Off the Record (January 27, 2021)

A SCORCHER of a case filed Friday (the 22nd) alleges that officer Kevin Murray committed four felonies and a misdemeanor in an episode occurring in a room at the Super 8 Motel on Orchard Avenue, Ukiah. Boiled down, it's alleged that Murray on his "implied or express authority" forced a female prostitute identified only as 'S.Y.' "to touch the defendant's penis against her will." Murray also is alleged to have possessed a small amount of methamphetamine that he said was evidence in another case he hadn't yet turned in. Murray has been placed on administrative leave by the Ukiah PD. (We’re sorry to see Murray humiliated like this. In our experience of him he's a nice guy and a good cop with an heretofore unblemished record. We'd certainly like to hear his version of these events. Murray is represented by Ukiah attorney Marci Baldock.)

CAMELOT TWO! Kicked off last Wednesday, right? Millions tuned in for the equivalent of a Super Bowl half-time show with all the unrelieved vulgarity thereof. And to think, for Roosevelt's final inauguration Congress allocated $20,000, which FDR said was way too much and so spent a mere $2,000 on that brief, dignified affair. 

NOT QUITE as grotesque as I expected, but the Biden inaugural was still at least ten degrees off. Hard to take the solemnity of the occasion seriously when a person takes center stage who's introduced as “Lady Gaga.” President-elect Lord Gaga strung out his cliches with only a couple of stumbles — “I call on Congress…, Light not darkness…, Listen to each other…” Never heard of “J-Lo” before her weird appearance at the swearing in, but had to wonder if she was aware that her terrible rendition of “This Land Is Your Land” was written by a communist for people who had no land and who should seriously think about taking some for themselves. An attractive black kid read a long, unpoetic poem heavy on the soppy sentimentality that ran through the event like the Cuyahoga the day it caught fire. Cowboy singer Garth Brooks butchered “Amazing Grace,” and why him in a country with at least a million people who could do it better? Maybe it was a subtle plea to rednecks to get their dumb asses as woked as this fat guy in the black cowboy hat? If this is “the soul of America” welcome to mass atheism.

AS TRUMP slunk out of town after pardoning a hundred more crooks and random degenerates, we argued if he was the worst president ever, concluding that Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's vp, was worse, as was George W. Bush. Johnson, a drunk and unabashed racist, single handedly undid Reconstruction when he succeeded the martyred Lincoln. If Grant had succeeded Lincoln the next 200 years might not have been so terrible for black people. Bush single handedly destabilized the entire world by invading the Middle East on the Biggest Lie until Trump came up with Election Fraud. Biden? The magnitude of the rolling catastrophes will prove much greater than his meager abilities and his advisors can possibly cope with, the former a stone grifter from way back, the latter a gang of undistinguished hacks left over from the Clintons and Obama.

FROM ABC later on on Inauguration Day:

George Stephanopoulos: “What did you think of the inauguration?”

Amy Klobuchar: “We didn't think it was going to snow, but it turned to sun. And I got to talk to Lady Gaga, so that made it all worth it.”

SOME PERSPECTIVE from an on-line commenter: “While we are vastly relieved to get rid of that orange monstrosity and his horrid family, there was never any real threat to the republic. That pathetic crowd of ninnies that stormed the Capitol couldn’t overthrow Burundi on a good day. We are far better than to let an ignorant mob like that derail the enterprise. Established wealth will never allow it. You on the right understand that, don’t you?” (No, they don't, but established wealth certainly does.)

HARD to believe but some pwogs thought Trump would be sure to pardon truth tellers Assange and Snowden, knowing full well Biden won't. And now that the Orange Monster has been vanquished we'll all just settle in as things return to “normal.” 

TRUMP did one truly grand service to the country — he destroyed the Republican half of the duopoly. The other half can be depended on to destroy itself.

A READER WRITES: “Have you noticed that Senator Amy Klobuchar seems to have a fake smile on her face all the time, no matter what the subject? As far as I can recall, the only time she doesn’t smile is when she’s debating with Bernie Sanders. Then she turns deadly serious.” 

THE PPP handouts included some dubious paycheck protections indeed. Duncan James law office? Really? The guy's a multi-millionaire off that endless, and endlessly cynical, lawsuit between the City of Ukiah and the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District. James ought to be able to cover his office paychecks out of his spare change. The Savings Bank of Mendocino, Scrooge McMannon proprietor, also gets a nice whack out of each locally dispensed PPP check, and these aren’t the only people getting handouts who otherwise scream, “Get Government Off Our Backs.” (BTW, Mannon's putting up another major eyesore building at the south end of Ukiah's big boxes near 101. The implied thinking in Ukiah seems to be, “Wot the hell? What's a little more visual squalor in a whole valley of it?”)

SPARE ME the conclusion of the pious letter from the Fort Bragg City Council that concludes, “As Dr. King taught us, a great nation is a compassionate nation. Let us take that notion to heart as we address our neighbors and seek to heal our community’s and nation’s divides. Bernie Norvell Mayor, Jessica Morsell-Haye Vice Mayor.”

