Mendocino County Today: December 8, 2020

Frontal Systems | Another Death | Leggett Volunteers | Big Surf | Lockdown Resistance | Yorkville Market | Tree Trimmers | Schultz Resignation | Colorful Bluff | Missing Whereases | Cabrillo Lighthouse | B Notes | Noyo Postcard | Moron Released | Rock Isle | Virtual Cannabis | Old Bridge | Ed Notes | Ship to Shore | Dysfunction Plus | Yesterday's Catch | Pearl Survivor | Empty Pews | Appity App | Transition Team | Wokies | Gray Pride | Activist Athletes | Tree House | Comments | Resolving Picture | Nose Off

A SERIES OF FRONTAL SYSTEMS will move across the region during the next seven days. Light rain will initially be possible over portions of Del Norte and Humboldt Counties Tuesday night and again Thursday evening. A more substantial threat of widespread and heavier rainfall is then expected this weekend, with additional rainfall possible during early to middle portions of next week. (NWS)

20 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County on Monday, bringing the total to 1779. Another death, now 24.

LEGGETT VALLEY FIREFIGHTERS SAVE THE DAY

On December 4, a woman and her three-year-old son who had been missing for four days were located. Trinity Brey and her son Anthony Florentine-Perez disappeared from a crash that left a man with major injuries near Confusion Hill in northern Mendocino on November 30.

Two of the firefighters who were called to assist when the woman was found naked on Hwy 101 not far from the crash site spoke to us about what they saw.

First on the scene was John Allen, a Leggett Valley Firefighter who lived not far from the accident site and had helped search for Ms. Brey and her child over the proceeding days. He was Incident Commander the day of the accident. “We were there [on the day of the accident] in probably two minutes of the call going off because I live pretty close to the scene,” he told us and yet Ms. Brey and her son were already gone.

There were three other emergency personnel on site quickly so he went up the road to look for the mother and son but couldn’t find them. “I just figured they got picked up,” he said.

But he soon learned the two continued to be missing. Over the next few days, he helped search for the mother and child with no success.

Then, on the morning of December 4, Both his department, and Delbert Chumley’s department, another firefighter on the scene we interviewed, received a call to respond to a report of a naked woman in the road and a possible child.

“I believe she had climbed up and was looking for help,” said Chumley of Piercy Fire, who was one of two searchers who located the two lost Carrico girls in 2019. He told us that when he got to where the woman was, John Allen had already talked to her. “She said her son was down the embankment and could he go get him,” Chumley said. Then he added, “John is the hero of this story.”

John, who denied being a hero, said, “I showed up and found the mother half naked…She wasn’t wearing any pants and was wearing a shirt. I’m not sure if the trucker that found her gave her the shirt.”

But Anthony was nowhere to be seen. “I asked the lady where her child was,” Allen told us. “She told me, but she said we would need ropes to get him. He was a 100 yards down the hill.”

John decided not to wait for equipment. He said he yelled and he heard the child yell back. He was able to tell where Anthony was. “He was more like 200 yards down the hill,” Allen said. It was very steep.

Allen made his way towards the child taking in the details. “He was totally naked and hanging onto the tree for dear life,” Allen told us. “If he would let go, he would have fallen. And he would have fell pretty far. It was pretty straight up and down. Like an 80 degree slope.”

To reassure the boy, Allen said, “I told him I was a firefighter. I grabbed onto him and he felt like a bag of ice. He wouldn’t really let go of the tree… I had to peel his little fingers off the tree. I told him I wouldn’t let him go.”

Chumley explained, “The child was naked. But John took off his hoodie and put the child in it.”

Holding Anthony, Allen began to climb the steep slope. “I feel like I took a step and slid back 10.” But other personnel came down and helped carry Anthony back up.

When they got towards the top, Allen said, “I carried him the rest of the way to the trucks and turned on the heater. He was just shaking he was so cold.”

Chumley explained, “We sat [Anthony] in the truck. He was very excited to tell us about dinosaurs. He told us, ‘They made sounds like this.'” Then Chumley said the little boy would demonstrate with a “Rawrrrr.”

“Anthony was very, very talkative” Chumley chuckled saying that he had a five-year-old who was talkative, too.

When the ambulance arrived, Allen said, “I got in the ambulance with him. I gave him a cookie. He was pretty hungry…He said he didn’t eat anything out there…I gave him some water.  I gave him another cookie…I asked him why he didn’t have any clothes on and he said his clothes got wet. We talked about dinosaurs and his birthday party and chocolate ice cream. We talked about a half hour.”

Meanwhile, Allen said, medical personnel were evaluating Anthony’s mother, Trinity Brey, outside.

“We were just trying to keep him calm and warm him up,” he explained. “He was just really cold and dehydrated and hungry.”

Eventually the ambulance took Ms. Brey and Anthony to the Garberville hospital. Chumley gathered some clothes for the boy and brought them to family at the hospital.

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Note: Neither John Allen of Leggett Fire or Delbert Chumley nor most of the other firefighters at the accident or part of the search teams over the four days the mother and child were missing are paid. They not only volunteer their time for emergency but spend long hours training. On top of that they raise money to buy the equipment they use to save people’s lives.

If you would like to help the two departments, below are addresses you can send checks. However, John Allen noted, Leggett Valley is a small department. He pointed out, “There are only five of us on it…One of our fire members got hurt so there are only really four of us….None of us get paid. We have to fundraise to buy our gear. We have to have bake sales to buy new equipment.” But more than the money, Allen pointed out, “We need more people in the community to step up.” He says the department is stretched thin, “We all have to work other jobs so we only get two or three [firefighters] to show up on every call.”

