MCT: Tuesday, September 15, 2020

• Smoke/Haze/Fog
• Additional Evacuations
• Hotshots Napping
• 802 Cases
• Sherwood Update
• Trash Beach
• Whale Rock
• Ed Notes
• Old Coast
• Harbor Denizen
• Yesterday's Catch
• Matrix Entertainment
• Northern Lights
• Intense Obsessions
• 1952 Footballers
• Shutdown Pop-ups
• 1977 Queue
• Mega Growers
• Another Universe
• Responsible Citizen
• Always Remember
• NFL Kneeling
• Osprey
• Ice Melt
• Liberials
• Comments
• Extreme Inequality
• Quandary Convergence
• Found Object

AREAS OF SMOKE, HAZE, AND COASTAL FOG will continue for the next few days. A few light showers are possible mid-week along the north coast, with a better chance for a wetting rain late in the week mainly north of Cape Mendocino. (NWS)

AUGUST COMPLEX - WEST ZONE: ADDITIONAL EVACUATION ORDERS FOR AREA SOUTHWEST OF EDEN VALLEY RANCH, MENDOCINO COUNTY

Effective Immediately

• ZONE- AB - South of the Middle Fork of the Eel River, west of Eden Creek, north of Salt Flat and east of Salt Creek.

• ZONE- AC - East of Brushy Mountain, south of the fire road on Salt Flat, west of Eden Valley and north of Bald Mountain.

Road Closures

• Private driveway near Williams Creek is closed to north bound traffic

• Bell Springs closed to north bound traffic at Lundblade Ranch Road

• Mina Road is closed to north bound traffic at the bridge over the North Fork of the Eel River

• Mendocino Pass Road closed to east bound traffic just east of the Williams Creek Bridge

• Hearst Willits Road at the bridge, closed to east bound traffic

Notes:

To support fire control operations and fire activity, the Mendocino County Sheriff in conjunction with the Unified Command Team for the August Complex -West Zone, has ordered an additional Evacuation Order.

View the most current evacuation map at: https://tinyurl.com/MendoEvac

For more information about wildfire preparedness visit: www.readyforwildfire.org

(Joint Press Release between the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, CALFIRE and Humboldt County Sheriff's Office)

13 NEW COVID CASES were reported in Mendocino County Monday. Total cases now up to 802, 61 active, with 6 in isolation or hospital. Total deaths not increased, at 18. Two thirds of the cases are Hispanic and almost 80% of cases are in Ukiah. Of the 696 cases reviewed for cause only 43 (6%) were workplace related, 94% were community spread and close contact. (We can probably assume that the 108 that are “under investigation” reflect similar percentages.) Conclusion: Mendo and the City of Ukiah need to do a much better job of targeting Ukiah area Hispanic hot spots and gathering places for notification and enforcement.

SHERWOOD OAKS MONDAY

From From Dr. John Cottle, Medical Director of Sherwood Oaks,

Time for some good news:

Sherwood Oaks has had two consecutive weeks of negative Coronavirus tests, which marks the end of the outbreak which started in early July. Their last confirmed case was diagnosed more than a month ago, and no employee has tested positive in more than 8 weeks. 

The in house isolation restrictions are being gradually loosened. Residents may be in the hallway if wearing masks but still may not congregate.

All staff continues to wear N95 masks and eye protection, but no longer need to gown unless doing close personal care. Testing will still be done, but less frequently.

Visitors are not yet allowed, but that policy should be changing in another week or two.

WELCOME TO FORT BRAGG’S GLASS BEACH

Posted Sunday to coast social media with the comment, “I feel sorry for the person that has to clean this up.”

Another person commented, “I mentioned the garbage cans being gone from glass beach over a month ago. I don't agree with whomever did this, but I also don't understand why the removed the garbage cans. Where are people supposed to put the trash."

(via MSP)

WHALE ROCK, 10 Miles North Of Fort Bragg

ED NOTES

FROM MOVEON: "Can we send you a Blue Wave sticker?" Sure, and while you're at it send me a Kick Me decal. 

WHOA! The top communications guy (of all people) at the Health and Human Services Department warned in a bizarre Facebook Live session that political opponents claimed Democrats are plotting an armed insurrection. 

O HELL YEAH. Outta yer limos Nancy and Chuck and into the streets!

