MCT: Tuesday, May 5, 2020

• Afternoon Highs
• Sparaxis
• Draft SIP
• Goose & Gulls
• Loosening Mendo
• Canoes For Sale
• Rent Control
• Boonville Postcard
• Ed Notes
• Tetrazzini Sings
• Yesterday's Catch
• Cyberman Smoke Break
• MendoLake MusicFest
• Last Grizzly
• Perverted Capitalism
• Sprouting Fists
• Reckless Reopeners
• Slaughterhouse 19
• B Funds
• Mantle & Maris
• Uneducated People
• Simone Segouin
• Vertical Parking
• Comments
• Found Object

VERY LIGHT, DRIZZLY PRECIPITATION will be possible along the Del Norte and Humboldt coasts during the day today and again early tomorrow morning, but warm and dry conditions will persist elsewhere. Well above normal interior temperatures are expected Thursday through the weekend, with afternoon highs climbing into the upper 80s to low 90s. (NWS)

DOOHAN TO LOOSEN SHELTER IN PLACE

Health Officer Releases Draft Shelter-In-Place Order

(County Presser, 8:30pm Monday, May 4, 2020)

As the State learns about Governor Gavin Newsom’s four-stage framework to reopen California, Mendocino County Health Officer Dr. Noemi Doohan has continued working on a new Shelter-In-Place revision to enter into Stage 2 this Friday. California is currently in Stage 1 which includes building capacity for:

• Testing 

• Case investigation and contact tracing 

• Personal Protective Equipment

• Healthcare surge capacity 

Dr. Doohan is planning to release a revised Shelter-In-Place Order on Friday, May 8 following the release of the State’s Stage 2 framework. This new Order in draft form, and the Health Officer’s Stage 2 Transition Plan, is available online here: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/community/novel-coronavirus/health-order. 

In preparation for Stage 2, please read the draft Order and Transition Plan and provide feedback by emailing callcenter@mendocinocounty.org. 

Feedback from the community and businesses will continue to be valuable as we move forward together across Mendocino County in this four-staged reopening process. The below chart outlines what types of businesses the Governor is allowing for reopening during various stages which can be found here: gov.ca.gov/2020/05/04/governor-newsom-provides-update-on-californias-progress-toward-stage-2-reopening/.

May 5, at the Board of Supervisors Meeting, Health Officer Dr. Doohan will be discussing the draft limited reopening Shelter in Place order planned to be released on Friday May 8. The meeting will be streamed live the on the Mendocino County YouTube Channel and Facebook page. 

For more information on the Board meeting and how to participate please visit: mendocinocounty.org/government/board-of-supervisors/agendas-and-minutes.

For more on COVID-19: www.mendocinocounty.org

Call Center: (707) 234-6052 or email callcenter@mendocinocounty.org

The call center is open Monday-Friday from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

---

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS

Mendocino County Stage 2 shelter-in-place draft language is available for review. There are three documents: the new order, a redline version indicating changes and a "TRANSITIONING TO STAGE 2" document. 

Our Public Health Officer has modeled the new language based on expectations of the upcoming California statewide revision, which is not yet available and could impact final language. The goal is to allow the activities in the yellow column, but these remain an unknown pending state level decisions. Our updated order will be released as soon as the State releases its updated order, hopefully within the next few days.

My feedback, which is non-binding on the process, is due at noon Tuesday. I'll do my best to coalesce and represent your feedback.

MENDO TO ISSUE LOOSEST STAY-AT-HOME ORDER IN THE REGION

Following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement that he plans to roll back statewide pandemic restrictions on many businesses, Mendocino County is poised to adopt what would be the loosest stay-at-home order on the North Coast, allowing hotels and vacation rentals to reopen and most retail stores for curbside pickup.

A draft of the new order, which will be discussed Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, could allow most retail shops, manufacturing operations, outdoor businesses, childcare facilities and offices where telework is not possible to reopen, and would allow for most construction to resume.

The proposal is based on updates announced Monday by Newsom to the statewide stay-at-home orders aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. The guidance would allow counties to ease restrictions on many “non-essential” businesses starting as early as Friday.

Supervisor Ted Williams said the county public health department had been in close communication with the governor’s office and public health officials from other Northern California counties when drafting its new proposal.

