MCT: Tuesday, October 27, 2020

• Very Dry
• SoCal Wildfires
• 1136 Cases
• Open Halloween
• Navarro Ducks
• Ballot Info
• Thirsty River
• Mayor Resigns
• Harvest Time
• General Trivia
• Caspar PO
• Gualala Highway
• Skate Park
• Lumber Store
• Uncle Festering
• Beach Buildings
• New California
• Mendo Rocks
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Happy Melania
• Elk Bluff
• Diluted Duck
• Coast Construction
• Dishonest Times
• Huckleberry Handshake
• Blank Pages
• Cat Portrait
• Comments
• San Antonio
• Green Vote
• Punching In
• Wokester Corral
• Soul Hurt
• Goat Reverie
• Found Object

A VERY DRY AIR MASS combined with breezy conditions will continue to produce locally critical fire weather through this afternoon. Frost and freezing temperatures will remain a concern in the interior valleys for the next few mornings. (NWS)

CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES FORCE 100,000 FROM HOMES IN ORANGE COUNTY

Two major out-of-control wildfires in Southern California have spurred mass evacuations and left two firefighters critically injured as the region faces more dangerous fire weather conditions Tuesday. 

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foxnews.com/us/california-wildfire-orange-county-silverado-fire-evacuation-irvine-yorba-linda-firefighters

SEVEN MORE COVID CASES in Mendocino County on Monday, bringing total to 1136. One new hospitalization.

KATRINA BARTOLOMIE SEZ: “The Mendocino County Elections Office will be open this Saturday, October 31 from 9am to 3pm to help voters. We will be answering your phone calls, issuing ballots, accepting your voted ballots and allowing voters to vote in our office. If you have any questions please call our office at 707 234-6819.”

DUCKS ON THE NAVARRO (photos by Dick Whetstone)

ELECTION DAY – POLLING LOCATIONS

This election is the kind of election we have never seen before. Polling places will not be what we are use to be. VOTERS who plan to vote at the polls this year, should bring their mail (vote-by-mail) ballot and envelope with them. If you arrive at the polls without your vote-by-mail ballot and envelope, you will have to vote provisionally, which requires filling out additional forms and placing the ballot in a “Special Pink” (Provisional) envelope that is processed separately from regular ballots. If you are not registered to vote, you can register at the polls on Election Day and vote provisionally. 

If you haven’t received your ballot in the mail, please call us and we will send you a replacement ballot. Please call 707 234-6819 for a replacement ballot. 

Polling Locations are open on Election Day Only – The Drop Box Locations at the City of Willits, City of Fort Bragg, the City of Point Arena and the County Admin Building in Ukiah are available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week; the Boonville Fairgrounds Office is open Monday through Friday from 9 am to 4 pm. 

Have you received your mail-in ballot yet? If not, PLEASE call the Elections office at 707 234-6819, we will gladly send you a replacement, or come into our office at 501 Low Gap Rd., Room 1020 Ukiah. 

For questions or additional information please contact the Election / County Clerk’s Office by calling 707 234-6819. 

MARSHALL NEWMAN CONFIRMS:

Horrifying. Not just below the 69-year minimum, but only about 30% of that minimum.

MAYOR WILLIAM V. LEE ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

Mayor William V. Lee, who has been a member of the Fort Bragg City Council since winning a seat on the Council in November 2016, has announced his resignation effective December 31, 2020. In a letter to Fort Bragg residents, Mayor Lee stated: 

To my friends and neighbors of the City of Fort Bragg

With deep respect and admiration to all the great people of Fort Bragg, I announce my resignation as your elected official to the City Council effective 11:59 pm, December 31, 2020. One of the great honors in my life has been serving you on the City Council for the past four years. I am humbled by the trust and confidence you’ve demonstrated to me and the support of thousands of you on our journey to make our community a much better place to live and to raise our families together. You are hard-working, dedicated people looking for the best life for all of us that are lucky enough to call this amazing coastline home. We are faced with many challenges right now and I am sure we will all emerge stronger and more resilient together. 

I am proud that we have achieved a balanced budget the past few years that we are guided with strong leadership on the Council and a talented City Manager, a great City Hall staff and a very well- trained police force. The future of our City looks bright, and working together we can accomplish many of our goals and wishes for the next generation to follow us. 

I have been offered a new position out of town, and after much reflection, I accepted the offer as a career advancement. This was certainly not an easy decision to make with all my obligations to the City, to the Coast Hospital and to my faith community as president of the Parish Council of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church. After prayer and meditation, I decided to make this transition now. I think this is the best decision for me and for my family, and I ask for your prayers and good wishes. Denis and I will maintain our home here in Fort Bragg so we will continue to be a part of this community and remain active in our social circles and our volunteer activities. 

Being a public servant is one of the great vocations in our society and I take that responsibility seriously and with a focused desire to improve our community to the best of my ability. The hundreds and hundreds of hours of reading and preparation were all worth it to ensure I made the best decisions I could to make life better for our people. I must say the most difficult part of my public service was the personal attacks on me when all I tried to do was make the best decisions I could at the time. Our political discourse is poisoned by a few in our community intent on destroying people’s reputation and not on creating better solutions for our citizens. Please be kind to one another. It’s totally OK to disagree, but let’s treat each other with respect and in a spirit of cooperation and compromise for the greater good. 

I ask God for abundant blessings on you, your families and all the people of this wonderful town. 

Will Lee, Mayor 

During this year’s nomination period, only two candidates qualified for the two available Council seats. At a special meeting on August 13, the City Council voted to cancel the November 3, 2020 general municipal election, and William Lee was appointed to a new four-year term on the City Council by a unanimous vote (with Lee recusing). Vice Mayor Bernie Norvell was also appointed to another four-year term. 

On Monday, December 14, 2020, Bernie Norvell and Will Lee will take the oath of office and a vote will be held to select a new Mayor and Vice Mayor. 

The City Council will have sixty days from the date of the vacancy, or by March 1, 2021, to either (a) appoint someone to serve the first two years of the remainder of Lee’s four-year term, with an election in November 2022 to determine who will complete the remaining two years of Mayor Lee’s term, or (b) call a special election to elect someone to fill the vacancy through the end of his term in November 2024. Conducting a special election would cost approximately $15,000. 

(Fort Bragg City Presser)

NIGHT LIGHT OF THE NORTH COAST: ’Tis the Harvest Season

by David Wilson

The girls are all grown up, beautiful young blossoms in their prime. They’ve overcome tremendous obstacles in their young lives, and now they are ready spread their wings and change the world. Where did the time go? Harvest season has arrived in the Emerald Triangle.

