MAUREEN 'MO' MULHEREN probably knows that Mendolib is circulating all manner of secret slanders about her. That's what this county's active Democrats do best, and by active Democrats I mean the middle-of-the-road extremists who show up for Inland and Coast Democrat meetings. They don't cluster-muster over real issues, serving mostly as conduits for whatever candidates and platitudes the state party and the DNC feed them, but they do come alive to stuff as many clones of themselves as they can into local public jobs. Mendolib runs Mendocino County. They also of course control the innumerable non-profits fastened to the necks of the dependent like mountain tics on dying elk. The local officeholders they've foisted off on the unsuspecting Mendo public have, with no exceptions, ranged from the overtly criminal to the graspingly incompetent, and even several 5150’s.The slanders re Mulheren wafting out of Coast and Inland Lib have nothing to do with the supervisor's job, everything to do with the high school-ish, we're cool, she's not. With Mendolib — about fifty people — it's solely a matter of getting “our” people into every paid public job in the county. The irony, and these fifty are big time irony-challenged, is that the Democrats haven't stood for anything since Kennedy (and he was a wobbler), and local Democrats, in my memory, can't point to a single in-county or NorCal triumph. And don't say offshore oil. Everyone was opposed to that.
THE COUNTY OF MENDO, predictably, has added to the confusion around pot farming by attempting to establish a licensing program before the state weighed in with its own confusing and unworkable gro-rules, so Mendo finds itself with roughly 1100 license applications of which some 250 or so applicants are more or less legal with another 900 or so applications pending. Or dropped out, despairing at an absurdly complicated process. These total of 1100 growers trying to get legal, and people argue about this, represent somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the true number of growers in the county. 5 percent would mean 20,000 love drug farmers are out there, which seems awfully high, but ten thousand growers out there doesn't seem like an exaggeration. When former Supervisor Pinches said he could draw up a workable licensing program on a cocktail napkin, we agreed with him because we think we could, too. And given the numbers of real smart people in the pot business, especially those who've either successfully staggered through the licensing process or dropped out in frustration, any number of them could also draw up a simple, workable plan. Nobody in authority asks them, of course, and the Supes just spent another entire day Tuesday attempting to fine tune their laughably failed licensing process.
AMY CONEY BARRETT was more than a match for the pathetic Democrats trying to tie her to abortion, guns, racism, and her alleged desire to deny medical care to the indigent needy. If you didn't groan when each Demo interrogator recited his or her see-through phony sob story about what would happen if one more rightwing nut job managed to become a Supreme Court justice, you better check your bullshit detector batteries. Only a Democrat could make Republican senators seem smart, but that's what the Democrats managed to do. Amy slam dunked all of them, and the forces of reaction will soon have another ally on the court. (Sexism Alert! I wish, though, that Amy would consult a speech therapist. Her nasal-routed voice is another of those fingernails-on-the-blackboard semi-screech jobs.)
AMY CONEY BARRETT on originalism: “That means that I interpret the Constitution as a law… I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. That meaning doesn't change over time and it's not up to me to update it or infuse my policy views into it.”
CONSIDERING that the Constitution was written in the 18th century by a small group of aristocratic deists who legally kept slaves and thought women shouldn't vote, by strictly applying their views to the 21st century is pretty tricky, so tricky only a Jesuit-trained lawyer would attempt it. But here comes Amy with a claim that Washington, Jefferson and friends intended that abortion be illegal, corporations be people, the Affordable Care Act be illegal, machine guns be protected by the 2nd Amendment, and on through the Trumpian catechism, which she’s telling us just happens to coincide with Old Marse's world view.
HOW ABOUT MOSES'S recommendations on warfare? “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” Strict constructionism has its limitations, I'd say, but millions of people cling to versions of originalism in their unshakeable, never-to-be-revised everyday views. But everything we know about the Founding Fathers says that they were au courant, the very cutting edge of the Enlightenment who, if they were revived to have a look at the 21st century version of their ideas, would scream and demand immediate returns to their crypts.