“The goal is to open as much as safety allows,” he said. “What we don’t want to is regress and cause a surge of cases.”

Williams said the new order could be in place as soon as Friday, when statewide restrictions are set be relaxed.

While the Board of Supervisors may recommend changes to the proposed draft, only the public health department has the authority to issue a new order.

The county order may also not be any less restrictive than the new statewide directive, which could be reversed if coronavirus hospitalizations rise again, Newsom said during his announcement.

The governor’s plan, however, does allow for rural counties with low infection rates such as Mendocino to further ease restrictions on businesses, including restaurants and hotels, once they meet requirements for testing kits, hospital beds and case tracing capacity. Newsom said he plans to announce additional information on those rules later this week.

A draft of Mendocino County’s proposed health order has provisions allowing restaurants to open with limited seating, while also permitting house calls for personal services such as haircuts and massages. It would also allow hotels and vacation rentals to reopen, permit medium-to-small gatherings and clear the way for an early restart to the school year.

Williams said the county expects to receive guidance from the state on rules and requirements for the accelerated rollbacks within the next few days. But he sound optimistic about when the county would be able to meet the state-mandated health and safety goals.

“The most worrisome aspect is the testing criteria,” he said. “We’re at the state’s mercy on scaling testing capabilities.”

Last week, the county did test hundreds of residents living on or close to the Round Valley Indian Reservation near Covelo after six tribal members tested positive for COVID-19. As of Monday, the testing has revealed just one new case.

The county’s proposed order comes amid growing pressure to reopen local businesses. On Saturday, Sheriff Matt Kendall wrote in a Facebook post that it was time for county and state officials to “re-evaluate” current stay-at-home restrictions on businesses, linking those restrictions to increased “depression, violence, abuse within the home, and real fear about the inability to make a living.”

The Facebook post received over a 1,500 “likes” and support from some local supervisors, including Williams.

Neither the sheriff nor the county health department immediately returned requests for comment.

In Lake County, Sheriff Brian Martin also has called on local public health officials to roll back limits on businesses. Northern California counties Modoc, Sutter and Yuba, meanwhile, have begun defying Newsom’s original orders and already are allowing nonessential businesses to reopen.

Mendocino County has reported 12 total coronavirus cases, including four people who have recovered, according to public health officials.

(Ethan Varian, Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

FOR SALE: CANOES & ACCESSORIES

• Four-Man Fiberglass Canoe: 18’ — $500
• Sailing Canoe, loaded extras: 18’ — $1200
• Two-Man Wood & Canvas Canoe: 17.5’ — $500
• Two canvas ship tents: 40’ x 25’ — $500 each
• One canvas ship tent: Used — $300

• 

• 

— John, 415/776-4224, or best offer for all above

IN THE MIDST of a deepening health and economic crisis, what would you expect Ukiah’s top realtor to be writing about? Showing houses with social distancing impositions? Market contraction? Declining property assessments? Sales activity? Finding a remodeling contractor? County planning and permit processing? Financing and mortgage rates under new banking restrictions? Housing shortages and prices? Infrastructure limitations in Mendocino County? The many failures in the County’s “housing element” of the General Plan? Second unit permit problems? Escrow requirements? The endless “studies” that developers must conduct before their permit applications will even be accepted…?

No, Ukiah uber-realtor Richard Selzer went to great pains last week to whine about what he called “rent control” laws.

According to Selzer’s own summary of the recent “rent control” legislation:

“Assembly Bill 1482 or the ‘Tenant Protection Act of 2019’ went into effect January 1. It prevents residential landlords from raising rent more than 5%, plus the local rate of inflation, in a single year. State Senate Bill 329 prevents landlords from considering the source of a tenant’s income; specifically, landlords cannot discriminate against renters who use Section 8 housing vouchers. Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent extension of Penal Code Section 396, the anti-gouging rule that went into effect after wildfires ravaged the state. Section 396 prevents landlords from raising the rent on all housing types, including vacant units, more than 10 percent above pre-emergency levels.”

This so-called “rent control” allows landlords to charge anything they want for new rentals or when new tenants move in.

In effect, these faux restrictions limit rent increases for existing tenants to not more than 10% per year and even then only if the tenant objects and goes to court over it since there’s no effective enforcement mechanism. What kind of greedy landlord would even want more than that per year? 

