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MCT: Sunday, July 19, 2020

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HOT AND DRY CONDITIONS will persist in inland areas for much of the next week. Cool conditions will persist along the coast, with a deepening marine layer and increasing clouds expected tonight through at least the first half of the week. Isolated thunderstorms will be possible in northern Trinity County late Tuesday afternoon. (NWS)

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(photo by Arete Gagnon)

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EARLY MORNING BLAZE DESTROYS THREE BUILDINGS IN DOWNTOWN COVELO

Arson has not been ruled out. Landline service is down and not expected to be restored until Monday at the earliest; accordingly Sheriff increases patrol because many Covelo residents lack 9-1-1 service.

mendofever.com/2020/07/18/early-morning-blaze-destroys-three-buildings-in-covelo/

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MENDO COVID, JULY 18

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MENDOCINO COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS FOUR LOCAL BUSINESS OUTBREAKS OF COVID-19

July 18, 2020, 6pm

Mendocino County has seen a rise in COVID-19 outbreaks during the last couple of weeks. As of today, we have 194 cases of COVID-19, 11 of whom are currently hospitalized, including 1 who was transferred to Napa County for higher level of care. 

Per Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, 2 cases of COVID-19 in a workplace constitutes an outbreak. Mendocino County Public Health is working closely with all known locations who have COVID-19 positive employees to contain the spread, including giving orders to isolate cases, and quarantine close contacts (defined as being closer than 6 feet for more than 10 minutes regardless of facial covering use) for 14 days from last contact with a known case. All locations have been cooperative in containment and investigation efforts. Please see the identified locations below for situational awareness.

Sherwood Oaks Health Center in Fort Bragg has had 7 residents test positive for COVID-19, 2 of whom have been hospitalized, and 1 of whom has passed away. 5 employees have tested positive for COVID-19. If you have been in close contact with a Sherwood Oaks resident or staff member, please self-quarantine, and participate in the outbreak testing event, performed by Mendocino Coast Clinics tomorrow, Sunday, July 19, 2020 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at 530 Maple Street in Fort Bragg. There will be 300 tests available. First come, first serve. If you have or develop flu-like symptoms, please contact your primary care physician. 

Ukiah Natural Foods Co-Op has had 2 employees test positive for COVID-19. Further testing of Co-Op employees is being facilitated by Public Health. “We are following the guidance as recommended by the Public Health Officer, Dr. Doohan, and are shutting down while working on the case investigation and contact tracing by Public Health,” said Co-Op Manager, Lori Rosenberg. “Our impacted staff are quarantined, and we have hired a professional deep cleaning service to clean the entire store. We are taking staff temperatures, and ensuring enhanced efforts for social distancing and disinfecting all surfaces. Our concern at this time is for the health of staff, shoppers and the community.”

The Fort Bragg Center for Laser & Cosmetic Dentistry has had one employee test positive for COVID 19. “The employee has been isolating since July 9th and no other employees or patients have reported experiencing any symptoms,” as stated by Dr. Alan Limbird. Dr. Limbird is working closely with public health to ensure a safe reopening for employees and patients. Mendocino County Public Health is providing outbreak testing for any patients who may have been exposed between June 22nd and July 13th. Outbreak testing for this event will be performed by Mendocino Coast Clinics tomorrow, Sunday, July 19, 2020 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at 530 Maple Street in Fort Bragg. There will be 300 tests available. First come, first serve. 

Ardzrooni Vineyard in Anderson Valley has had four employees test positive for COVID-19. Isolation and quarantine housing has been arranged for those affected by this outbreak. Outbreak testing will be offered early next week. Press Release with more information on this testing to follow soon.

Indication of uncontrolled community spread, which has already been seen in Sonoma and Marin counties, includes outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities and grocery stores. The COVID-19 surge has now hit Mendocino County, and will likely worsen until Labor Day, given state modeling data. “We urge you, follow the Health Officer orders, and remember to wear your mask,” said Health Officer Dr. Noemi Doohan. “They have been created to save lives.”

Mendocino County Blanket Quarantine and Isolation Orders: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/home/showdocument?id=36667

Orden De Cuarentena De Mendocino: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/home/showdocument?id=33740

CDC Guidance on Workplace COVID-19 Outbreaks: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-business-response.html

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CLOSED AGAIN! Ukiah Co-Op is again closed due to a second covid case among staffers.

We are closed again! Unfortunately, a 2nd COVID case was discovered among the Co-op staff late yesterday. The second case was already isolating due contact tracing conducted during the first case. The store will remain closed for a few days in order for Public Health to complete additional contact tracing. Our general manager is working with the public health department and local officials and they will issue a joint press release later today. The Co-op will remain closed for the next few days. Please check the Co-op website here or our social media pages for updates. Thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. (Ukiah Co-op Presser)

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(photo by Larry Wagner)

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SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS:

California will authorize schools to open in counties that have been off the state monitoring list for 14 consecutive days. Schools will be subject to new requirements for masks, physical distancing and contact tracing. Schools that don’t meet monitoring list requirement must begin the school year through distancing learning. All school staff and students in 3rd grade and above must wear masks. At least a six foot distance must be maintained. Handwashing stations will be required. The school day will start with temperature checks. A cohort of staff will be tested regularly.

The current trend in Mendocino County puts us on a trajectory for inclusion on the state monitoring list. Collective behavior will determine whether our local school boards are afforded the latitude to consider in-person and hybrid models. Our adherence to infection mitigation measures today will impact cases in early August. I'm hopeful Mendocino County schools will focus resources on providing the best distance programs.

Governor's press conference re School Guidance with CDPH guidance attached:

• Safe in person school based on local health data

Using health data, (e.g., community spread of the virus) schools can physically open when its county has been OFF the monitoring list for 14 consecutive days

Schools that don’t meet this requirement must begin the year distance learning

• Mask requirements

All school staff and students in 3rd grade and above MUST wear masks

Students in 2nd grade and below are encouraged to wear masks or face shields

• Physical distancing and other adaptations

Staff must maintain 6 feet b/w each other and with students

Symptom checks

Hand washing stations

Sanitation and disinfection

Quarantine protocols

Regular testing and dedicated contact tracing

Requirement to test staff regularly (a cohort of staff, Dr. Galley will discuss further)

State contact tracing workforce will prioritize schools

• Rigorous distance learning

Access to devices and connectivity for all kids

Daily live interaction with teachers and other students

Challenging assignments equivalent to in-person classes

Adapted lesson for English language learners and special education students

• The State has invested $5.3 Billion in add’l funding with priority on equity to deal with learning loss associated with closures due to COVID and very focused towards special needs

When should in person learning close?

• Schools should consult with a PH officer FIRST if a classroom cohort has to go home b/c of confirmed case.

• A classroom cohort goes home when there is a confirmed case

• A school goes home when multiple cohorts have cases or more than 5% of school is positive

• A district goes home if 25% of their schools are closed within a 14 day period

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REBECCA JARRETT WRITES (Mendocino Fifth District facebook page):

So, so, tired of people from out of the area screaming at me that they will not wear a mask or sanitize their hands. Just had a tourist couple with a woman who refused to wear her mask correctly and her husband who straight up wouldn't wear one at all, yell and scream all the way back to their car. "What are you protecting people from, the flu is worse!" I proceeded to let them know in my best Chamber of Commerce voice that we were under orders from not only the State of California but our county public health officer. Pointed to all the signage in the window and said that now there was a fine of up to $500. Fell on deaf ears...They are driving a blue kia sedan, please, make their stay unbearable if they cross your path. Better yet, call the sheriff. — feeling exhausted.


