MCT: Sunday, September 27, 2020

• Glass Fire
• Fire Weather
• Waters Projects
• 931 Cases
• Fire Video
• Pet Joey
• B Vid?
• Last Aggie
• Third Strike
• Early Ukiah
• Harvest Confrontation
• Kitchen Staff
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Fashionable Maladies
• Some Like It Hot
• Prop 15
• Handley's
• Sadly Fallen
• Discriminatory Names
• Lombard Angels
• Brain Damage
• Great Loneliness
• Rent Strikes
• Electoral Cloud
• Listen Dummy
• Craig 71
• Marco Radio
• Unlikely Questions

FAST MOVING FIRE Just Started Near Calistoga/St Helena (20 acres, early Sunday morning): fire.ca.gov/incidents/2020/9/27/glass-fire/

EVACUATION ORDERS Rolling In: twitter.com/CALFIRELNU

Here's a look at the fast-spreading brush fire near St. Helena that has prompted mandatory evacuations in Napa County. https://t.co/V1IDCeuz6r #GlassIncident pic.twitter.com/6nRkjBKaN8

— Kristofer Noceda (@krisnoceda) September 27, 2020

One hour timelapse view on the #GlassFire St Helena cam looking SE. Wind in the area pushing smoke plume low to the ground #CAwx #FireWx pic.twitter.com/b4Zd5dpiEv

— Rob Mayeda (@RobMayeda) September 27, 2020

HOT TEMPS INLAND all week combined with some return of patchy hazy conditions and “robust” winds (5-15mph) creating elevated fire weather conditions with highs in the 90s to around 100. Slight abatement to into the weekend, but still hot. 50s to 70s on the Coast, also with some smoke-haze. No Planned Power Shutoffs are anticipated in Mendocino County.

A WARMING AND DRYING AIR MASS along with robust northeast and east winds will result in critical fire weather conditions through Monday. The offshore flow is expected to produce record heat for coastal areas and possibly smoke aloft. Dry weather with no chance for rain and above normal temperatures are expected for the remainder of next week. (NWS)

AV DRINKING & WASTE WATER PROJECT UPDATE

(from the minutes of the AV Community Services District meeting minutes of 9/16/2020).

Clean Water (Waste):

[Engineer] Dave Coleman sent the suggested layout of the waste design to the parcel owners at the corner of 128 & 253. He did not hear back so after a week he texted and discovered that they had missed the document in their emails. This morning [9/16/2020] he texted again and was told that they were looking it over and things seem to be on track. They are aware the plans can be modified. The plans include the routes through the land, future replacement fields (the requirement to have double the space needed), and irrigation turnouts so they can use the treated water for irrigation (including crops above the injection field) as well as a house hookup. The footprint is roughly 5 acres (an elongated area). The treatment building is not being considered now as the main thing is to get through negotiations. Both the owners and our engineer feel that siting the building is not a big problem. The main thing is getting beyond negotiations. The call next week will also focus on what those negotiations should look like and basically how much the state is willing to pay. 

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Drinking Water:

In order to satisfy State funding requirements, [Engineer] Jack has finished an updated engineering plan with all the features of the project. Keeping in mind the Lambert Lane well field has to be swapped out with different wells, it is getting very close to a final product. It is close enough that it has allowed a first look at possible rates. The rate study report was our first time looking at what it will cost to maintain and operate the system. Again, this is a draft and needs further work and is not ready for release. But Kathleen, Joy and I feel the possible rates are encouraging. This rate study will be presented to this board to be finalized. As the rates depend on the formula we choose (i.e. how we fund our costs – though base rates or usage or a combination of the two), this board will have to have a presentation within a couple of months to start to figure this out. We are meeting with the State Funding program (our 100% funders) next week Tues, Sep 22. We are going over both projects, but the question for Drinking water is how we go through this process of approving the Drinking Water plan and the resulting rate study which will ultimately be sent out to rate payers. We do not yet know how this is navigated. We will be helped in this by our consultant with RCAC (Rural Communities Assistance Corp). We will probably have the help of our attorney, as well. [Engineer] Jack Locey is meeting right now at Janet Lombard’s with the Meadow Estates parcel owners to go over the component at their well field and open negotiations. He has either completed or has started negotiations with all participants. Also, the engineering report includes a hydrology report from a California based ground water geologist. They were hired by the engineers but would seem to be unbiased and as they have already studied the Boonville ground water situation, [Director] Kathleen McKenna and [Director] Valerie Hanelt think they might be willing to host a Zoom meeting to explain their results. [CSD Manager] Joy Andrews has been tasked to look into this. Also, after reading through the engineering plan Director Hanelt realized she misunderstood how many new wells would be built. There will be new wells dug in the current well field in Meadow Estates. But the only new area that doesn’t already have a well is the playground site. The two Zoom panel presentations (Health and Hydrology) are not going to be scheduled until after all the components of both projects are established.

23 MORE COVID CASES in Mendo Saturday, bringing total to 931. Almost 80% of them are in the Ukiah Valley.

CHECK OUT the Anderson Valley Fire Department’s website for a new video providing information on Wildland Fire Behavior, Evacuations and Sheltering in Place by retired AV fire chief Colin Wilson. Go to the AVFD home page (andersonvalleyfire.org) and scroll down to the announcement panel. This video was recently added to the site as an alternative to doing in-person presentations for local Fire Safe Councils due to the virus. If there is sufficient interest, we will do additional videos on related wildland fire preparation issues.

andersonvalleyfire.org/fire-behavior-evacuation-shelter-in-place-video/

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Joey knows sit, and in many ways he’s an easy going guy who is always aware of what's happening around him. Joey is very clear that he is NOT a hugger, so an adults-only home might suit him best. Joey’s been livin’ it up in a foster care, and is described as a sweet and loving dog. His foster family agrees that Joey’s ideal abode would be a mellow household, with a guardian who understands his quirks. 

Joey is housetrained and loves to swim. We think Joey would do best in a home with no other animals. Joey is a Beagle X, 4 years old, 33 pounds, and neutered, so he is ready to go home with you ASAP! There’s more about Joey here: mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/joey

To see our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, events, and updates about covid-19 and the shelter, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com. We're on Facebook at: facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

WHERE’S THE MEASURE B COMMITTEE MEETING VIDEO? According to their agenda they were supposed to meet on Wednesday, September 19. But as of late Saturday, no video of the meeting has been posted on the County’s youtube video channel. Was it cancelled? Is it a techno glitch? Could they be hiding their embarrassing selves? Or, more likely, the usual incompetence associated with just about everything related to Measure B?

FROM MY PHOTO COLLECTION BOOK, MENDOCINO INSPIRATIONS, available exclusively at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino (707-937-2665 or easy online ordering at gallerybookshop.com).

This is the last photo of the last cow in a direct bloodline back to cattle who roamed and grazed along the Albion River in the 1800s. Early in October, 2019, Aggie lay down inside a burned out ancient redwood stump. I fed her alfalfa and apple slices as well as slurps of water for several days, but she refused to budge. She knew it was the end of the line after a couple of years of diminishing health. When she died at mid morning, one of the young heifers walked up the hill alone to the house to announce the passing with muted moos.

That sensitive heifer gets her own solo photo page elsewhere in “Mendocino Inspirations.”

— Malcolm Macdonald

ACCUSED MURDERER COULD FACE DEATH PENALTY DUE TO 1979 ARMED ROBBERY CONVICTIONS

Thomas Dean Jones, a 65-year-old Ukiah man charged with the September 23 murder of his step-son and attempted murder of his step-son’s husband, could face life in prison without parole or potentially the death penalty due to these charges being strike three under California’s Three Strikes sentencing laws. Jones’s original two strikes stem from a series of armed robberies in Lake and Sonoma Counties he pled guilty to in 1979.

mendofever.com/2020/09/25/accused-murderer-could-face-death-penalty-due-to-1979-armed-robbery-convictions/

EARLY UKIAH

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FRIDAY NIGHT AT HARVEST MARKET:

Fort Bragg at its finest and an over the top plug for our beloved Harvest Market, which trains its employees to be warriors. In the good way.