Allen said the volunteer job is very rewarding though. “I truly like to do my part for my community.” he explained. “I try to give something back to my community. I love helping people.”

If you would like to help, send a check or money order to:

Leggett Valley Fire, PO Box 191, Leggett, CA 95585

or

Piercy Volunteer Fire Department, PO Box 206, Piercy, CA 95597

(courtesy Kymkemp.com)

BIG SURF, photos by Judy Valadao

MANY AREN'T BUYING PUBLIC OFFICIALS' 'STAY-AT-HOME' MESSAGE. Experts say there's a better way.

Some 33 million Californians are now under a new regional stay-at-home order that began Sunday night, a last-ditch effort to turn the corner on an alarming rise in coronavirus cases statewide. The blunt messaging worked to bend the curve in the spring, when fear of the novel virus and the insidious ways it might spread kept many indoors. But nine months later, the words seem to have lost their meaning.

pressdemocrat.com/article/news/many-arent-buying-public-officials-stay-at-home-message-experts-say-th/

THE YORKVILE MARKET is hosting our last community dinner for 2020 this Friday, 12/11. We will be serving a delicious meal of Chicken Cacciatore over creamy polenta with green beans as our main course, and olive oil (locally sourced) cake with marscapone whipped cream and Yorkville quince sauce for dessert. The price per person is $25.00. This meal will be take-out only, and reservations are required by Thursday at noon. Please call us at (707) 894-9456 or email me back at yorkvillemarket@gmail.com to reserve your spot. When you make your reservations, I will confirm with a pickup time to avoid any bottlenecks in the checkout process. Also, remember that if you are looking for a locally sourced one of a kind gift to give this holiday season, we have a lovely selection of soaps and lotions, art, pottery and artisan food products available right here at the Market. Wishing you all a merry end to 2020 and a fantastic beginning to 2021!

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WE WERE NOT SURPRISED to hear that Planning & Building Services Director Brent Schultz resigned on Monday. Not only was he saddled with an impossible to administer pot ordinance, but most of his more than 30 years of experience was in urban planning for the city of Ontario in SoCal, nothing like Mendo’s outback “planning,” which is mostly paperwork for projects that take way too long to process — if they ever get approved. Schultz, who only lasted a little over two years since coming to Mendo in the summer of 2018, was also saddled with a chronically understaffed department and what staff there is is not very experienced and the experienced ones complain about both Schultz and their own nearly untenable situations with a large backlog that gets bigger by the month. When he first arrived, Schultz robotically offered the usual sight-unseen uplift: “I’m excited to be working for the citizens of Mendocino County and look forward to meeting the Planning and Building team and the entire County organization. I’m ready to get new projects off the ground, from small projects like room additions, to brand new homes, to new housing for our growing community and for those who are rebuilding after devastating fires; I love every aspect of the job and hope I can be a helpful resource for my staff and the public.” There was some minor success at first with the 2017 fire recovery. But not much after that. Schultz gave the pot ordinance a well-meaning try at first, announcing early on that he was going to do a “deep dive” into the pot applications and figure out what to do. Predictably Schultz soon drowned in the quicksand of pot applications and the program. Not long after he was brought in, the then-pot program manager Sean Connell quit in frustration. Connell was replaced by Megan Dukett, a well-known CEO loyalist with zero pot program experience who has kept a low profile since being assigned to the pot program. (We half-suspected Ms. Dukett might even have been assigned to Schultz as a way for CEO Angelo to keep her micro-managing eye on Schultz, given the turbulent history of the pot program and its many administrators/victims.) No sympathy for Schultz from here though. He was well paid and, although we were told he “resigned,” we suspect he might be retiring with yet another fat pension, much of it to be provided by Mendo’s over-stressed pension fund. 

(Mark Scaramella)

MR. WENDAL OF FORT BRAGG WRITES: re: Tammy Moss-Chandler Hyperbole

WHEREAS, Ms. Moss Chandler managed to maintain Mendocino County’s homeless and mental health status quo by ignoring the recommendations of the Marbut and Kemper consultants. Her inaction kept the number of clients up which brought in more grant money to line the pockets of county management and the people running the countless (thirty-something) “helping” organizations.

WHEREAS, Ms. Moss Chandler funneled funds to the inept and dishonest Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center, forcing the City of Fort Bragg, who has no Social Services department, to step in yet again to ensure an emergency winter shelter on the coast.

WHEREAS, Ms. Moss Chandler managed to stay on the job for a full 5 years so she can collect a pension that is much greater than the income of a vast majority of working residents in the county

THE NOVEMBER MEASURE B COMMITTEE MEETING 

Measure B Project Manager Alyson Bailey Reports:

Unfortunately, I had difficulty getting Zoom to stream on YouTube and ended up with a partial product. I believe that the experts will be streaming our upcoming Mental Health Treatment Act Committee meeting on the 16th. 

Here are the discussion and motion notes. Crisis Residential: Contractor Couples & Son won (via base bid) the construction award for the Crisis Residential Treatment facility as accepted by the Board of Supervisors in November.

Psychiatric Health Fcaility: Regarding Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) Operations, legal review is underway for RFP questions and the timeline for award has been estimated to be November 30th.

Behavioral Health Regional Training: It has been decided that the Behavioral Health Regional Training Center does not have to adopt a cost-recovery model. The original plan (based on the cost-recovery model) has been revised, and will be developed further with a model based on long-term Measure B support. In addition, the project has begun again and is estimated to be open by April or May of 2021.

Clarification on Measure B Costs: Costs to Measure B regrading the A87 invoice (an annual, internal countywide system billing process from all service departments to all customer departments) are measured through time studies and multiple audits. There has not been an A87 charge to Measure B yet because the billing cycle is on a two-year lag due to the extensive safeguards. Measure B will be a part of the A87 charge for the first time in FY 2020/2021.