But Richard Selzer says these ineffectual laws, even including the anti-gouging law, are bad because…?

Selzer: “Is there anything in these laws that makes developers want to build more homes? No. Given the reduced [sic] income, do you think these laws could dissuade people from building and/or investing in rental properties? Yes. Basically, rent control removes the impetus for developers to build new houses, which makes our housing shortage worse, not better.”

“These laws” may not contain anything that “makes developers want to build more homes” (and why should they?), but California’s current budget includes almost $2 billion in new housing subsidies:

• $500 million in one-time cash for local governments to combat homelessness—of that $300 million will go towards regional planning, and $200 million as awards for cities that build new shelters or permanent supportive housing.

• A quintupling of ongoing cash (from $80 million to $500 million) for the state’s most important low-income housing financing tool, the low-income housing tax credit.

• $500 million in one-time cash for “moderate-income” housing production, or the so-called “missing middle” of housing for California’s middle class.

• $25 million to get more homeless Californians on federal disability programs.

That’s not all, of course, because these latest handouts are on top of what was already in place at the state level and what cities and counties are already doing.

Selzer insists that the mythical “free market” is the only way to get more housing built. But the “free market” in housing, similar every other modern industrial sector — is a myth in the first place since the entire housing market is dependent on “socialized” government-funded streets, sewers, water, schools, fire services, law enforcement, etc.) 

To realtors like Selzer and his many acolytes in Mendocino County who take a sizable whack out every transaction based on its “market value,” (which, Selzer fails to note, raises the cost of housing) unless the rent “control” laws themselves include “incentives” to landlords and developers, these nearly non-existent controls will only make the housing problem worse. 

(Mark Scaramella)

ED NOTES

WE HAVEN'T ENJOYED a righteous scandal out of Fort Bragg in a while, but there's a beaut shaping up that involves the Gray Whale Inn, the former Gray Whale Inn. The gallant old structure was once Fort Bragg's hospital, Dr. Bowman at your service.

ONE MORE PLUG for the fiction of Annie Proulx and her lightest book so far, the comic masterpiece, ‘That Old Ace in the Hole,’ funniest thing I've read since ‘The Ginger Man’ and ‘The Magic Christian.’ (The last prescient in the Trump experience.) ‘That Old Ace in the Hole’ contains the truest, most vivid account of lust maybe ever, certainly in my experience of prose accounts of blind passion.

HIGHLIGHTS of today's disasters include the usual Trump clash with media, and here we are with everything collapsing around us and our leader seems crazier by the day. Today's media contretemps involved the Morning Joe show, a TV talk show with this Joe Scarborough character and a speed rapping babe with big white teeth called Mika Brzezinski (daughter of Zbigniew). The dear leader tweets that Scarborough ought to be investigated for murder, claiming the accidental death of an aide to Scarborough might have been the work of Morning Joe. Scarborough responded, "This president, I ask that you get checked out. I ask that you take a rest, I ask that you take care of yourself. Maybe let Mike Pence run things for the next week," in an apparent reference to the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president to take over if the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." Which should have been applied to Trump months ago. Pence, however, is a quiet nut but certainly also 5150 by any reasonable standard, but is also not a guy you want in charge at this time. Ditto for Biden. 

FEMA, according to unnamed sources, is estimating that the death toll from the coronavirus will reach 3,000 cases daily by June 1st. That number is nearly double the current level of 1,750 deaths a day from the disease. The projections, obtained by The New York Times, are based on modeling from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

YES, ANDERSON VALLEY, you were hurled from your slumber at 2am Monday morning by the apocalyptic din loosed by frost fans, but please recall the consoling words of your friend and neighbor Ted Bennett of the Navarro Winery, “My grapes are more important than your sleep.” Twenty nights of massive disturbance is a small price to pay for the welfare of not only Ted and his grapes, but for the success of Mendocino County’s primary industry! 

A STRAIGHTFORWARD PERMIT PROCESS for the infernal machines and a detailed “best practices” document which would at least mitigate the din (both proposed by the local wine industry a few years ago when they first started keeping us awake all night) is beyond the capabilities of the industry and the County. (Mark Scaramella)

CHECKING AROUND mostly deserted Boonville, I couldn't find anybody who'd gotten a stimulus check. The government, such as it is, says the $1,200 stimulus checks are on the way.