So I'm in there on Friday night, enjoying the only social life I will ever have again, when the checker has to go address an issue.

The issue is three out of town ladies who aren't wearing masks and don't wanna. Because they're not sheeple, you see.

Oh, ladies. You came to the wrong seaside getaway.

I'll cut to the end: Does screaming "Psychos!!!!' at all the people gathered round watching you get kicked out of the store make you have a better or worse vacation?

Harvest's staff (mostly local young folks) stayed low key and professional while ejecting these three totally uncooperative ladies. Karens, dare I say? Without their fkg groceries. To the obscene but funny (a Fort Bragg specialty) jeers of the gathering crowd.

It got downright medieval there for a sec. Then the ladies left to more jeers and laughter and everybody went home. Pretty damn good Friday night, relatively speaking.

Checker who confronted the lady and took the biggest ration of sh*t, when asked if she wanted a break: "Yes I want a break. I just put my safety on the line." Damn right sister. For us.

Go Harvest!

(Chris Calder)

MENDOCINO STATE HOSPITAL KITCHEN (Talmage)

ED NOTES

THERE’S MUCH UNHAPPINESS at Rancho Navarro, a hilly chunk of water-short land at the northwest end of the Anderson Valley. It was grid-ed out without regard for its topography and sold as parcels as a rural development in the late 1960s with a common clubhouse, pool and homeowners board of directors, the whole of it breathed into life by a hustler named Fernhoff who spent the rest of his life in related lawsuits. Rancho Navarro is just down the road from the Holmes Ranch development, which did take the topography into account, and does have a homeowner's/road association board of directors but no clubhouse and pool. The Holmes Ranch has always been slightly more up-market than Rancho Navarro, being part-time home to world class celebs like author Alice Walker, bourgeois communist Angela Davis and the more plebeian former Playmate of the Year, the late Donna Ronne, the last doing a memorable stint as the Boonville Dump attendant, never failing to transform that weekend chore for us locals from mere off-load to delightful encounter with her merry patter and memorably un-correct jokes. Although large-scale marijuana ops aren't unknown on the Holmes Ranch, small-scale marijuana gardens have thrived at Rancho Navarro for many years, early on featuring a Princeton graduate named Lipmanson who managed to parlay his second bust in a row at the same site into a law degree when he brought a bogus but winning suit against the County of Mendo and used his winnings to go to law school, subsequently joining the legion of under-employed lawyers hanging around Northcoast courthouses wrestling each other for assignments processing the indigent on into state prison for $75 an hour. The rub? Rancho Navarro’s property owner’s rule book prohibits commercial enterprise, which marijuana grows obviously are.

I ASKED a parent of an Elementary School child how she thought on line learning was going for her 7-year old. “Pretty good,” she said. “No problem with hooking up to the teacher. Sometimes my daughter gets a little lost in math when she isn't finished and the class ends, but overall I don't have any criticisms.”

HAVEN'T CHECKED yet with the parents of high school students, but off the top, for high school kids, boys especially, cyber-learning may work better without the, ahem, distractions of the contemporary coed classroom. It doesn't seem widely known but school principals also are tasked these days with enforcing dress codes, prohibiting boys from wearing ganga-banga thug gear to school while ensuring that girls dress “appropriately” meaning, it seems, not showing up togged out as commercial street tootsies. Jeez, when I was in high school girls couldn't wear dresses that went any higher than their lower shin bones. Today, it's, "That's a high school kid!!?"

WHAT? Female drill instructors are heading to all-male Marines boot camp in San Diego as the Corps moves to make coed boot camp a “top priority.” Excuse another Rip Van Old Guy riff, but I can't, as they say, quite wrap my head around this one. I managed to emerge traumatized but intact from Marine Corps boot camp, 15 weeks worth, in 1957. 