Aside from the A87 charge, MOUs and Direct Invoicing may be utilized instead between County departments, bypassing the A87 process.

If direct billing takes place, that exchange terminates then, and does not continue into A87 billing. Regarding County employees, Measure B Committee Members who are also Citizens Oversight Committee Members do not get paid to sit on the committee, nor do County employees who are spectating.

The Citizens Oversight Committee understands the processes under which Measure B may be billed, by whom, and why. It agrees that internal billing is the most expedient way to do business as long as the services are transparent and can be exchanged for an outside vendor if fiscally appropriate. 

CIT Training: The Committee did vote to recommend to reimburse the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office for their countywide CIT training in the amount of $12,400. This is a three-day training for Law Enforcement specifically on managing mental health situations that they may encounter. Because of social distancing, the training was held in a large outdoor area with more than six feet of space available between participants. Here is more information on the CIT training http://www.citinternational.org/bestpracticeguide. 

Calendar: Concerning 2021, the Citizens Oversight Committee will continue with their current meeting schedule in expectation of increased, and further fiscal decision making.

SKAGGS & WHO?

On Saturday, December 5, 2020 at 11:40 P.M. Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies were on routine patrol in the area of Highway 20 at Road A in Redwood Valley.

Deputies observed a vehicle traveling westbound on Highway 20 and noted a vehicle registration violation. The Deputies performed a traffic stop on the vehicle and contacted three occupants.

The driver was identified as Anthony Moron, the rear passenger identified himself as Brian Skaggs. The front passenger, who was later released without charges, was on active probation with search terms. There was also a strong odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle.

Skaggs, Moron, Skaggs (2013, before being sent to prison for driving the car from which Walter Miller shot at a following CHP patrol car).

Deputies searched the vehicle and located a "billy club" in the front passenger compartment. A further search of the vehicle revealed a large amount of processed marijuana, items related to the sales of marijuana and stolen checks.

Christopher Skaggs (who verbally identified himself as Brian Skaggs) was searched and found to be in possession of psilocybin mushrooms and a live ammunition cartridge. The Deputies continued their investigation and developed probable cause to believe that Skaggs provided them with a name of another real person (Brian Skaggs) in an attempt to elude prosecution for his suspected crimes.

The Deputies developed probable cause to believe Skaggs was in possession of marijuana for sale as well as possession of psilocybin mushrooms. Skaggs was found to be on active parole.

His Parole Officer was contacted and issued a parole hold for his arrest. Skaggs was found to be a convicted felon and prohibited from possessing ammunition.

Skaggs was arrested for Felony Parole Violation, Felony False Impersonate Another, and Felony Possession of Ammunition by Prohibited Person. Skaggs was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held on a No-Bail status.

Moron was arrested for Felony Possession of Billy Club Weapon.

Moron was booked into the Mendocino County Jail. In accordance with the COVID-19 emergency order issued by the State of California Judicial Council, bail was set at zero dollars for Moron and he was released after the jail booking process.

Please visit the following link to hear Sheriff Matthew C. Kendall provide a Public Safety Message on the current COVID-19 emergency order related to zero bail: facebook.com/MendocinoSheriff/videos/2568683186688486/

The third passenger was released from the scene without charges.

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A READER NOTES: "Skaggs was the hard boiled seen it all veteran, Moron was the something to prove rookie. Together they were an unstoppable crime wave. Coming this fall Skaggs and Moron, The Billy Club Caper."

PINS & NEEDLES

Cannabis Ad Hoc to Host Cannabis Cultivation Virtual Town Hall

Rescheduled to December 16, 2020 at 4 p.m.

Post Date: 12/07/2020 11:10 AM

Please note the Cannabis Virtual Town Hall date has been rescheduled. Please see updated information below. On Wednesday, December 16th at 4:00 pm, the Board of Supervisors Cannabis Cultivation Ad Hoc Committee consisting of Supervisors John Haschak and Ted Williams will host a virtual Cannabis Cultivation Town Hall Meeting. The Supervisors will give an update on their current efforts with State agencies and provide an opportunity for the public to participate by asking questions and providing public comment.

Virtual Town Hall Details: 

What: Cannabis Cultivation Virtual Town Hall 

When: Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at 4:00 pm 

Who: Mendocino County Board of Supervisors John Haschak and Ted Williams; Planning and Building Services Director, Brent Schultz; Planning and Building Services Staff 

How to attend: 

To join via Zoom, click the link: https://mendocinocounty.zoom.us/j/89835755017

To join via phone, dial: +1 669 900 9128 and enter the webinar ID: 898 3575 5017

The webinar will also be streaming live on the County’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/mendocinocountyvideo) and the County’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/mendocinocounty/).

How to submit your questions and comments:

There will be a live Q & A feature on the webinar where you can submit your question live during the event.

For more information, please contact Mendocino County Planning and Building Services Cannabis Program at (707) 234-6680.

ED NOTES

HER MANY FRIENDS in Fort Bragg will be saddened to learn that Carol Milliman has died in Oregon. Gary Milliman is a former Fort Bragg City Manager. After leaving Fort Bragg, the Millimans settled in Brookings, Oregon, where Gary Milliman served as the town's manager.

IT'S STILL so dry out there that we weren't surprised to see a CalFire spotter plane make a wide, slow circle around the Anderson Valley this afternoon a little before 3.

DEPRESSING STAT: One in six restaurants, a startling 110,000, has had to close according to the National Restaurant Association. The closed restaurants, on average, had been open for 16 years and employed 32 people. It means that nationally more than three million people have lost their jobs. 

