MCT: Tuesday, September 1, 2020

• Coastal Clouds
• 704 Cases
• Linda Aubrey
• Lightning Bolt
• Baled Hops
• Pup Available
• Point Cabrillo
• Teenage Fatality
• Plowing State
• That Flag
• Election Day
• Vinny's Lasagna
• 1952 Roofers
• Surplus Produce
• 1930 Bank
• Ed Notes
• Pool Boy
• Israeli Firefighters
• Yesterday's Catch
• Masks Help
• Greenwood Creek
• Eureka Elite
• Trump Family
• Comments
• Corporate Conspiracy
• Crumb 77
• Canceling Dems
• Same Team
• Redwood Railbike
• Heartbreakingly Asparkle
• Trump-o-Matic
• Sports Strike
• Found Object

HOT AND DRY weather will continue across inland northwest California through the week. Marine layer clouds will expand north along the coast today, and will be persistent through the rest of the week. Near-record heat is possible across the interior this weekend into early next week. (NWS)

SMOKEY HAZE ALL WEEK with high inland temps in the 90s, hotter next weekend with inland Sunday temps approaching 110. Calm winds; overnight lows in the 50s then 60s by the weekend. Patchy smoke and fog on the coast with daytime highs in the 60s into the 70s over the weekend.

EIGHT ADDITIONAL COVID CASES in Mendocino County. Total now 704; 17 deaths. But 617 released from isolation; 67 cases still in isolation; 3 in hospital. 

LINDA AUBREY OF ELK HAS DIED

Linda seemed fearless throughout the pain & indignities of her long medical ordeal. Her graciousness, curiosity, playfulness, activism, & interest in others overrode the ravages of cancer. I was in awe of the way Linda rose above her suffering. Sending love to Sabin & all in her inner circle. — Liz (Coast Listserve)

I just heard from her son, Sabin, that she passed peacefully last night. I gather that her cancer treatment became ineffective a while ago, so it was only a matter of time. She fought very hard until the end. She was an awesome person, who brought joy into the lives of many. Elk has lost one of its originals. May she rest in peace. — Joe (Coast Listserve)

A READER WRITES:

Look at this astonishing shot by staff photographer Karl Mondon Aug. 16 (Bay Area News Group). He’d been up since 4 am chasing lightning bolts and around dawn joined a fisherman on the S.F. waterfront. Then this struck.

He wrote: “Even the fisherman was impressed. ‘Hey, 2020 ain’t so bad now, is it?’ he asked. Turns out, it is. The storms eventually produced nearly 14,000 lightning strikes and more than 700 wildfires statewide, according to Cal Fire.”

And we’re not even in Fire Season yet!!!

BALED HOPS, 1913

WANT A GREAT PUPPY?

From Kristina, a new AV Village Member:

I have a year old German Shepard/Labrador mix female looking for a new home. I’m currently somewhat ill and am looking for someone to give my puppy the attention and training that she needs. Please call Kristina if interested. 415 342 1540. Photos available upon request as I can’t seem to figure out how to post one with this email. 

THANK YOU!

POINT CABRILLO

19 YEAR OLD UKIAH MAN DIES in Highway 20 single-vehicle crash.

On Monday, August 31, 2020 at approximately 5:12am a 2005 Mercury Mariner, driven by a solo 19 year old male Ukiah resident, was traveling westbound on State Route 20 just west of Marina Drive at an unknown speed. The driver let the Mercury veer into the right shoulder of SR-20. The Mercury left the roadway and continued in a northwesterly direction until it collided with a steep dirt embankment. The driver of the Mercury succumbed to his injuries on scene. The deceased driver of the Mercury was transported from the scene by Eversole Mortuary. The death investigation is being handled by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. The name of the deceased will be released by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, pending the notification of the deceased’s family.

CHP Presser

PLOWING STATE STREET, 1911

THAT CONFEDERATE FLAG…

Editor,

Following one of our regular Sunday at noon Black Lives Matter acknowledgement gatherings in Boonville a local resident pulled over to ask me what I knew about the Confederate Flag flying along the highway halfway between Philo and Boonville just a bit east of the Grange. Not much, I admitted. Shortly after I got home a call came in from another concerned Philo woman asking the same question so I decided to look into who had put it up. Since then a couple more people called to ask what I knew so given the curiosity here’s what I know.

The owner of the property where the flag flew is Sylvia Carsey and along with others in the Valley gave her a thumbs-up for flying a Mexican Flag along side and below the American flag along with the California Flag. The phone number I had for Sylvia didn’t work so I called one of her relatives I know and asked how to get in touch with her. I was told that she was in Mexico but that one of her tenants had put up the flag calling it an “Italian War Flag” in tribute to his Italian heritage. Bull dookie!, I thought, but was given where he supposedly worked so I stopped in there to have a chat.

Some years back the gentleman had been a well-respected volunteer firefighter – an emergency first responder. He left for a while and then returned to Anderson Valley a couple years ago but did not rejoin the Fire Department — spending his time here minding his own business and working on cars.

When I asked him if he knew who had put up the Confederate Flag he readily admitted that it was he and went on to say that he put it up in anger because someone, “probably from Black Lives Matter,” one night had taken down the “Rebel Without a Cause Flag” he had put up. “I’m a rebel,” he said, “though I have no cause. Black Lives Matter people do, but not me. If they would have asked me, I would have taken it down.”