HILLARY lost to Trump, Biden also might lose to Trump, making them the only two persons in political America who could manage it. But as we watched the Democrat senators getting serially bitch-slapped by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, it's even more obvious why Biden is the party's nominee. Last week’s embarrassing Democrat performance was lowlighted by a question from Hawaii senator, Mazie Hirono who asked Barrett if she'd ever sexually assaulted anyone. Barrett said she hadn't. But this cretinous inquiry is Hirono's main move at judicial nominee hearings. Her defenders say the question sounds crazy but it's really a cagey “perjury trap” that can lead to prosecution if the nominee lies. Of course it's objectively batshit, serving only as a metaphor for the present functioning of the entire Democratic party.
A CERTAIN prominent local official posted a photo of his “edged and mowed lawn,” obviously unaware that he teeters on the edge of full-blown suburban psychosis. But then lawn guys seem mildly nuts to many of us, me certainly, because we know they lie awake worrying about their insane patch of chemically-soaked green, constantly battle botanical intruders, spend small fortunes on their weird little expanses of unnatural growth, and even in their dandelion-haunted dreams, the specter of the neighbor's rogue gophers gives the lawn guy no rest.
THE GREAT RE-WRITE made another giant stride towards national amnesia with the announcement that Eskimo Pies are now known among the good and the pure as Edy’s Pie, as the 100-year old company agrees to erase its “derogatory” brand name.
SINCE REDWOODS can live to be three thousand or so years old, give or take 500 years, it stands to reason that Native Americans had the opportunity to create, steward or manage at least four iterations of the types of forests that Europeans encountered when first exploring California. How did their land ethic and management techniques evolve over the millennia? How did that evolution alter the structure and composition of the forests? Were their goals, and the techniques used to achieve them, relatively static, given that fire was the basic landscape-level management tool available to them? Or were they evolving as climate and cultures changed?
If we’re amazed by a tree, or stand of trees, being two or three millennia old, what about a culture that managed and lived in/with those forest for the three thousand years during which they grew and at least ten thousand more before that? As romantic as it is, the idea that the old growth forests, as we know them, sprouted in a time before time; when people lacked the understanding or agency to effect landscape-level changes, gives too little credit to the cultures and peoples who had an active hand in creating or maintaining some of the greatest forests our history can remember.
Control fire and one controls the vegetation. Control the vegetation and one controls fire. Exclusion of fire without controlling vegetation is not control of fire. We are dealing with ecosystems that were managed under multi-thousand year old management regimes that were based on putting fire on the grind; regimes that we simply cast aside in a matter of decades. It seems likely, to this observer, that we’re not getting out of this situation by letting the land go back to “nature” unless nature includes humans putting fire on the ground in a controlled manner in order to achieve specific goals.
— Aaron Sawyer
WILLITS MURDER BACKSTORY EMERGING: The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) arrested James Presley Whetstone, 29, of Willits, on Wednesday, Oct. 14 for the suspected murder of his father James Andrew Whetstone, 69, of Willits.
Family members originally thought James Andrew had gone missing on Oct. 9 and reached out to the community on social media for help. MCSO began a search for the elder Whetstone a few days later, but on Oct. 14 sources say James Presley called the police and admitted to the crime. When law enforcement arrived at the family home where both Whetstones lived in the 1500 block of Valley Road in Willits, James Presley directed Officers to a “fresh grave that had been concealed with debris.”
According to an MCSO press release, “A search warrant was granted for an in-depth search of the property, prompting a further search by Sheriff’s Detectives with the assistance of investigators with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office. During this time, Sheriff’s Detectives excavated the area of the fresh grave and recovered the remains of James Andrew Whetstone.”
James Presley Whetstone was arrested based on probable cause, and was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on a charge of murder where he was to be held in lieu of a to-be-determined amount of bail. A forensic autopsy of James Andrew Whetstone’s body is pending at this time. MCSO Detectives are continuing investigations into the incident.
According to a social media post by the suspect’s sister, Amber Whetstone, James Presley is a life-long “psychopathic schizophrenic” and the medication he was taking “seemed to have no affect (sic).” She wrote that there “wasn’t any reason to believe that he was harmful or a danger to anyone” although he “did display strange behavior from time to time.” Amber said that “there were signs that [James Presley] might have done something to our father” but the family “didn’t want to believe that about our brother” and “gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
Amber said she doesn’t know why her brother did what he is suspected of doing, but her father was the “ultimate sacrifice to protect our lives from our brother.”