MICHAEL CAPUTO is the nut talking up civil war, although he's not alone. Apparently what set him off was a Politico story Friday that said Caputo and other Trump political appointees were pressuring Centers for Disease Control officials to alter weekly coronavirus reports.

“YOU UNDERSTAND that they're going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that's where this is going,” Caputo said, the New York Times reported on his Facebook live post. And off he went: “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. The drills that you've seen are nothing. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it's going to be hard to get.”

HMMMM. The last time I bought ammo — a box of shotgun shells — was some thirty years ago at Rossi Hardware, central Boonville, and the last time I fired a weapon was when an Oakland fireman friend, a gun guy, brought a reconditioned M-1 up here at my nostalgic request so I could shoot it, having been trained in that rifle way back in Marine Corps boot camp. Yessir, got my Marksman badge, too. Just barely, though. I fired a 199 and, as I recall, 195 was the cutoff, below which the poor shot stayed at Camp Mathews until he got over the 195 mark. We “snapped in” for a solid week, meaning we practiced the different firing positions — prone, sitting, standing — with leather slings. Funny thing about it, I still remember one of the instructors, a veteran of the Korean War, telling us, “This is all a lotta bullshit. The thing is is to get as much fire out front as low and as fast as you can.”

A FEW YEARS AGO, I ran into a college professor who told me that Camp Matthews was now a city called Del Mar, and that she had owned a home there while teaching in San Diego. I remember we marched (er, walked) back to Marine Corps Recruit Depot from Matthews, about twenty miles. Before setting out the drill instructors ordered us to empty our canteens. I dimly recall shuffling past some up-market homes in La Jolla, but I don't recall the march as all that strenuous. We were, after all, lean mean killing machines by then by the time we mastered live ammo.

SO, MR. EDITOR, you start out talking about this Caputo psycho then veer off down Memory Lane? Free associating or Alzheimer's kicking in? All the violent talk from these fat boys like Caputo must have set me off. Lots of us lib-labs have guns, too, but it’s hard to believe it will come to that. But since March 1st, unbelievable has become a daily occurrence.

SUNDAY, a man driving a blue pick-up with a camper shell and Texas plates pulled up alongside the Black Lives Matter contingent as they mattered black lives at the Boonville Fairgrounds. The driver, who appeared to be Native American, asked the group if they had any cash they might donate to him. They didn't. One of our black lives matterers saw a load of marijuana beneath the camper shell. Moocher Man was later spotted at the Redwood Drive-In wearing a side arm, which, loaded or unloaded, is illegal in California.

OLD COAST

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WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A ‘FREELOADING HARBOR RAT’?

So you come in Friday night and a freeloader is tied off in your slip. No one there. Marina is closed, heck, staff is vacant even when they are open. I'm getting too old for this shit. I called and emailed the Marina and haven't heard back. Neighbors tell me this guy's been bouncing empty slips all summer. What can I legally do, assuming we aren't lawless yet? I know for a fact he hasn't a cell phone and is not a local. He also pulls out early in the morning and I wonder if he's the one who stole my dock lines. Spud Point, Bodega. Sad.

— Ray Lanus, Commercial Fisher (via MSP)

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 14, 2020

JOHNATHAN ECHOLS, Sacramento/Ukiah. Pot possession for sale, paraphernalia.

FRANCISCO GOMEZ, Vallejo/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI, metal knuckles, fourth of subsequent conviction priors. 

JOSEPH GRANT, Windson/Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, paraphernalia, felon with stun gun, saps or similar weapons, 

SKYLAR HENDERSON, Willits. Domestic battery, controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

ANTHONY HIDALGO, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ASHLEY LENHART, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance for sale, pot possession for sale, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation.

JESSICA MIRELES, Potter Valley. DUI.

AMANDO OLSON, Angwin/Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15, two prior convictions.

LUIS ORTIZ, Ukiah. Protective order violation, vandalism, county parole violation, evasion.

HAROLD ROGERS, Ukiah. County parole violation.

NOELLE STONE, Fort Bragg. DUI.

JESSE THOMAS, Redwood Valley. DUI.

LYLE VINCENT III, Ukiah. Domestic battery. 

SHAUN WAY, Potter Valley. Paraphernalia, loaced handgun not registered owner.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Channel surfing last evening, I came upon a Major League Baseball game. Now, please bear with me as I must divert a bit. You will see why.