HERE in dusty, depleted Boonville, the lead city in the Anderson Valley, our restaurants are reeling but holding on.

AMERICANS who rate their mental health as “good” or “excellent” has declined 10 percent amid the pandemic, a new Gallup poll reveals. It's the worst rating Americans have given their mental health since 2001, when Gallup began checking US for 5150 quotient.

BREAKDANCING and skateboarding, along with surfing and rock climbing are among four new Olympic sports to be introduced in Paris 2024. The International Olympic Committee says they're putting a “strong focus on youth,” as if the existing contest line-up favors the geriatric. 

A READER WRITES: I am very conflicted about the shut down. Sooo many people are broke, have no money for food….most of the small restaurants will bite the dust for good. I think Newsom is going too far. Why not just keep all people over 65 on lock down and ask their relatives to stay away. I think 80% of the deaths ( something like that)… are in that group. Why penalize the rest of the population. Generally, Bay Area people wear masks and make a big effort to follow the protocols. I can understand discouraging groups, gathering with others over the holidays during a surge... but this seems draconian. However, my friend in Italy says their lockdown even more strict. And the Italians are dealing with it…..and they can hardly live without their social life and their dining. I just worry that with the complete loss of a safety net, with MConnell in control, homelessness will explode and the poor will never recover. This country is so screwed up it is breathtaking. At this point, I pretty much feel all politicians are corrupted on some level. How they can go home without passing some kind of bill is beyond me. All of them with their elite financial status. No one really cares about the disenfranchised anymore. Maybe they never did. With the Senate controlled by the Repugnants….nothing will change and we will continue on this horrible decline. And Biden won’t be able to turn it around. Maybe no one can now that we are predominantly a Conversative Republican society. And unless Trump is indicted for at least one of his crimes, he will be hovering over us for a long time, stirring up pot. I, probably like most people, frankly can’t focus on it any longer. this whole situation politically just is a rats nest that will never be put to rest. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, December 7, 2020

JONAH BOYETT, Eureka/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance for sale.

SCOTT CHAPMAN, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

KATHRYN DOUGLAS, Ukiah. Domestic battery, failure to appear.

AMBROSE FALLIS, Covelo. Paraphernalia, probation violation.

BENJAMIN HOFF, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger.

STEVEN MAROS, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-loitering on private property.

ANTHONY MORON, Lakeport. Possession of billy club.

LUIS PARRA, Newhall/Ukiah. DUI with priors.

ROY SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Parole violation.

CHRISTOPHER SKAGGS, Redwood Valley. Pot possession for sale, controlled substance, personate to recorded document, ammo possession by prohibited peron, parole violation.

JAMES TIMMONS, Eureka/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, county parole violation.

PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR

by Bruce Anderson

Count me as one. I was two, my brother one, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941.

My brother and I were born in Honolulu where our paternal grandfather, a Scots immigrant, was a principal in a successful business called the Honolulu Iron Works. My father, a graduate of the Punahou School, same as President Obama, spent much of his youth surfing and his evenings in white dinner jackets. He never quite adjusted to being a poor person.

By the end of the war Pop was loading submarines at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. He’d cashed in his Honolulu chips because, like most Islanders, he assumed the Japanese would follow-up their successful blitz of America’s Pacific defenses with a ground invasion, and Pop preferred to be among the missing when that inevitability occurred.

The morning of the infamous day, we’d been up before dawn demanding, as family lore has it, ice cream cones. We were in the car as the sun rose and with it came wave after wave of low-flying planes swooping in over us and central Honolulu. We drove obliviously on as the invaders devastated the American fleet where it was conveniently assembled in Pearl Harbor, their crews slumbering, many eternally.

“The planes were flying so low I could see the pilots,” my father remembered. “I still thought it was some kind of maneuvers. There was smoke coming from Pearl Harbor, but most people simply assumed there had been an explosion and a fire. There were lots of people out in the streets watching the planes coming in.”

My father said quite a few spectators were recreationally strafed as the Japanese flew back out to sea. He didn’t know what was happening until we got home. It hadn’t occurred to him that the planes were hostile. That thought hadn’t occurred to much of anyone in Honolulu until they were either shot at or a stray bomb fell on their neighborhood. The Japanese, as always on-task, mostly confined themselves to military targets and, of course, forty years later, held the paper on our mortgages, including, for a spell, the Mendocino County Courthouse.

Some 20 minutes after the attack had begun, my father stopped to buy us our coveted ice cream cones, which were served up by an unperturbed clerk, and we drove on home. “Nobody had any idea that the Japanese would do such a thing,” my father said whenever he talked about December 7th. “They were too far away and America had no quarrel with them.” That he knew of, anyway.

Arriving home, my father famously complained to my mother that “These military maneuvers are getting a little too goddam realistic.” My mother, who’d always regarded her husband as something of a Magoo-like figure, informed her mate that the Japanese were attacking both Pearl Harbor and, it seemed, Honolulu, where errant bombs aimed at Hickham Field had already destroyed homes and businesses of non-combatants. She’d turned on the radio when she’d heard explosions. One of the first things she learned was that a bomb had obliterated the area where we’d made our ice cream purchase.

Years later, a hippie told me that I’d eluded the random wrath of the Japanese because I had “good karma.” I think it was more a case of God’s high regard for idiots and children.

My father was exempt from military service because he had a wife and children, but he was pressed into service as a member of a sort of impromptu Honolulu home guard — (Honolulu in 1941 was about the size of today’s Santa Rosa) — called the Business Man’s Training Corps, or BMTC. My mother had much ribald enjoyment at the abbreviation, and was even more delighted at the sight of my father togged out as a World War One Doughboy, the only uniforms available.