MSP: WE GUESS 'TECHNICALLY' THIS IS SHELTERING IN PLACE IN ALBION

(photo by Kathy Wylie)

MASKING UP: A random collection of on-line comments from Mendocino Sports Plus:

OMG, Do you really expect people to stay locked up in their house for several months? I think camping is a great alternative, get outside and enjoy some fresh air. So may people have had to cancel their vacations. Just let them be!

Like Brigham Young said, "This is the PLACE!" He also had little social distancing skill vis-a-vis the many wives as evidenced by the dozens of offspring. Maybe we all died but didn't know it and we're looking at a picture of how the survivors succeeded by taking a vacation.

Lake county looks the same. Boats for days cases going up. Cant get restaurant employees to wear masks.

Oh grow up. Seriously?? We're allowed to travel, just not far. Campgrounds are allowed to be open. If you want to stay in complete lockdown, do so.

Happy they are having fun

dam looks full, always wanted to camp there

Gotta say for most emergencies we get a call on our phones stating what’s going on. Air sirens, TV notifications. For the Pandemic nothing. People don’t take it serious because we have to get our info from the news media or Facebook and we’ll you know how folks think of that in the current political climate. On top of that each place says different things. Law enforcement says different things then the city or county. People wonder why nobody is on the same page with anything ? Baffling !

This is so wrong! Close tourism!

What SIP? We have to but the tourists don't, and our essential workers are stuck serving and cleaning up after them and they get the risk of being exposed. If we need to SIP, the then tourists shouldn't be here.

Good luck keeping any of the businesses afloat without the tourists.

Those dirty little tourists and their nasty bugs.

Aren't they replacing that bridge? Then obviously they're bridge builders.

wtf?!!!?? now how many license plates are from over 50 miles away?? where is code enforcement?

Where is all the law and order in all this - ohh wait we defunded them

Many of these dummies zipped through Boonville yesterday on their way to the coast.

Looks pretty open air to me

When economy is more important than your fellow man, the $ is your master.

Great to see Americans be american. Enjoy yourself campers....

for real we are still in phase whatever which means we can go places and be around a certain amount of people. We will soon be back to the beginning of the SIP.

some people need to live an let live. These people aren't hurting no one

I agree. I want to go camping on the coast, but I'm stuck in the desert. Out monsoon season started, so it rains every evening between 5 and 7, so no camping for me…

MSP NOTE: We received a message from a viewer from the Sacramento area saying, “I read comments from the locals voicing concern about vacationers in their areas. Several times a week I receive posts or emails from your area businesses inviting me to visit. Maybe the locals should have conversations with the local lodging businesses and restaurants…”)

Here's the post to coast social media: "What the actual F*ck is going on today? Belligerent, self-entitled non-masked argumentive tourists all over Mendo today. It's awful and I don't feel safe operating my business in this mess: (The town feels under siege, carload after carload. I have been open for two weeks and have not experienced this level of weirdness, but it's not good, people!"

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Our Pet of the Week is a sweet, charming Shepherd mix. Beautiful Serenity is 2 years old and weighs 50 pounds. Serenity enjoys belly rubs and being close to people. We would love to see Serenity gain a bit of confidence, so a home where she will get out and about and be exposed to different environments and experiences would be ideal for this young girl. Serenity is pretty mellow and easy to walk on leash. She was excited to meet Fetch, a fellow shelter guest, during her evaluation, and she had a little crush on him. Fetch was adopted, so Serenity is looking for a new canine friend….perhaps one in your home?

You can find more about Serenity and all of the shelter's dog and cat guests at mendoanimalshelter.com While you’re there, read about our services, programs, events, and updates regarding covid-19 and the shelters in Ukiah and Ft. Bragg. Visit us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/ For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. 

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GOLD RUSH DAGUERROTYPES 

Chinese woman with daguerreotype, circa 1850

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DON’T TOSS THE CANNABIS ORDINANCE. JUST ENFORCE IT!

Editor, 

At a time when we are seeing record high temperatures, record low rainfall, worsening dead zones off our coastline and killer toxic algae in our rivers, a proposal is afoot to expand cannabis cultivation into our rangelands. This will demand a lot of water that we can’t spare, and it will deposit a lot more fertilizer into our rivers and streams that we don’t need. This is exactly the wrong proposal at this time of worsening droughts. It will likely sabotage decades of restoration efforts which we’ve already invested in to save our struggling salmon fisheries from being pushed into extinction. We must not let our rich heritage of salmon fisheries be jeopardized by the lure of short term profits.

Some Supervisors are proposing abandoning our cannabis ordinance, which has strict requirements and limitations, replacing it with the Use Permits process which will give the Planning and Building staff a lot more “flexibility.” Replacing our ordinance with Use Permits, which are at the “discretion” of the planning staff, will also provide few, if any, remedies for complaints from the public. This is a bad deal.

You may have noticed recently the proliferation of large clusters of 14 or more white plastic hoop houses. This has occurred because the 10,000 sq. ft. of cannabis canopy allowed in the ordinance was then changed to 10,000 sq. ft. of white plastic eyesore at the “discretion” of the Planning and Building Dept. Surprises like this that destroy our views and devalue our properties are exactly what we don’t want. We should, instead, abide by the promises made in the ordinance and work to make it even better.

Instead of the proposal to expand cannabis into our last remaining open space, our rangelands, we could, instead, expand into our industrial and commercial zones where infrastructure and water resources are already developed. Cannabis growers truck in much of their soil and even at times their water, so having these activities in an industrial setting would be a much better fit than in our neighborhoods, or in our open spaces, and it would help reduce their carbon footprint. Electricity instead of generators would also greatly reduce the risk of fire.

Lured by the promise of big money, Ted Williams and John McCowen are working hand in hand with the cannabis industry to promote this expansion plan into our rangeland, largely for the benefit of the corporate grower.

The small grower is not likely to afford these bigger parcels and all the permits and infrastructure that will be needed, so this will likely benefit the better capitalized crew that is flooding in from out of the area.

We’ve already seen so much plundering and pillaging and now this proposal for bigger grows on steep, highly erodible land, will deliver just more of the same — a lot more fish choking sediment in our rivers, water diversions, garbage, code enforcement complaints, crime and threat of fire.

Code Enforcement complaints are up by 31%, with only 2 officers on the cannibis beat. Policing is stretched thin, too, and the Covelo cartel problem is spreading. Why expand cannabis to our rangelands where enforcement is much more difficult?

Measure AF [a cannabis industry proposal] went down to defeat by a large margin in every district in 2016 because it proposed cannabis for every zone. We’ve already voted this idea down, but they are determined to ignore the wishes of the public.

If we hope to have a future on this fragile earth, protecting our fisheries, our wildlife and wild lands, enforcing the laws already on the books should matter to all of us.

If you don’t wish to see our cannabis ordinance abandoned, or are sick of non-enforcement, then let your Supervisors know by mail or by phone.

Their upcoming meeting is the 4th of August. Urge them to take a cautionary approach by staying with our existing cannabis ordinance and our existing cannabis zones. I urge you to write or call to make sure that your voice is heard.

Sheila Jenkins

Willits


SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS REPLIES:

"Lured by the promise of big money, Ted Williams and John McCowen are working hand in hand with the cannabis industry to promote this expansion plan into our rangeland, largely for the benefit of the corporate grower.”