(Courtesy, The Willits News)
A GUY called last week who was angry because I'd pronounced him an anti-Semite and threatened to off his contributions to our comment line. Yes, by golly, I've got a high horse and occasionally I have to mount it to ride down the more egregious bigotries. But that exchange was months ago. Yesterday the wrong-way obsessive seemed miffed because I didn't agree with him about the Mossad taking down the World Trade Center. “Bullshit,” I said. “Everyone knows the Anderson Valley Unity Club pulled that one off. They might look like a bunch of harmless old ladies, but I know for a fact they also did Building 7.”
AFTER YEARS of beating back fanatics I should know better than to try to fun them. Or jump down the rabbit hole with them for a tour of their paranoia. This guy said he had the facts. And, like a fool, I entered his twilight zone. “Your alleged facts are from thoroughly discredited lunatic websites,” I said. “There is not even a whiff of credible evidence that the Mossad was involved in 911.” Since I don't read much crank lit (other than the Press Democrat) I didn't even know that International Nutdom was blaming the Israelis. He demanded to know where I get my facts. “By looking out the window. The sun is out” I said, “And by grabbing the bull by the tail and looking straight at them.” It went on for a while, me mentally kicking myself for arguing. “Well, you're wrong,” he said, and hung up. I wondered if it was raining where he was.
YEARS AGO there was Dr. Ed Miller, an elderly Marin bigot whose letters-to-the-editor appeared regularly in newspapers from San Francisco to Crescent City. He wrote a bunch I published in Boonville's beloved weekly until it belatedly occurred to me the doctor's letters basically contained a single subject — Jews. Miller was a fairly clever writer in that he always managed to elude, but barely, saying anything that anybody could say was overtly anti-Semitic. But he never had any other subject, and he'd gotten onto the Boonville weekly because at our International Affairs Desk we often tried to speak up for the plight of the Palestinians, and just as often criticized the apartheid state of Israel, political stances uncommon in the US because the Israel Lobby owns our elected national officeholders and also many state officials, a fact of American life and not evidence of closet anti-Semitism as fanatic Zionists claim whenever someone points it out. Anti-Semites, being stupid, nasty blood libeling bastards, thought the left ava and its left contributors, notably the late Alexander Cockburn, were allied with them. (Cockburn was a hero to Palestinians. I'll never forget walking into a little Palestinian market with him one afternoon where the owner and his wife immediately recognized him and tried to give us a free lunch.) Anyway, I finally cut Dr. Miller off when his monomaniacal anti-Semitism became so blatant he had to go. He called up to argue. I said I and everyone else was tired of him, that he was a one-note Johnny with one subject — Jews control everything, which is why everything is bad. My reply to him at the time was, “Well, Ed, if Jews are smarter than everyone else and secretly run the world, how do you account for the Jews of Mendocino County? Is this place some kind of set-aside for dumb Jews?” 'He chuckled and said, “Could be, but I'm not an anti-Semite and it's very wrong of you to censor me like this.” By then, Miller had been 86ed by most papers, although I'd see his letters here and there, always on Israel, crimes of. He would have loved the internet.
BETSY CAWN WRITES: Trying to square your description of the political swingers over your way with what we see from this dusty remove:
“Mendolib runs Mendocino County. They also of course control the innumerable non-profits fastened to the necks of the dependent like mountain tics on dying elk. The local officeholders they’ve foisted off on the unsuspecting Mendo public have, with no exceptions, ranged from the overtly criminal to the grasping incompetent, with a few certifiable mental cases.” And, “With Mendolib — about fifty people — it’s solely a matter of getting “our” people into every paid public job in the county. The irony, and these fifty are big time irony-challenged, is that the Democrats haven’t stood for anything since Kennedy (and he was a wobbler), and local Democrats, in my memory, can’t point to a single in-county or NorCal triumph.” On this side of the Cow, Mendo politics seems dominated by the conservative core represented by District 1 Supervisor Carrie Brown (she sits on our Area Agency on Aging Governing Board — which gives the Older Americans Act short shrift but is legally allowed to do so because our Joint Powers Authority votes to allow the absolute minimum services required (and then neglects its promises in state-approved local plans).