I have no idea what a Rebel Without A Cause Flag might look like and didn’t ask, but I assumed it was simply the Confederate Flag. We talked a bit about “all men were created equal” and a pinch of the plight of being Black in America and he seemed to get it and agree so I said that I was one of those in support of Black Lives Matter and felt I could speak for that group in asking him to please take down the Confederate Flag as it is offensive to some of us. He said, yes he would. I thanked him and told him that I would pass on that he felt violated in his Constitutional right to self-expression by the midnight raid.

It took a couple days but the man was good to his word though he did feel the need to make a statement. Down came the Confederate Flag but in its place were two black and white versions of the American Flag, one with a single red stripe and one with a single blue stripe which my computer tells me stand respectively for firefighters and police. Between and below these two is a hand written sign:

At today’s (Aug. 30) regular Sunday noontime rally for Black Lives Matter in Boonville it seemed that we got more toots and waves of support than usual but as the group was dispersing a youngish, fully decked out woman biker called across the street from the Drive-In asking “Do you believe in abortion?” I guess I’m the only one that kind of heard what she was saying because everyone kept going and I was the only one to walk over to better hear what she said. She quickly changed from abortion to let me know she was a transgender Trump supporter, a revelation that seemed to be used to somehow validate Trump or give her more credibility, and then to go on and on with hard line Trump rhetoric. Though I attempted, I was not given the opportunity to make it much of a conversation so I pointed that out, shrugged and walked away uttering/muttering (facetiously?), “Have a nice day. Stay safe.”

David Severn

Philo

POMOLITA ELECTION DAY

COAST DINING TIP from Betty Lou Whaley:

Vinny’s has the best lasagna (your choice of meaty or cheesy) on the planet, comes with a terrific slab of garlic bread. Call ahead, give your credit card number, and they will carry it out to your car.

SLEEPY HOLLOW CABINS, ROUTE 1, 1952

DROP OFF your surplus produce at the AV Food Bank. The Anderson Valley Food Bank would love to have people drop off produce on the mornings of our food bank days, which are the first and third Mondays of the month. Packing happens at 10 am in the AV Methodist Church. We serve 120 families each foodbank, so being able to give away local delicious fruits and vegetables is our goal. Thanks everyone for helping us achieve our goal. You can contact Benna Kolinsky at boonville95415@gmail.com for more info

BANK OF ITALY (AMERICA), UKIAH, 1930

ED NOTES

NO, JOE, YOU DON'T. SO? Biden solidified the Trumpian fantasy that "radical socialists" are behind the rioting these days: "You know me, you know my heart, you know my story, my family story - ask yourself, do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really? I want to make it absolutely clear, so I'm going to be very clear about all of this. Rioting is not protesting, looting is not protesting, setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness plain and simple." Biden, finally emerging from his basement, was speaking to a manufactured rally in Pittsburgh today, you know, one of those placard-waving deals the Democrats put on to fake enthusiasm for their candidates.

FEDERAL HEALTH AUTHORITIES said Monday that 94% of all deaths attributed to covid were those of persons beset by underlying health conditions. No surprise there, which shouldn't mean we stop distancing and masking up to kill more of them. By all measures, Americans are right up there with the unhealthiest populations in the world.

GOVERNOR NEWSOM and the state legislature have revealed their tepid plan to protect California from a looming tsunami of evictions caused by the coronavirus. There won't be any rent forgiveness for tenants. Or money for homeowners or landlords to help them meet their mortgage payments. The “Tenant, Homeowner, and Small Landlord Relief and Stabilization Act of 2020 does propose some foreclosure protections to small landlords suffering from missed rent payments. 

CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS say the bill is intended as a bridge to next year, by which time they hope a second round of federal stimulus spending will free up new rental assistance funds for California. Another round of larger unemployment benefits — which experts said kept many renters afloat before they expired at the end of July — could also help beleaguered tenants. 

TENANT ADVOCACY GROUPS, while pleased with certain protections afforded by the bill, expressed disappointment that not all renters would be protected from evictions for a longer period of time. They argue that displaced renters will inevitably end up in environments in which coronavirus thrives: doubled-up apartments, homeless shelters, and "inter-generational homes." A recent UC Berkeley analysis found that nearly one million renter households in California have had a member lose their job due to the pandemic who could be vulnerable to eviction. 

SUPES CANDIDATE Mari Rodin justly lamented the cutting down of a good size redwood in her Westside Ukiah neighborhood. Selina Luiz promptly explained, "Many residents on the Westside have received notices from their insurance companies to create a defendable space. Or they will be cancelled. This is because of the fire threat. Also if the trees become too large they can undermine the foundation, or compromise your sewer lines. I have seen many people on the Westside and on Oak Park that need to take down trees. I am sure it was a hard decision but likely had to be made."