Where can I learn more about the promise of big money? Does the big money have a name? All outdoor cultivators in Mendocino County are operating on “provisional” licenses from the state. The provisionals sunset in 2022. By this time, cultivators must hold “annual” licenses in order to continue cultivating. The existing ordinance has not been successful in enabling cultivators to transition to annual state licenses. The existing ordinance, authored primarily by Supervisor McCowen, is based on a ministerial model. Our ministerial permits cannot be conditioned. Further, our ministerial permits do not meet site specific requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). California Department of Food and Agriculture has worked with county staff on a concept known as “Appendix G” for over a year. This appendix would provide checkbox style site specifics. 

For example, one of the checkbox represents approval of a Sensitive Species Review by California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Because the ministerial permit cannot be conditioned, CDFW would have the option to either approve or deny. It’s foreseeable that many of the 700 legacy cultivation provisional licenses would not be approved for continuation under the annual license. 

That is, if state agencies even complete the process. Ministerial permits do not have a finite timeline. 

Contrast this with use permits. Under discretionary use permits, agencies have 30 days to provide comment. No comment is treated as approval by default. Further, use permits meet the site specific requirement of CEQA.

Many other counties have implemented cannabis under the use permit model. That said, it’s not a panacea. Humbolt has far more staffing in their cannabis program and still only approves approximately 70 cannabis cultivation use permits per year. If we were to staff up to Humboldt's level, we’d be looking at a decade to transition. My goal is not to swap our ordinance for a use permit model, but rather, ensure we transition our legacy cultivators to annual licenses, whatever it takes. 

Some cultivators have argued to keep the current process in place. When I ask what they’ll do in 2022 when all regulated outdoor cultivation in Mendocino County ceases, I often get deer-in-headlights. Selling out to big corporations is a fiction. Corporate cannabis is focusing on places like Santa Barbara, where licensing is a breeze, farmland is plentiful and production is in close proximity to the enormous southern California consumer market. 

If Mendocino County cultivators survive the botched framework, their market will be in "county of origin" high quality flower, not biomass for extraction. Biomass requires flat farmland, cheap labor and scale, none of which fit the characteristics or culture of Mendocino County. 

Sheila Jenkins raises important points about protecting our environment. I share the concern about agricultural impact on water and I’d prefer see plants in ground without plastics. These concerns exist whether we continue with the potentially dead-end ministerial ordinance or we rebase on discretionary use permits. 

The issue at hand is structural and technical in nature. Change "largely for the benefit of the corporate grower” is a rural legend. Keeping seven hundred farms from becoming outlaws overnight is the primary motivation for considering a shift of approach. Addressing the shortcomings of the model is our path to maintaining regulation. Regulation is what protects the environment and reduces crime. 

Although Supervisor McCowen often refers to himself as my secretary in reference to finishing my half baked ideas, we have not been working on this together. I see Supervisor McCowen capitulating in recognition of staff’s continued frankness about the ordinance being fundamentally flawed. If I deserve any credit, it’s in provoking staff to admit the pipeline is clogged, perhaps indefinitely. 

Whether the ordinance can be adequately patched to meet state requirements remains to be seen, but I do have respect for McCowen’s willingness to look objectively at his creation and consider the best next steps. Brave cultivators who entered our embarrassing program have been the brunt of laughter from illicit market counterparts who recognized what an endless pit of hoops the program would be. Fixing the model is about upholding our county’s end of the deal.

Ted Williams


MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: Where did Ms. Jenkins get the impression that the reform proposal would somehow eliminate “our existing cannabis zones”? I have not heard or seen anything about the reform proposal that would fundamentally change any existing zoning, which is exactly where the County should have focused in the first place.

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO UKIAH?

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FORT BRAGG IN THE HEADLINES AGAIN

Three northern California churches have gone to federal court to challenge the state's ban on singing and chanting in houses of worship, arguing that it unfairly singles out religious services while ignoring protests against police brutality.

cnn.com/2020/07/16/us/california-covid-singing-ban-church-lawsuit/index.html

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HOPLAND BUILDINGS

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MATT LEFEVER WRITES:

Alright my friends, I finally did it. I started my own Mendocino County news site. After coaching from Kym and Paul, I'm going live. In the beginning, the rollout will most likely be slow and buggy but I appreciate your support and interest. Thank you to all those that have supported my posts and articles and I look forward to helping our community communicate across our vast country.

https://mendofever.com/

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CATCH OF THE DAY, July 18, 2020

Cervantes, Ferrell, Ford

ALEXIS CERVANTES-NARANJO, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, under influence, no license.

LEE FERRELL, Santa Rosa/Boonville. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

SYDNEY FORD, Laytonville. DUI.

Freeney, Fuller, Jones

RICHARD FREENEY, Montgomery, Alabama/Ukiah. Under influence, disorderly conduct-loitering.

ADAM FULLER, Ukiah. Domestic battery. 

JAMES JONES, Eureka/Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, suspended license, evasion, failure to appear.

Killion, Langley, Mickelson

NANCY KILLION, San Francisco/Mendocino. Domestic battery.

MICHAEL LANGLEY, Ukiah. Controlled substance, disobeying court order, resisting, probation revocation.

ASHLEY MICKELSON, Willits. Burglary, false ID, failure to appear.

Parker, Santos, Sheffer

PHILIP PARKER, Fort Bragg. DUI.

JOSE SANTOS-HERNANDEZ, DUI, misdemeanor hit&run.

THOMAS SHEFFER, DUI causing bodily injury.

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‘IT’S SPOOKY RIGHT NOW’: Inside the Creepy Federal Crackdown on Portland Protesters

When Customs and Border Protection joined the protest crackdown in D.C., they were made into U.S. Marshals. In Portland, they’re using new powers provided by Trump.

by Spencer Ackerman

PORTLAND—Border agents in camouflage uniforms with obscured insignias. Protesters whisked off the street. An unarmed activist shot in the head with a “less-lethal” projectile.

Federal agents in Oregon are operating under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security’s critical-infrastructure force, the Federal Protective Service, Customs and Border Protection said on Friday, after facing widespread outrage over an array of remarkable tactics. 

But there is no border-enforcement mission in Portland. Instead, the feds have been carrying out a crackdown on weeks of protests in favor of Black liberation and against racist police violence. CBP claims those protesters are violent, but a DHS timeline of “rampant long-lasting violence” committed by Portland protesters gave heavy emphasis to graffiti and superficial property damage.

Still, CBP has been granted expanded authorities under President Donald Trump’s Jun. 26 executive order protecting “monuments, memorials and statues,” as well as from a recently created DHS task force known as PACT. And it’s vowing to continue operations that have drawn remarkable condemnation from Portland and Oregon elected officials. 

“While the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) respects every American’s right to protest peacefully, violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. “Violent anarchists have organized events in Portland over the last several weeks with willful intent to damage and destroy federal property, as well as injure federal officers and agents. These criminal actions will not be tolerated.”

In an escalation of their operations against Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Washington, D.C. last month, and in defiance of the Portland city government, CBP have snatched protesters and put them in unmarked vans for detention. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that CBP drove a detained protester, his face hooded by his hat, in a circuitous, disorienting path before arriving to detain him back at the federal courthouse near where he had been detained. 

Unidentified federal officials, wearing the same uniforms, shot 26-year-old Donavan LaBella in the head with a “less-lethal” round on July 11 after he kicked away a gas canister the officers threw at him. LaBella suffered a fractured skull. 