From seedlings, you nursed them and protected them. You watched as their genders showed. You sent the boys off to boarding school, hopefully before any mischief occurred — boys and girls are trouble when mixed together. Unwanted things happen. Unexpected seeds will completely derail a young life. 

You fed and nurtured them as they grew, guiding them through each new challenge. Like a mountain lion protecting her young, you held predators at bay. You trapped mice and rats, and your heart hurt when you lost girls to them anyway. You fenced out the deer, hoping it would also keep the wild pigs from rooting up your babies. Sometimes it didn’t work. 

You protected their tender roots from the subterranean threats of gophers and moles with sonic deterrent spikes, and found that they aren’t 100% effective. You supported them with netting or with ties when their branches became long and the winds picked up. When the rains came, your redoubled efforts kept most of the sopping bud-laden branches from breaking. You sprayed the girls with expensive organic compounds to keep the mildew off… but watched as the devastating mold spotted here and there anyway.

Through it all, you stayed awake at night worrying about navigating the complicated bureaucratic details of the legal cannabis industry, and about whether you would lose the farm to it if you weren’t perfect. You worried about people coming to rip you off. And would there be enough water in these years of drought? Would you have to order water trucked to you just to get by? What about the crazy wildfire season roulette wheel, would a disaster land on you? Will insurance even cover the farm from wildfire next year?

There’s more work for you as you prepare to send your girls out into the world, maybe into the medical profession, or perhaps recreation, but you find yourself already looking to the challenges of next year...

(To keep abreast of David Wilson’s most current photography or purchase a print, visit or contact him at his website mindscapefx.com or follow him on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx and on Twitter @davidwilson_mfx .)

AV VILLAGE GENERAL TRIVIA with the Coordinator

Tuesday October 27th, 4:30 to 5:30 PM

Join us for General Trivia with the AV Village Coordinator and have a little fun and learn some new useful facts?!

Please RSVP with the coordinator so we can get an idea of attendance, thank you.

Anderson Valley is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: General Trivia with the AV Village Coordinator

Time: Oct 27, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 434 337 6734

Passcode: avv

One tap mobile

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CAN YOU IMAGINE replacing Gualala's 22-foot wide Main Street with a four-lane, 64-foot-wide highway like the illustration below? That's exactly what a vocal group chose at last October's Town Hall. Now even Caltrans think that looks too "urban," and they want your input. (The illustration is based on the actual Caltrans specifications.)

Over 650 people who love Gualala have signed a petition asking Caltrans to scale back the project and follow the Gualala Town Plan's requirement for a narrower, three-lane right-of-way. That will allow safer turns and will even interim parking where needed (like at the Surf Center). The Gualala MAC also advised Caltrans to go scale back to 3 lanes.

Please join your neighbors and make your voice heard. It's as easy as 1-2-3:

1. SIGN the petition at Change.org/SaveGualala. (You can also make a comment there.)

2. WRITE to Bonnie.Kuhn@dot.ca.gov and tell Caltrans you want to be part of the virtual meeting about Gualala's highway. (You MUST ask to attend!). It's tentatively set for Nov. 12th. You can also ask to participate by mail, and you can tell her what you think.

3. "FOLLOW" Save Gualala to stay up on any changes.

Want to help? Join Save Gualala. It's free. Just send your info to SaveGualala@gmail.com

A FORT BRAGG READER ASKS: "Does anyone else think it might be a good idea to close the skate park in Fort Bragg? I love that my son and his friends have a safe place to hang out but every time I've gone there since Covid no one is ever wearing a mask. There was about 17 youth there yesterday of all ages and no mask wearing. I didn't see any adults around, maybe they were sitting in their cars? No one social distancing in the park...

I think the way things are going it might be a good pre-emptive move. Yes, it's sad to think of it not being available to our youth but unless there is some kind of monitoring it is a transmission risk. People come from Ukiah to skate there too which makes it even more of a possibility that it could be an outbreak location."

TO DEFUND OR NOT TO DEFUND?

by Bernie Norvell, Fort Bragg City Councilmember

On October 19th I was invited to the Sheriff station to attend the formal transition of Sgt. Comer of the sheriff's office to the rank of lieutenant and regional commander on the coast. Several Deputies, the Sheriff, and the Undersheriff as well as several county staff including Supervisor Dan Gjerde and a representative from the DA’s office attended along with several staff from city hall, including the City Manager and Council Member Albin-Smith. The event was held in the parking lot to accommodate social distancing but befitting the blue-collar attitude and work ethic of coastal and county law enforcement. 

For me it was a great representation of public safety supporting each other and acknowledging the well-deserved promotion of one of our local Deputies. This is a move that makes us better.

After a little over an hour, everyone dispersed back to work. 

A few hours later our community received a Nixle alert to shelter in place and I was reminded how important our men and women of law enforcement are to our community. An armed and dangerous suspect was on the run in one of our neighborhoods. First thought, who should I call to check on? Then… I hope they catch the suspect. That brings us to the “THEY,” the ones who get the call to protect us. I imagined everyone I saw and spoke with that morning in the Sheriff's Office parking lot, feeling grateful they were there for us and reminding myself they sign up for this. So, when I hear “defund the police” my first reaction is, What? Are we then going to trust and expect the community to police itself? That’s a laugher. How many community members would have dropped what they were doing to go out to meet an armed assailant on a multi-state rampage the way Deputy Sheriff Ricky Del Fiorentino did six years ago. 

Then it hit me, this is a learning opportunity! Let's talk about what we want to defund. Some obvious examples would result from that defunding: law enforcement would not be the first call to deal with mental health calamities, same for domestic arguments, or illegal camping or problems with transients. Throw in the occasional civil issue of neighbor or family disputes. So who is currently available to answer these calls any time after five pm during weekdays or anytime on weekends. 911, dispatch? Who should be available to answer these calls or who is getting paid to do so? I'm not sure you will find a Police Chief or Sheriff who thinks their departments should be the first call. Perhaps a civil standby or support group. Possibly, but not the ones knocking on the door. I was told by a law enforcement officer, “When the neighbor calls because Uncle Fester is sitting on the porch naked playing in the litter box, the first person there should not be wearing a badge and a gun.” A rough analogy maybe but to the point. By the way, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. But guess who gets the phone call? If it's after 5 pm or a weekend there is only one answer. These law enforcement departments are not only the ones who should not be dealing with these calls, they already aren’t getting paid for it. So, nothing to defund here. The need for social services, unfortunately, does not occur only during regular business hours. Certainly not today during shelter in place (SIP) times. Suicides are up 40% in the county over the last seven months. When we look at how our current system is structured, we may find that law enforcement is the default call, not by choice. However, in our real world, the professionals who are trained and paid to handle the non-criminal calls, like Uncle Fester, are often called after the fact (meaning after law enforcement) to come in and evaluate. 