THURSDAYS, all of September, free covid 19 testing for anybody who is not experiencing symptoms, 9-11am, at Anderson Valley High School. Results expected within 4-5 days. Questions may be directed to the clinic at 895-3477 or email covid@avhc.org

ONCE UPON a time in America there really were socialists organized as a Socialist Party of millions of registered voters. Their standard bearer was the great Eugene Debs, a railroad worker from Terre Haute. Debs once threatened to free the popular labor leader Big Bill Haywood, imprisoned on a false murder charge in Idaho, by bringing armed sympathizers to Idaho to free Haywood by force, and right there’s your contrast with the “socialist” Bernie Sanders.

ISRAELI FIREFIGHTERS ARRIVE in California to Assist Wildfire Response

In response to a request from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, a team of 10 Israeli firefighters have deployed to California to assist in battling some of the largest wildfires in the state’s history.

oesnews.com/israeli-firefighters-arrive-in-california-to-assist-wildfire-response/

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 31, 2020

RICHARD CAUCKWELL, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, county parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

CHRISTINA LANCASTER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, controlled substance, failure to appear.

BRYAN MENDOZA-MORENO, Boonville. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

SHANE MILLER JR., Ukiah. Under influence, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

DAVID MISTRETTA, Mendocino. Resisting.

JACOB SELLMER, Willits. Failure to appear.

SHAWN SPILLER, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

MIRA TORRECILLA, Redwood Valley. DUI.

DAVID WOOTEN, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

CLOTH MASKS DO PROTECT THE WEARER – BREATHING IN LESS CORONAVIRUS MEANS YOU GET LESS SICK

There is no doubt that universal mask wearing slows the spread of the coronavirus. My colleagues and I believe that evidence from laboratory experiments, case studies like the cruise ship and food processing plant outbreaks and long-known biological principles make a strong case that masks protect the wearer too.

theconversation.com/cloth-masks-do-protect-the-wearer-breathing-in-less-coronavirus-means-you-get-less-sick-143726

GREENWOOD CREEK

SCREWING SOUTHERN HUMBOLDT

by Paul Encimer

A small but merciless financial elite runs Eureka and serves the HumBayBeltWay exclusively. Its urban mentality has exploited its rural regions. The Southern Humboldt part of the story is well illustrated by the fate of its Garberville Vets Hall which sits empty month after month, condemned because of mold. Compare that to Eureka itself with its own Eureka Memorial Building, aka the Eureka Vets Hall. It very recently got renovated for a cool 9 million. The County even put up 2 and a half million of its very own taxpayers lucre. But even with its fresh face the Eureka Vets Building still has been described architecturally as equal parts bank, prison, and reform school. When in doubt paint it brown and don’t forget the horrifying Gold Leaf paint and graceless columns.

To each his own, I guess, since I do my best to avoid that particular thoroughfare, as I avoid as many Eureka thoroughfares as possible if you want the truth. Brown Noire is not my milieu. But the supervisor for this district, Virginia Bass, who has loyally served central Eureka and the business elites who operate out of it, has at least gotten something in return for her — dare I say it — brown nosing. The usually torpid County got off its ass in fact to lead a successful effort to evade the earthquake code.

SoHum Supervisor Estelle Fennell, an equally dutiful servant, continues to get nothing to replace Garberville’s defunct Vet’s Hall. The Hall has been left to decay away by a County whose indifference is clearly surpassed by its malicious neglect. Mold! There was a decades-long leak in the corner of the main hall near the pool table. Continuous demands for redress were ignored over those decades. The administration of Estelle Fennell was just the moldy final touch in finishing off of the hall.

No surprise. Giving SoHum nothing is the terms of Estelle’s service to the Eureka Elites who despise the SoHum hipnecks. The strategy of the County in relation to SoHum never deviated in a determination never to replace, only to reduce, SoHum facilities. Oh yes Estelle can spend three hours on an occasional Friday - as she attended so poorly from her much shabbier office next to endless tanks of PG&E propane, — but she is a lot cozier now in a spanking-new, nicely renovated Redway building. The downside is that she shares this office with the predatory Planning Department of John Ford in the process of destroying the local economy. That’s the point behind it, actually, giving the Eureka Elites an attack base to finish off the last of the homesteaders. It also has allowed for a painless way to pay off an election year boost to a servant who knows not to ask for anything substantial of the Eureka Elites. And so Estelle has been rewarded with nothing much.

It was the Vets Hall that served as Community Center and Town Hall. with an enormous workable kitchen and a huge main hall that could seat several hundred people and sometimes hosted an overflow crowd on its steps and sidewalks. These crowds were often there to roast the County.

All Gone with the Mold, but by the County of Humboldt hardly regretted. Years of purposeful mismanagement has finally led to those large cloth banners hanging on two sides: “CLOSED.” Irrecoverably lost, saith the County, because of the mold. Leaving Southern Humboldt without a political center. The attached Courtroom, where once jury trials were held, went with it. Eureka and its HumBayBeltWay strikes another blow for centralization. As the current Public Works Director (who himself works out of a noncompliant building) once told me: we don’t open up things in Southern Humboldt, we shut them down. So the loss of the Vets Hall, and the court house as well, is an example of the continued gutting of the civil spaces in SoHum.

Not that the Vets Hall was an unalloyed benefit. In apparent terror and contempt for the upcoming generation of dope smoking losers of Vietnam War Vets, the WW2/Korean war vets panicked. Accordingly the older Vets relinquished control of the hall to The County, (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Eureka Elites.) True enough, these returning Vietnam Vets wanted to do crazy stuff like feed people and house them in emergencies. But the County was there to fulfill the expectations placed upon it by the older Vets and a plenitude of local haters not to let this kind of commie/hippie stuff happen around here.