On Friday morning, after the latest evening of confrontation, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf tweeted pictures of “what I saw in Portland yesterday” that showed nothing more than graffiti’d buildings. Beside him in a subsequent picture were CBP officers kitted out in military-style uniforms as if they were an occupying army. Their uniforms said POLICE on the front. 

“We will prevail,” Wolf tweeted. On Fox News, he estimated the size of his contingent at “about 100 or so” officers.

Sen. Ron Wyden, one of Oregon’s two U.S. senators and a Democrat, said CBP had become an auxiliary force of the president’s—and promptly committed an abuse of power. 

“Border patrol agents have long been the political pawns of Donald Trump. It’s no surprise that the agency that detained innocent children at the border was deployed to Portland for more political theater at Trump's behest,” Wyden told The Daily Beast. “A lot of serious questions remain about this abuse of power, but what is clear: Trump and his occupying army are escalating violence and trampling on the constitutional rights of Oregonians.”

His Senate colleague, Jeff Merkley, told The Daily Beast that "any role for CBP apart from the border and ports of entry is inappropriate, unacceptable, and must be ended."

At a press conference in downtown Portland Friday afternoon, a series of speakers called for the removal of federal cops from the protests and for a federal investigation into what they termed the kidnapping of Portland citizens.

“We call for the immediate cease of the use of weapons and crowd control munitions against our citizens,” said the Rev. Tara Wilkins of the Portland Interfaith Clergy Resistance. “We demand officials withdraw federal law enforcement and investigate the kidnapping of our citizens.”

Wyden, Merkley and U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici said Friday they would ask the Justice Department and DHS inspector generals to investigate what Merkley called “horrific and outrageous” acts by federal law enforcement in Portland.

"CBP is operating as a shadowy paramilitary force in Portland and other places throughout the country, and this is absolutely horrific and unacceptable. The President may think that this authoritarian made-for-TV stunt will help his reelection, but real people’s lives and rights are at stake," Merkley told The Daily Beast.

In early June, before the executive order, hundreds of Border agents joined minimally-identified federal law enforcement deployed in Washington, D.C. streets, ostensibly to protect federal property as well. That time, however, the Justice Department had deputized them as temporary U.S. Marshals. This time, CBP said, they’re in support of the Federal Protective Service, a DHS arm for protecting critical infrastructure from terrorists—with whom the Trump administration has baselessly equated left-wing protesters. 

Trump issued his executive order in response to the toppling of mostly Confederate monuments. But the order extends a sweeping grant of law enforcement authority, aimed against “anarchists and left-wing extremists,” that goes beyond even the “protection” of statues, to the protection of any federal property. 

“Upon the request of the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Administrator of General Services, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, personnel to assist with the protection of Federal monuments, memorials, statues, or property,” the order’s fifth section reads. Nothing in the document provides detention authority for CBP. 

A different, decade-old authority CBP cited to The Daily Beast, 40 U.S. Code § 1315, empowers DHS to “make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of the officer or agent or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if the officer or agent has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing a felony.” 

Whether such “reasonable grounds” existed in Portland is the subject of substantial dispute. Protesters have said they were taken off the street and into minivans without any reasonable cause of action. 

CBP said that one of the detentions it made, captured in a widely-circulated video, came after it “had information indicating the person in the video was suspected of assaults against federal agents or destruction of federal property. Once CBP agents approached the suspect, a large and violent mob moved towards their location. For everyone’s safety, CBP agents quickly moved the suspect to a safer location for further questioning.” 

A spokesperson claimed CBP agents identified themselves and their insignia were visible, even though they make no such identification in several videos circulating across Twitter; their insignia patches are the same camouflage as their uniform; and the detentions occurred at night. “The names of the agents were not displayed due to recent doxing incidents against law enforcement personnel who serve and protect our country,” the spokesperson said.

A Yale University philosophy professor who authored a book on fascism said the unfolding crackdown on the streets of Portland was ominous.

“Lawlessness in the name of law and order is the hallmark of fascism,” said Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works. 

“We have been told by many that the Trump administration is just American politics as usual, with a dose of dysfunction, that we should not worry, that this too shall pass,” he said. “However, history teaches us that military and paramilitary forces bypassing the rule of law to crush dissent is a terrible sign of the nature of a regime. This is an alarm that must be heeded even by those who urge complacence.”

The AP, which first reported the applicability of the executive order to the Portland CBP deployment, identified on July 10 CBP personnel as an elite tactical team called BORTAC and noted it includes snipers.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday requested Wolf remove federal forces from Portland. Wolf, talking to Fox News, expressed defiance toward local elected authorities. 

“I offered DHS support to help them locally address the situation that’s going on in Portland and their only response was, ‘Please pack up and go home,’” he said. “That’s just not going to happen on my watch… I saw the graffiti, I saw the broken windows, I saw the broken doors.” 

Wolf visited Portland after calling it “under siege” from left-wing forces. But in repeated media appearances, the acting DHS head spoke in the name of liberating Portland police to “do their job” against the constraints imposed by local politicians.

To the national media suddenly hip to the presence of federal agents on the streets of Portland, it’s a stunning development to watch videos of unidentifiable officers in camouflage sweep protesters away.

To the founder of the Portland’s nonprofit civil rights organization Don’t Shoot PDX, it’s same song, different singer. 

“It’s pretty arrogant for city and state leaders to be speaking out against this activity now when they didn’t denounce it before,” Teressa Raiford told The Daily Beast. “This is literally the same violence we’ve been experiencing at the hands of the Portland Police. It’s just a different agency.” 

Raiford says it was a response to a slew of lawsuits that convinced city and state officials to shift the violent tactics of their law enforcement officers against protesters, and that shift wasn’t all that meaningful: from policies that permitted the unchecked deployment of tear gas in crowds to a mandate to warn protesters in some way beforehand. Activists in Portland say neither the local police nor the feds are abiding by the new rules. 

“It’s all ‘how do we get away with attacking people using these agents, so they’ll go home?’” said Raiford. “It’s just to disperse us. So when they realized there might be a legal mandate for them to be prosecuted and held accountable, the tactics changed. Now they have other agencies doing the assaults.” 

Raiford didn’t go so far as to suggest local and state agencies were coordinating with the feds, but Juan Chavez isn’t so sure. He’s the director of the Civil Rights Project of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, one of three firms that has successfully sued Portland officials over the use of force in the George Floyd-inspired protests. When it’s the Portland Police Bureau, Chavez said, there’s a clear defendant. With anonymous feds, the legal recourse is much more murky, Chavez told The Daily Beast. 

“Legally speaking, it creates some holes in being able to go after them,” he added. “The people in these minivans abducting people are just John Does, at this point.” 

That’s by design, Chavez insisted. “This is just another way to thwart accountability,” he said, and it’s likely a proving ground for Trump to deploy officers in other cities as well. The intent is to cause a psychic harm against people in Portland. It’s spooky right now.” 

The federal agents’ behavior is an extension of the Portland Police Bureau’s, he suspected. “I don’t think anybody could foreclose on the idea that the PPB isn’t working with the feds on this,” he says. “We’re going to take them on. This won’t go unchallenged.” 

Portland police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

On Thursday night, protester Doug Brown watched a group of protesters peacefully trailing Portland Police officers near the federal courthouse downtown. Jaywalking was their only crime, Brown insisted. 

But that didn’t stop a group of federal officers in camouflage appearing and without warning shooting pepper balls at their feet, Brown told The Daily Beast. “Then they lined up, blocked the streets and started firing at people directly, no warning,” he said. “They’re nameless. There’s no accountability. They can just do what they want.” 