THE LADIES at the Anderson Valley Market told me today that a surprising number of outsiders are still passing through, asking questions like, "Is there a hotel around here?" 

THE SOCO County Fair has been canceled for the first time since WWII. The Mendocino County Fair, Boonville's largest annual draw, hasn't formally announced that it, too, is off, but it probably is. Dr. Doohan told Supervisor Williams on Tuesday that she didn't see any chance of the County Fair happening this year. But she hasn't made an official announcement.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans,” available free now on YouTube. Nothing new, really, for the eco-attuned and unfair to Bill McKibben, but interesting. Moore himself moves around in a limo and lives splendor life, but most of us can hardly avoid, as inhabitants of industrial civ, contributing to its destruction. Of course some people are far more destructive than others, which is the point of the film.

SUNDAY'S NPR NEWS was especially irritating with constant chirp-chirp references from the happy talkers babbling on about the "far left" of the Democratic Party, clearly the usual misrepresentation of the Ocasio-Cortez quartet who've revived hopes for a progressive party, terrifying the party's entrenched power brokers. What? Single payer? Way too far to the left? Immediate cash assistance to the millions thrown out of work? Sounds like Lenin to us. With NPR you can't tell if it's just ignorance or malice. Or sloth or stupidity. Or the usual journalo-prostitution. All seem to be at work here. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 3, 2020

TAMMY GILCHRIST, Willits. Stolen vehicle, failure to obey health officer, probation revocation.

VILMA MCCUTCHEON, Elk. Resisting.

ADRIAN PHILLIPS, Covelo. DUI causing bodily injury, driving without license.

AFTER AN OUTPOURING OF SUPPORT and Interest, Mendo MusicFest is now MendoLake MusicFest

(Mendocino & Lake Counties, California 5/4/2020) Organizers of the event are thrilled to announce that after a week of relishing in the dozens of musical submissions, we have decided to rename our festival “MendoLake MusicFest” in the spirit of inclusion and recognition of the community shared between residents of Mendocino & Lake Counties. Ultimately, our community is made better through song, and organizers are excited to showcase the musicians of Lake County and share in the experience with its citizens. The MendoLake MusicFest is hosting a free, “live-streamed” concert event, featuring and celebrating local musicians and performers on Sunday, May 24, 2020. We are currently seeking video submissions of some of your best work - recorded from a previous live performance or something recorded virtually - to share with the community. Organizers will select exemplary performance footage submissions and stitch them into a cohesive performance video. Our goal is to produce an hour to an hour and a half event, showcasing musicians from all age groups and genres of music. 

Please include the following when you email your submission:

● Performer/Group/Band Name

● Song Selection

● Video of a previously recorded performance or a virtually compiled performance created while maintaining social distancing practices.

● Name(s) of the Performer(s)

● A short biography on your band / what you want the audience to know (about the band or the song)

● Contact information.

Email your submission information to mendolakemusicfest@gmail.com no later than Friday, May 15, 2020. Due to the number of submissions, do not expect a receipt response for your submission. You will be notified if you are selected or if we need more information from you. If you or someone you know has a song to sing, share your melody with Mendocino County for this year’s Mendo Musicfest. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the event organizers at mendolakemusicfest@gmail.com

WHEN THE BIRDIES SING LIKE THE FAT LADY

by James Kunstler

Spring is popping now with a ferocious energy that can only remind the sullenly sequestered masses that life is going on without them. Every living thing is busy making-and-doing out there, except the poor humans, idled without work or purpose. 

That won’t last long. People don’t submit automatically to zombification when some pissant bureaucrats issue them $1200 checks. They yearn to bust out like everything else on this living planet. And if they can’t do it in a good way, well…

The mega-machine we constructed to drive this society has sucked a valve and thrown a rod. The machine is broken, no matter how much more fuel the mechanics pump in. (One suspects somebody may have topped it off with Karo syrup.) Anyway, the machine got too big and too complex, with too many extraneous bells and whistles, and with way too much computerized cybernetic control built-in, so the mechanics barely noticed it was coming apart (they were too busy partying). That big machine is smoldering in a ditch for the moment. The dazed and bloodied passengers realize that the ride is over, and now they must march on to get somewhere, anywhere, away from this miserable ditch and the wreckage in it. The fine spring weather is their only consolation.