So the Viet Vets inherited a completely attenuated occupancy, always under threat from the unfriendly County just for showing any creative initiative, particularly serving all the community, which it did superbly. I can attest to this. Where would my radical politics have been without the cheap rent, efficient kitchen and easy availability? Homeless, me and a lot of others. Exactly to the County’s taste, and that of SoHum’s own little money elite in coalition with local haters, who found a natural leader in Estelle.

Meanwhile I hung around the Vets for Peace as a fellow traveler. A draft refuser, I was repulsed by the military — but not by vets. For much, maybe most, of the core group of Vets, the war was never going to be over. It was never going to be over for me either. Too many imprisoned friends for one and a deep anti-war agenda which was my form of patriotism. In the process of opposing the war, I had counseled hundreds of men on ways not to become vets. I found that these returning Vets matched my anti-war intensity. Forced military service, cold war economic channeling, prostitution of a nurturing instinct to fight selflessly for family, neighborhood, community made these Vets opponents of an imperial foreign policy.

Eventually I found these homecoming Vets my natural allies in opposing war but also in aiding the vulnerable and healing our own wounds through local good works. A solid contingent became innovators in the missions of Vets returning to Vietnam to repair the damage. They were to be quick with an ambulance for this cause or a voluntary mission for that cause. However a major change came with the Satanic Old Bush’s Iraq War, 1991. Gone went the ”Vietnam Syndrome” — replaced by the grinning death’s head of the New World Order. Overnight there were two kinds of Vets — Peace Vets and Patriotic Vets. I can still see the puzzled face of a newly patriotic Vet facing our little peace demonstration. He, like so many other “anti-war” people, turned out to be a “vegetarian between meals.”

The Year before, the Vets sent a little league team to Cuba. We got beat but even our most notorious cop, Deputy Android, raised money for the team at a dollar a baseball in a dunking pond . A year later, a Vet was expelled for life from the dominant organization — Vets of Foreign Wars — for his acts of civil disobedience at the beginning of the war … and for posing with his wife in a picture shaking hands with Fidel Castro!!! The Vets for Peace was the direct outgrowth of that scandalous action and paradoxically this released an amazing burst of creativity that for a time gave, and occasionally still gives, our local Vets a World Class status. The Vets Hall remained through all this a thorn in the side of the County and its Elites. As well as a wild hair to local haters who found a ready leader in their war against poor people in Estelle.

Yet, to the very end, there was a sort of continuing community of Vets in putting on the semi or tri annual dinners. Ironically, or fittingly, it was at one of the meals that the crisis built and exploded between the Peace and the Patriot Vets — a thanksgiving in the midst of one a of those horrible cold and rain spells. It was time for an emergency shelter. The year before the VFW had adamantly opposed using the hall for a shelter, with the full backing of Estelle, now a vigilante spokesperson. With the support of the President of the Vets for Peace, I occupied the hall. Open it or arrest me. Rex Bohn was chair of the Humboldt supervisors then and he wouldn’t pull the plug on me. The Commander of the VFW was a friendly man and he raised no objections to my presence.

The homeless haters in the VFW were not to let this be repeated. The new Commander, soon to become an open Trumpster, first came to my attention when he led a counter-demonstration against our Friday noon Under The Clock anti-war “rallies.” The cops were there in advance, anticipating trouble. It just so happened that I had organized a little choir to sing our Corporate Christmas Carols - like “Oh little town of Garberville” where Jesus ends up sleeping in the street. You know — boilerplate stuff — very funny to us. And that helped to offset the 15 or so flag bearing VFW followers who stood in the street, hoping to block our way. When I warned them not to block the driveway to the “Mall,” I was assured that the Chamber had okayed this. When their leader asked why I was still there, I had to tell him that I did this every Friday and if he wanted to have it to himself maybe he should try Wednesday. And of course cars going by saw waving flags and the usual suspects. It was one of our biggest anti-war demos to date and even got some notice on KMUD news, long bored with such issues in favor of police and fire reports and fluff and bubble news that would not disturb the well-to-do grower.

These pro-war forces were indistinguishable from the cadre of local haters and moved easily into opposition with using the Vets Hall for things like emergency shelter. Estelle was untiring in her efforts on the VFW’s behalf. Using her newsroom skills as a fabricator of stories, she invented a fantastic story that the VFW owned the building and so had the sole authority for opening and closing the Hall. This despite a history of threats and intimidation from the County whenever the Vets took the hall in too “radical” a direction. She maintained her big lie even at an open meeting notwithstanding having a crowd of activists waiving evidence to the contrary gleaned from the County’s archives.

It worked though. Paralyzing her opposition, Estelle was thus able to install her homeless hater allies from the VFW in official possession of the hall. I think we did one more shelter night and then the VFW changed the locks in order to keep Vets for Peace permanently homeless itself. So much for Estelle’s Peace credentials. She had already abandoned her Environmental ideals through her unquestioning support of the Global Highway through Richardson Grove’s old growth redwoods. She has topped that by dropping her advocacy for Marijuana, fronting instead for the amazing California-state-led betrayal of small pot growers. Peace, Environment, the sacred Herb — three out of four horse riders of the Hippy Apocalypse shot from the saddle. The Fourth, Sexual Equality has yet to be abandoned, given that she is openly gay and a “feminist” who once sported a bumper sticker asserting that her other vehicle was a broom.