(Courtesy, the Daily Beast)

* * *

GUALALA MANTIS

(photo by Randy Burke)

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I think Trump is a victim of his own success and counted heavily on the polls that kept saying he was going to lose. Melania always looked like she’d had it with him and who could blame her? She signed up to be the trophy wife and is now stuck with being First Lady and shielding her son from publicity.

I don’t think we can escape and I don’t think it’s Trump’s fault this happened on his watch. He was good at what he did prior to the Presidency — sleazy real-estate deals, reality TV star who’s only line was You’re Fired!, selling crap, cheating on his wife, going bankrupt, and having his face in front of a camera with ridiculous theories.

This is a man who never held public office of any sort prior to 2017 and is being blamed for policies that were either put in motion or already in place before he came to office. And the more the media screams, the easier it is for the culprits who created this chaos to stroll away without blame.

* * *

* * *

STREETSWEEPING

Editor,

How long will it be before Mendocino County cuts back the Sheriff's office and loses half our sheriff's department? I know they are capable of it because they are very liberal and probably want to follow what the rest of the liberal cities are doing. It wouldn't put it past me but I don't think Matt Kendall will let that happen but you never know who carries the punch over there. The county probably has the top say. Don't be surprised if it doesn't happen.

That mongolian piece of dog manure George Soros is putting $220 million into trying to stop the police force.

I guess a lot of you people out there like protesters tearing down the statues and looting and breaking windows and raping and killing and stuff. Liberals seem to like it. But President Trump is starting to bring the military in. I hope and pray that they grab these people and stomp them right into the asphalt so they will look like the monogram that says black lives matter only it will say blue lives matter! Get rid of them! All of them! I'm starting to feel better about the president. Thank you.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

* * *

MEANWHILE, UP IN PORTLAND

Badges? We ain’t got no badges.
We don’t need no badges.
I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!

* * *

THINK AGAIN

Letter to the editor,

It was reported the week of July 5 that two or three East Bay ladies were cited for painting over black lives matter on public streets, i.e., refurbishing the streets back to original condition/removal of illegal tagging. Just doing good civic duty cleaning up! Oh no! Those bad bad ladies were slapped with charges of discriminatory vandalism. What? The judicial brain trust must have had several meetings formulating this charge. You may give high marks for creativity. I don't! Ridiculous! Why were no tickets issued for tagging public streets? Defacing public property? Making racist signs on public property? Be assured, black lives matter is in fact racist! Don't kid yourself or BS others. Turn the page, there is an undercurrent far beyond BLM. It is anarchy, total disruption of our system as it exists today. A large portion of these far left wing flamers are using these peaceful -- yeah right! -- protests as a cover for a special group agenda. They and those who burn, loot and destroy stores, police cars and public property could care less for the true black agenda.

You think racist comments are one-sided? Look again! Watch TV or read the newspaper. A very large number of white/black Americans are being pushed, pulled and drugged into a new mindset of racist discriminatory feelings. I have been force-fed and overflowing with white injustice reform. We need reform, no doubt. But don't, repeat don’t, attempt to give me a political enema with a firehose. I'm just apt to crap all over you and a few of those left-wing beauties you hang out with, or are about to.

Stronger letter to follow!

God bless America, the Donald, Jerry Philbrick

Still Very Old And Very Angry

Boonville

* * *

(photo by Carston Butters)

* * *

"WE HAVE BECOME A NAZI MONSTER in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us....No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us - they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them." 

— Hunter S. Thompson

* * *

EVER WONDER what everybody's freaking out over? This guy has a clue. He really is sort of the George Washington of California. First Governor, laid the ground rules for policies that lasted for decades.

Like bounties on Native American people ($15-20). Funding for informal militias called 'Rangers' (like the Eel River Rangers) who burned and massacred Native American villages and shot people at random. Just to deplete the population. State funded. Slavery too, focusing on children. Mostly Native American, but anybody not white, really. Sold in public slave markets in Sacramento and San Francisco. Into the 1880s.

Thrown up yet? Peter Burnett was the first Governor of California for a reason. He got the job done. A California where white supremacy was the rule. Otherwise they wouldn't have kept his policies for 30 years. Hard as it is to swallow, this is what created the State of California that we enjoy. That many of us “own” a part of. Good to be clear: the genocide was so there could be the owning.

There were a lot of people here before Americans showed up. Almost none of those people were white. When it came to who got land deeds after statehood, everybody was.

Feel guilty? Don't. Why? You didn't do anything. But don't clutch your pearls too hard when somebody comes along and talks about stolen land, or stolen bodies, and injustice that doesn't go away just because the descendants of the perpetrators want it to. How often do you hear Germans say “Get over it”? And they lost! How often do you hear Americans say it? All the time.

Sometimes when you get coldcocked, you deserve it.

— Chris Calder

* * *

Coastal Camo

* * *

A DUBIOUS HONOR

Good morning, Mother Earth,

Today you have the dubious honor of welcoming 226,000 new people who want to live and make a living on your surface. In fact, that 226,000 is after everyone who died last night have been replaced. It's about 150 people per minute, every minute of the year. Is there anyone out there who still believes this is sustainable?

Overpopulation along with avarice and greed are the main causes of almost all of our environmental problems. Why are we chopping down the Amazonian rain forest? Because an increasing population is creating a demand and market for timber, cattle and soybeans. I think today there are many countries that have exceeded their carrying capacity for humans. At this point the people often have no choice but to flee, stressing some other country’s carrying capacity. Do you think that a town like Santa Rosa would be twice as nice with twice as many people and cars? Is there too little traffic and too many parking spaces?

Mother Nature likes a nice balance which we've gone far beyond. She's very tolerant, but eventually will quit being beautiful and crash the entire population, leaving just enough of it behind to start again. Perhaps this coronavirus thing is just a "preview of coming attractions."

It seems ironic that the world's most apex predator could be brought down by something that doesn't even have a cell wall. But unless it kills 226,000 people a day, the population will continue to grow, the environment will continue to degrade and we will be responsible for our own demise.