I saw a movie back in 1984 called the ‘Lonely Guy’, starring Steve Martin. It was about lonely guys who split from their wives or girlfriends and moped along as singles. There was this one scene where Martin goes to his friend Charles Grodin‘s, a real sad sack, party. When Martin gets there, he at first sees several people in attendance, but upon a closer look, realizes the people are not real, but cardboard cutouts, and Grodin is alone. I thought it was funny at the time, so I’ve always remembered it.

To return to last night: So I’m looking at the game with my nephew. The camera focuses on the batter, and in the background are all the fans watching in the stands, making the usual fan noises. I thought that only a few fans were supposed to be in attendance because of the pandemic. I commented on that to my nephew, who said to watch the fans as the camera panned across them. Then I realized: None of the fans were moving, all sitting perfectly still and looking flat. They weren’t real, they were cut-outs. And probably the fan noises were outtakes from real games in the past. The whole thing was an illusion so that viewers could feel like things were normal.

That got me thinking what else isn’t real? We are being manipulated in all aspects of our lives; we’re really living in the matrix. It’s very scary.

As for current pro sports on tv, I’m disgusted at the illusion. I switched channels immediately, and promised myself I wouldn’t watch any of it until this whole pandemic situation is over, if ever. $400,000,000 salaries and they couldn’t even give us the real thing? Bah!

AURORA OVER NORWAY

“DON’T BEND; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”— Franz Kafka

FORT BRAGG FOOTBALL, 1952

PLEASE DON’T CALL THE COPS ON POP-UPS

by Soleil Ho

I swear to god, if I hear about one more pop-up having to shut down during this pandemic because some anonymous fool wanted to rain on everyone’s parade, I’m going to lose it. It’s hard to grasp that there are people who seek to shut down the pop-ups and other food projects out of a Manichaean sense of right and wrong, when the times we live in are so desperately calling for more empathy, not less.

This past Wednesday, popular Oakland pop-up Broke Ass Cooks was shut down by the health department of Alameda County, which sent a letter to their landlord insisting that they cease operations immediately.

A spokesperson at the Alameda County Department of Environmental Health later told The Chronicle in an email that the department sent the notice after getting a complaint, and that it “receives numerous complaints about observed illegal food operations.”

“They come in from all doors (phone calls, emails, letters, website). There’s no specific tracking of pop-ups. The DEH acts quickly to respond to complaints in order to protect public health and prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses,” the email read.

Like many pop-ups and home-cooking businesses, Broke Ass Cooks was operating in a legal grey area. While California Retail Food Code AB-626 legalized sales of home-cooked food statewide in 2018, the law would only apply for counties that opted in and provided their own permitting processes. So far, only Riverside County has opted in; Alameda County, where Broke Ass Cooks is located, is still working out its own implementation.

FIRE POT, an on-line comment: 

"Everybody worth their salt [behind fire lines] that I know sneaks back in to water. Yes - they figure out a way even if it means hiking guerrilla-style and having a neighbor pick them up in a quad. That’s how we have always done it. These permitted mega-farms should not get a pass if other ranchers and growers do not! The permitted mega-farms have tons of financial resources - most of them have outside big-money investors and some even have outside corporate backing. This plan basically puts outside financial investors ahead of locals. The permitted mega-farms are in the best position to lose a year. They get zero sympathy from me or from anybody I’ve been speaking with. The local mom and pops get all the sympathy and respect! And if you are a local mom and pop who permitted? I wish you the best also! If you were my neighbor I’d help you sneak in to water…and we would work together in this crisis (ya permit patsy, I still love ya!)"

FACT CHECK

Editor: 

Most of us are aware of the hostility and finger-pointing going on in politics these days. Who or what is the enemy?

Let’s remember that one’s media source is highly influential in what we think and how we understand what we hear. If we really want a clearer understanding of the great political divide, consider watching Fox News and PBS News. And please, please, fact-check what you hear. I think we have seen that anyone can say anything with an emphatic tone and it gets repeated as hard fact. (Type into your search engine: “How to fact check.”)

A wise man once told me that people believe what they want to believe and they dismiss or reinterpret everything else. Whether we know it or not, fear is the greatest influencer of all.

Democracy requires personal responsibility, critical thinking and active curiosity. Many people are struggling with despair right now, which is understandable. Perhaps in spite of, if not because of this, we can choose to take a deep breath and act with hope. The children of the world need us to shoulder the responsibility of living in a democracy.