Darling Carrie endorsed Glen McGourty for her seat, and Glen’s voters are the whitey-tighty “leadership” of exploitative agriculture (e.g., the Mayfield enterprises) and water sellers. Brown herself is the patron saint of the new Mendocino Inland Power & Water Commission, which supports the removal of the Scott Dam at Lake Pillsbury — and demonstrates no cognitive capacity in allowing the Humboldt County officials and enviro-whiners to define the dam removal as a sane idea (when that is how the Russian River is continually replenished in the summer, the source of Inland Mendocino and southerly vineyard plantation supplies.
I guess I can agree that they’re all pretty cuckoo, one way or another, but politically powerful? Maybe at sneering and sniping at their emotional “enemies” — and to be sure putting their pet pals into lesser official positions (Richard Shoemaker comes to mind). Somewhere on the outskirts of Mendolib and Mendowrong politics, the misfits and community activists that regularly come to the aid of their neighbors (thinking of all the fire and medical service workers and volunteers) quietly get the work done.
Whereas, over here in flailing Lake County, at least our cannabis permitting process has been well accepted (with obvious renegades and nasty boys, of course). But the booze industry took over a long time ago, because it funds the Chamber of Commerce and dozens of promotional outfits; and our implacable Congressman from Napa humbly serves ravioli at his annual fundraising event.
Maybe I’m out of touch with the scene (as usual, not generally associated with clubs of any kind), but it seems to me that the Redneck Republicans and right-religious frontmen pretty much run this place on both sides of the hill, and they have both county Administrations feathering their beds at every turn.
THAT REPORT RELEASED this week by the California Department of Public Health declared that Healdsburg and Cloverdale could soon run out of water. The dire news was duly passed along by the Press Democrat although it was denied by Cloverdale and Healdsburg officials, whose denials have not yet been reported by the Rose City daily. “It's not true,” said Healdsburg Mayor Jim Wood. “I think what probably attracted the attention of the state is that Cloverdale and Healdsburg asked for mandatory water conservation. All of our wells are chugging at 100% and are refilling at a normal level. We believe we are fine. We are concerned about the future and we want to conserve water for us here in town, but also for the whole region.”
ON THE LARGE SUBJECT of regional water, a relative handful of inland Mendo and SoCo sons of the soil get off paying obscenely low water rates for diverted Eel River water while domestic users pay ever higher rates. No surprise that Mendo is especially screwed because most of the water diverted from the Eel River and stored in Lake Mendocino is owned by Sonoma County, although none of it goes to Cloverdale and Healdsburg, while huge amounts of water rests in Lake Sonoma for the almost exclusive use of the Yobbos and their jet skis. (Violent objection to this para from Potter Valley. Ok, ok, some of the diverted water gets to Cloverdale and Healdsburg. And some gets all the way south to Sausalito.)
SONOMA COUNTY makes millions of annual dollars selling the diverted Eel's water, with Mendo getting nothing but cheap water for the aforementioned handful of grape farmers. When former Mendo supervisor John Pinches tried to get a discussion going aimed at re-negotiating Mendo's one-way water deal with Sonoma County, he couldn't even get a second. Why? Other than Pinches our supervisors are terrified of the Farm Bureau and its water hogging grape growers, although a new supervisor like Williams of the 5th District, and maybe even Silent Dan Gjerde of the ocean-view 4th District, have little to fear from Mendo County's dominant special interest, that cheap water mafia of Potter Valley and the downstream wine dons of the Russian River watershed.
THAT was a terrible accident out in the middle of the no road shoulders stretch of the Willits Bypass that closed the Bypass for hours Wednesday evening. That disaster is the worst yet, but over time the Bypass will be our very own Mendo Blood Alley for sure. Critics of the project seldom raised the no shoulders issue on that mile-long stretch out in the middle of the thing, but that and the absence of off and on ramps at Highway 20 were and are huge design flaws.
