mississippi (known as the “Voice of the White South”), who often called black people “an inferior race.”

Said Biden at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night: “Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished.”

To Biden, any assessment of his past conduct that clashes with his high self-regard is unfair; after all, he really means well. On the campaign trail now, his cloying paternalism is as evident as his affinity for wealthy donors.

Biden shuttles between the billionaire class and the working class—funded by the rich while justifying the rich to everyone else. His aspirations are bound up in notions of himself as comforter-in-chief.

“I get it, I get it,” Biden said during his brief and self-adulatory non-apology video in early April to quiet the uproar over his invasive touching of women and girls. He was actually saying: I get it that I need to seem to get it.

“I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that I’ve made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable,” Biden said in the video. “In my career I’ve always tried to make a human connection—that’s my responsibility, I think. I shake hands, I hug people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, ‘You can do this’. . . It’s the way I’ve always been. It’s the way I’ve tried to show I care about them and I’m listening.”

Weeks later, appearing on ABC’s "The View," he declared: “I have never in my life, never, done anything in approaching a woman that has been other than trying to bring solace.” It was not a credible claim; consider Lucy Flores, or the countless other women and girls he has intrusively touched over the years.

For several decades, Biden has made his way through the political terrain as a reflexive glad-hander. But times have changed a lot more than he has. “What the American people do not know yet is whether Biden has actually internalized any of the blowback he’s earned over the years for his treatment of women,” journalist Joe Berkowitz wrote last week. “So far, it’s not looking good.”

What’s also looking grim is Biden’s brazen adoration of wealthy elites who feed on corporate power. His approach is to split the rhetorical difference between the wealthy and the workers. And so, days ago, at a fundraiser filled with almost 180 donors giving his campaign the legal limit of $2,800 each—an event where he tried and failed to get funding from a pro-Trump billionaire—Biden declared: “You know, you guys are great but Wall Street didn’t build America. You guys are incredibly important but you didn’t build America. Ordinary, hard-working, middle-class people given half the chance is what built America.”

The formula boils down to throwing the “hard-working middle class” some rhetorical bones while continuing to service “you guys” on Wall Street. Given his desire to merely revert the country to pre-Trump days, no wonder Biden keeps saying that a good future can stem from finding common ground with Republicans. But for people who understand the present-day GOP and really want a decent society, Biden’s claims are delusional.

Biden sees his public roles of winking patriarch, civility toward racists and collaborator with oligarchs as a winning political combination. But if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, Biden will suppress turnout from the party’s base while providing Republicans with plenty of effective (albeit hypocritical) fodder. Already the conservative press is salivating over the transparently fraudulent pretenses of Lunch Bucket Joe, as in this headline Tuesday in the right-wing Washington Examiner: “Biden Rubs Elbows With Billionaires in $34M Penthouse.”

When Bernie Sanders (who I continue to actively support) denounces the political power of billionaires and repeats his 2020 campaign motto—“Not Me. Us.”—it rings true, consistent with his decades-long record. But Biden can’t outrun his own record, which is enmeshed in his ongoing mentality. And so, the former vice president is in a race between his pleasant image and unpleasant reality.

As the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden is the biggest threat to Joe Biden’s political future. He continues to be who he has been, and that’s the toxic problem.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #1