Then, physical violence by drill instructors was routine, verbal violence incessant, the idea being to break down the recruit so far that he automatically did what he's supposed to do — kill people. Most of us wanted to kill them, and some of us probably would have — plenty of psychos join the Marines — if the drill instructors didn't take a break while we trained with live ammo. If a female DI had beat on me and, as my male DI often did, called me "a California queer sent to sabotage my Marine Corps," I would have laughed. Sorry, I just can't imagine women in this role.

AVA HEADQUARTERS rests in a small sea of pavement, the site having been a drive-thru coffee kiosk. But considered from a fire perspective our place still has plenty enough vegetation and trees, most of them small trees, but every day I can't help imagining them, dry and as brown as they are, as potential menaces that might suddenly combust in the afternoon furnace. Trees everywhere in The Valley, especially redwood and pine, demonstrate their stress in brown patches rain may or may not revive. Used to be when the leaves of our deciduous trees turned gold and red early in September, it meant that rain could rain any time. Now? Rain might not arrive until January, if then.

MASTER SHOWMAN that he is, it's hard to say if Trump is just woofin' to deliberately stir up the libs or if he's serious about not leaving office. Whatever he's doing he's already managed to convince the yobbos, his “base,” that the vote will be rigged, although it won't be rigged if he happens to win. For the millions that view Trump as The Great Beast of the Apocalypse come to life, he has created huge election anxiety, although if he loses and refuses to leave the Secret Service will simply drag his jive ass outtathere and feed him to BLM. No way he can stay illegally because the military doesn't like him, and without their guns he's gone. But last week, doubling down on his threats to not recognize the results of the election, he said, “You know, you have to be careful with the ballots. That’s a whole big scam … We want to make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be with this whole situation. Millions of unsolicited ballots… That's the only way we're going to lose, is if there's mischief. And it'll have to be on a big scale. So be careful. And we do want a very friendly tradition (transition?). But we don't want to be cheated and be stupid and say 'Oh let's transition’."

ALMOST everything Trump says is open to interpretation because he's typically incoherent, but he and his surrogates have repeatedly made claims of widespread mail-in voting fraud, of which there is no evidence. And as the ongoing riots in so many cities work to Trump's advantage, not to mention Sleepy Joe's evident unfitness which we'll see in full flower Tuesday night…

AN INTERESTING BOOK just out is called "Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020" by Lawrence Douglass. The review in the NYRB (part of which we provide below) may be more interesting than the book as it enumerates both the stay-strategies Douglass describes supplemented by those the reviewer, Pamela Karlan, comes up with. There are a bunch — everything from Electoral College monkey business to electronic whizbangery. We'll see. But if Trump and his fascistas lose the election in an undeniable landslide for Sleepy Joe and attempt to remain in power we're looking at a straight-up insurgency that could break the country up into something like Yugoslavia.

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 26, 2020

JENNIFER CRAM, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SEAN FLINTON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

SANTOS GONZALEZ-ESQUIVEL, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JOSELUIS LOPEZ-RAMOS, Vallejo/Ukiah. DUI.

JORDAN LUNA, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, county parole violation, resisting. 

ANDREW MAYNARD, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

MATTHEW TAYLOR, Willits. Brandishing, criminal threats, resisting, failure to appear.

SHAWN WOLFE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

IF THE “VAST PUBLIC” weren’t entirely satiated by the trendy grief of others, they merely got a hold on their own. How many gold-diggin’ knotheads had spun the web of the ever-popular self-help book? Everyone but the Hillside Strangler and my mailman, that’s who! Face it, the plain truth is that most Americans feel left off the bus if they can’t hitch up their rattled psyches to some fashionable new malady bein’ bandied about on Phil and Oprah. The longshoreman or the guy from the pickle factory were survivors and survival didn’t play very well within a nation drenched to its Valium-gobblin’ core with luckless visions of self-hate and unendurable dejection.