We want de-escalation in the Uncle Fester situations. We all agree he shouldn’t be headed to jail, but we are not putting the correct social service workers in first. The current system is not working and most if not all would agree with that assessment. If the plan is to take money away from law enforcement because we shouldn’t be paying them to do the social work, I have good news for you, we aren’t. They do it by default. 

So, does law enforcement need more money to do their jobs? I don’t know. The sheriff makes a pretty good argument for it. I am certain giving them less will not solve any of our problems. Perhaps we should take a harder look at who we are paying to do what.

A READER WRITES: County staff has distributed the below letter. Is anyone taking odds on the chance that the California legislature and the US Congress will approve?

The State of New California

Mendocino County

September 22, 2020

To: Whom it May Concern,

Subject: Notification of Presentment and Recognition

The Citizens of New California State are issuing this Notification of Presentment and Recognition of the New California State. We, the citizens of New California State, are determined to live under a State Government in the United States of America and under the Constitution of the United States of America.

New California Declaration of Independence of January 15, 2018 states:

"Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. When a long train of abuses and acts to seize and hold the people's power without legal authority and pursuing invariably the same Object that clearly demonstrates a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Our Vision: A representative government for citizens adhering to the United States Constitution

Our Mission: Formation of New California State

Statement of Intent: The Citizens of New California have decided to remedy the abuse of power by the government of California by exercising their right to form a new state provided in United States Constitution Article IV Sections 3 and Section 4.

United States Constitution Article IV Sections 3: "New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress." United States Constitution Article IV Sections 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence."

New California State Representative

ED NOTES

TRUMP: “Joe Biden called me George yesterday. Couldn't remember my name. Got some help from the anchor to get him through the interview. The Fake News Cartel is working overtime to cover it up!” Biden was addressing a virtual concert Sunday night when he said: “Four more years of George, er, George, er, he — we're going to find ourselves in a position where, if Trump gets elected, we're going to be in a different world.”

WE'RE ALREADY in a different world of rolling unaddressed catastrophes, and the Democrats are the largest cargo cult ever in believing that Biden is the man to right the good ship America. Something has finally snapped. Trump has accelerated the ongoing bipartisan disaster, and he just may have tipped it over the edge into full-on chaos commencing November 4th, especially if he magically manages to beat Biden.

MEANWHILE, in Boonville, where I have the early shift at Boonville's beloved weekly, it was still dark when I walked out to the office, suddenly halting in mid-shuffle by a crouched form in my driveway, maybe twenty yards from me. I froze. And stared, trying to assess the figure for danger quotient. Should I silently retreat for my shotgun or call out, “WTF, dude?” Or just wait for him to finish whatever the hell he was doing. I stared and assessed until I saw him making a smoothing motion and realized he was petting my cat, Alice, named after the late Alice Choteau of Fort Bragg, and not really my cat anyway since it had simply shown up for dinner one night and never left. I walked up to the guy and, suddenly recognizing him from somewhere, I said, “Good morning, wazzup?” (In old age I find myself lapsing into dude-speak with younger people as if they're beyond conventional communication, an arrogant, even rude assumption, but there it is. He replied as if there was nothing odd about wandering in off the highway at 4am to pet a cat, and even less odd to be chatting with the property owner at a ghastly hour. “This is a very nice cat,” the young man said. “I just love him.” I regretted saying, “He's a she” the moment I said it, not knowing how unhinged the kid was, but he seemed, in his stringy-haired dishevelment, harmless. A dangerous psycho wouldn't be wandering around in the pre-dawn cozying up to strange cats. And then I remembered where I'd seen him. He'd wandered in here one afternoon months ago to talk to Alice the Cat. And here he was again. It occurred to me that he'd probably been released from the County Jail at a little past midnight, which the Jail does with lots of catch of the day types in order to bill the state for a full day of incarceration. “You don't mind, do you?” he asked me. “No, I don't mind if Alice doesn't,” I said. He asked me if I could “help” him get something to eat. “You mean like hold your fork?” He said, “Like a coupla bucks?” He clearly wasn't nuts. I reached into my pocket for a coupla bucks. “Thank you,” he said, “and thank you for sharing your cat?” And he walked off into the dark toward Mendocino.

MONDAY MORNING’S light frost caught me, and probably you, unprepared, in my case unprepared to protect my two-year-old poinsettia. As president and sole member of the Poinsettia Rescue Society, formed thirty years ago when I belatedly noticed that millions of the brilliant plants were thrown away after Christmas, I began collecting them, re-potting them, nurturing them, bringing them inside when it got cold. They’re brilliant plants, more attractive to me in their multiplicities of green than they are blushed red or, worse, anemic pink and white. So, I had a two-year beaut out in front of the office, left it out over the weekend expecting cool but not frigid overnights, and… … This morning it’s fairly shrieking, “You betrayed me! My deep green leaves are curling and soon I’ll be one more exploited, abandoned poinsettia…”

A READER WRITES: "I don't recall that you have posted the URL for checking to see if your ballot has been received. We put our ballots in the ballot box at PA city hall so we were pretty well assured that our ballots made it to the election department but I checked anyway. I suppose that the people who put their ballots in the mail would like to know if their ballots made it to their destination. 

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/assessor-county-clerk-recorder-elections/elections/vote-by-mail-absentee-status

Do you know if Mendo is going to take forever to count the votes again this go around?" 

ED NOTE: Over the years, the final count has taken a long time to tally, around a month. But the prelim count release is usually a pretty accurate guide to how it's all going to go.

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 26, 2020

ANDRU CAMPBELL, Ukiah. Community supervision violation.

RICHARD FELIZ JR., Redwood Valley. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

MICHAEL FREEMAN JR. Covelo. Protective order violation.

OSVALDO GARNICA, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

RAMON MACIEL, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JERMAINE RAMSEY, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, urinating in public.

CASEY RAY, Willits. Driving without license, probation revocation.

JAIME RIVERA, Stockton/Ukiah. Paraphernalia, false ID, county parole violation.

ERYCKA SMITH, Willits. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury.

WHAT ABOUT MELANIA?