KING was universally reviled when he was alive, and routinely vilified by the national media. The FBI's fruitcake founder, J. Edgar Hoover, spied on him and circulated tape recordings of King's private moments, while the Birmingham Police Department in King's hometown withdrew police protection while King's home was bombed and vandalized with his wife and children inside. Whether or not he taught us how to be nicer to one another seems an unresolved matter given that half the people in the country are so violently unhappy with the big picture that a representative sampling of them invaded the Capitol last week, some hoping to murder certain officeholders.

MY COLLEAGUE, The Major, read the above and said, “Better not use ‘fruitcake’ or people will say you're homophobic. And that probably qualifies as a micro-aggression which, as you know, I’m very sensitive to.” Major, I sez, I'm beyond caring, besides which I mean ‘fruitcake’ in the ‘wacky’ meaning of the term, not the sexual sense.

I WORKED for a guy in my youth who, like many white men of that benighted era, was a living, breathing compendium of retrograde opinions which, expressed today, would send cancel culture to the intensive care units. His fave slur was versions of “It's enough to drive me fruit!” He was perpetually on the road to fruit, but looking back I'm not sure if he meant “fruit” in its homophobic sense, given that homosexuals were then invisible, but I have to assume he meant it as the crueler of the two pejoratives.

ON A BACK page of the ICO, the intrepid Gualala weekly, there's a column under the hed, “Advertising is oxygen for local journalism,” going so far as to describe the paper's advertisers as “heroes.” The hed should read, “Advertising is cyanide for local journalism” because newspapers dependent on advertising must, of necessity, not say anything that might upset the local Rotary or, in Mendo, the many censorious “liberals.” In practice, that means newspapers leave out most of the news, and certainly leave out the most vivid opinion. George Orwell put it best, “Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”

ORWELL also said, “If a free press means anything at all, it means the freedom to criticize and oppose,” by which standard one wonders what some of Mendo's young reporters think they're about. A lot of what one reads and hears around here is by people who want to be loved, want local government to give them affectionate chucks under their uncomprehending chinny chin chins.

MENDO’S KING OF THE DOUBLE DIPPERS

(Willits City Council meeting agenda, Oct. 28, 2020)

City Manager Reports And Recommendations

a. Approve Contract with Interim Police Chief, Fabian Lizarraga, for an Amount Not to Exceed $50,000, plus an Agreement to Secure Housing, at a Cost Not to Exceed $1,700 Per Month, or a $1,700 Cash Stipend Per Month. (Approved unanimously.) When he was interim chief in Fort Bragg, Lizarraga was known for being not present, kinda like Major-Major in Catch-22. He was out when he was in, in when he was out. 

IT LOOKS TO US, as non-lawyers, that the Federal Judge is allowing Gurr-Borges to proceed with their claim that they were singled out by the “opt-out” zoning imposed on the property, and thus denied a legitimate permit. However, the judge dismissed their claim that there was a “conspiracy” to do it (subject to reconsideration if more proof is provided at a later time), and dismissed their property rights claims because pot is still illegal in federal court. 

RUMORS out of Ukiah promised a Trumper demo at the County Courthouse on His Last Day, but it never happened, and never happened anywhere in the land, even as The Great Healer took the helm promising unity, as his political party harpoons the Great Orange Whale in a second impeachment. Social media, Ukiah, contained a comment from a Ukiah teacher describing the leader of the aborted Courthouse demo as “the stupidest student I've ever taught.”

SIGNS of the times. A 25-year-old Ukiah single parent who works two jobs for about $30 an hour couldn't make his rent and has been evicted. Fortunately, for him and his 6-year-old son, the young guy has a grandma who is helping him out. If it weren't for grams and gramps, this country would be a lot sadder than it is. The old folks have been raising their children's children for how long now?

TRUST IN THE MEDIA is at an all-time low, with less than half of all Americans and just 18 percent of Republicans saying they trust traditional media outlets. Trust but verify, as President Ron cautioned US, but most places in the world people understand that the media they're consuming is a private business owned by wealthy individuals with the typical conservative views of wealthy people. In this country, media are owned by wealthy people whose views range from the fascist end of the conservative spectrum to conservative liberals at the other end — Trump to Biden. There is a tiny left wing media whose views are entirely shut out by the mass media where most Americans get their information. (You're welcome.) 

BIDEN seems to think fringe sexual politics is a priority. He has signed an executive order that will force schools to include transgender athletes in girls' sports. The order, titled Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, was signed just hours after Biden assumed office on Wednesday evening. It states that “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”

FAIR ENOUGH, but if you defenestrate yourself just so you can beat all the girls in the hundred yard dash, well, hell, let's invoke some basic standards here. Reminds me of the guys who claimed to be gay just so they could play in a tough gay men's softball league in SF. That was back in the day when there was still some stigma attached to minority sexual practices. Also reminds me of two guys I played baseball with at Cal Poly, both of them in their early thirties, who'd been playing college baseball all over the country ever since they'd left high school. Pre-internet, all they had to do was bounce around from state-to-state, playing a season here and season there. One of them, Rod Atnip, finally got caught because he was a little too competitive. A little guy with a big fastball, pro scouts remembered him at some cow college in Alabama, another tried to sign him out of some obscure college in Nebraska. Where he was in his decade-long ballpark hegira when he landed in San Luis Obispo, I never knew. As an alleged student, Atnip spent nights playing cards for fairly big money downtown, days raiding the bookstore in his specially-sewn shoplifting coat, the fruits of that labor sold to us impoverished enablers for two-thirds off the cover price. At SLO, Atnip was enrolled only for the Spring semester, most of baseball season. By the time he flunked out the season was over and he was on the road again.