— Ben Hamper, Rivethead

CORPORATIONS NEVER DIE

Editor: 

Long ago in 1978, Proposition 13 saved us from massive property tax increases, allowing us to stay in our homes until we pass away. Property taxes eventually get readjusted up to market rates because people die and their property changes hands. Works great except … corporations live forever. They never die, and thus their property valuations never get increased to market rates. Proposition 15 fixes that flaw in Proposition 13. With Proposition 15, large commercial businesses will pay market property taxes.

Kee Nethery

Sebastopol

HANDLEY'S, LITTLE RIVER AREA

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Why are we even having this conversation? It is surreal that we are even seriously discussing whether or not the sitting president will leave office if he loses the election.

Of course he will have to leave office, like every loser who came before him. The very fact this topic is now even up for discussion shows how far this Republic has sadly fallen. 

An international poll out today shows that virtually every country around the world — including the U.K., Japan, Australia, and Germany — has the lowest opinion of the United States they’d ever had since the surveys began. They “feel sorry for us” as our republic slowly crumbles before their — and our — eyes.

I want my country back. This November may be our last chance.

HYSTERIA EVEN GETS TO CALTRANS

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, State Parks Director Armando Quintero and Department of Transportation Director Toks Omishakin announced Friday a series of actions to identify and redress discriminatory names of features attached to the State Parks and transportation systems. Agencies also will expand representation and increase transparency around a state committee tasked with recommending changes to geographic names in California.

The moves come in the wake of a national conversation about the names of geographic features, markers and statues affiliated with the Civil War, genocide of Native Americans and other remnants of institutionalized discrimination. Steps announced today dovetail with additional measures announced by Governor Gavin Newsom to mark Native American Day in California following the Governor’s formal apology to Native Americans last year.

“The Governor fundamentally changed the way Californians grapple with the difficult beginnings of this State when he formally apologized to California Native Americans last June,” said Governor’s Tribal Advisor and Executive Secretary to the Native American Heritage Commission Christina Snider. “For California Native Americans who have survived generations of depredations against our very existence, these disparaging and dehumanizing names serve as a constant reminder that we were never intended to be part of the California dream. The leadership of the California Natural Resources Agency and the Department of Transportation in furthering these corrective initiatives demonstrates the State’s real commitment to act on the promise of the Governor’s apology, heal relationships and work to make historically dispossessed communities whole.”

Assembly Member James C. Ramos (D-Highland), the first California Native American elected to the state Legislature, welcomed the announcements.

“Ensuring that state facilities are respectful and inclusive of California’s history and all its people is a much-welcomed step,” Ramos said. “As a Native American, I look forward to the acknowledgement of our presence and culture as well as the education that will occur during a renaming process.”

Secretary Crowfoot said it is past time to revisit historic names that stem from a dark legacy that includes discrimination, violence and inequity.

“Recent protests over racial inequality have spurred a national conversation about institutional and systemic racism in the United States. That conversation includes a new reckoning over monuments, symbols and names found in our public spaces,” Secretary Crowfoot said. “We are committed to continuing this dialogue in an open and transparent way.”

Crowfoot is directing the Natural Resources Agency to expand the membership of the California Advisory Committee on Geographic Names (CACGN) by adding members designated by the Native American Heritage Commission, California State Library, California African American Museum, California Department of Transportation as well as the legislative Selective Committee on Native American Affairs and Black, Latino and Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucuses.

At the same time, the California Department of Parks and Recreation has begun to inventory racist markers and names of features within the State Parks system. State Parks is developing a process to assess the inventory and solicit input on potential name changes. State Parks also is refining plans in consultation with Tribes and other groups to update interpretive signage, exhibits and educational materials for student programs.

“This is a generational moment that calls for the California Department of Parks and Recreation to take stock of and critically examine our state’s historical legacy,” Director Quintero said. “We want every Californian, whether they are first generation or the 500th generation, to feel welcome in parks and see stories shared by all voices.”