The BMTC wouldn’t have been much of a match for the Japanese Imperial Army which, fortunately, never appeared on Waikiki. The Japanese had surprised themselves by the unopposed success of their attack on Pearl Harbor and had not prepared to land an occupying ground force.

December 7th was a major trauma for America. For our family, too. Pop made plans to head for the Mainland as soon as he could wrap up his affairs and get on a boat, but he wanted to accomplish both without being derided as a slacker for fleeing. It took him another year to make it stateside. As he cashed in his chips and continued to spend his days surfing and sitting around in the dark at night behind blackout curtains, he put my mother and his two toddlers on a troop ship for San Francisco.

My mother was a registered nurse who’d worked at Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu, also the birthplace of President Obama, contrary to what the remedial readers say. She remembers daily submarine alerts all the way across the Pacific during which everyone, including the women and children on board, trundled over the side by rope nets into lifeboats. Mom recalls that the two of us infants loved being handed off like a couple of footballs up and down the side of the ship, but the daily alarms and exertions terrified her and everyone else on board.

But we made it through the Golden Gate unscathed, and were soon ensconced at the Fairmont Hotel, the evacuation center for people fleeing Hawaii.

* * *

Joint Address To Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Japan (1941),

by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation.

As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Alas, that’s why they are increasingly making it impossible to live within society without one.

Curbside pick-up for food, groceries, home goods?

Better get the app.

Lowbrow TV entertainment? Get the app.

Airline tickets? Get the app.

Voting… yeah, what’s the pint, but get the app.

Proof of vaccination and social credit?

Get the app.

App

Apprehension.

Ordering already shitty food (let’s use Arby’s as an example) and then having someone wait in line for you, pick it up for you, drive it to you, set it on your porch until you get the notification on your phone…

And now it’s 30 minutes older and shittier. And cost you 17 bucks plus tip.

LEAST SURPRISING NEWS of the world's most surprising year is that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are launching a rival to the Queen's honors list. In fact, I'm only shocked it's taken so long for Meghan and Harry to make it clear that receiving a mere knighthood from Her Majesty is nowhere near as important as having an approving tap on the shoulder from them. The couple has filed court documents to trademark their new awards scheme which will be run by the Archewell foundation, the charity they set up in their son's name to protect his privacy. And they've stipulated that they will be honoring individuals and organizations that they feel have championed their own values in areas including Charitable service, Education, Science, Literature, Racial Justice, Gender equity, Environmental stewardship, Youth empowerment, Health and Mental Health. Meghan and Harry haven't announced the title of their soon-to-be-coveted honours yet, so in the interim, I will dub them the 'Wokies' in recognition of their ultra-woke view of the world. And it doesn't take a genius to work out who the winners of the 'Wokies will be' - it will be people like the Sussexes themselves who in their own minds are the living, breathing personification of perfect personal virtue, unimpeachable moral probity and consistent ethical purity, even if they often practice the complete opposite of what they preach.

— Piers Morgan

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED CHOSE THE WRONG SPORTSPEOPLE OF THE YEAR

by Dave Zirin

Sports Illustrated certainly got the headline right. This year the magazine gave its much celebrated Sportsperson of the Year award to “The Activist Athlete.” During a year where the wall between politics and sports was not only breeched but obliterated, it was really the only choice. After the police murder of George Floyd and the massive demonstrations that followed, athletes stepped up. They took to the streets. They pushed for people to vote. And they defended their right to speak out.

The athletes that Sports Illustrated chose, however, say more about how the minders of sports are attempting to set the parameters—and the historical memory—of what proper athletic activism looked like in 2020. The SI editors wrote, “Our Sportsperson of the Year award goes to five men and women who in 2020 were champions in every sense of the word: champions on the field, champions for others off it.”

They included Kansas City star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who pressured the NFL to recognize the right of players to protest for Black Lives; Breanna Stewart of the WNBA who spoke out against bigotry while leading her Seattle Storm team to a title; LeBron James for leading voter registration drives; Naomi Osaka, the tennis star who elevated her game while elevating the names of people killed by police; and Chiefs’ lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who won a Super Bowl and then “left the NFL to join the front lines of the battle against Covid-19.”

These are all worthy people. But as @saqno1 reminded me on twitter, Noam Chomsky put it perfectly when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

I’d rather celebrate those who operated outside of this spectrum; the athletes who did not accept the parameters of approved activism. We should start with those who helped us collectively expand our minds beyond the “acceptable opinion” imposed upon us about what protest should look like.

I would start in fact with the player strikes in August after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. These were critical because they introduced the power of labor into the movement for Black lives. The strikes came at a moment when the labor movement was largely absent from the summer’s historic demonstrations. To represent that struggle, I’d go with George Hill of the Milwaukee Bucks, the first team to strike, setting off a chain reaction through just about every sports league. As Hill said,

“Until the world gets their shit together, I guess we’re not going to get our stuff together… We’re down here playing in the bubble to do these things for social justice and all that, and to see it all still going on and we’re just playing the games like it’s nothing, it’s just a really messed up situation right now.”

Hill was brave enough to be critical of even being in the Bubble playing games while Black people were being shot in the back, saying, “We shouldn’t have came to this damn place…Coming here just took all the focal points off what the issues are. But we’re here. It is what it is. We can’t do anything from right here. But definitely when it’s all settled, some things need to be done.” These strikes helped refocus the world’s attention on Jacob Blake. They were called off too soon, as players were pressured by President Obama and franchise owners to channel their anger into electoral activity and team social justice committees.

The groundwork for the politics of resistance that emerged from the Bubble were laid by the NBA’s Bubble-mates in the WNBA. There are many WNBA players one could laud. They were front and center every step of the way on the issues that animated 2020. The players forged a different path of struggle when they directly challenged WNBA franchise boss, Atlanta Dream Kelly Loeffler and called for her removal from the league.