Patricia Stenger

Santa Rosa

WE’VE ENTERED THE ERA OF ‘BRANDING FOR BLACK LIVES’

by Dave Zirin

This was a curious opening weekend in the National Football League. After a summer of marches in all 50 states against racism and police violence following the murder of George Floyd, the NFL has been desperate to avoid a players’ strike for racial justice. Since police shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, the struggle has escalated into labor action in almost every other sports league and the NFL, with billions of dollars at stake, has been trying to avoid any cancellation of games.

To assuage the players, 70 percent of whom are Black, the league put on something perhaps best described as “Branding for Black Lives.” End Racism messages were put up around the stadium and stamped onto the end zones. Antiseptic slogans like “It Takes All of Us” were worn on T-shirts. “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the Black national anthem, was played alongside “The Star Spangled Banner” before games. The Minnesota Vikings even had the family of George Floyd in their stadium as guests. The air was so thick with messaging that the Miami Dolphins, Houston Texans, New York Jets, and Buffalo Bills chose to stay in their locker rooms during the anthem rather than be a part of the big show. The Dolphins players released their own powerful video about why they wouldn’t emerge for the pageantry, saying, “We need changed hearts. Not just empty gestures.”

The NFL had the temerity to release a video in celebration of its players fighting for Black lives that included an image of Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid kneeling. Yes, the owners are exploiting the very players they have exiled from their league. Colin Kaepernick called out the “propaganda” of it all on Twitter, and expressed solidarity with his former teammate, friend and fellow fighter for racial justice Eric Reid, who rather suspiciously is an unsigned free agent after a tremendous year with the Carolina Panthers. Kaepernick wrote, “While the NFL runs propaganda about how they care about Black Life, they are still actively blackballing Eric Reid (@E_Reid35) for fighting for the Black community. Eric set 2 franchise records last year, and is one of the best defensive players in the league.”

Despite it all, players expressed themselves on their own terms. Several took a knee during the anthem, including Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich and Baltimore Ravens assistant Wink Martindale. (The sight of a white coach taking a knee is like seeing a unicorn at the Kentucky Derby.) The Seattle Seahawks and Atlanta Falcons attempted to crack the official messaging by collectively taking a knee after kickoff and letting the ball fall harmlessly into the end zone. It was meant to symbolize that there are things more important than football. Other players made sure that the names of people killed by racist police violence—names like Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain—were visible on their uniforms. One of the most awkward parts of the day was hearing network announcers discuss the players paying tribute to the fallen without using the words “police.” It was as if they had died of natural causes and the players were just giving them a shout-out.

Amid this push and pull between player dissent and league branding, a hero did emerge—but not in the NFL. Naomi Osaka won the US Open in thrilling fashion, and the 22-year-old tennis star wore a different mask before every match with a different name of someone who had been killed by police. After her final triumph, a comeback victory against Victoria Azarenka, ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi asked Osaka, “You had seven masks with seven names, what was the message you wanted to send?”

She gave a response for the ages, looking at Rinaldi and saying, “Well… what was the message you got?”

Naomi Osaka’s message could not have been clearer. The NFL’s, less so. As the fight against police brutality continues, players are going to need to reckon with how much they want to defy the NFL’s branding for Black lives and fight for clarity that this is a struggle, unequivocally, against police violence.

Or, as Colin Kaepernick said with such clarity four years ago, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder…. This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed…. If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

OSPREY ON THE WING

OCEAN-LEVEL RISE DUE TO ANTARCTIC GLACIERS TEARING LOOSE

What will it mean to Coast communities to experience an ocean-level rise of 10 feet?

Two major Antarctic glaciers are tearing loose from their restraints, scientists say, increasing the threat of rising seas

Located in West Antarctica, the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers have been losing mass for more than a decade. The survival of Thwaites is so critical that the United States and Britain have begun a targeted, multimillion-dollar research mission to the glacier. Its loss could trigger the broader collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to eventually raise sea levels by about 10 feet.

s2.washingtonpost.com/2b88ea4/5f5fbeeee6e81b5cfa654320/5beda231ade4e2323e5e7c78/4/13/d8e7746253b7eecc9dae43cb3f0a2ec6