As part of today’s announcement, Caltrans will carry out a detailed review of all named assets located on the state transportation system and develop a proposal identifying those to be renamed or rescinded.

“Transportation is meant to bring people together, bridge divides, cross immovable boundaries and connect people from all walks of life,” Director Omishakin said. “Caltrans cannot accomplish this mission without addressing the specter of exclusionary, prejudiced place names located throughout the California State Highway system. While long overdue, the department is honored to stand with the Natural Resources Agency and help facilitate a new legacy celebrating diversity, equity and inclusion.”

BLUE ANGELS OVER LOMBARD

IF, INSTEAD OF CONTINUING to pursue the failed Hillary Clinton-neocon agenda and pushing for impeachment of Donald Trump over his interference in Ukraine, the Democrats had gone after Trump for his desecration of the environment and the public's health which has affected Republicans as it has Democrats, they might have had a winning hand, particularly when articles like this one [below link] have been numerous since he took office. What it tells us is that when push comes to shove, those running the Democrat Party really DON'T give a damn about the public's welfare:

“The Trump administration has rejected scientific evidence linking the pesticide chlorpyrifos to serious health problems, directly contradicting federal scientists’ conclusions five years ago that it can stunt brain development in children.”

E.P.A. Rejects Its Own Findings That a Pesticide Harms Children’s Brains

(via Jeff Blankfort)

THERE IS A LONELINESS in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock or the terror of one person

aching in one place

alone

untouched

unspoken to

watering a plant. 

— Charles Bukowski 

CALIFORNIA’S RENT STRIKE: Who pays and how it works

Once a fringe tactic, rent strikes are gaining political attention around the state as renters seek payment relief amid the coronavirus recession.

calmatters.org/california-divide/2020/09/california-rent-strike-who-pays-and-how-it-works/

OUR MOST VULNERABLE ELECTION

by Pamela Karlan

Review of Lawrence Douglas’s new book, “Will He Go? Trump & The Looming Election Meltdown of 2020”

In October 1884, as a particularly ugly presidential race neared its end, Walt Whitman decided instead of voting to write a poem. “Election Day, November, 1884” argued that the most remarkable feature of the United States was not its stunning natural wonders—not the Mississippi River, nor the limitless prairies, “nor you, Yosemite” (however our current president wants to pronounce it). No, Whitman declared, the “powerfulest scene and show” was “America’s choosing day.” And not because of the men who were selected to govern: “The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing.” Elections matter because they are a central way in which we constitute ourselves as a nation. In this centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote (at least if they were white, since effective enfranchisement didn’t come to Black citizens in the South until the Voting Rights Act of 1965), voting remains a powerful expression of who counts as a full member of the political community.

When Whitman wrote, the nation was only eight years past the debacle of 1876, during which the winner of the presidency—Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican—was not determined until two days before the inauguration. Vote suppression, fraud, dishonest counting of the ballots, and the vagaries of state law had led to Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina each sending more than one set of electoral votes to Congress. The Twelfth Amendment, which lays out the process for declaring the winner of a presidential election, proved inadequate to the task of resolving the dispute over which sets to count, not least because the amendment’s language was susceptible to multiple readings, and Democrats controlled the House while Republicans controlled the Senate.

It took a special, jury-rigged electoral commission, hardball behind-the-scenes bargaining, and ultimately a concession by Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden to reach closure. As Lawrence Douglas, a professor of law, jurisprudence, and social thought at Amherst College, observes in Will He Go?, that was only the beginning of our woes. The price of the deal that gave the Republicans the presidency was their agreement to end Reconstruction—a decision that haunts us to this day. In Douglas’s words, “Catastrophe was avoided by disaster.”