Don Phillips

Manchester

* * *

* * *

BIDEN IS GOING TO WIN

Editor,

Just like about every other fretful Democratic/liberal/progressive person in America, I’ll admit I’ve had a mild case of political PTSD left over from 2016 (and from 2000 & 2004 for that matter). However, these days the national political opinion polls are truly glorious. There is no doubt about it, folks. Joe Biden is going to win one of the largest, overwhelming landslide victories in American presidential election history! This impending political news is outstanding if you’re a Democrat. The polls in the usual swing states are also quite clearly in Biden’s favor as well, not to mention the numerous traditionally Republican-controlled states now on the verge of finally becoming swing states thanks to demented Donald Trump’s ongoing, internationally televised mental breakdown and political self-destruction taking the entire racist, fascist Republican Party down with him in flames on Nov. 3. And of course that’s what we’re all watching in real time right now - diabolical Donald Trump’s farcical, full-blown maniacal meltdown both politically and psychologically speaking. Haven’t you noticed that President Trumptanic is literally sweating almost as much as tricky Dick Nixon did back in the day? Some in the American media are pointing out the obvious (that the metaphorically buck naked, morbidly obese Orange Emperor has no brain and is completely insane), but most reporters are apparently, for some strange reason (could it be cowardice?), still too afraid to tell the terrible truth about traitor Trump the tangerine tyrant. Why? What is the so-called free press so afraid of? What ever happened to our fearless, heroic, patriotic profession of journalism that actually, once upon a time, had the respect and admiration of the American people? How did we go from The Washington Post’s Woodward & Bernstein bringing down sweaty Richard Nixon’s paranoid presidency (which wasn’t nearly as criminal and nowhere near as treasonous as traitor Trump’s Russian-controlled Republican regime) to this current situation (with some notable exemplary exceptions) where most American journalists voluntarily choose to act like they’re living in an authoritarian country without a First Amendment? Freedom of speech doesn’t mean much if everyone is too terrified of consequences (or too satisfied with their paychecks) to speak truth to power. Allow me an attempt, if you will, to lighten the mood of my fellow Democrats/liberals/progressives with some good news for a change! Yes, folks, it’s true: Trump’s foolish fascist regime is finished, and his much-deserved political execution is right around the corner. USA! USA! USA! In fact, despicable Donald Trump is the pathetic political equivalent of a “Dead Man Walking” (all apologies to Sean Penn & Susan Sarandon). As a long-time observer of American elections, I have no doubt at all at this point as to what the outcome will be. And nothing that I have to say about it is going to decrease voter turnout in the least. Democratic voter turnout wasn’t a problem at all during the primaries, and the anti-Trump turnout will be massive in November. Unlike 2016, Trump’s psychotic sales pitch is falling on deaf ears, since he is a disastrously failed incompetent incumbent who can’t even come up with a reason as to why he should be given a 2nd term, other than the fact that Trump the plump chump is a ridiculous racist who is in love with the Confederate flag and sacrilegiously worships statues of Confederate traitors. And as poorly as these clueless conservative Republican politicians did in 2018, what possible reason would there be to believe the GOP’s chances could improve in 2020? This election really is all over but the shouting, and we should stop playing defense politically, stop living in fear of what happened in the previous election(s), and go on the offense unreservedly in the remaining 3 months of this one. Our cause is righteous and we will be victorious, because the racist Republican Party is doing everything possible at this point to lose. We the people are going to win in 2020 in a landslide! Let’s win this one for the late, great John Lewis. Believe it or not, there actually is light at the end of this particularly long, dark, terrible tunnel of lies and treason otherwise known as the Trump Administration. Traitor Trump (otherwise known as the Confederate flag-loving racist Moscow-loving moron) can’t lie his way out of this one, and his big daddy Vlad can’t steal this one thanks to Trump having effectively (and perhaps only temporarily) turned many highly-skilled, tough-as-nails, patriotic operatives in our military and intelligence communities into hardcore partisan Democrats. The so-called “deep state” is in fact watching this one very closely, and Trump’s corrupt Russian war criminal benefactors know it. Trump is done. Calling the CIA “Nazis” as one of his first official statements as president was actually the end of Trump’s “re-election” chances. (And, after all, Trump wasn’t legitimately elected the first time around according to irrefutable statistical analyses of the official vote totals in 2016 from the swing states under Republican control, which show unmistakable signs of the statewide vote totals having been altered to give Trump margins in those states just above the automatic recount thresholds.) So to sum up, there is no need to worry about winning in 2020, if they let the people vote. And we the people will vote for Joe Biden for President and for other Democrats down-ballot this Nov. 3rd in historically impressive numbers. God Bless America! And God Bless our soon-to-be 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden.

PS. PUTIN’S PUPPET

Vladimir Putin’s puppet Donald Trump is a political dead man walking. November 3rd is the scheduled date of Trump the traitor’s political execution which will be watched live on TV by hundreds of millions of happy people both here at home and around the world. The end of Trump’s tyranny will be the beginning of hope and change for us all.

Don’t miss your chance to vote for the American presidential candidate Joe Biden. The political demise of demonic Don the con will no doubt be the highest rated reality TV show of all time, so stay tuned, because the voters are about to tell Trump he’s fired!

It’s all over for Benedict Donald. Russia’s useless idiot Trump the chump is done. The American choice for president Joe Biden will be elected the 46th President of the United States in an overwhelming electoral college landslide, not to mention by what is sure to become one of the largest popular vote margins of victory in American presidential election history.

Jim Jones Trump’s deranged death cult (formerly known as the Republican Party) is a national embarrassment. Fortunately, most Americans are good patriotic people who will no longer tolerate traitor Trump’s psychotic circus of incompetence, corruption and cruelty. This upcoming election is all over but the shouting. Specifically, the shouting will be coming from the world’s whiniest lying loser Donald Trump with his usual dimwitted and dishonest refrain of “Hoax! Fake news!”

The story of the November 3rd election will be America wins, Vladimir Putin loses, and delusional Donald Trump can go inject his lungs with Lysol all he wants, it won’t save his illegitimate, pathological presidency from the wrath of the American people on Election Day. Trump is a loser and an idiot!

Sincerely,

Jake Pickering

Arcata

* * *

GOJIRA, DON'T YOU WEEP, DON'T YOU MOAN.

"Well, one of these nights 'round twev [twelve] o’clock, this old town's gonna really rock. Didn't Pharaoh’s army get drownded [sic]? Gojira [Godzilla], don't you weep." — Trad.

The recording of Friday night's (2020-07-17) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KMEC-LP Ukiah* is right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0393

*Sorry, but not KMEC tonight, again. Just only on KNYO, the 87-watt Little Lion in Fort Bragg. Available info: KMEC's website's been down for three weeks, their web stream is off, their phone line is dead, and the only people who've replied to my scattershot texts, phone calls and emails are people who have no idea what's going on or have an idea and are clamming up about it because they know what side their bread is buttered on. If you know the story, or know somebody who does, let me know so I can blab it and get everyone on the same page through the magic of communication. What I know so far: zip. Except for: the Mendocino Environmental Center's current with rent to County Supervisor McCowen, but approximately $500 in arrears on payment to Pacific Internet. KMEC fits in a closet in the back of the MEC and costs about as much as a cup of coffee at Schat’s per day to operate, but somebody in the hierarchy of the Environmental Center has to make sure that piffling amount gets paid. Who is that person? Speak up; don’t be shy. I just wanta help. I'm not going to hurt you. I will not touch you in any wrong way or at all. If you stutter I will not make fun of you. Once upon a time I myself had a speech impediment. I had a lisp so thick it sounded like tearing sections out of a phone book. I know what it feels like. Even if it's hard —especially if it's hard— spill the dang beans.

But that’s not what last night's show's about. It's pretty fancy, as usual. Frightening amounts of both useful and frivolous information. Musical thrills; I mean literal thrills. Half an hour into this there's Lorrie LePaule’s Mendocino Theater Company radio adaptation of the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, an early feminist drama from 1909 about small town murder, oblivious official men and a sewing kit with a dead bird in it. There's this week's installment of Jay Frankston's historical, romantic and numinous novel El Sereno about sixty tumultuous years of 20th-century Spain from the point of view of the man with all the keys. John Sakowicz' poem Vespers. David Herstle Jones' meditation on a lusciously predatory bar prostitute. Jerry Philbrick's latest festival of gun-totin' elderly racist right-wing belligerent ignorance. There’s disease, pestilence, innovation in sport, vehicles, taxonomy, creeping fascism, an unusual take on cancel culture, a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the first of hundreds of times the U.S. deliberately punched itself in the nose (in the desert, actually) with a sloppy atom bomb, and the advent of a new weekly feature of MOTA that will be variously titled: Looks at Fox, Focus on Fox, What the Fox, Fox in Sox, etc. I'm trying to keep the kvetching about President Ass-clown to a minimum, but when it starts taking more effort to avoid looking there than to look there, I look there for a minute or two again, and so what. Also there’s a long bit exploring Charlie Engel's trials and tribulations regarding Sherwood Oaks that really is very fair, I think, to all sides in the tragedy that we’re all heading for if we live long enough. And that's just some of it. I'm knocking myself out for you, here, every time, everything on the table, as disgraced genius Louis C.K. and the sainted Alex Bosworth, from whom I seem to be estranged, each once said, and if you like it and can use it, great. If something pisses you off so you write to complain or to show off how you can do better, that's even more perfect. I repeat, spill the beans.