That the County closed the hall so soon after excluding the Vets for Peace in favor for Vets for War becomes a piece of poetic justice. Unfortunately this exclusion seems to be the ongoing plan of key members of once active old Vietnam Vets. Like the WW2/Korean Vets, these have become patriotic old Vets, depleted by illness and death, their idealism exhausted. This remaining handful remains too compromised in my view to lead a movement for a new hall under the *entire Vets Community’s control* which, with Estelle’s complicity, has fallen into the hands of a tiny clique of VFW, willing to have new generations fight more worthless wars.

We don’t need leadership from Vets who have learned nothing while History goes on repeating itself. Nowhere among these old Boomer Vets has there been any expressed sympathy for another generation of returning Vets of the Endless War, the great majority of who oppose, as the Vietnam Vets once did, the war they fought in. These returning Vets, like the ones of the Vietnam era, are unheeded. This fresh generation, with their burdens of injury, drugs and despair, are being driven to early death and suicide within a society that just can’t care for them. It is this generation of Vets that a new Vets Hall should be being built for - at their explicit direction and for their explicit support. But these Endless War Vets are part of an abandoned “Millennial’ generation that has have been thoroughly cheated out of the physical and spiritual building materials for the regeneration of themselves or their ruined society and are left holding an empty bag. It sucks.

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] One thing I find incredibly funny in all of this is that no matter what one thinks of Trump, the Uniparty cannot come up with a single candidate that appears more convincing. And, to rub salt in the wound, this analysis takes into account the fact that the Trump Biden is running against is the absurd McMedia-created character that lives rent free in the heads of wokesters and those of the lowest of IQ. They can’t even find someone to take on THAT. There are not enough LOLs in the word for this level of failure.

[2] Got arrested in my second floor apartment as a 19 year old GI on a drunk and disorderly charge in Wahiawa HI in 1977. We were jammin’ to Ted Nugent Double Live Gonzo on a shitty period boom box fueled by copious amounts of alcohol and youthful exuberance when the Korean neighbors had finally had enough and called the cops. As the cops pulled just below the windows we were all singing and shouting out of, Terrible Ted launched into “Stranglehold,” easily the most bitchin’ song on the entire album, a key musical phrase of which was the lyric “come on, come on up.” Such an unfortunate turn of phrase for our particular circumstance! One thing led to another and of course HPD followed our musical injunction by comin’ on up and delivering one of their own. “Shut this shit down, youngster” they demanded on their first request. I said OK and politely shut the door and rejoined the festivities. The second request a few seconds later was not nearly so pleasant. The cuffs behind the back and bouncing around the paddy wagon defenseless to prevent forward falls on the way to the drunk tank was surely unpleasant enough, but the technique that stuck with me most was the simple application of the nightstick under the jaw every time I opened my mouth to say a word. Not even hard, mind you, but MOST effective all the same! Surprisingly, the 1st Sgt was mostly bemused by the whole incident when he came to bail me out several hours later. No ass chewings or nothing! Needless to say, when the cops showed up at court for me to plead out and pay my fine a few days later I was nothing but respectful. Learnt my lesson with that little adventure, I did.

[3] Anybody else seen video of events in DC last night, BLM mob of about 50, surrounding diners in a restaurant, shouting in their faces “White Silence is Violence”, and “Black Lives Matter”, insisting these poor people raise their fist in solidarity? I mean they were screaming at one woman who wouldn’t comply for 5 solid minutes … It’s hard to watch, she was surrounded, reminded me of boot camp when DIs focus their wrath on one beleaguered recruit, you had to feel sorry for her just sitting there looking down, she was merely eating dinner, then this. They surrounded the table of one little boy of about 8, looking confused and frightened, he raised his little fist; he won’t be forgetting this incident anytime soon.

And in Kenosha, an elderly man rushes to his burning package store with a fire extinguisher, Community Members streaming out with arms full of bottles, looted goods; a young Community Member suddenly coldcocks the old man, knocking him out. He was down when the video ended. Needless to say, don’t expect to see anything about these incidents on CNN. No matter, tens of thousands of people are aware of them. And it means tens of thousands of more votes for Trump.

[4] I live and work in the Tetons of Wyoming. The town of Jackson Hole and the immediate environs are one of the most liberal enclaves in America – set down in the middle of an endless Ruby Red Sea on all sides. In the town of Jackson Hole – and all around it – are Trump signs and car stickers and branding everywhere – I have yet to see a Biden sign, banner, car sticker or anything of any kind – NOT ONE. The electoral votes of Wyoming are in the bag for Trump – that is a foregone conclusion. But this lack of a sign of life for the Dem campaign in any way in THIS town is breathtaking.