And so here we are at a fraught moment in the convergent crises of corona virus and the foundering economic system that it infected, with all its frightful pre-existing conditions. Of course, it isn’t capitalism, so-called, that is failing, but the perversions of capitalism, starting with the appendage of the troublesome term: ism. It isn’t a religion, or even a pseudo-religion like Zoroastrianism or communism. It’s simply the management system for surplus wealth. In a hyper-complex society, the management of wealth naturally grows hyper-complex, too, with lavish opportunities and temptations for chicanery, cheating, fraud, and swindling (the perversions of capital). It’s in the interest of the managers to cloak all that hyper-complex perversity in opaque language, to make it seem okay.

How many ordinary Americans have a clue what all the Municipal Liquidity Facilities, Primary Dealer Credit Facilities, Primary and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities, Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facilities, Main Street New Loan Facilities and Expanded Loan Facilities, Commercial Paper Funding Facilities, currency swap lines, the TALFs TARPs, PPPs, SPVs represent — besides the movement, by keystrokes, of “money” from one netherworld to another (both conveniently located on Wall Street), usually to the loss of non-elite citizens generally and to their offspring’s offspring’s offspring?

Real capital is grounded in the production of real things of real value, of course, and when it’s detached from all that, it’s no longer real capital. Money represents capital, and when the capital isn’t real, the money represents… Nothing! And ceases to be real money. Just now, America is producing almost nothing except money, money in quantities that stupefy the imagination — trillions here, there, and everywhere. The trouble is that money is vanishing as fast as it’s being created. That’s because it’s based on promises to be paid back into existence that will never be kept, on top of prior promises to pay back money that were broken or are in the process of breaking. The net result is that money is actually disappearing faster than it can be created, even in vast quantities.

All this sounds like metaphysical bullshit, I suppose. But we are obviously watching money disappear. Your paycheck is gone. That activity you started — a brew-pub, a gym, an ad agency — no longer produces revenue. The HR department at the giant company you work for told you: don’t bother coming into the office tomorrow, or possibly ever again. Your bills are piling up. The numbers in your bank account run to zero. That sure smells like money disappearing. Wait until the pension checks and the SNAP cards mysteriously stop landing in the mailbox.

There’s going to be a lot of trouble. Ordinary Americans are going to get super-pissed if money doesn’t disappear from the stock markets, too. They’ve seen this movie before. They will know for sure that they were played, that the class of people who hold most of the stocks are doing just fine while everybody else stares into that old abyss staring back at them. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the Hamptons on that fateful day.

All this because we just can’t face the task of reorganizing our national home economics to suit new circumstances. So, nature will do it for us. Nature will furnish us with a marvelously efficient black hole where we can conveniently stash our fake money so that we’ll never have to see it again. Nature will bust up our giant institutions, our giant corporations, our giant networks of financial obligations. And after a period of confusion and social disorder, some clever humans will aggregate into smaller networks and re-organize their activities on a smaller scale that actually supports truthful relationships between the production of things deemed to hold value and money that represents those things.

The beauty of springtime is sublime and, as Edmund Burke noted, that very beauty provokes our thoughts of pain and terror.

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

ARAB SPRING STREET ART

NEO-NAZI "REOPENERS" would Kill nearly as many Americans as died in All US Wars

A new simulation by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School predicts that if all the states completely reopened today and all Americans ceased all social distancing measures, a million people would die in this country by June 30. That is, almost as many would die in the next two months as soldiers died in all of US wars in all of US history. That is the outcome being demanded by the “reopen” protesters who menaced Michigan’s state capitol with confederate flags, Nazi paraphernalia, and assault weapons. 

juancole.com/2020/05/reopeners-nearly-americans.html

TO SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS — Re: Measure B

Hello Again Supervisor Williams:

My name is Gregory Sims, I reside in in your district (Philo) and I appreciated your address at the Boonville Fair Grounds and our beginning conversation after the talk. I'm in my 3rd year as a Visiting Scholar in the Developmental and Psychological Sciences in Education at Stanford. I became involved in this research project because of my concern for the at risk and homeless in Mendocino County. I spent some nine months with RQMC working with Tim Schraeder, CEO, staff and clients at Manzanita, MCAVHN and Gibson House. I drew from a program I wrote with the staff at Unicorn Youth Services in Philo in which seven factors, were isolated as areas for growth: Use of thought, emotions, physicality, social ease, personal values and identity, life appreciation and spiritual vision. Tim and I determined we could offer his clients the opportunity to utilize blends of my 7 areas with 5 areas of his assessment program: 1) Personal health management 2) Home or living area management 3) Communication with self and others, 4) Safety 5) and Time management. What we discovered was some promise but the need for more research, development and organized application. 