Furthermore, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile educational items I set aside for you while gathering the show together. Such as:

What is intelligence? https://theawesomer.com/what-is-intelligence/580299/

The closer you look, the busier it gets. Look intently enough and you can see Kenneth Patchen's butterflies bigger than the Earth, not to mention leopards made of golden wire not merely circling the sun but right down there wading around in it up to their eyeballs. https://newatlas.com/space/images-sun-campfires-nasa-esa

And "Damage has been set at half-a-million dollars." That's all? Money was different in those days. People didn't sue you because they were painting their fingernails and tripped on the doorjamb. If a train crashed, a train crashed. Trains crash. Also, you could buy a whole block of houses in San Francisco for what it costs to get your Prius fender fixed today, and screwdrivers and toothbrushes and shotglasses (and car headlights) didn't have supercomputers in them. They just screwed things in or out and cleaned graham crackers out of your teeth and briefly held flammable toxic liquid and showed the road ahead. And when you graduated from high school you knew calculus or at least trigonometry, Spanish, German and/or French, the major dates and locales of history, animal husbandry (you could spay your own cat and assist in the birth of a calf). You could paint a portrait of someone and they'd be pleased with how it came out. Everyone could plumb and wire and roof and cook and sew and type and survey and make change at a register and do any job that needed doing in a new town. They could make tenses agree in casual speech and knew where to put the apostrophe in a sign, knew how to dance gracefully, who to hold the door for, to take a slap and like it and learn from it and not get fresh with that one again. You knew the names of at least a hundred colors and a hundred nuanced emotions. You could play the piano and recite from memory at least one epic poem and possibly even a whole Shakespeare play. It was rare if a person couldn't sing or tell a joke. Also, every spigot everywhere could be fixed in a minute with a washer that was so cheap they gave them away from a bowl next to the free rulers and paint stirring sticks and free golf pencils, and if you were white you could enter any diner, sit at the counter, spread out the newspaper (morning edition or evening edition of any of a dozen different newspapers just for your city), relight your pocket-cigar and settle in for a lunch hour that lasted an hour. And the coffee was terrible everywhere, so bad that it’s a wonder people drank it at all. So it wasn’t just money that was different.

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/the_wreck_of_the_city_of_san_francisco

— Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

* * *

FOUND OBJECT

30 Comments

  1. Eric Sunswheat July 19, 2020

    MONDAY, June 15, 2020 (HealthDay News) — While a fever and cough have seemed to be the early warning signs of COVID-19, new research shows almost half of hospitalized patients experience a host of neurological problems.

    In fact, headaches, dizziness, strokes, weakness, decreased alertness or other neurological symptoms can appear before the more commonly known symptoms of infection with the new coronavirus (known as SARS-COV-2), the researchers said.

    Those neurological symptoms can also include loss of smell and taste, seizures, muscle pain and difficulty concentrating…
    The report was published online June 7 in the Annals of Neurology…

    SOURCE: Northwestern Medicine, news release, June 7, 2020…
    https://consumer.healthday.com/infectious-disease-information-21/coronavirus-1008/covid-19-can-start-with-neurological-symptoms-758539.html

    • Eric Sunswheat July 19, 2020

      Jul 19, 2020 | Original story by King’s College London.

      Analysis of data from the COVID Symptom Study app, led by researchers from King’s College London, reveals that there are six distinct ‘types’ of COVID-19, each distinguished by a particular cluster of symptoms…

      The findings have major implications for clinical management of COVID-19, and could help doctors predict who is most at risk and likely to need hospital care in a second wave of coronavirus infections…

      The six clusters are as follows:

      1- (‘flu-like’ with no fever): Headache, loss of smell, muscle pains, cough, sore throat, chest pain, no fever.

      2- (‘flu-like’ with fever): Headache, loss of smell, cough, sore throat, hoarseness, fever, loss of appetite.

      3- (gastrointestinal): Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, diarrhea, sore throat, chest pain, no cough.

      4- (severe level one, fatigue): Headache, loss of smell, cough, fever, hoarseness, chest pain, fatigue.

      5- (severe level two, confusion): Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, muscle pain.

      6- (severe level three, abdominal and respiratory): Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, muscle pain, shortness of breath, diarrhea, abdominal pain.

      Next, the team investigated whether people experiencing particular symptom clusters were more likely to require breathing support in the form of ventilation or additional oxygen.

      They discovered that only 1.5% of people with cluster 1, 4.4% of people with cluster 2 and 3.3% of people with cluster 3 COVID-19 required breathing support.

      These figures were 8.6%, 9.9% and 19.8% for clusters 4,5 and 6 respectively. Furthermore, nearly half of the patients in cluster 6 ended up in hospital, compared with just 16% of those in cluster 1.

      Broadly, people with cluster 4,5 or 6 COVID-19 symptoms tended to be older and frailer, and were more likely to be overweight and have pre-existing conditions such as diabetes or lung disease than those with type 1,2 or 3.

      The researchers then developed a model combining information about age, sex, BMI and pre-existing conditions together with symptoms gathered over just five days from the onset of the illness.

      This was able to predict which cluster a patient falls into and their risk of requiring hospitalisation and breathing support with a higher likelihood of being correct than an existing risk model based purely on age, sex, BMI and pre-existing conditions alone.

      Given that most people who require breathing support come to hospital around 13 days after their first symptoms, this extra eight days represents a significant ‘early warning’ as to who is most likely to need more intensive care…

      *Researchers have now identified skin rash as a key symptom of COVID-19 in up to one in ten cases. However, it was not recognised as a symptom during the time when the data was gathered for this analysis so it is currently unknown how skin rashes map on to these six clusters.
      https://www.technologynetworks.com/diagnostics/news/researchers-identify-six-distinct-types-of-covid-19-337592

  2. Louis Bedrock July 19, 2020

    Trump and Biden are Tweedledee and Tweedldum.
    I hope they both lose.

    I’m casting a write-in vote for Jacinda Ardern.

    “Jacinda Ardern, the 39-year-old prime minister of New Zealand, is forging a path of her own. Her leadership style is one of empathy in a crisis that tempts people to fend for themselves. Her messages are clear, consistent, and somehow simultaneously sobering and soothing. And her approach isn’t just resonating with her people on an emotional level. It is also working remarkably well.

    People feel that Ardern “doesn’t preach at them; she’s standing with them,” Helen Clark, New Zealand’s prime minister from 1999 to 2008, told me. (Ardern, a fellow member of the Labour Party, got her start in politics working for Clark during her premiership.) “They may even think, Well, I don’t quite understand why [the government] did that, but I know she’s got our back. There’s a high level of trust and confidence in her because of that empathy.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-leadership-coronavirus/610237/

    “They may even think, Well, I don’t quite understand why [the government] did that, but I know she’s got our back.”