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] When the dogwoods lose their leaves in July, and the Oaks start turning brown in August, you know there is something very serious going on with our local climate. All you gotta do is watch mother nature. The local hills are drying out faster due to a thinner ozone layer which increase UV and Solar radiation thereby drying out the ground moisture earlier in the year. Not to mention our forests are no longer hundreds of feet tall with old growth that acts as insulation from the beating down rays of the sun. Old Growth trees like Redwoods and Firs don’t crown out during a forest fire either, the fire burns the chaparral under the trees and rarely crowns out in the tree. These fires are fueled by 120 years of brush growth since California Department of Forestry refused to let fuel loads burn for the last century. The regular “fire pattern” in this area is much smaller fires every 7-25 years. We better just hope these forests don’t end up in all that Herbicide Sprayed Tanoaks on Mendocino Redwood Con-pany lands West of this fire. There are literally millions of dead trees which were left standing after Mendo Redwood Company (Gap-Old Navy Fischer Family) sprayed and left standing as dead dry hillsides. Shame on Mendocino Redwood Company, they also REFUSE to stop burning wood pellets in Redwood Valley during these fires despite the air quality being at the very worst possible with smoke and ash falling : Mendocino Redwood Company are bad neighbors who do not care for our communities. Money is their bottom line $$$

[2] Biden’s continued exhibition of cognitive decline will, I feel, cause non TDS dems to really question their ability to vote for a cretin being pushed by their party. The majority of Americans want law/order, the ability to improve their lot in life and feel safe. This does not template well over Dem controlled areas, hence Trump landslide. To Trump supporters, this may NOT work out well for the country as Trump’s personal flaws seem to track too close to Cohen’s depiction. The lesser of two evils is STILL evil. Keep training, assess your perimeter to include the neighbors area and have a very flexible plan (Semper Gumby).

[3] Today is the first day of school for my 2 grandsons via virtual learning. They are 8 and 7 years old respectively. My extended family has been getting a blow by blow description and pics from my daughter-in-law of the preparations leading up to this momentous day.

Each boy’s bedroom has been outfitted with a nice desk and chair and an appropriate computer. Some kids were provided a computer while the parents of others had to buy theirs. I don’t know what criteria were used to decide who got theirs for free.

Anyway, my d-i-l reported by text “The last three hours were distasteful with capital D. I don’t even know how to juggle between two kids schedules. I had to lie down for lunch break because it is just too much! Hopefully the afternoon is not bad and tomorrow goes smoother”

And then she adds “Disastrous with a capital D”

I then asked if she thought the teachers were doing a good job. She replied “Yes they are trying so hard. I have to carry a portable charger at all times because I am communicating with their teachers and helping other parents”

I forgot to mention that my d-i-l recently won an election for president of the PTA so she’s very involved. She’s also a substitute teacher.

I then asked “Are the boys able to stay focused for a one-hour class?”

She answered “Sort of. I am taking turns and camping out in their rooms so I can listen to the lesson.”

Then came the best part that had me laughing MAO.

D-i-l reported that “People need to mute themselves. I am hearing kids screaming “I pooped!” “Where is my water?” Screaming kids my head is about to explode”

Then my son Thom chimes in with an anecdote horror story from HIS on-line class. He’s 43 years old and started Nursing School remotely a week ago Saturday.

D-i-l replied: “I hear you Thom! This is horrible! Theo missed math and gym! The whole website crashed on everyone. Poor teachers needed a break and so did the kids. I am sitting here cursing at the laptops and sent the boys on the trampoline to burn some energy. Dear God! I need to run away to a remote island! I am so done”

[4] I dislike conspiracy theories in general because most of them are presented without facts, but I can no longer Ignore them. Obviously, our country is falling apart. But why? Our government at many levels no longer represents the people, if it ever did before. Any differences between the Democratic and Republican parties are irrelevant. Trump or Biden is irrelevant.

What's truly lacking is an active opposition to the way things currently are. Most people just try to go about their business. It's not that people are dumb or oblivious. It's that people have been removed from the political process for such a long time that they think what's occurring now is just a phase we're going through. I don't blame them for feeling that way (even though I occasionally complain how dumb they are, but that's just me being angry).

What we need is for aware individuals to organize and educate the public about what's really happening; to speak to public groups and organizations, rationally, without appearing to be tinfoil hat wearers. It wouldn't require many individuals. Ronald Reagan won his election because he asked the public if they were better off now than before. People need to be asked those kinds of questions. Not lectured to. They need to have their worries and feelings validated. If the citizenry were put in a situation where they must answer questions, then they'll begin to act much more responsibly and effectively. It's all about suggesting, not demanding.