Loeffler—in the middle of a pandemic and massive multi-racial demonstrations—openly ran for Senate on a cynical, and deeply racist platform of demonizing not only the Black Lives Matter movement but also her own players for supporting the struggle. In response, her players turned the tables and not only called for the people of Georgia to vote for her opponent, Ebenezer Baptist Reverend Raphael Warnock, but also for her to be catapulted from the league, in effect fired. As their union tweeted, “E-N-O-U-G-H! O-U-T”. Atlanta Dream player Renee Montgomery—who was taking the year off to focus on social justice initiatives—asked for a meeting with Loeffler to discuss, a meeting that Loeffler rebuffed.

There were also players in the WNBA like Layshia Clarendon who were not only calling for Loeffler’s removal and defeat but pushed for even newer parameters, saying, “Being Black and Non-Binary Is My Superpower.” Having a non-binary player not only be open about their identity but also having announcers respect their pronouns felt like new ground was being broken beyond all previously known boundaries. From calling for a boss to be fired and being a league that shows it can celebrate Black LGBT, non-binary people, the WNBA perhaps deserves its own category for making its mark on 2020.

Connected to the WNBA ecosystem but also utterly singular and distinct in her journey, was the great Maya Moore. I don’t see how any celebration of the 2020 activist athlete could be complete without lauding Moore. Perhaps the greatest player in her sport. Moore left her sport in her prime two years ago to challenge the racism of the criminal justice system and fight for the freedom of a wrongly convicted man name Jonathan Irons. Jonathan Irons finally won his freedom in 2020, calling Moore his ”guardian angel”. That Irons and Moore were also married this year is a beautiful coda on the story. It is also frankly incidental. Maya Moore brought the love of a life-affirming struggle to 2020 all while putting the games we play in stark perspective.

While Hill pushed for the Bucks to strike—for radical action in the face of racism—Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown pushed for a radical politics. Brown, like many athletes this year, took a knee during the anthem. When asked to explain why, he quoted someone outside the world of sports, saying, “Angela Davis once said that racism is so dangerous not because of individual actors but because it’s deeply embedded in the apparatus. I think about that quote a lot when I think about the national anthem.”

Brown also took part in marches following the killing of George Floyd, posting his street actions to Instagram. Just 24 years old, Jaylen Brown represents a wing of the struggle beyond LeBron: someone more than a decade younger who sees struggle beyond the voting booth as a path to liberation.

That leaves Colin Kaepernick. I think 2020 was the most important year for Kaepernick’s voice since his exile from the National Football League for speaking out against police violence. Kaepernick is an unapologetic radical in the best sense of the word, in that he is pushing his audience to see brighter vistas beyond the immediate blight that engulfs our lives. Kaepernick made this known after after George Floyd was killed and people protested in historic numbers when he said, “When civility leads to death, revolting is the only logical reaction. The cries for peace will rain down, and when they do, they will land on deaf ears, because your violence has brought this resistance. We have the right to fight back!”

Then as the call to defund the police rose from the streets, Kaepernick curated at Medium a series of articles called Abolition for the People where leading scholars argued for full abolition of the police and the dismantling of our racist system of criminal justice. Writing one of the pieces himself in a series entitled “The Demand for Abolition” Kaepernick wrote,

“It’s been four years since I first protested during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ At the time, my protest was tethered to my understanding that something was not right. I saw the bodies of Black people left dead in the streets…I saw little to no accountability for police officers who had murdered them. It is not a matter of bad apples spoiling the bunch but interlocking systems that are rotten to their core. And systemic problems demand systemic solutions.”

As pressure was placed on the sports world from President Obama to the sports owners to the media for athletes to channel their anger at police violence into voter registration, Kaepernick stood against the flow of rocky waters and walked against the political rapids. 

These people, Hill, Clarendon, Moore, Brown and Kaepernick, represent a different manifestation of this year of the activist athlete, something less safely consumable than the choices by Sports Illustrated but perhaps far more important: the desire for the people to enforce their will on a society that is fundamentally broken, not merely with laments but solutions. Striking, protesting, holding up radical theorists, and articulating solutions: those are my Activist Athletes of 2020. Efforts to throw them down the memory hole, to in effect erase them from the history of 2020, must be fought with ferocity. Their ideas will be needed in the years to come. 

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Is the CIA an enemy of the people? Of course it is, and has been since the 50’s and 60’s. All but the most brainwashed (or stupid) know this at some level. JFK all but said so, and we see how he was treated/disposed of. Also enemies of the people are all of those who cry ‘conspiracy theory’ at the mention, or discovery, of any untoward, unlikely, ‘can’t happen here,’ or obviously nefarious government behavior. Same process occurred in the USSR, where the KGB diagnosed mental illness (and put into ‘mental hospitals’) any who mentioned/discovered nefarious government behavior. JFK knew this long ago. The idea that modern prog wokesters are pro-CIA is one of the most unintentionally funny events of the past four years — and that is saying a lot. History rhymes.

[2] Why am I having to save up to buy a tractor?. I want to get an old Case or IH with big rear wheels, drive it up and down the street, freak out the neighbors. Also, to drag large stones around the property to rebuild a boundary wall that was originally put up c. 1650-1700. I’m not sure how they moved these boulders back in the day, maybe with oxen and block & tackle? And how did these large rocks — which weigh as much as 500-600 lbs — get scattered? It’s almost like at some point they grew legs and tried to get away.