The United States has had fifty-eight presidential elections since George Washington won a unanimous electoral vote in 1788–1789. Few of them have been as obviously consequential as the election of 2020. That would be true even if it were only about the issues: how America will handle Covid-19, racial inequality, immigration, climate change, foreign relations, economic policy, and judicial appointments depends on whom we choose to lead us next. On each of these questions, there are sharp differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But although we have had many critical elections, none of them since the end of Reconstruction has occurred under anything like the cloud hanging over this quadriennial choosing.

The pandemic has made it harder to recruit poll workers and to keep polling places safe. Millions more Americans will attempt to vote by mail than have ever done so before, and in some states they will face difficulties in applying to get their ballots. So there is genuine concern whether every eligible voter who wants to cast a ballot will succeed in doing so. US intelligence agencies have pointed to renewed Russian efforts to influence the election’s outcome and undermine public confidence in the democratic process. In normal election years, the election legitimates the winner; this time around, the question may well be whether the election itself was legitimate.

Three of the last seven incumbents—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush—were defeated when they ran for a second term. And yet it is inconceivable that a respected scholar like Douglas could have written a book with a title like Will He Go? about any of them. In each case, the answer to that question was obvious: once the results were announced, all three men swiftly gave gracious public concession speeches recognizing that the people had spoken. Each praised what Bush, in his remarks, called “the majesty of the democratic system.” Each pledged to cooperate with his successor during the transition period. And after they left office on the date set by section 1 of the Twentieth Amendment, all of them avoided public comment on the next president’s performance. That is because, as Douglas explains, “our political leaders have accepted—and internalized—the norms of the democratic process.”

Not Donald Trump. He has flouted nearly every norm of American political life: using the White House for campaign events, threatening to jail his opponent, calling members of Congress “treasonous” for not applauding his speeches, inviting foreign intervention in our electoral process, undermining the independence of the Justice Department’s prosecutorial decisions, using the presidency to promote his business interests,* praising autocrats while denigrating our allies. He has spent his entire presidency simultaneously attacking and defending the legitimacy of the 2016 election—attacking it on the grounds that his failure to win a majority of the popular vote was due to extensive vote fraud, and defending it from the charge (most recently supported in excruciating detail by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) that his campaign was entwined with Russian efforts to influence the outcome. And he is firmly launched on a campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election as well. Far from wanting all citizens to participate, Trump has admitted that the more people who vote, the less likely he is to win.

CRAIG’S 71ST

Warmest spiritual greetings,

71st birthday message:

As September 28 approaches (the day in 1949 when Craig Louis Stehr was born at the Catholic Hospital in East Cleveland, Ohio), I am tonight in Honolulu wrapping up six months of living here. The politicians shut down the tourist economy causing my paid work to stop and consequently I've fallen behind by over $2500 in rent due at the Plumeria Hostel Alternative.

The manager is trying to get the Salvation Army to pay my back rent and Catholic Charities have also been contacted. At this time I am preparing to return to the Magic ranch in California's Mendocino County.

Meanwhile I am ignoring the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Whereas four years ago I initiated a boycott in the name of Earth First! because there was no mention of environmental issues during the debates. This time around I am not going to do anything at all. Wild fires are raging on the West Coast. Global warming is real. The presidential election is stupid. It's that simple.

I am no longer identified with this body nor this mind. Chanting “Om Namah Shivaya” replaces the mental factory’s endless discursive thinking. And the highest spiritual reality works through the body-mind complex without interference.

On my 71st birthday I wish you to have your own spiritual practice, unique and blissful. Religious organizations are useful and may be inspiring, but experience over the past 50 years has proven that many religious groups are overrated. Many harbored criminal elements and the insane and most lost their luster and were less fascinating when media attention declined.

Frankly the so-called new age didn't fare well either. Much of the old age had serious problems too. I seriously encourage taking responsibility for one's own liberation.

I am always interested in revolutionary ecology. I accept money at: PayPal.me/CraigLouisStehr. You may contact me online CraigLouisStehr@Gmail.com. I'd rather be monkeywrenching.

Craig Louis Stehr

Honolulu

FOURIER TRANSFORMS FOR BIRDS.