WHERE'S KAREN? Karen Horner, Mendo County Librarian and cultural services maestro, that is. We understand that Karen slipped outtahere unremarked, no presser, no slobbery farewell from the Supervisors. Did she jump or was she pushed? Whatever the circumstances of Kar's departure, she's landed in one piece in Cody, Wyoming.
ERNIE BRANSCOMB: I often think that the difference between modern perception of history and having seen it is phenomenal. There is nothing like being in the midst of history, seeing tasting, smelling, hearing and feeling history is just plain different than reading about it. Everybody points to the damage of the '55 and '64 floods, and the cause is often blamed on logging. Then, I agonize about the fact that most people just don't get it. Very few people even know about the worst windstorm in the last 150 years. The October 12, 1964 windstorm blew down millions and millions of board feet of timber. The timber lost in today's fires doesn't come close the timber lost in that blow-down.
Two years later we had the '64 flood in the middle of the major timber clean-up operation. The storm took out all of our infrastructure. Roads, power, phone, all gone. Getting access to food and medical care was a major emergency. The weather cleared after the flood and allowed transportation into the Garberville airport. That was a life saver, literally. If it were not for access by air many more people would have died.
With such a pressing transportation emergency, logging equipment was used to make access roads with no holds barred. Mud, rocks trees and brush went right into the river. Bridges were made from logs spanning creeks. The loggers that are cursed today for causing the '64 flood were actually the very heroes that saved our lives after the '64 flood. No talk of North Coast environmental damage should start without mentioning the October 12th, 1962 Columbus Day Windstorm.
After the '64 flood, the major damage to the salmon fishery was caused by cleaning the trees, brush, and log debris from the streams. The water holes and hiding places were removed by unwise people over the local's major objections. The unwise had college degrees.
I think that we all know the biggest problem to the environment and fisheries on the north coast is that we are living elbow to elbow, trying to squeeze babies in between us, and not honoring what we have learned from history.
October 1962: (source https://atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/Wind.pdf )
“The Columbus Day Storm By all accounts, the Columbus Day Storm was the most damaging windstorm to strike the Pacific Northwest in 150 years. An extensive area, stretching from northern California to southern British Columbia experienced hurricane-force winds, massive treefalls, and power outages. In Oregon and Washington, 46 died and 317 required hospitalization as a result of the storm. Fifteen billion board feet of timber (more than a year's annual cut) worth 750 million 1962 dollars were downed...”
I wrote a little bit about windstorms on my blog:
https://ernielb.blogspot.com/search?q=columbus+day+windstorm
GEORGE HOLLISTER WRITES: I remember the 1962 wind event. It blew over whole rows of windbreak trees, and buildings on the coast. I remember we had a 50 foot section of picket fence that was blown out of the ground, intact, and moved about 50 feet before is lay on the ground. There were boulders on Heeser Drive as a result of the giant waves that broke over the bluffs and on to the road. There is a good story from the people manning the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse, too. Our power was out in Comptche for a long time, it must have been weeks. Telephone service was knocked out as well. I was eight, and I remember there was no generator, and we kept perishable food in an ice chest. The ice must have come from Safeway in Fort Bragg. I don’t remember. There was an old cabin with a wood cookstove that we cooked on. Most of what we ate came from a can. Kerosene lamps were used for lighting. We continued to go to school, despite there being no electricity in either the Comptche School, or at Mendocino High.
It is worth noting the 1964 flood event, too. What it did to the Eel River should be a lesson to all who think that watershed can have long term structures placed in it or over it. Logging had nothing to do with what happened. What happened to the Eel is inherent.
THE JUBILATION greeting the revelations that Hunter Biden is your basic outta control type-guy comes mostly from the rightwing hoping to bring down his father. The Trumps, and Trumpians, are the very last people to celebrate given their own sins. And show me an American family that doesn't contain at least one Hunter Biden, and I'll show you a childless couple who lived to be a hundred. If the hapless Hunter weren't a Biden he'd be shuffling in and out of the Mendo County Courthouse with the rest of the local Bidens. (There are millions of us! Millions, I tell you!”) Not that I’d dare aspersions at the guy myself because, like most men, I have Hunter Biden tendencies, and I've shuffled in and out of the County Courthouse in an orange jumpsuit a few times. (Quick story that still makes me laugh. On one orange jumpsuit occasion they had me in the suit, complete with chains like I might go off in the courtroom, and here comes then-DA Susan Massini who, spotting me, exclaims, “Hi, Bruce, so nice to see you. How are you?” No, she wasn't being ironic.)