 [3] When I first considered moving north in the late nineties, I visited Covelo and would have chosen it had not a young Native American friend of my god-daughter’s explained that I would be virtually eaten alive by the piranhas who victimize dumb white people like me. (I loved the Yolla Bolly press and aspired to work there, as a professional in the publishing field, live humbly on a little plot of farmable land, help organize services for elder care, stuff like that.) I picked Lake County and discovered the same political nightmare on this side of the Cow, and the horrific disfunctionality of abused (and subsequently self-flagellating) tribal families. The miraculous efforts to stop the Army Corps of Engineers, resulting in Reagan’s unwitting last minute decision, is a true “cliff-hanger” — the ending is as astonishing as the present reality is today. 

[4] History is full of opportunities to miss opportunities, fully taken advantage of and not in a good way.

Going back not too far, Palestinians had a decent chance at their own country in the West Bank. But, when it seemed that the long process of negotiation and bribery and arm-twisting by the US was about to bear some fruit, Arafat called out the intifada and that was that. 

So, what have they got now? A wall built by Israel (which proves that walls do work and do solve problems) and no country but instead a shit-hole dominated militarily by Israel and the prospect of steadily diminishing life-chances for Palestinians for the foreseeable future. 

Britain and France had a good chance to shorten the Great War by means of bold action in early 1915 against Turkey by way of the strait leading to Constantinople and the peninsula alongside the waterway. If the Royal Navy and French ships had appeared in the Sea of Marmora the post-war consensus was that Turkey would have sought terms. Enver Pasha himself said that if only Britain had had the courage. And, early in 1915 Turkish fortresses in the peninsula, though heavily gunned, had limited ammunition, Turkish troop presence in the area was small, and with some quick action, Britain and France could have pulled it off.

But the initiative, though started, was delayed by weeks by hesitancy, second thoughts, reluctance by the Royal Navy to take risks, until “no” took root in the higher echelons, and then when action was finally started, the Turks had massively increased their forces, the Brits in the area got one third less than what they needed and a month late at that and the opportunity was missed.

What does this have to do with anything? The USA is presently all a-bristle with opportunities to reset the clocks if only skillful and resolute action is taken by Trump people with respect to this farce of an election. 

It’s not just chances in the short term but longer-term also. What this last five years showed was that what the America First movement needs is institutional back-stopping because what we saw was a determined though incompetent effort to get rid of Trump, and a better effort to legally harass officials working in his administration. That cannot go on if the America First movement is to take root and become effective. It’s no good just to have a bunch of guys in camo doing target practice in the backwoods, what it needs is people embedded in the unelected machinery of government, in investigative and intel agencies, in the Pentagon, the DOJ, in the foreign affairs Blob etc., to counteract those working in concert with Democrats and Republicans.

But it seems that all these many openings will get whiffed the same as did the Palestinians and the Brits and the French. Failure to see clearly, failure of nerve, failure to think things through, this could be the death of it, giving a chance to nastier alternatives. Because there are always alternatives. 

[5] You can see the abject failure of the educational system (including colleges and universities) in the workplace. You see it especially in the younger set who spell very badly, can't construct coherent sentences, can't do cursive, don't know the multiplication table, are abysmally ignorant of elementary geography and history. It's depressing, all that money spent and all those years in the classroom and what the hell for.

 [6] I have a couple friends who do not believe much in the virus and think masks are stupid. Yet they wear their mask when going into stores. I ask them why? They say “Hey- if it makes the old people less afraid then it’s a small thing to do”. Basic decency, good neighbors…It’s really up to us to treat each other well. Screw the political hype and just be kind to your neighbors…

[7] I’ve never taken a long time to recover from any illness, except CoV-19. 9 months later still breathing issues, cough, chest pain, extreme fatigue some days, muscle weakness, night sweats, brain fog. Had a few bad flus in my life and very recovered quickly. Multiple other people I’ve known to have gotten it also have had lasting issues. I’ve worked very hard to rehab myself over the last few months and I’m doing much better, but I wouldn’t consider myself fully recovered. I’ve spent thousands on medical care in the past 9 months, but my quality of life is not the same as before I got sick. People are coming down with chronic conditions like adult onset asthma, colitis, heart conditions after “recovering” from being sick. Blessed are you and yours that you got to walk away with a clean slate. It’s not the same for everyone and you won’t know how sick you may get until you are or aren’t extremely ill.

I was healthy, active, and relatively young. There are a lot of unknowns about exposure to how sick you become too. It’s possible wearing a mask helps decrease a large exposure and may lead to more mild symptoms. I was heavily exposed to people who were very sick in late feb/early march with no mask because we were told cov-19 wasn’t here yet. Possible that exposure played a role in severity of illness.

[8] Hey neighbors, let’s try hard to be gentle and kind to one another. I promise I will. This morning, a lady in Mendo who wasn’t wearing a mask lectured my elderly mask-wearing parents about how they needed to be sure to properly dispose of their masks so as to not harm animals. Unsolicited lecture that bordered cray-cray is how they described it - and this person was not one of our homeless friends. We are better than that Mendo. Let’s all be nice. Nice is so nice.

(9) Ahh the evil liberal excuse for society’s ills and for attempting to reform prisons to steer away from mass incarceration which leads to many more ills in society than it benefits is an always present blame game in the comment section and I see today is no exception. Remember we’ve had mass incarceration AND the death penalty here in California before and, alas, crimes were still rampant? It’s not the deterrent that we wish it was. The war on drugs has reduced use and crime by nothing, but damaged millions long term and still keeps doing so today. Nobody wants to talk about what actually leads to crime. Poverty, lack of hope and opportunities to better oneself, a lack in stable, safe places to live, enough food and income to survive. THOSE are actually the things that lead to most crimes being committed. And by the way things are looking in this country as we face mass illness, death and poverty just knockin’ on the door, logic says we haven’t seen nothing yet. But please let’s keep doing the same shit over and over again and avoiding the cause and wonder why things never change and/or get worse.