[5] Until my freshman year of college I never knew there was such a thing as alliteration. Then poetry professor, Dr. George pointed out the following: The Lady Of The Lake. XXXI. A various scene the clansmen made: Some sat, some stood, some slowly strayed; But most, with mantles folded round, Were couched to rest upon the ground, Scarce to be known by curious eye From the deep heather where they lie, So well was matched the tartan screen With heath-bell dark and brackens green; Unless where, here and there, a blade Or lances point a glimmer made, Like glow-worm twinkling through the shade. But when, advancing through the gloom, They saw the Chieftains eagle plume, Their shout of welcome, shrill and wide. Shook the steep mountains steady side. Thrice it arose, and lake and fell Three times returned the martial yell; It died upon Bochastles plain, And Silence claimed her evening reign.

[6] Not that it gives any comfort for it shows the collective ability of people to lie to themselves, but who really believes that the current festivities in all those cities is really about Black lives mattering, especially as most of the rioters are White? 

Do you think that Black lives matter to those White kids acting out and busting things up? Do you think that Black lives matter, or EVER mattered, to the legions of legislators that manned those august chambers all through US history including the present day, or to the state governors or city mayors, or state assemblymen who act as if they really give a shit about Black people? They don’t because if anybody in power ever gave a damn, it sure isn’t evident in the conditions that Blacks live in considering that for a good forty years, things have been getting worse for them. And it’s been getting worse for most Whites, for who really believes this notion that wages have “stagnated” since the 1970s? They haven’t “stagnated”, they’ve plummeted, California construction workers being one example, for in the 1970s construction work provided a living wage. No more though. 

Which is what all this violence is really about, the severe compression of life prospects for ordinary citizens. The only lives that matter are those of the thin upper crust, typically college educated, that comprise either the Donor Class or those in the managerial clerisy that minister to Donor Class needs and interests. But times they are a changin’, people are onto the con, Republican voters twice nominating for the presidency a non-Republican if I ever saw one, and one that doesn’t abide by the usual Republican nostrums, people in Democrat states taking to the streets in nightly rock pitching competitions. I wonder if those in power recognize the peril that’s brewing. There’s a saying in Old Blighty, before you enter the yellow box make sure your exit is clear. Have the anointed made sure the exit is clear? 

SMEDLEY BUTLER: The Retired General who stopped a Wall Street Coup

Many Americans would be shocked to learn that political coups are part of our country’s history. Consider the Wall Street Putsch of 1933. Never heard of it? It was a corporate conspiracy to oust Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just been elected president. With the Great Depression raging and millions of families financially devastated, FDR had launched several economic recovery programs to help people get back on their feet. To pay for this crucial effort, he had the audacity to raise taxes on the wealthy, and this enraged a group of Wall Street multimillionaires.

mintpressnews.com/retired-general-stopped-wall-street-coup/242643/

HAPPY 77TH TO ROBERT CRUMB, who’s captured here in a self-portrait from 2001.

BILL OF PARTICULARS

by James Kunstler

The few times this Covid-19 year of seclusion that friends have come over for dinner, they’re horrified to hear me say that I will do whatever I can to prevent the Democrats from winning the election. I was never a big thumper for Donald Trump, and didn’t vote for him in 2016 (or Hillary), but I will this time.

I’m in favor of his policy stands for defending the US border and stopping the flow of illegal migrants, on ending our foolish misadventures in foreign lands, on reducing the government’s stranglehold on private enterprise, and on opposing the matrix of rackets that make up the “DC swamp.” I admire Mr. Trump’s resilience in the face of a relentless assault by “the Intel Community,” the DC cabal of Lawfare seditionists, and the despicable confabulations of The New York Times and other media voices-of-authority captive to the Left.

I still view Mr. Trump as the designated bag-holder for the catastrophe of our economic quandary, but his political opponents would surely make things worse with their crypto-Marxist fantasies of a totalist American nanny-state. Few in any quarter of US leadership understand the long emergency we’ve entered, and most who do are too timid to spell out what it will actually require of us in the way of rigor and fortitude.

But here is my bill of particulars against the Democratic Party and what it has come to represent in recent years (and I write as someone who has remained a registered Democrat since 1972):

When their basic philosophy is not incoherent, it presents as explicit hypocrisy and bad faith. For instance, their Orwellian insistence on shutting down free speech in the name of “diversity and inclusion.” This malignant jive has just about destroyed higher education across the land. But it has also managed to infect business, government, and the arts, and turned the general population into cowering hostages willing to lie about their convictions to avoid “cancellation.”

The key to understanding the Democratic “progressive” ethos is this: the drive for coercion, the wish to push everybody around, to tell them how to think and what to do. There is an evil purity about the pleasure they appear to take in it, like children who enjoy tearing the wings off flies. They like to see their enemies squirm and plead in torment before “cancellation” makes them disappear from the scene. They like to extract confessions and apologies, not for the sake of redemption, but as grounds for further persecution. In short, they’re sadists.

They seek to erase every boundary of behavior that makes civilized life possible and overtly campaign to overthrow science and reason in the name of a new-and-improved form of racism. Math, history, and literature are too hard because they are products of “white supremacy.” Better get rid of all that — and while you’re at it, cancel white people on the basis of their sheer whiteness. Relations between men and women are not difficult enough; better gin up a campaign of grievance and resentment against men, disable them wherever possible, and militate against masculinity per se — turning America into a nation of pliable eunuchs.