The creative blending of bodymindful applications offers a potential opening to adaptive living for individuals who have lost focus and direction. The development of this educational methodology is gradually taking shape and will soon be ready for evaluation then application. I am sharing this effort with you so we can become better acquainted and also because I am concerned with the current proposed use of Measure B funds. These funds can support a site, staff and program which will provide organization for and facilitate the development of useful approaches to physical, emotional and social function as a way of living for individuals now isolated, some lost. I am a retired (inactive) psychologist and a past Commissioner of Juvenile Justice for Mendocino County. I have deep concerns regarding the proposal to take one million dollars of Measure B funds for purposes other than what the measure specified. I have attended numerous Measure B meetings and I wish to address the importance of transparent ethical decision making. Specifically, I think there are numerous issues to be resolved before any transfer of Measure B funds of the million dollar magnitude is executed in behalf of any agency including Redwood Quality Management. 

The residents of Mendocino County are undergoing considerable stress in managing the Corona Virus and are doing it well. Introducing a questionable and disputed use of Measure B funds as 'an elective surgery' in the heart of our present dire circumstances is unwise. I'm hoping you might consider proposing those making this request withdraw it or if you agree, move for it to be tabled until it can be further examined so as gain the community acceptance accorded measure B (88%). That figure reflects the trust voters had that our agencies would use these funds in accordance with their mutually agreed upon intended purposes (as stated in measure B). 

I hope we can speak with each other before the Tuesday May 12th 9 a m meeting. If possible I would also like to speak electronically with the board on this issue. Please feel free to share this communication with whomever you deem to be appropriate. 

Regards,

Gregory K. Sims, PhD

Visiting Scholar, DAPS, GSE

Stanford

<gregory@saber.net>

SAME PLAGUE, DIFFERENT DAY

Our hopelessly muddled response to CV19 assures the sickness will return and return and return. Our hopelessly muddled response to CV19 is a blinding display of the depths to which American education and intellect have sunk. We are changed from the days of "Yankee Ingenuity" to THIS! We are the Land of the Stupid, the laughingstock of the world. We don't even realize it. Instead, we demonize everything we can think of, domestic and foreign, to explain our deficits and our appalling failures. We demonstrate, constantly, the horrifying psychological truth that the dumber you are, the smarter you think you are. (Look it up! Look at our stable-genius CEO!)

My sole god is EDUCATION, the only way back to a quality of life we once had, once enjoyed, earned and deserved. I am in touch with classmates from a Baltimore public school we went to during WW2. College grads today have less command of the English language, less capacity for thinking, less awareness of the rudimentary facts of life, than we had in sixth grade.

It's not our fault, at least not exclusively. Our rulers--the ones for window dressing and the unseen ones who pull their strings--have planned this, patiently and determinedly, for generations. Their perseverance has paid off. LOOK AT US!

Their plan (duh!) was to re-engineer American society (and world society) so we'd be a world of, basically, serfs, tending to a tiny class of wealthy. TAKE A LOOK! TAKE A GODDAMNED LOOK!

All around America--and elsewhere--we celebrate our unity and determination to defy the plague. Too bad, too bloody bad we can't come together in something besides banging pots and singing Sinatra. This plague of stupidity has so successfully shrunk our minds, we few who get it need to scream for the masses who don't--SCREAM!! I have, literally, thousands of books around here by smart, informed, alert, terrified, heartbroken people. We can't take cover in "We didn't know." The Truth, as they constantly and futilely asserted on X-Files, is out there. Uncover it and examine it. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!

I remind you of Jay Leno's habit of showcasing street encounters on his show. He would ask passersby really tough questions, like: Who is buried in Grant's Tomb? Their answers were anything but funny.