The recording of last night's stupendous (2020-09-25) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg is right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0403

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:

2020 Audubon bird photography winners.

https://tinyurl.com/2020AudubonPhotoWinners

The oral history of Bat Boy. “We had to be careful. Anything that smacked of bestiality was kept out of the paper, but we didn’t go into how he was conceived. We just said he was found in a cave and built on the image.” In fact: “Five U.S. senators are space aliens!”

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/626827/weekly-world-news-bat-boy-oral-history

This blacksmith contest champion Anne, the one on the left, is Anne Bujold, Lois McMaster Bujold’s daughter.

https://tinyurl.com/AnneBujoldBlacksmith

And a little about three-time Nebula award winner and seven-time Hugo award winner Lois McMaster Bujold, creator of the Vorkosigan Saga, including one of my favorite space-opera science fiction characters ever, dwarf military genius Miles Naismith Vorkosigan’s mother Cordelia. Best line? Okay, that would be in response to a bunkered war general’s barked question, “Where have you been, woman!” Cordelia says, “I went shopping. And look what I got! The price was a bit steep, though.” And she bowls and bumps a heavy shopping bag down the long table of meeting war staffmen for the general to open it and find the bloody severed head of the enemy leader, pretender to the throne, who’d been terrorizing their city and potentially the entire empire from the fortified safety of his (their own) palace… Oh, wait, there’s another from the same novella: Sergeant Bothari, incredibly messed up mentally, has bonded with Cordelia, who once rescued him (from, among other things, being compelled by his torturer to torture her!) and now he worships her; he can focus and stay relatively sane and not explode in brute animal violence unless she gives explicit permission, and he’s so grateful. At one point they’re brazening their way past enemy guards; one of the guards says to Bothari, “And just who are you.” Bothari says, “I’m the Lady’s dog,” and just stands there and smiles softly at him, all that ready destruction and horror simmering beneath the surface. The big tough armed guards swallow nervously and let them pass. (It’s been ages since I read those books. I might have a word or situation wrong here and there.) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold

— Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

QUESTIONS UNLIKELY TO COME UP DURING THE DEBATES In The Most Important Election In The History Of The U.S.A. Since The Last One

by Frank Scott

Is private profit achieved by selling at the market the best way to benefit the greatest number of people and if so, how come so many people are homeless, unemployed, poor, without health care, while market forces accumulate trillions for war and billions for pets?

Speaking of war, if mass murder, blasting bodies to bits, crushing and burning them to death, destroying cities, reducing nations to rubble with populations of cripples and refugees and such are all legal outcomes and not “war crimes”, what the hell is wrong with machine gunning your annoying neighbor, raping his children and setting fire to his house?

If Biden is a murderous sexist maniac for rubbing women’s backs in public is Trump a murderous sexist maniac for leaving the toilet seat up, as recently revealed by the 35th hooker to write a book about his toilet habits? Which immediately became a best seller?

Which of the major parties of capital’s candidates can put together a paragraph of reasonable, coherent, unrehearsed thought expressed in reasonable coherent English in response to a question from an unpaid citizen without first taking meds and reading from a teleprompter?

What is the meaning of life?

Is Israel more, less, or just as important to you as New York, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alabama, and you know, those other American places?

When making love to your wife do you ever allow her to get on top?

Do either of you favor expulsion from society of all those public figures – political leaders, talk show hosts, sex workers, street vendors and such - who claimed Trump could not/would not be elected in 2016, considering them a detriment to American mental capacity, already in a condition judged by some experts as terminally critical and near total brain death? 

And if not, candidate Biden should you be elected will you select some of them for your cabinet? And candidate Trump, should you be elected will you select some to be executed?

Would either of you ever dare to debate the Green party candidate for president, publicly, with questions submitted to you from an audience of Americans with less than a quarter of a million in the bank?

Have you ever heard of the Green Party?

Have you ever heard of Americans with less than a quarter million in the bank?