Under their banner, anything goes and nothing matters. Violent anarchy is “mostly peaceful.” Looting is a form of “joyful liberation.” Anybody’s property is just their free stuff. (What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.) Crime is the new entitlement. Self-defense is insulting to mobs. Thugs with long rap-sheets are exemplars of virtue and must be honored in violent rituals of civic destruction.

Those are general principles.

At the official level since 2016, they’ve played out in a set of pernicious campaigns against the public interest and common decency by the self-proclaimed “Resistance.” RussiaGate was, in the strict sense of the word, a conspiracy to overthrow a president carried out by a coordinated effort of high-ranking government employees across many agencies, who knew exactly what they were doing. It was an exercise in perfidy, bad faith, and lawlessness run by the very Department of Justice entrusted with enforcing federal law, including attorney Andrew Weissmann’s clean-up crew fronted by the dishonorable figurehead Robert Mueller. It remains unresolved due to the tensions in that department and the obdurate resistance of the federal courts — for example in the three-year persecution of General Flynn. The eventual day that the hammer comes down on the perps of RussiaGate, if ever it does come, will be a moment of historic moral and ethical clarification in this sore-beset country.

The 2019 impeachment fiasco was a parallel ruse run by Representative Adam Schiff, former Department of Justice lawyer Mary McCord, and Lawfare warrior Daniel S. Goldman, with help from Resistance intriguers in the National Security Council, Eric Ciaramella and Alexander Vindman, and Hillary Clinton’s holdover confederates in the State Department. Mr. Ciaramella’s pretense to be acting as a “whistleblower” was a nakedly false act, illegally abetted by Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, himself a former DOJ RussiaGate player. It is amazing that neither of these two has been indicted for sedition.

Add to these matters the associated misdeeds in the FISA courts, the ridiculous, scurrilous charges against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh by the mendacious Christine Blasey Ford, the ongoing schemes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer to rig the vote with unverifiable mail-in ballots, and the wholesale acts against the public interest by Democratic mayors and governors such as Ted Wheeler, Kate Brown, Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo, Lori Lightfoot, J.B. Pritzker, Ralph Northam, Jacob Frey, Tim Walz, Muriel Bowser, Eric Garcetti, Gavin Newsom, Tony Evers and a wider rogues’ gallery of other Democratic Party subalterns such as Minnesota AG Keith Ellison and NYC education Chancellor Richard Carranza and you have a nearly complete picture of this odious faction.

Finally, add the cherry-on-top: Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden. Does anybody still believe he is a plausible chief executive — even in his own degenerate party? I doubt it. Why they engineered his nomination may remain one of the great mysteries of human existence. Except perhaps to speculate that their sadism has turned inward and become a suicidal death-wish. They are finally so miserably contemptible that they just want to end it all.

Personally, I don’t want to see any of these people anywhere near the levers of power in this country. Quite a few of them deserve to be in jail, and I believe before Mr. Trump’s second term is up, they will be — if they don’t try to wreck the United States altogether with new treasons in the November election. I’m against them heart and soul, and I no longer care what my old friends think about it.

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

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ED NOTE: Agree almost totally with Mr. K's indictment of the rancid Democratic Party, but Trump is not a rational alternative. We're in a helluva fix with this presidential choice, which is no choice. The ava is going third party for the umpteenth election in a row, but if we were voting in a swing state we'd have to go for Biden as the lesser evil of the two disasters, but whomever's left standing in November they are certain to be unequal to rolling back the accumulating catastrophes.

YOU CAN PEDAL Through California's Redwood Forest On A Railbike, And The Trip Looks Absolutely Stunning

boredpanda.com/redwood-forest-railbike-skunk-train/

Editor,

30 AUGUST 2020 — "Mendocino National Forest, Calif – 30 Aug 2020 – The August Complex was initially 37 different fires in the Mendocino National Forest that started on August 17, 2020 in an epic lightning storm. Many fires have merged to form larger fires. Currently, the complex is 215,588 acres and 18 percent contained. Suppression actions are planned. Actual acreage is subject to change as fire activity progresses throughout the day."

U.S. Forest Service Press Release

Another year of drought & fire. The world seems to be ending. Wildfires are everywhere.

The night sky is filled with sparks. Every night. For the past week. At night, our old growth redwoods in the Mendocino Forest are heartbreakingly asparkle.

In this, the world-after-world of a burning Mendocino Forest, Dante and Virgil descended through the Nine Rings of Hell. After the Ninth Ring, they reached the Center of Hell.

Here, Dante & Virgil are followed by the brave women & men of CAL FIRE.

Closer to my home, fifty feet off Vichy Springs Road -- to the east, past the old Ukiah city dump -- fire pops out of the dry blond grass & blackberry thickets.

All throughout the grass & thickets -- saffron & rosy dots. Red dots & red lumps. Orange-red dots & orange-red lumps. Like a Georges Seurat painting. But they're not saffron & roses. It's fire.

Fire.

A murder of crows, who had been watching, scatter. Their moment of presence over.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

THE SPORTS STRIKES AGAINST RACISM HAVE NOT BEEN COOPTED

by Dave Zirin

The story of the 2020 sports-strike-wave-against-racism is already one of both inspiration and cooptation. It’s also a story that is being written in pencil not pen. In other words, it’s a story that still does not have an ending and we should be wary of anyone who thinks they have an ironclad analysis of where all of this is headed. But to even have a sense of where it might go, we need to understand why it detonated in the first place.