To the Editor:

Ever since the Republican convention Melania Trump has seemed happier than at any point since Election Day 2016. I think I know why. According to Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan's book "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump," Ms. Trump didn't move into the White House until June 2017, five months after her husband moved in, because she was renegotiating her prenuptial agreement with Mr. Trump to ensure that her son Barron would have equal footing with Mr. Trump's other kids in Mr. Trump's will.

But I think her new prenup went beyond that. I think Mr. and Ms. made another agreement: Ms. Trump would move into the White House and pretend to have a real relationship with her husband until after the 2020 election, and then she would be given a financial settlement and would be free to do as she pleased. That would account for Ms. Trump's newfound happiness, because she sees the light at the end of a very dark tunnel - she's almost there, almost free of a man for whom she feels little if any fondness. Don't expect Ms. Trump to remain in the White House long after the election.

If Ms. Trump did in fact renegotiate her prenup, she was smart to do so. But if she was really smart, she negotiated a lump-sum payment, not any kind of alimony or child support to be paid out over time, as Mr. Trump, with $400 million in debts, may be in no financial position to honor any such long-term commitment. And if Ms. Trump was exceptionally smart, she had Mr. Trump put the entire amount of such a lump-sum settlement in an escrow account, thus giving the ever-waffling Mr. Trump no opportunity to renege.

I would like to wish Ms. Trump well, but after the contempt she has shown for the children her husband locked in cages on the Mexican border, I have lost all sympathy for the woman who has had to play real wife for three and a half years. She seems to have no more empathy for the less fortunate than her husband does. In that sense, it's too bad their marriage exists only on paper, as they seem well suited for each other.

Lawrence Reichard 

Belfast, Maine

OSCILLOCOCCINUM FOR FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS

On 10/25/2020 1:38 PM, Beverly Smith wrote:

Oscillococcinum (nickname, Oscillo: Os sil' loh) homeopathic remedy that has made it mainstream for years because of its effectiveness...and without potential side effects from shots...

---

Beverly, the reason homeopathy doesn't have side effects is that it has no effects at all. It's a placebo treatment. Unless you're allergic to the real vaccine, which only one out of 750,000 people is, there are no side effects to that either but once vaccinated you're way less likely to catch and spread the flu.

Here, question: What is the active ingredient in Oscillococcinum?

Answer: Oscillosoccinum's active ingredient is "anas barbaiae hepatis et cordis extractum 200CK," which means it is made by diluting a bit of duck heart and duck liver repeatedly until not even a single molecule of duck heart or duck liver remains in an entire crate of bottles of the actual pills.

That's why it's okay for vegetarians and Buddhists to swallow it. There's no duck, active or inactive, in it at all. It's 100-percent duck-free. You absorb more of the so-called active ingredient by simply breathing the air of a planet that has ducks on it somewhere, than you get by buying and eating oscillococcinum.

Sugar-free cough drops are cheaper than magical snake oil (or the ghost of a duck heart) and solve a tickly throat. Hot tea is also good.

— Marco McClean

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Some expressions of untruth are painless. The 9-11 terrorists came through Canada. Right? Wrong. But if you’re American, then it’s true because such luminaries as John McCain and Janet Napolitano said so, and they must know. Right? Wrong. But they didn’t suffer by saying so and everyone has by now forgotten they even said it. 

The vast diminution of American working class income and employment is the result of technology. Right? Every economist worth his salt will tell you this, every coastal intellectual who deigns to look at the issue will tell you. Or, if it’s not that, then it’s unfair Chinese trade practises to blame. See, both explanations exonerate the real culprits, those that sold-out that class of people commonly regarded as deplorable. 

Back to the question; why not? Why not let someone else do your thinking for you? Just this, belief in things that aren’t so is inconsistent with survival. It’s that simple. And ideologies that pervert history, that lie, that bend and shape what happened, or altogether ignore facets of it, is not innocuous. It’s like Orwell said, the truth still stands right behind you. Lying about events doesn’t change them.

So what’s the way forward in this Age of Ideology, that is to say, this Era of Lies? Think for yourself. Trust your own eyes and ears and powers of reason. Two plus two equals four, it will always equal four no matter the power and “expertise” arrayed against it. 

BLANK PAGES

by Gil Partington

On Wednesday, Donald Trump tweeted a series of photographs with the caption: ‘Kayleigh McEnany presenting Lesley Stahl with some of the many things we’ve done for Healthcare.’ The pictures showed his press secretary handing some papers and a hefty volume to the 60 Minutes reporter, just before an interview which the president cut short acrimoniously. 

As many Twitter users were quick to point out, one of the images showed Stahl opening the book and peering inside at an apparently blank page. Had the book been mocked up for the purposes of the interview, embodying not only the lack of an actual health policy, but also the fakery and pretence at the heart of the administration? Others responded that the absence of text proved nothing, since it could have been a flyleaf or title page: “Haven’t you ever read a book?”

It wouldn’t be the first time that Trump has used blank pages for rhetorical effect. At a press conference in 2017, he announced he had handed over the management of his businesses to his sons to avoid any conflict of interest, gesturing to a table full of unlabelled manila folders containing what looked very much like empty sheets of paper (journalists weren’t allowed to open the folders). At another photo opportunity, he posed in front of teetering stacks of blank printer paper, wrapped in red tape, representing the unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork he intended to cut back. More recently, he’s been caught out signing blank sheets for the cameras, pretending to work while in hospital. If Trump’s style of presidency belongs to the screen age of social media, it has often tried to deploy paper as a physical guarantor of old-fashioned seriousness.

But if the intention in giving the giant book to Stahl was to make Trump’s frequently promised but ever elusive healthcare plan seem more concrete, it had the opposite effect, serving only to complicate the layers of fakery and reality. If the book was blank, did that mean it was simply a dummy, a prop created for the cameras? Did it mean it wasn’t a real book at all? 

It’s an intriguing question. At the beginning of Jean Cocteau’s Orpheé (1949), the protagonist leafs derisively through a hot new literary journal, giving viewers a sight of its pages, which are entirely blank. The punchline is its title: Nudisme. The book is doubly unreal: both a film prop and a blank volume. Except that you can now buy a copy of Nudisme. The American artist Jason Fulford has published a careful facsimile of it, which you can either leave blank, or use as a notebook. It’s either more real (you can hold it in your hands) or less, since it’s a copy of a fake book. Take your pick.