THE HUNTER BIDEN saga is just getting warmed up. And it's already a case study of media corruption in that as of Saturday only the rightwing wank media like the Daily Mail and New York Post are giving it significant attention, but there's more than enough there that given the revealed links to daddy-o that the NYT and Wolf Blitzer should be running it down. But so far, the lib media is either ignoring it all or saying stuff like, “The Russians again.”
MEANWHILE, the biggest accident in American history was in Georgia where he told the usual adoring mob, “Could you imagine if I lose? If I lose to the worst candidate in American history? My whole life, what am I going to do? Maybe I'll have to leave the country?”
JAMES MARMON on childhood memories: “My dad or stepdad, had a razor thin leather belt me and my three brothers were terrified of. I remember only getting it once. We were more afraid of our mom snitching us off than I was of him. She always demanded punishment, my dad had to comply or face terrible consequences.
THE GODDESS KNOWS I'm no Pelosi fan. My basic attitude is a plague on both political houses, and probably yours too, but as I understand the basic stimulus beef holding up the next round of mass help is that the Trumpers want it to include millions for the undeserving rich who got millions in the first round. Nance correctly wants all the money to go to the struggling, of whom there are thousands more every day. Of course it's nauseating to watch the food-secure on both ends of this discussion continue to take their long weekends while the food-insecure line up for food relief, many of them with children. A new stimulus package deal must be reached by Tuesday if Congress is to get it done by Election Day. The amount they're arguing over, by the way, is between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion, every dollar of it faith based but cash-good until it isn't.
DISTRICT 2 SUPERVISOR CANDIDATE, Mari Rodin, had privately circulated an email, which said in part, “Last week I learned I have cancer. I do not know what the future holds. But for the time being - through Election Day - I must focus all of my energy on my treatment and recovery. I do not take this decision lightly. It pains me to step back just when our momentum is reaching its peak.”
THEN, a couple of days later, she circulated a public email, which says in part, “Last week I learned I have cancer. I do not know what the future holds. But for the time being - through Election Day - I must focus all of my energy on my treatment and recovery. I do not take this decision lightly. It pains me to step back just when our momentum is reaching its peak.” … “Due to a recent cancer diagnosis, I am away from the campaign, focusing on my treatment and recovery. A deep, heartfelt thank you to the many volunteers and supporters who are continuing on with campaign activities. I am truly honored by your support and confidence in me.”
WHICH SEEMED ODD that Ms. Rodin would announce that although she's suspending herself from her campaign because she's being treated for cancer she wants her campaign to continue. But given that thousands of Mendolanders have already voted, and given that the choice between Ms. Rodin and Ms. Mulheren has nothing to do with the issues or being a supervisor, and given that both have served (Ms. M. is still serving) on the Ukiah City Council as their home town slides inexorably toward permanent hellscape, the election becomes more like the issue-free one you might remember from the 5th grade: I'm voting for Mo because I like her bicycle. I'm voting for Mari because she's inviting me to her birthday party. Anybody who has had political authority for Ukiah over the past twenty years has a lot to answer for, but this being Mendocino County where few people of means are held responsible for anything, and you are whatever you say you are, and County government having achieved a perfect entropy… Whomever is elected Supervisor will make no difference whatsoever.
WE UNDERSTAND Mendolib's herd bulls, Joe Tame Man and the little fella managing Mari Rodin's campaign, are unhappy with the UDJ's coverage of Ms. R's announcement that her campaign goes on without her. How anybody, even a learning-handicapped character like Tame Man, can misread Ms. Rodin's withdrawal statement is beyond me, but Mendolib seems especially frantic to get their gal, dead or alive, onto the Board of Supervisors to go along with their other guys, Silent Dan Gjerde, Glen McGourty (presumed victor in the 1st District), and John Haschak. No idea where Ted Williams stands in the Mendolib cosmology, but he seems to elude their cold, dead hands, fortunately for Mendo.