In Santa Barbara the City raised a full block apt housing complex. 62 units were provided. The zoning regulation of 326 square foot of living space was reduced to 250 square feet. Sixty one chronically homeless residences of Santa Barbara were housed in small studios. Full bathrooms, a microwave kitchen and living space with a bed. Drinking and mentally ill people were housed in a supportive housing situation. One of our local banks donated computers to these folks. It has worked very well for many years. The Sixty Second apartment was built for the house manager. Now we build mixed use housing for the downtown workers, homeless and the mentally ill. All supportive of course. The city wishes it could do more. We have not solved the homeless crisis. As we all know rents are reaching far higher than many of our working class people can afford. We must research the basic reasons why people find themselves out of shelter. Some move into their vehicles for safety reasons and dodge the laws that are written against such a move. Some people build small huts for shelter and others buy tents. I personally have had to live in cars, vans, RVs and for a temporary time a tent. It was very hard to reach out for help to try to help my family when disaster struck. We had our pride you know. But we had our children to keep our heads up and to progress into a better and better situation. Yet the rents kept going up and up and up. We lived in RVs until our children were grown. They now have housing. My son in a hotel room and my daughter owns 4 houses. Homelessness is and can be a temporary situation for most folks. For those who are weakened by this crisis, they become prey to drug dealers and self medicate their depression symptoms. We are a cruel nation when we let this fester. Come on now. No more poverty pimps who receive six-figure salaries to run shelters and day centers. Let us bring the homeless themselves to the table. They are the ones to tell you what their needs are. Self empowerment goes such a long way. It provides the step ladder to housing one’s self. Yes a safe camp can and will help.

DAHO-MANA, a young Hopi woman. 1902. Arizona. Source - National Anthropological Archives.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

The price of Salmon. I am just back from the supermarket. “WILD” caught Keta Alaskan Salmon. $6.99 a lb. Not farm raised, I am retired so I do the shopping and I read the labels. The fishmonger assures me it was on the fin yesterday. Just because I am Curious George I looked up a one way flight from AK to Logan. 1300 balloons at my fatass wt. of 220 lbs. 6″ 3″ Add in the costs along the way. Fisherman, nets, diesel, handling, etc. etc. This craziness can not stand. Anyway the salmon is gonna be great on the grill! I have been informed that the salmon ran rich in the Westfield and Farmington before the dams.

17TH CENTURY NUNS PRAYER (located on the wall of the priest upstairs vestibule at Cathedral of the Marshes, Holy Trinity, Blythburg overlooking the River Blyth)

Lord, thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit that I must say something on every subject and every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others' pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a fearing cocksureness when seems to clash with the memory of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a saint — some of them are so hard to live with — but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.

AMEN

(via Randy Burke)

PAINTING BY JAMES AVATI

CANNABIS ACCOMMODATION (CA) DISTRICT APPLICATIONS OPEN HOUSE Event at County Planning & Building Services Department, Ukiah CA -- all day, June 26, 2019.

Cannabis inspectors and planners will be available for your CA District application questions. See you there!

Reminder: The drop box submission deadline for all Cannabis Accommodation (CA) District Applications is July 3rd, 2019 at County Planning & Building Services Department, 860 North Bush Street, Ukiah, CA 95482.

PANCAKES: WHITESBORO GRANGE SUNDAY

A traditional pancake breakfast will be served at the Whitesboro Grange on Sunday, June 23rd .Breakfast includes orange juice, pancakes with maple and homemade berry syrups, ham, eggs your way, and coffee, tea or hot cocoa. The public and visitors are invited to join neighbors and community for a hearty pancake breakfast. Adults $8, ages 6-12 half price, children under 6 eat FREE. Breakfast is served from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Whitesboro Grange is located 1.5 miles east on Navarro Ridge Road. Watch for signs south of the Albion Bridge.

"I HAVE THIS SAYING: 'Things have an awfully funny way of working out.' Actually-- I changed it recently. Now I say: 'Things have an awfully funny way of working out. If you make them work out'." / "What caused you to change your saying?" / "Things weren't working out."

TO SUCCEED IN THE US, Better to Be Born Rich Than Smart

“In short, the system conspires against young people from poor families, especially those who are Black or Latino,” the experts conclude. Their research also showed that children from affluent families have a “safety net” that keeps them from lagging behind.

telesurenglish.net/news/To-Succeed-in-the-US-Better-to-Be-Born-Rich-Than-Smart-Study-20190619-0025.html

KNOW YOUR OLIGARCHS (#18)