Tristram Shandy has a blank page (as well as a solid black page and a marbled page) on which Sterne encourages his readers to “paint” the sensuous Widow Wadman “to your own mind ... Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which Malice will not blacken, and which Ignorance cannot misrepresent.” 

Victor David Dinnerstein’s The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew (1969) used the blank page for political satire. In 1976, George Maciunas, the co-ordinator of the Fluxus movement, produced Flux Paper Events, 16 blank pages whose ripped, stained condition told a story about what had happened to them. In 1998, the Dutch artist Hans Bossman made a Newspaper without News as relief from the onslaught of printed information. In Richard Kostelanetz’s Tabula Rasa: A Constructivist Novel (1978), the narrative consists of “the space of the printed page and the time it takes the reader to turn from one page to the next.” 

But Trump’s ‘healthcare plan’ may be closest to The Condensed History of Nothing (1970) by the Canadian poets bpNichol and David Aylwood, whose non-existent narrative corresponds to its subject matter. It’s a real book, it just doesn’t have any content.

(London Review of Books)

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] It’s only fair that in The Greatest Nation on Earth that is being kept alive by fake money conjuring and ongoing institutionalized corruption that we should have our political parties joining along in all the fun.

The Greatest Nation on Earth teaches its young that it is the best and greatest of all things. Well, as is abundantly clear to anyone who actually cares to look, ineptitude and corruption is on that list as well. Serving as a Great City on the Hill and Shining Example to the World of how being privileged with a great land mass and great natural resources and people who built great factories and railroads from empty prairie lands and sand dunes along lakes is no guarantee of survival or prosperity when internal rot fully takes over. We shouldn’t have worried so much about those nasty Sputnik launchers. We should have been paying much greater attention to the decay from within. A decay of institutions in many forms and in personal conduct and character. We may not be the Titanic but we might be like the poor souls who realize that the plane they’re on is going down, the pilot can’t gain back control and likely doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway, and the solid nasty ground is getting ever closer in our uncontrolled descent.

The Bidens are a mess. They – and many others – are poster children for our times and our era.

[2] When you are standing atop the gallows with a noose around your neck the best you can hope for is that it is a new rope. 

Did you go along to get along your whole life?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Are you OK with holding the world’s population hostage with the threat of being “bombed back to the middle ages” and pissed off about the Iranian hostage incident?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Did you ever speak the phrase “creative destruction” in glowing terms?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Do you believe your DNA is radically different to that of a Bonobo?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Do you still use Facebook for any purpose”

Do you believe Oliver North is a noble and honorable purveyor of the truth?

Do you believe that Sarah Palin brought a valuable truth or insight into the United States political discussion?

Fifty six years after the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication do you still believe you have been told the truth about U.S. foreign policy?

Do you feel that Quantum Mechanics is B.S.?

no need to repeat the obvious

Luckily my name is not everyone, I am not worried.

Look!….. it’s mourning in America

BridgeUnderConstruction

[3] I remember posting here in 2016 that Hillary was going to win (I wasn’t happy about that), so my track record in elections isn’t good. All I know is that no matter who wins, we will not be happy with the near- and intermediate- term results.

Justice is just a human construct. The universe doesn’t care about justice, IMO. Stars explode and annihilate entire species without warning; space rocks slam into the Earth and dinosaurs die; dark energy pervades the universe such that it eventually suffers a heat death. That’s not justice.

So whatever happens in and after the election happens. Apparently there’s no logic nor fairness to it. Let’s discuss it after November 3rd.

In the meantime, buy food and other necessities and hope for the best.

[4] So long as half the country thinks that the Democratic Party provides a valid and valuable public service, Deep State actors who act on behalf of monied interests have the political cover they need. 

So, no worries for Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper and their ilk, they stand straight and tall, real marines all of them, because in the estimation of the fools that vote status quo they are the best of the best of the best, patriots one and all, fighting for what’s just and right, in defense of Democracy and the Constitution of the United States of America.

What a joke. It’s hard to believe that so many people are so delusional, especially racial minorities – the most stalwart Democrat voters – who really think the Democrats act in the interest of the downtrodden when the opposite is true. How long will it take before these people see what’s right under their noses? 

I was just reading some of Orwell’s stuff on the nature of British society, and in certain passages he refers to monied interests and to permanent members of the governing bureaucracy and the military who he sez would rebel if real economic and democratic reforms were enacted, in other words the Deep State, such as it existed at the time. And what we’ve seen is that very same rebellion in the United States at the election of Donald Trump by that very same class of people that Orwell was talking about.

Why so? Not that Trump threatened to reform governing institutions, but rather he threatened existing economic and trade and investment arrangements, that is, he spoke in favor of the interests of the American working class, those formerly employed in that huge swathe of America that used to be home to vast industrial operations that have been moved to China and Mexico and other places to the great detriment of those millions of American workers.

Of course Trump also spoke in favor of America’s interest generally, something not done in polite and enlightened society where talk of national interest is regarded as retrograde, redolent of past times when gays and Blacks were persecuted and moms were under the thumb of abusive and authoritarian husbands. 

See, depictions as in Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet you see were made-for-TV propaganda designed to distract from the oppressive reality of everyday life. This is according to a certain set of academics and ideologues. 

But I was there and I saw up close when Dad had a job and Mom could depend on him and could stay home and take care of us. And there were many, many millions just like me. Were things better for most of us back then? You bet they were. Have things gone to shit since then? You bet they have. And the Democrats were NO less guilty in what took place than their political counterparts. 

[5] NOW, WHEN/IF BIDEN LOSES or has the election stolen, I would like to point out just a few of the reasons that it’s not my fault or Russia’s or Ralph Nader’s or the Green Party’s.

1) There is no evidence that Russia has had any influence over the 2020 (or 2016) U.S. election. (But please do send me hundreds of angry evidence-free denunciations of the supposed lunacy of saying so.) (I would much rather you blame me than Russia because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.)

2) The Green Party got a teeny tiny bit of the vote and probably gained Biden as many votes in Maine and places that have ranked choice voting as it cost him elsewhere, and is the most likely party to challenge any of Trump’s election-related crimes.

3) I supported Bernie.

4) I didn’t advise campaigning on a promise to keep fracking. I didn’t even pretend that campaign was a mistake driven by ignorance of polling rather than subservience to funders.

5) I didn’t declare “The Party c’est moi!” and run screaming from every popular position.

6) I live in a non-swing state.

7) The notion that I decided the election through my failure to push scheme #2 above aggressively enough is exposed by my utter inability to advance scheme #1.

8) I didn’t create the electoral college — I’m trying to abolish it.