WAY BACK when there were still honest liberals, the Northcoast was represented by the Kennedy-esque, Clem Miller who died in a plane crash while campaigning for another term. Miller's opponent in that election was the Republican, Don Clausen, who managed to lose to Miller although Miller was dead. Clausen stayed in office for years until he was unseated by Democrat Doug Bosco, not that anyone could tell the diff between Clausen and ol’ Boxcorp, as he was known around the ava.
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] INTERDICTION RESUMING? Watch out everybody they’re really poking around a lot. Saw three other people pulled over today in the 101 Willits corridor. By Fish and Game at one of 'em. Vehicles open, contents shifted about, folks out of the car. 2 trucks. 1 car. Anybody waiting on a call, a visitor or box that's overdue. Heads up. (A second comment: Ah Laytonville through Ukiah, the good ol' gauntlet, drug profiling at its best.
[2] RE SATURDAY'S WOMEN'S MARCH IN GARBERVILLE: Garberville is no place to demonstrate that you want abortion legal, and, your local Healthcare organization, Southern Humboldt Community Hospital District, is strictly opposed to allowing or providing reproductive freedom, women’s health, or (don’t say the word) abortion.
SHCHD hates women, oddly, because SHCHD preferentially hires women, since women accept more abuse and will work for less money. SHCHD lacks diversity in hiring, discriminates against men, elders, persons of color, and persons with experience.
SHCHD in particular, and Garberville in general, regards women as a cheap labor source, a captive audience of patients, and, second class citizens.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump both feel that women are a convenience, that women’s bodies are for the pleasure of men, and that women are breeding animals, with few rights.
Both candidates would be happy to take away women’s right to vote, women’s right to reproductive freedom and reproductive health, and, in Garberville, men would prefer you barefoot and pregnant, bound and gagged.
Nice effort, by local women. I wonder if they fully understand the environment they are protesting, the situation that Humboldt County women exist within. I would have expected massive protest against Amy Barrett’s ascension to the Supreme Court, which I regard as a huge deception, and a definite step towards taking away women’s rights.
Women are witnessing the repeal of Feminism, the withdrawal of women’s rights and reproductive freedom, by a very screwed up President! Don’t start thinking that Biden is any better, since he is also a proven abuser of women…
[3] Women adopting double barreled married names is an affliction, a standard feature of feminist dumbness and inconvenience.
What happens in the next generations when smith-jones marries campbell-graham?
And in the next generation after that a four barreled name marries another four barreled name?
Stupid. And worsened by the trend of giving children as first names what were formerly – except among wasps announcing their pedigrees – surnames. So now it is boys called MacArthur and girls called Madison. Why the fuck?
And let’s compound that absurdity with people demanding bespoke pronunciations for otherwise perfectly standard names:
My brother taking me aside, “It is spelled Anna but she pronounces it Arna.”
Well, she may but I won’t. For me from now on she can be “Hey, you!”
These tidal waves of madness are apparently made up of millions of drops of idiocy.
[4] Thank God the election is in three weeks. Nobody knows what will happen after that. Here are some possibilities:
1. The Dems win the White House and the Senate, thus controlling everything. Look for a lot of crazy Dem political shenanigans. The Supreme Court gets packed with Dem lawyers. The Barr-Durham (B-D) Investigations get shut down.
2. The Dems win either the White House or Congress, but not both. Bi-partisan fighting insures nothing gets done.
3. Trump wins and Republicans re-capture the House and keep the Senate. Finally, we’ll see the real Trump. The Supreme Court remains conservative. B-D investigations continue and the seditionists get what’s coming to them.