If you're stirred to comment, great, but show a little wit, thought, grasp, something beside the exercise of your God-given and Constitution-protected right to say any goddamn stupid thing you want.

Be on notice. I said, many posts ago, I wouldn't delete stuff unless it's abusive. I've changed my mind. Come up with something worthwhile or shove off.

(Mitch Clogg)

SIMONE SEGOUIN, mostly known by her codename, Nicole Minet, was only 18 when the Germans invaded. 

Her first act of rebellion was to steal a bicycle from a German military administration, slicing the tires of all of the other bikes and motorcycles so they couldn't pursue her. She found a pocket of the Resistance and joined the fight, using the stolen bike to deliver messages between Resistance groups.

She was an extremely fast learner and quickly became an expert at tactics and explosives. She led teams of Resistance fighters to capture German troops, set traps, and sabotage German equipment. As the war dragged on, her deeds escalated to derailing German trains, blocking roads, and blowing up bridges, helping to create a German-free path to help the Allied forces retake France from the inside. She was never caught.

Segouin was present at the liberation of Chartres on August 23, 1944, and then the liberation of Paris two days later. She was promoted to lieutenant and awarded several medals, including the Croix de Guerre.

After the war, she studied medicine and became a pediatric nurse. She is still going strong, and this October (2020) will turn 95.

VERTICAL PARKING MACHINE

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

 [1] Ladies and germs;

Consider a compass. 360 degrees.

There are as many opinions on the Covid-19 issue as there are degrees on a compass. Every pro and con argument can be found with a quick internet search. Every nuance. Every scholarly report, every half-assed opinion.

Here is what we currently know about the virus;

Not a God-Damned thing. We all have opinions, and we all can find argument on the internets that support and affirm those opinions. But opinions are not facts. The virus is called a novel virus for a reason, and the past 5 months of intense research is not gonna give us facts that we can make considered, correct decisions upon. 

In one month, maybe two, your opinions will be unrecognizable compared to those you hold today. I have come to the position that I have no opinion that I would consider reality based, and while I consider daily the veritable shit-storm of conflicting reports of all issues virus, I will view the issue with attention, but will withhold any thought of absolutes. There just aren’t any.

[2] I literally cannot believe that anyone could say with a straight face that the daily Trump clown show (a) reflects a president “working hard”, or (b) is anything other than shameless TV time. Even the timing is cynical … 5-7 PM to cut into the evening news peak, and to dampen any fact-checking or criticism. It hasn’t saved one life, and probably cost many. It’s laughable – but I guess to the cult he walks on water – or behaps bleach. And UV light shines out of his butt.

 [3]

Locking down a country was a ridiculous stunt.

“Social distance” is bullcrap too.

Yes … we think we understand you don’t like the pandemic. And no-one else likes it either. But the point is, without lock-down, social distancing, self-isolation and quarantine, the whole country could have been as bad as NYC.

Because these measures were effective, they are being attacked as “unnecessary” – the logic is deeply flawed. And to keep the numbers really low, masks are part of the future.

Along with more testing, continued social distancing, temp tests, hand-washing, and support for the isolated. All of this until there is a treatment or a vaccine.

[4] Joe [Biden] do you remember yesterday is the better question I suspect he remembers 1993 better than he does the last ten minutes.

That’s the crazy thing about dementia.

My mother in law got the dementia actually Alzheimer’s we did the best we could to take care of her ourselves after her husband died of a heart attack in my couch.

We paid out of pocket for a nice lady to come take care of her while we were at work and this went on for months. Her mood steadily soured she became suspicious and angry even combative. The dementia took her sweet quiet demeanor and replaced it with a dark brooding person who wanted to know where her husband was.

Then one day she became angry and actually took a swing at the nice lady we hired to essentially baby sit her and took to crapping on the floor next to the toilet.

We then had to concede defeat and found a home for her. In that home were a bunch of other ladies with worse cases of dementia. Some so bad they were literal lumps of breathing flesh and nothing but occasional grunts and farts to express they were even alive. Dementia sucks I feel bad for Joe and anyone else who has it or gets it it robs their loved ones of the person they love and eventually leaves an empty shell were a human once sat, loved and lived.

FOUND OBJECT