9) I don’t run the corporate media outlets that bow before Trump — I’m trying to break them up and regulate them.

10) I didn’t tolerate Trump’s hateful instigation of violence and intimidation. I’ve been trying to get him impeached, removed, and prosecuted for it since before his first inauguration — but a certain political party preferred a bunch of dangerous lies about Russia and a Ukraine story that made their own guy look bad.

11) I didn’t lie about voting by mail, strip names off rolls, create long lines, or utilize unverifiable machines and scanners. That was your elected officials.

12) I didn’t kneel down and let Trump put a George W. Bush election thief on the Supreme Court. I proposed impeaching Trump for a legitimate offense from the long list of indisputable public outrages, and forcing the Senate to deal with it. Now, if you want to spend the next couple of weeks telling everyone for the 10 millionth time to vote for Biden, knock yourself out. I’ve had a job doing that for months. – David Swanson

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LEFT SOLIDARITY?

by Howie Hawkins

In 2004, a number of prominent progressives issued statements calling on people to vote for Democrat John Kerry in the close states and the Green Party candidate in the so-called safe states where the outcome would not be close. In 2020, many of these same people have moved further to the right and call for a vote for Biden without any support for a Green vote in the so-called safe states.

In 40 states, the vote for the Green presidential ticket determines whether the Green Party retains or gains ballot line for the next election cycle. In most states, it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, or 5%. But there is no support for the Green Party this year from these progressives. What happened to left solidarity?

They have abandoned the idea that the best way for the left to fight the right is to build and fight with its own independent strength, advancing its own program under its own banner against two-capitalist-party system of corporate rule. Instead, they have responded to the rise of Trump by shifting to the right with him, telling the independent left to silence and disarm itself and back Biden, a man who would fit comfortably into the center-right parties of Europe.

Reliance on the lesser evil has historically led to greater evils. In the classic case, instead of running their own candidate for German president on 1932, the largest party, the Social Democrats, supported the conservative Paul von Hindenberg as the lesser evil to Hitler. Von Hindenberg won and appointed Hitler to the Chancellorship. The Communists ran their own candidate in the most sectarian way imaginable, saying the Social Democrats were the “social-fascist main enemy” and “after Hitler it’s our turn.” That was a case where left solidarity against the fascist threat instead of relying on conservatives to stop the fascists. Had the socialists and communists formed a left united front, they would have easily outpolled the rightwing parties.

The result of progressives consistently settling for the Democrats as the lesser evil has created a political dynamic has been moving US politics to the right for decades. The soft-right Democrats ignore progressive demands they pose no threat of taking their votes elsewhere. Instead, they adapt to the hard-right Republicans. Bill Clinton called it “triangulation.” Joe Biden calls it “working across the aisle.”

Meanwhile, the progressives in the Democratic Party are accommodating to Biden’s politics. Bernie Sanders is now for Medicare for All over 55 years old with a public option for the rest. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the Green New Deal slogan from the Greens and diluted the content in the non-binding resolution for a Green New Deal by dropping the essential immediate demand for a ban on fracking and new fossil fuel infrastructure, eliminating the rapid phase-out of nuclear power, removing the deep cuts in military spending to help fund the program, and extending the deadline for zero carbon emissions from 2030 to 2050. The words Green New Deal were not mentioned at the Democratic convention, in the Sanders-Biden Unity Task Force recommendations on climate, or in the Democratic Platform, which is pro fossil fuels and, for the first time in 50 years, pro nuclear.

There will be no Medicare for All or Green New Deal from the Democrats, let alone a retreat from military bloat, wars, and coups abroad. But these progressives counsel people to vote for them everywhere, which tells the Democrats to take them for granted because posed no threat to vote for the Greens anywhere.

I don’t support a safe states strategy. Every state is a battleground for the Green Party. The gas industry is fracking the hell out of battleground states Pennsylvania and Ohio where the ducking Democrats join the retrograde Republicans lending no support to the anti-fracking movement. Greens, not the Democrats, are fighting the expansion of the Enbridge oil pipelines that take Alberta tar sands oil and Bakken fracked oil across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota on to oil refineries. In every state, Greens are taking on Democratic machines in the cities, and real estate industry that finances them, when we fight for affordable housing and against the brutality of police forces that do what the Democrats in the cities designed them to do, which is to keep downscale people, particularly Black people, down and out of upscale communities. They are set up to police the New Jim Crow lines of school district and municipal boundaries that segregate us by race and class.

We should all be concerned about the voter suppression activities of Trump and the Republicans. But Greens know from bitter experience that we should also be concerned about voter suppression in the form of party suppression by the Democrats. The Democrats were able to knock the Greens off the ballot in Montana, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania where the Green petitions had two to three times the required signatures, which was difficult to do in the Covid lockdown. But the Democrats are also legislating party suppression. For example, in New York the Democrats rammed through a law attached to the state budget bill in April while attention was focused on the pandemic that triples the number of votes the Greens need to keep their ballot line. Only Nader for president in 2000 and me in 2014 for governor ever got that many votes as a Green candidate in New York. If we lose the ballot line, we will need 45,000 good signatures – triple the old number – collected in a six-week window to get statewide candidates on the ballot. When the Socialist Party lost its ballot line in 1938 in New York, it never recovered it. There was not an independent left party with a ballot line in New York again until the Green Party, 1999-2002 and 2010-?.

I can understand why people in a close state would vote for Biden to stop Trump. I don’t agree, but I share their desire to get Trump out. But why aren’t the prominent progressives afraid of a repressive Democratic Party that is suppressing the Green Party?

The simple-minded trope that a vote for the Greens is a vote for Trump ignores the fact that a Green vote is in the Green column, not Trump’s. It is an anti-Trump vote, a stronger anti-Trump vote, and a second front against Trump that adds to the total against Trump. But instead of a united front against Trump at least in safe states, these progressives are showing no solidarity with the Greens.

That trope also falsely assumes that Green voters will vote Democratic. It ignores the fact that most Green voters are Green voters, not wayward Democrats. Greens bring their own voters out, people who are disgusted with the two corporate parties. 100 million people didn’t vote in 2016. They are disproportionately working class, people of color, and young. They are the potential base of an independent left in the US.

The 2016 exit polls showed that 61% of voters for the Green presidential candidate Jill Stein would have stayed home if she was not on the ballot. Plug those numbers into the close states in 2016 – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. It was Black voter suppression and the Electoral College that gave the presidency to the popular vote loser, Donald Trump. The Greens didn’t do that.