4. The Republicans win the presidency or Congress, but not both. The same results as #2.
5. A Black Swan event or events occur. Many possibilities. Use your imagination.
[5] All people of good conscience must reject the currently promoted racist dogma of white shame, blame, guilt, and punishment (via reparations). This violates the American and Enlightenment principle that all people are individuals who bear responsibility for their own actions, not those of their ancestors or relatives. There are places on earth where tribal collective guilt and vengeance is practiced. The results are not good. Rwanda and Yugoslavia come to mind. One sees a common thread in the rhetoric of demagogues like Milosovic or Hitler. Tell your people they are victims, they’ve been cruelly and unjustly treated by those people over there – those others. Oh, but now it’s our turn to get even, to do to them what they did to us. So what if 200 years have passed; feel the pain like it happened today. It’s a small step from anti-white racism to singling out Jews as the focus of the problem. Many in the black community already preach and believe that Jews were the financiers of slavery, the ship captains, the plantation owners. The extent of those “facts” are disputed. But facts matter less and less in our info age. People believe what satisfies them, what feeds their hate. In short, I’m saying we must stop the insanity of tribalizing American society. Treat people as individuals. Wasn’t that the original goal of the civil rights movement, which has now evolved into a bizarre agenda of grabbing freebies and cultivating righteous hatred..
[6] What was Crazy Joe and his boy up to in those foreign climes? What normally attracts the attention of normally attentive people is the exchange of a lot of money with an unreasonable justification behind it. If you say that someone spent hundreds of thousands for a piece of construction equipment, and the buyer is a construction company operator, then such a transaction makes sense on the face of it. But when money exchanges hands, when a LOT of money exchanges hands, with flimsy-looking pretexts, then it’s natural to wonder wtf is going on, especially when the payer is domiciled in a notoriously corrupt regime and when the payee was a drug-taking, booze swilling ne-er-do-well, whose Daddy happens to have been Veep of the US of A. Is there a national interest in knowing all about this? Of course there is. What was the quid pro quo? What was Joe expected to do in return for this apparent largesse?
[7] Regarding co-morbidities and COVID:
Everyone has some body part that doesn’t work perfectly or has some functional weakness. That’s why we don’t live forever. Many of these imperfections are at a very subclinical level, so a person can live a full lifespan without any symptoms. But eventually that imperfection gets you.
COVID-19 is very good at attacking weaknesses and exacerbating them. In effect, everyone has co-morbidities. The average person has a healthy enough immune system such that the virus doesn’t get enough of a foothold to affect the inherent weakness. That’s why many victims only just don’t feel well as their symptom, or are asymptomatic.
Others, however, have obvious malfunctions. These people are the ones who get permanent organ damage or die. They suffer from diabetes or asthma or some such. Old persons especially have more malfunctions and/or obvious co-morbidities, so they die at a higher rate than apparently more healthy, younger people.
Just because you aren’t sickly or old, you still have major susceptibility to the virus. All the figures aren’t in yet because this disease has only affected humans for a year or so. People now 21 or 22, like college students may be asymptomatic or only get the sniffles, but remember, symptoms aren’t the disease itself. The virus may do a lot of subclinical damage to vital functions that aren’t yet detectable. Years later, a 55 year old man dies of kidney disease, never realizing his kidneys sustained subclinical damage 30 years earlier.
My point is that it is unwise, even foolhardy to minimize concern over catching Covid. As a matter of fact, other illnesses and infections may also affect the human body subclinically and cause an earlier death later in life; thus it is important to try to avoid close contact with sick people as much as possible.
[8] One of the biggest factors other than very old age is obesity. People who are obese tend to get much sicker at any age than others unless you have kidney disease or heart disease. I am 71 and have 25% lung capacity and asthma. The first time I got it was in February and didn’t realize it was covid until about a week later when the pandemic response team was in front of my building. I had all the symptoms but I was barely sick. I had very mild symptoms. I am just getting over it for the second time because I have so much trouble wearing a mask that I keep having to pull it off. The second time I got it was milder than the first time. My doctor has had me on Vitamin D and aspirin for a few years but both doctors stressed both Vitamin D and especially aspirin for Covid because this is not a lung disease it is a vascular disease. We don’t know whether this has long term effects. Herpes and Aids stay in your body. Everyone should be taking vitamin D and aspirin. People who are obese should be very careful about wearing masks and social distancing. Look what happened in the rose garden. Lots of people tested positive but the only two that had to go to the hospital were Trump and Cristy. both obese. And because of who they are they got the best medical care available.
ON LINE QUESTION of the week: “Out of all the crackheads in the world that Burisma could have hired for $186,000 per month, why did the most corrupt corporation in the Ukraine choose the vice president's son?”
Be First to Comment