[5] In Southern Oregon there are THOUSANDS of people without housing as of three days ago. There is NOWHERE to rent and if one lucks out the monthly payment is astronomical. Mom and Dad's spare room was filled years ago and any space in the yard or out front on the street was spoken for by last April. One tiny spark from a passing car on I5 southbound and the entire facade is no more. One tiny spark we are all from the next bardo. Reno is CONSTANT smoke with only 3 clear days here since 2 August. So much for my great escape.

[6] I never had much use for the idea of America as an “empire” aside, that is, from that long and wide territory between the Atlantic and Pacific, a very large patch of dirt encompassing groups of people that don't play well together and never have as evidenced by that bloody dispute of the 1860s and the long cold war between North and South ever since. 

The wide world beyond, i.e. the one that the furrowed-brows in Washington's foreign policy elite presumed to – cough – control was never much more than a half-assed shambles of partially voluntary and partially involuntary association, tied together sometimes by mutual interest and sometimes by military force as in the case of Germany and Japan. Alliances of the unwilling and unable, led by an incompetent “superpower” that waged disastrous wars that bled its Treasury dry, most lately in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, “stupidly inept” characterizes not only the recruitment of Crazy Joe, but American foreign policy since WW2 and its preposterous and calamitous economic policies of the past forty years. America's elites became possessed of the most cockamamie notions, nonsensical on the face of them, illogical at the core, ideas that nobody with an ounce of sense would subscribe to. Yet they were pushed as if they were the pinnacle of enlightenment, the height of humanity's achievement and the bald facts on the ground exposing their absurdity proving no barrier to those same thinkers defending their handiwork, and the work of their intellectual predecessors, defying reason and the most obvious, most visually available evidence. 

What the hell is going on in America? Dissolution is what's going on, that empire stretching from Atlantic to Pacific coming apart, its constituent parts refusing to be governed by the imperial capitol by people not of their taste or choosing, not just because of culture and ideology, but because economically the arrangement doesn't work, can't work, and can't be fixed. 

Black lives don't matter to those rioters in the streets, it's their own lives and prospects that matter, Black lives don't matter especially to the Democrats, what matters to the Democrats are their own fortunes which are tied to those of their billionaire paymasters. The billionaires screwed this thing up most handsomely and the only way I can see to salvage this mess is to let it come down and then re-build, but without the input of those screwing things up in the first place. 

(7) When we all grew respectfully this was not an issue. Never would a land owner clear cut to grow like they do now. They would tuck it in, work with their land. Once the mega grow technique became the trend it all went to hell in a handbasket. Our lands cannot sustain 1000s and 1000s of plants. The quality has gone way down as the quantity has gone up. Ole' English vs Narwhale folks. Ground chuck vs Kobe. B Bar S vs Nathan's. My son has been working on a LEGAL FARM. OH CRIPE. They cut 1000 plants dried em all in 3 days using heat and dehumidifiers. So crispy like glass. All at the direction of the east coast boys who finance it. They MANAGE it but obviously know nothing of growing. Too many foxes in the henhouse.

"INEQUALITY of wealth is above all inequality of power in society, and in theory it has no limit, to the extent that the owner-established apparatus of repression or persuasion (as the case may be) is able to hold society together and perpetuate this (dis)equilibrium." — Thomas Piketty in "Capital and Ideology," (2020) pg. 265.

CONVERGENCE OF QUANDARIES

by James Kunstler

And so, America has a new manufactured crisis, ElectionGate, as if all the other troubles piling up like tropical depressions marching across the September seas were not enough. Let me remind you what else is going on. The Wuhan pandemic is still on the scene, the economy is collapsing, a domestic race-war is escalating, the whole west coast is burning, and US oil production is crashing. 

Oh… and slow-moving tropical storm Sally is forecast to come ashore as a hurricane on the Gulf Coast Monday with a large coastal storm surge followed by dumping up to two feet of rain.

America needs a constitutional crisis like a hole in the head, and that’s exactly what’s being engineered for the holiday season by the clever folks in the Democratic Party’s Lawfare auxiliary. Here’s how it works: the complicit newspapers and cable news channels publish polls showing Joe Biden leading in several swing states, even if it’s not true. Facebook and Twitter amplify expectations of a Biden victory. This sets the stage for a furor when it turns out that he loses on election night. On cue, Antifa and BLM commence to riot all around the country. Meanwhile, a mighty harvest of mail-in votes pours into election districts utterly unequipped to validate them.