The move to the right by the left in this election has reached into the ranks of traditionally independent socialists who used to take the position of building an independent socialist party and no support for the capitalist parties. These folks used to believe that crossing this line of working class political independence in elections is like crossing a picket line in a strike.

On the System Change Not Climate Change (SCNCC) website, ecosocialists are not calling for system change in this election. Maura Stephens calls for a vote for Biden even in her home state of New York where Biden has been ahead of Trump in the polls by 25% or more since he became the presumptive nominee in March and more than 30% in the polls since late August. Likewise, Ted Franklin on the SCNCC website calls for a vote for Biden everywhere, even his home state of California where Biden has led Trump by an average of 32% since March.

On the System Change Not Climate Change listserv commentaries on these articles, others have chimed in for a vote for Biden everywhere including the safe states. Brian Tokar wrote he was voting for Biden in Vermont where the polls have consistently shown Biden ahead by at least 23%.

Richard Smith is the author of the recent book, China’s Engine of Environmental Destruction, a devastating analysis of the drivers of endless rapid growth embedded in China’s hybrid capitalist-statist economic system and in China’s police state that represses all resistance. His most recent SCNCC post, “The Chinese Communist Party Is an Environmental Catastrophe,” summarizes the book’s analysis. Agreeing with the vote-Biden-everywhere posts, he wrote, “Given our winner-take-all system, no third party has a chance in this country, so left political struggle takes place outside the parties and inside the Democratic Party for lack of any other option.” That is like saying given the Chinese one-party state, the Chinese left of environmental, labor, oppressed-nationality, and pro-democracy activists should work inside the Chinese Communist Party for lack of any other option. What happened to system change?

There is an option for the US left. Greens have won office in over 1,200 elections in the US. Over 100 currently hold office. The left could replicate those wins in the thousands if it stopped saying and acting as if there is no other option but the Democrats, where progressive demands like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and ending the endless wars go to die.

The irony of this shift to the right and no support for the Greens as an independent left by so many prominent progressives in this election is that in hopes of getting rid of Trump, they have followed Trump to the right. After this election if the Green Party is eliminated from many state ballots, the question may not be whatever happened to left solidarity, but what happened to the left, period.

(Howie Hawkins is the Green Party candidate for President in 2020.)

LAST ROUNDUP AT THE WOKESTER CORRAL

by James Kunstler

I have some questions for former friends who have dumped me on account of my support for Mr. Trump’s re-election — which is mostly a vote to prevent the Democratic Party and its fellow travelers from running the government. On the whole, these former friends are college-educated, mature in experience, and cultured. Some of them are well-acquainted with history, which is to say, they ought to know better than to support the obviously illiberal motives of the political Left.

Are you against the principle of free speech? The Democratic Party is. They used to be champions of the First Amendment; now they want to make it conditional on ideas and sentiments they support. Contrary ideas are to be labeled “hate speech,” and suppressed, along with anything that might hurt somebody’s feelings. How did you come to such a complete misunderstanding of what free speech means? Namely, that a free society is obliged to tolerate the expression of disagreeable ideas up to the limit, as the Supreme Court put it, of “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

I will answer my own question partially by saying: you have been programmed against free speech by what used to be the very vehicles of it, the newspapers and TV News channels, which have, amazingly, come out against freedom of the press and turned into propaganda outlets for Woke Progressivism and its illiberal agenda — thereby inadvertently committing suicide of the entire profession. We’ve seen this acted-out most vividly just the past week in the social media companies’ efforts to suppress all news of the Biden family’s global business operations, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and other leading news organizations that Americans used to depend on to know what was happening in the nation. This is especially unforgivable during a national election.

Did you support the movement on campus in recent years to shut down events featuring speakers such as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve), Heather Mac Donald of City Journal, Dinesh D’Souza, and many others who represented not-so-Woke ideas that “offended” you? Since when are your feelings so special that they negate the open exchange of ideas in the places that used to be dedicated to it, the universities? Should higher education only entertain ideas that you and your cohorts approve of? What if, in some future, a different cohort gains control of higher education and seeks to exclude your ideas on the grounds that they’re “offensive” (i.e. they just don’t like them)?

Are you in favor of a politicized Department of Justice and CIA? That is what the Democratic Party’s Resistance League deliberately brought about during the 2016 election, and they continue to promote it. Is it okay for bureaucrats to break the law to disable their political adversaries? That was the essence of the RussiaGate ruse. Former employees of those agencies, such as ex-CIA chief John Brennan and Andrew Weissmann, who ran the Mueller investigation, to this day still hype “Russian collusion” falsehoods to deflect attention from their own misdeeds. You let them get away with that.

Is it okay for these government agencies to spy on US citizens without any legal predicate, except their being political adversaries? Would it be okay if that were used against you in some future disposition of things? Is it okay for the FBI to withhold exculpatory evidence in federal court proceedings, thereby obstructing justice? Is it okay for the FBI and CIA to “leak” falsehoods to news reporters for political advantage? Do you not understand how by failing to oppose these actions you undermine the basis of political rectitude in a republic — bearing in mind the literal meaning of the word republic, from the Latin, res publica, the public thing, where civilization lives?

Are you against reason itself? For all your talk about the primacy of science, your agenda militates furiously against it: Math is “racist,” there’s no biological basis for understanding sex, all science is a “white colonial way-of-knowing,” masculinity is “toxic,” women can have penises and men can menstruate. Do you really believe these absurd fantasies manufactured in the graduate schools in the service of academic careerism at all costs — or do you just go along with them for the sake of protecting your own careers and perquisites?

Are you in favor of Antifa riots and the BLM hustle? They are staunchly supported by elected Democratic mayors and governors. These organizations looted and burned down shopping districts in many cities, and Democratic leaders did nothing to stop them. In Portland, Oregon, the nightly riots have continued for over 120 days under Mayor Ted Wheeler and Governor Kate Brown. The nightly riots have ceased to have any genuine political purpose or meaning; rather they’ve degenerated into a party space for energetic young people who can’t otherwise go to clubs, parties, concerts, cafes, or raves during the Covid-19 shut-down. So, rather, they’re enjoying a long-running game of “Cops-and-Robbers” out in the streets, busting things up, setting fires, getting chased around, and waking people up in their homes late at night with bullhorns and heavy metal music. They’re obviously having fun. The police have been forbidden to effectively disperse them, and the Multnomah County DA refuses to prosecute any of them — all of which just inspires the Antifas and BLMs to keep the game going. They have no real stake in the public interest. The net effect is terrible destruction of the city as a functioning civic organism. The Democratic Party has made it all possible. Wait until it comes to your town or city.