    Holy shit—Can you imagine Americans saying that about a Trump, an Obama, a Biden, a Bush, or a Clinton?

    Ardern in 2020.

    • Marshall Newman July 19, 2020

      “You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.”

      • Harvey Reading July 20, 2020

        You morons who plan to vote for Biden will get exactly what you deserve if he is selected by the electoral garbage college. I suspect most of you are the sort who think the Clintons and Obama were great. Take your pitiful party and shove it as far as I am concerned. ‘Thuglicans are total fascists and the ‘craps and their dimwit followers aint far behind.

        • Marshall Newman July 20, 2020

          More name-calling? Really? Thanks for helping make my case.

      • Louis Bedrock July 20, 2020

        It appears that “thinking” is threatening to some of the provincials.

  3. Lazarus July 19, 2020

    FOUND OBJECT

    Hey H!
    Is that a COVID-19 free zone…?

    Be well,
    Laz

  4. Susie de Castro July 19, 2020

    Biden…

    wasted opportunity…

    Could have delivered his woman v.p., as promised, long time ago, and had the v.p. DO SOMETHING, or the v.p. could have DONE SOMETHING, by now. At the very least, create some EXCITEMENT!

    • James Marmon July 19, 2020

      Why would female VP be better than a male VP?

      Oh! I get it, she would be the first female President after Biden steps down and resumes treatment for his dementia.

      So I ask this, why would a female President be better than a male President?

      James Marmon
      Critical Thinker

    • Pat Kittle July 19, 2020

      Don’t worry Susie.

      Biden’s Israel lobby masters know perfectly well he’s demented, so if he wins he’ll soon be replaced by his carefully vetted VP.

      The main thing is to make sure his VP is a slave to Israel’s interests — like starting a war with Iran for Israel.

  5. izzy July 19, 2020

    Grapes have been pushed about as far as they will go, so now it’s up to cannabis to save the local economy? There is an odor of desperation here.

    If we’re really looking down the road, it might be wise to start getting back to more traditional mixed agriculture and animal husbandry as well. It’s not inconceivable that food may be more valuable than fiat money in the not-too-distant future.

  6. James Marmon July 19, 2020

    RE: USELESS CONTACT TRACING, AND NO MEANINGFUL DATA

    Why isn’t contact tracing protecting California from COVID-19 outbreaks?
    (Staffing goals didn’t account for summer case surge, testing lags)

    “Beyond the goal that Gov. Newsom had set to train 10,000 new contact tracers, I’m not aware of any other data or any other facts that demonstrate that we’re doing it successfully,” Glazer said Wednesday.

    Glazer said the state and most counties have not indicated how many people contact tracers reach within 24 hours, the amount of time that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends in order to effectively isolate new infections and contain the spread. They also haven’t indicated how successful they are in reaching the close contacts of new cases.

    And he said they haven’t provided case data being collected on the infected that can be useful in assessing public risk — were they medical staff or other workers deemed essential during the outbreak, such as grocery and food production employees? Were they avoiding going out in public or did they go to parties? Did they regularly wear masks?

    “We don’t have any data to understand our circumstances,” Glazer said. “Yet without it, we can’t expect to contain the virus.”

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/16/why-isnt-contact-tracing-protecting-california-from-covid-19-outbreaks/

    James Marmon MSW

    • Joe July 19, 2020

      The covid cows are out of the barn and so contact tracing is useless at this point and is just another tool to attack what little freedoms we still possess in this country;

      “Testing and tracing is most feasible as an effective strategy at the start of an outbreak when there are just a few chains of transmission of the disease. But if this does not keep the epidemic under control, and there is widespread community transmission, there will quickly be many cases and contacts. This is especially the case with a disease such as COVID-19, which is easy to catch, is quickly passed on after an infection sets in, and can infect some people without producing symptoms.”

      https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-why-testing-and-contact-tracing-isnt-a-simple-solution-137214

      • George Hollister July 19, 2020

        A lack of nuance, and too much faith in the capabilities of the CIA.

        • Louis Bedrock July 20, 2020

          Wrong again, George.
          You naively underestimate the CIA
          Read one of the books by Philip Agee, John Stockwell, or Ray McGovern.
          Read Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
          Read Diary of a Hitman.

          But you don’t read.
          You invent your own facts.
          And you wouldn’t recognize a nuance if one bit you in the ass.

      • Joe July 19, 2020

        I think at this point in our history it should be painfully obvious that the American military industrial complex is not controlled by the American public .

    • Joe July 19, 2020

      This is the crux of the biscuit in our current civil dilemma and will be the catalyst for the next civil war if it isn’t brought to heal by our democratic institutions peacefully.

      • Harvey Reading July 20, 2020

        What exactly is a “crux of the biscuit”?

    • Harvey Reading July 20, 2020

      From the National Review? Give me a break you old fascist.

  7. dr. michael turner July 19, 2020

    “”What the actual F*ck is going on today? Belligerent, self-entitled non-masked argumentive tourists all over Mendo today. It’s awful and I don’t feel safe operating my business in this mess: (The town feels under siege, carload after carload. I have been open for two weeks and have not experienced this level of weirdness, but it’s not good, people!”

    Trump created the conditions for this by repeatedly sowing doubts and rebellion, now imbecilic Trumpazoids are spreading viral destruction far and wide, even way out here in the boondocks. Lots of Trump lovers and COVID deniers write here on the AVA, dare tell us how great you feel about all this.

    • George Hollister July 19, 2020

      The AVA also has it’s share of Trump blamers. The problem is the profile of the average tourist on the Mendocino Coast, and the age group and cultural profile of who has the highest rates of infection. Yes, there are some people who insist on singing in crowded, unprotected, confined spaces, but that is a small part of the total of people getting infected. Right now the largest group testing positive are people between ages 19, and 34; women; and Latinos. There appears to be some degree of fatalism involved here.

      Remember, too. The CDC early on, for at least a month, insisted that people should absolutely not wear masks. Masks did nothing, could increase your risk of exposure, and provided a false sense of protection. Coved-19 was transmitted on surfaces. Remember, be careful and wash your hands after you fill up with gas at the gas station? James Marmon seemed to know more than the experts did. So did the doomsday crowd. Is that good?

      So there have been some credibility issues with the CDC. Not that this is surprising, since now there is more that we don’t know than we know, and back then we knew even less. People have to use their own judgement knowing that the CDC is not necessarily right. For me, that means wearing a mask, and taking precautions when it is necessary to enter the war zone.

      I still don’t know what is correct about opening schools. The smart thing Trump has done is let states decide. The CDC seems AOL on this one. So is everyone else.

  8. Susie de Castro July 19, 2020

    If you add the ‘undeclared’, the ‘other’, and the ‘non- Hispanic-American’ ethnic groups to the other ethnicities who are carriers, or have not been tested, then you cannot say Hispanics out number all other Americans, as being represented on the chart.

  9. Joe July 19, 2020

    Since we are a rural county we avoided this disease for the most part in the beginning and now it’s time for us to take our lumps like everyone else. The cat is out of the bag on this one and it is part of the yearly influenza pool now. The best we can hope for is to modulate the load on the health care system but that has it’s many costs as we are all aware. Blaming an infection on any one group of people is a fools errand and just lends itself to the race hysteria that has also infected our country recently. The virus is not politically or racially inclined other than it’s affinity for attaching to cells with a certain sort of receptors in it’s hosts. Boost your immune systems, hope for the best and quit being terrified.

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