(10) Population of 1100+ in Covelo proper. Probably similar amount in the surrounding hills. Over half of the 911 calls for service in Mendo come from Covelo. Mendocino Counties’ entire population is under 90,000.

As kids pretty certain none of these thugs n thuggettes had any normal parental guidance. Then consider they are all parents who will never be parents. Probably never have been. Have recently had a few come forward talking about how the 9, 10, 11 year old boys were raping and forcing their 5 year old COUSIN to suck their d@☆&s. CPS closed the case due to lack of evidence. Does a 5 year old make this stuff up? NO, they saw or experienced something to know. Tragic ass terrible never ending bullshit. Come on wake the hell up. It’s not ok to be so out to lunch and support this dismal destruction of your community. Then pretend nothing happens. Ugh. So… KEEP TALKING. BRING KHADIJAH HOME TOO. THE REWARD FUNDS ARE WAITING FOR YOU. The key players in that are safely tucked away in the whoscow. Now is the time to sing. Let Connie have some peace in her soul. It is time.

A RESOLVING PICTURE

by James Kunstler

Much as Chief Justice John Roberts would like to be the finger down the Deep State’s throat to trigger the up-chucking of Mr. Trump from the nation’s gullet, it looks like he won’t get his chance in the new 6-3 disposition of the US Supreme Court. So far, it is Justice Samuel Alito in the lead, preparing a landing zone for the President’s case against the state of Pennsylvania in its shabby-ass attempt to stuff its ballot boxes with iffy mail-in votes. I believe that case is going to be heard, and Justice Roberts’ position will be moot.

The problem over in PA is that its Act 77 bill passed before the election by the state legislature to expand absentee balloting (i.e., mail-in voting) did not comply with the PA state constitution, and required a constitutional amendment, which never happened. Could be pretty cut-and-dried. While the SCOTUS is thought to be reluctant to intervene in state constitutional issues, a case involving federal elections may prove an exception. And then there are other issues with the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. A lot of electoral votes there.

The virtual takeover of US elections by the Dominion vote tabulation company was a stealth operation probably enabled by the connivance of scores of elected officials at both the federal and state levels — senators, congressmen, governors, and on down. It’s been going on for years due to the secrecy of the op and the complacency of the public, with a little help from the Democratic Party’s friends in the news media. Did money change hands? Potential criminal violations abound.

What on earth was Canada-based Dominion, with its grotty Smartmatic software — connected to Venezuela and to George Soros’s would-be world-changing Open Society Foundation, and very possibly to China’s ruling party — doing in charge of counting our votes? Perhaps serving something other than America’s national interest. We’ll soon find out in a way that will make a lot of heads explode.

An awful lot has been churning in the deep background for months before the election. Mr. Trump was onto the mass write-in vote scam enabled by the media-assisted hysteria over Covid-19. The wheels of genuine US intel against national security threats still turned in spite of whatever Deep State perfidy had been aimed at Mr. Trump himself from Day One in office, and the president made use of his own private counter-intel hackers to suss out the game — which was finally to overthrow him by ballot fraud. The result was Executive Order 13848 issued in September 2020, which specified foreign interference in elections as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security” and laid out some pretty stringent remedies.

The main one was a requirement for the top executive agencies — DOJ, DOD, Homeland Security, Treasury plus the Director of National Intelligence (Mr. Ratcliffe) — to deliver an assessment within 45 days of the election. We’re now in the sweet-spot of that 45-day delivery period when something has to pop. Looks a little like the AG, Mr. Barr, has been dithering and wriggling painfully over this, and even making noises about resigning. But he may have already surrendered his credibility, with the foot-dragging of the FBI under Christopher Wray and the agency’s apparent lack of interest in election fraud. The consequences of EO 13848 will roll out with him or without him.

The real action was over at the Department of Defense, where the President hastily cleaned house this fall and installed the trustworthy Christopher Miller as SecDef, along with top aide Kash Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick as Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Mr. Cohen-Watnick had been an assistant to General Michael Flynn, former Director of Defense Intelligence, in his brief tenure as National Security Advisor before getting sandbagged by Barack Obama and James Comey.

Both Mr. Cohen-Watnick and General Flynn are intimately familiar with the apparatus of Defense Intelligence, of course, and have been actively using it to identify DNC and Joe Biden activists who played a role in election irregularities as well as foreign actors. This wasn’t any RussiaGate type bullshit; it was the real deal. EO 13848 includes this provision:

The report shall identify any material issues of fact with respect to these matters that the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security are unable to evaluate or reach agreement on at the time the report is submitted. The report shall also include updates and recommendations, when appropriate, regarding remedial actions to be taken by the United States Government, other than the sanctions described in sections 2 and 3 of this order.”

The “remedial actions” are interesting. They include pretty severe sanctions against any “persons” (entity or company) involved in or enabling foreign interference in elections: attaching property in the US, blocking trade, and an array of financial restrictions and penalties. The EO does not spell out criminal penalties that might fall under the sedition and treason statutes, but expect these to be activated as the law provides. Quite a few political celebrities and figures in the news and social media may have exposed themselves to liability in this. If it doesn’t mean the end of Facebook or Twitter, it may spell the end of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey running them. Also include the less-well-known execs at The WashPo, The New York Times, and several cable news networks.

Eventually, Mr. Trump will have to personally deliver the bad news to Joe Biden that he and Dr. Jill won’t be attending the inaugural ball on January 20 (live or on Zoom). Sound too wild to be true? Well, stand by on it. We’ll know soon enough.

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

NOSE OFF: WHO HELD IT HIGHER?