Are you in favor of cancel culture? The Democratic Party is addicted to it. Should livelihoods and reputations be destroyed for expressing an opinion, or telling a joke? Is asking someone for a date in the office a firing offense? Were Christine Blasey Ford and Michael Avenatti unimpeachable witnesses during the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings? Or was that just an instance of anything goes and nothing matters? How much sadistic pleasure do you suppose has been involved in the professional ruination of men in the media, the arts, and politics? How much of cancel culture and the Me-Too movement have been based on simple coercion, the wish to push other people around, and on vengeance for personal losses and slights?

By the way, did you notice that Jeffrey Toobin has not been fired from his positions at The New Yorker magazine and CNN for jerking-off on-screen during a Zoom meeting of his professional colleagues last week? None of them have even publicly criticized him. Why do you suppose that is? I suppose it’s because he is a favored member of the Woke Journalists club and enjoys special protection from professional ruin — though the truth is he’s thrown away his credibility as a legal commentator, whether the Wokerati like it or not, especially on matters of public conduct. But that’s just one example of the hypocrisy that Wokesterism is full of, and reveals its chronic disingenuous insincerity.

The Democratic Party supports all this pernicious mendacity and bad faith, and more. Joe Biden is the current figurehead of the Party. Mr. Biden pretty clearly has insurmountable defects of his own, first as an international grifter while holding national office, as well as the misfortune of his cognitive decline, which is not his fault, but disqualifies him for high office. As for everybody else in the party, I don’t want such a reliably dishonest gang to be in charge of running the American government. So, I’m voting for Mr. Trump. He’s far from my idea of an ideal candidate, but despite his defects, he’s managed to hold the country together during the greatest disruption of normal life since World War Two. I’ve also come to admire his resilience and, yes, his bravery, in the face of an opposition that has spared no effort of foul play to destroy him.

I’m under no illusions that Donald Trump will Make America Great Again in the way that many of his supporters understand that slogan. The USA is headed into a terrible ordeal of economic disorder that I call the long emergency. Mr. Trump won’t stop it, and it may yet make a fool out of him. But the Democratic Party’s agenda would add an extra layer of tyrannical and sadistic insanity to the process that will only bring more suffering to more people, and I don’t want that to happen. I believe that Mr. Trump will probably win the election, but we’ll have to see what kind of nefarious dodges his opponents will employ to prevent any resolution of that outcome.

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

LOST IN TIME WITH GOATS

by Steve Wayne

I‘ve been staying in Mendocino County often in the many revolutions around our solar center we call the sun, the more in imagination whenever life seemed demonstrative and time consuming and less than condign. It was explained to me in my youth the necessities of life in much drama of the sixties and seventies. If you recall that era of American history well and good if not read on it and remember the causes of amended rights issues if nothing else. 

I don’t remember the JFK assassination, although I recall the Gemini space rocket launch from the spelling on the side of a black and white view box, left alone to ponder " Is this really happening or is it another launch “. The writings of wrongs were designed to all our comforts and we decided that was best when Robert Kennedy and later MLK assassinations made news an exhausting description maybe because of the night Bobby Kennedy was shot. My older brother and myself were awakened by our sitter because she was disturbed and needed a comforting presence. 

The report special was broadcast live at 10 pm CST. We were in the land of the Athabascan dialect MN on central time two hours different. We had moved into our new home the year before, I think. Although there were many young ladies still wanting to hang out with the two of us, I would hear one sided phone conversations of my parents with them until a friend of my Mother, who had lived in town and had an older sister that was from California and had taken time off since her school was out of session and our parents could visit. 

She watched us that summer and my brother and I learned to read from a hand written menu and find out what homemade smores were at the time, something that has never been repeated.

I appreciate learning, discussing, and being a part of an open society. The best way to stay less opinionated and allow the other party their say, unless it is a time forgotten, I always seek to combine experience for self- motivation at work and in learning if I can do both. What I find abhorrent are people who stay unmotivated and base themselves on what money will support their particular mission in life. 

Whenever I see ballot initiatives for state or local schools I read carefully and then find out later, as in one school system more than ½ a million in $ spent on a supposedly higher learning center to build a time machine and later hopefully to promote a fun like movie idea. Where is the discipline for this, I wonder. 

When computers were initiated for fast service Y2K approached with a computer that was in distribution with regular shipping channels and still in use for some lucky or not so lucky, depending on how you appropriate usage and outcomes of performance. 

I was very much into learning in what programs that would assist, I picked up a language program that would assist from Fry’s Electric in the populated region of San Jose, that would help me translate and learn over 70 languages where 50 was a standard. It had included a voice print screen that would match your own recording with language already entered into each language through sound or site the user could match your voice with the native recorded voice to almost undetectable range to be that, this was from an credible institute and as I read the daily news and believed that this may be compromised from attack I purchased my first and last Y2K deterrent being fall of 99,I figured the protections and backup requested since the machines purchase a backup of the RAM random access memory wouldn’t hurt anything. The language program work fine up to the Navajo recordings which were absent, I OK and suggest this was a ploy by the manufacturer to further misunderstanding and grant them an occupational hazard attributable to an reenactment of the Kecksberg, Ohio incident reported in much UFO coverage and WW2 history about neo socialist travel and the eventual downfall with all nations help on both fronts. An incredible and maladjusted thought that cannot happen. I was also skeptical of the 2000 change over in time with most pre print out data the only real threat was reintroduction of the actual year for anyone left to the task. I placed the memory device in and within 10 minutes could see it was not functioning in a helping manner and terminated it. The one and only loss the voice print feature that I still miss. My occupation at the time involved side work with my trade of Electrician which left time to study for my future interest of Geology Engineer as it sometimes referenced in further study of civil engineer. This worked nicely with the weekend where I and others could research and study the local flora and fauna throughout the Silicon Valley and county we worked and study in all with CCRS or the riparian station that it is commonly called. The first part Coyote Creek as the indigenous had called an area sacred to them for meeting outsiders and other tribal members that had been away or had news to share.

The whole area needed riparian action in the watershed system that was the focus along with the water in the region. Maybe I’ll get a chance to review some stories someday. 

What initiated this story was the recent phenomena to reclaim land for public use remove invasive weeds with the natural benefit another species quite capable, the goat pictures included and they speak to the resolve and need for natural solution to the day’s dilemma and to keep Planet Earth Safe.

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FOUND OBJECT