It starts by understanding the impact of the police murder of George Floyd—which has led to the most important social uprising in decades and the largest series of marches in the history of the United States; a social uprising that’s been met with terrible violence thanks to this President, his cohorts in the police, and the violent white militia movement.

The NBA and WNBA players argued back in June about whether to play in this Covid-free bubble or if they should just sit out the season so as not to distract from the demonstrations in the streets. They did, of course, decide to go back and, as part of the deal, the owners and commissioner Adam Silver incorporated Black Lives Matter into their messaging with BLM written on the court, players kneeling during the anthem, and slogans written on the uniforms. Call it woke capitalism. Call it woke marketing—if you like. It was corporate symbolism in the model of so many companies that put out statements against racism following Floyd’s killing.

But after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, that contradiction became too intense. Players in the NBA and WNBA—which has led on all of these political questions—felt like chumps. They were in a figurative and literal bubble away from their families and friends, living in dorms, saying to one another: “Here we are playing with BLM on our uniforms and nothing changes.”

That led to the Milwaukee Bucks not playing on Wednesday in their playoff game against the Orlando Magic. Other NBA teams followed suit. Then the WNBA teams announced that they would be sitting out, which was stirring but not surprising. Then it went to Major League Baseball, which really was stunning given its conservative history and paucity of Black American players. Then Major League Soccer and, gobsmackingly, the National Hockey League. Naomi Osaka, the tennis star of Japanese-Haitian descent, also bowed out of her tournament and tweeted the following, which summed up so many of the feelings across the sports world:

“[B]efore I am an athlete, I am a black woman/And as a Black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis. I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction.”

She continued, adding hashtags:

“Watching the continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police is honestly making me sick to my stomach. I’m exhausted of having a new hashtag pop up every few days and I’m extremely tired of having this same conversation over and over again. When will it ever be enough?”

The sports media largely called these “boycotts.” But they are not boycotts. They are strikes. These athletes are not consumers, they are workers, and they were withholding their labor in protest of police murder and white supremacy. Some people on the left have cynically rolled their eyes at this. After all, as they say, these are very wealthy people. They’re not real workers…. What could they really accomplish? (This dismissiveness, unfortunately, mirrors the racist drivel from Jared Kushner and his implications that the players’ efforts are somehow inauthentic because of their wealth and fame.) This analysis, which, in addition to ignoring the way that racism affects all Black and Brown people and not just the poor, misses three objectives that the players have already achieved:

Recentering the conversation around Jacob Blake and not on “anarchists” burning cities and all the ways the right has tried to reframe what is happening.

Capturing people’s imagination about labor striking for Black lives.

Giving a sense of hope during a period of profound sadness and helplessness—from the Kenosha shootings to that feeling that we marched after George Floyd’s murder here we are. Nothing changes.

That is all incredibly important. Especially the second point. As I wrote before, I received half a dozen calls from labor folk asking how to contact the players. It raises a challenge to labor officialdom to no longer be on the sidelines in the fight for Black lives.

But the radical potential of this moment also means that, within hours of these strikes, the forces of cooptation were also working overtime. Sports owners, who tend to be to the right of Ghengis Khan, were scrambling to show their support for the players. Entire teams started putting out statements and talking about action plans that came out of conversations between management and labor. Instead of players striking, it was teams announcing that they would not be playing: “labor and management against racism!” The Baltimore Ravens are a great example of this, putting out on the team letterhead a statement decrying racism, calling for the arrest of Breonna Taylor’s killers, all with the aim—at least for now—of appeasing some fed up football players whose season is supposed to start in less than two weeks.

The players in all the leagues, in an absence of a lead from the broader labor movement, have been left operating in a vacuum, trying to wrest concessions from ownership to join the struggle for Black lives. As one could imagine when dealing with billionaires, this had led to tamping down of demands, with much of the energy being channeled toward the November election and electoralism, most notably an agreement to open up stadiums as voting centers.

There has also been a great deal of publicity about the appearance of President Barack Obama, who spoke with LeBron James and Chris Paul, encouraging them to go back to work, use their platform through playing basketball, and start a social justice committee. This is Obama trying to neutralize a struggle and funnel it into a safer direction, less likely to offend the white majority, and less likely to spread. 

But the intervention of Obama has also led to an analysis that this is a story that has ended with cooptation, of selling out. That is wrong. Again, this is a story written in pencil, not pen. We still don’t know where this is going. We need to understand this situation is on a knife’s edge. The players now have incredible leverage to use their spotlight, to extract concessions from management, or to go back out on strike again, especially if police and militias aren’t brought to heel. And of course, they aren’t.

We don’t know where this is heading. Instead of decrying this for what it isn’t, we need instead to be holding up their example to the rest of the labor movement to act with similar urgency to this political moment, not expecting athletes to do it for us. What we can also do, though, is acknowledge that any action which lays down a gauntlet and challenges the labor movement to act, should be seen as a step forward. Striking for Black lives is now on the table, not as an abstraction but as a goal worth fighting for.

FOUND OBJECT