Lawfare cadres agitate in the contested states’ legislatures to send rogue elector slates to the electoral college. The dispute ends up in congress, which awaits a seating of newly-elected representatives on January 4, hopefully for Lawfare, mostly Democrats. Whoops…! Turns out the Dems lost their majority there too. Fighting in the streets ramps up and overwhelms hamstrung police forces in Democratic-run cities. January 20 — Inauguration Day — rolls around and the Dems ask the military to drag Trump out of the White House “with great dispatch!” as Mr. Biden himself put it so nicely back in the summer. The US military breaks into two factions. Voilà: Civil War Two.

You didn’t read that here first, of course. It’s been all over the web for weeks, since the Democratic Party-sponsored Transition Integrity Project (cough cough) ran their summer “war game,” intending to demonstrate that any Trump election victory would be evidence of treason and require correction by any means necessary, including sedition, which they’d already tried a few times in an organized way since 2016 (and botched). The Democrats are crazy enough now to want this. They have driven themselves crazy for years with the death-wish of eradicating western civ (and themselves with it). There are many exegeses of this phenomenon, mostly derived from Marxist theories of revolution, but my own explanation departs from that.

The orgy of political hysteria, insane thinking, and violence is a psychotic reaction to the collapsing techno-industrial economy — a feature of it, actually. When all familiar social and economic arrangements are threatened, people go nuts. Interestingly, the craziness actually started in the colleges and universities where ideas (the products of thinking) are supposed to be the stock-in-trade. The more pressing the practical matters of daily life became, the less intellectuals wanted to face them. So, they desperately generated a force-field of crazy counter-ideas to repel the threat, a curriculum of wishful thinking, childish utopian nostrums, and exercises in boundary-smashing. As all this moved out of the campuses (the graduation function), it infected every other corner of American endeavor, institutions, business, news media, sports, Hollywood, etc. The country is now out of its mind… echoes of France, 1793… a rhyme, not a reprise.

The US economy began a slow and insidious collapse because its petroleum energy base became unaffordable. The reality of that was obscured by paradoxical appearances: the shale oil miracle goosed up US oil production from under five million barrels-a-day in 2007 to thirteen million barrels-a-day in 2019. Pretty awesome. Seemed like we were awash in oil. The problem was the companies producing shale oil couldn’t make money at it, and the loans that went into staging the shale oil “miracle” went bad… and then the companies couldn’t get new loans… and went bankrupt. So, the crash of US oil production is a self-reinforcing feedback loop that is sure to continue and will make things worse. Now, less than a year after reaching that majestic 13 million barrels-a-day, production has fallen to around 10 million a day — quite an impressive drop. Further obscuring the actual dynamic in play, gasoline prices at the pump are quite low — under $2.50-a-gallon where I live, compared with $4-plus a couple of years ago — and most citizens consider the price of gasoline their sole index of how things are going in the oil industry.

The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated and accelerated the damage from that by shutting down much of small business across America since March. The businesses and people who owned them have suffered terribly. That and the public lockdowns have greatly depressed the demand for oil products, driving the price-per-barrel down and reducing the cash flow of the oil companies. That also aggravated worsening relations with our principal trading partner, China, the net effect of which threatens the supply chain for all sorts of critical parts and products needed to keep our complex systems running.

Whether Mr. Trump or anybody can respond intelligently to this long emergency is a matter of considerable moment. As far as election politics are concerned, Mr. Trump is only marginally better positioned because he is not in favor of destroying the existing institutions of the republic as his opponents are. There’s less reason to believe he’s capable of coping with the nuts-and-bolts of the economic collapse that awaits after the election dramaturgy plays out. For Mr. Trump, much depends on the illusory performance of the implausible financial markets. This is the season for market crashes, as it is the season for Atlantic cyclones, and those markets have been acting as toppy as a moon-shot lately.

Meanwhile, the BLM mayhem continues overnight, this time in stodgy little old Lancaster, PA, where a knife-wielding Hispanic man was shot by the cops. Crazy how unjustified that seems. The incident and the reaction to it (riot… fires) followed the assassination attempt of two LA County sheriff’s deputies in their car Saturday night by what appears to have been a black child or a dwarf. Afterward, BLM “protesters” showed up at the hospital where the deputies were undergoing surgery, shouting “I hope they die.” I can’t wait to hear Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell try to explain that to their faithful fans on MSNBC.

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