WE'RE SEEKING CONFIRMATION, but it seems that Mendo Public Health's Sharon Convery has been locked out of her office — summarily fired in the middle of the pandemic. Rumors of peculiar, if not illegal, practices at Public Health have been rife.

THIS RESPONSE re Convery late Friday afternoon: “Good Afternoon Mr. Anderson, Thank you for your inquiry. Ms. Convery is currently employed by the County of Mendocino. Beyond that, the County doesn't comment on personnel matters. Best regards, William Schurtz, Human Resources Director, County of Mendocino”

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: According to public employee employment records, Sharon Convery has been employed by Mendocino County since at least 2011 when she was listed as a part-time public health nurse. Later that year her title was changed to Sr. Program Manager, then Deputy Director Public Health Nursing in 2013. In 2016 she was again listed as Senior Program Manager, then in 2019 Senior Program Manager-Nursing with a base pay of $102k plus benefits. In April of 2020, Fort Bragg Police Chief John Naulty reported that Convery was “Mendocino County Director of Clinical Testing,” and praised her quick action on a covid-exposed prisoner who arrived in Mendo during an early prisoner release fiasco. Just last January 8, Ms. Convery was described in a County Presser as “a Registered Public Health Nurse with Mendocino County’s Communicable Disease and Immunization Program.”

 “As part of the County’s Emergency Preparedness team, Sharon has staffed numerous drive-through flu clinics. ‘I’ve had a lot of practice with mass vaccination events,’ she smiles. ‘These clinics are a little more intense because of social distancing and wearing N95s. What we do is public education. We’re here to make sure no one has prior medication allergies that would make them poor candidates for vaccination. Safety is our responsibility. This vaccine site is a good thing. In the future we will go wherever we’re needed to make sure people get vaccinated.’ The comment she’s heard most from vaccine recipients: ‘It didn’t hurt at all! I didn’t feel it’!”

EVEN MORE INTERESTING, perhaps, is that Sharon’s name appears second in the list of defendants in Barbara Howe’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Mendocino County from 2019, just after Tammy Moss Chandler. 

ACCORDING TO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, California relies on a secret formula to determine regional lockdown tiers by projecting ICU capacity four weeks out, and that projection is arrived at by some fancy math indeed. State health officials say it would be too confusing to release to the public, as the governor and these same officials issue sudden cessations of stay-at-home orders as business owners frantically bring back staff to re-open only to be closed down again.

BRITS immediately noticed that the bust of Churchill had been replaced by a bust of Cesar Chavez in Biden's Oval Office. The best account of the rise and fall of Chavez's United Farm Workers is Frank Bardacke's “Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers,” the only comprehensive and non-hagiographic account I know of on the subject of Chavez. Highly recommended.

UNDER BIDEN, THE SACROSANCT apartheid state of Israel will continue to get a blank check courtesy of American taxpayers, as will our high tech military, the same high tech military that controls, with its Afghan allies, less than ten percent of Afghanistan while Afghanistan’s 10th century opponents threaten to take control of the entire country. 

FORMER SUPERVISOR JOHN MCCOWEN WRITES:

In what amounts to a bait and switch, Supervisors Haschak and Williams recommend opening up every neighborhood to dramatically expanded cannabis cultivation.

On Monday January 25, in line with previous direction, the Board will consider a proposed land use based permitting system for cannabis cultivation.

Unfortunately, Supervisor Williams and Haschak are taking the opportunity to overturn previous Board direction and eliminate every meaningful protection for neighborhoods.

If this passes in its current form it will throw every residential neighborhood under the bus by allowing 12 outdoor plants without setbacks.

The original version posted with the agenda (the "bait") kept the current exemptions and setbacks in place. These restrictions were hammered out over the last 10+ years and were intended to allow for the legal cultivation of cannabis without tearing neighborhoods apart.

The "Final Draft" (the "switch") was posted last night and eviscerated the restrictions in the exemptions and threw out the setbacks, substantially eliminating protections for residential neighborhoods.

In place of 100 square feet grown indoors with setbacks from property lines and residences, anyone who can claim 2 exemptions will now be able to grow 12 plants of any size (some "plants" exceed 15' in height and 150 square feet of canopy) outdoors right under someone's bedroom window.

It's baffling to me why Supervisors Williams and Haschak are proposing to throw out these carefully crafted neighborhood protections and open the door to renewed neighborhood conflict.

I was initially very impressed by how faithfully the proposed ordinance follows Board direction to craft a land use based permit system that allows for expansion as well as permits in Rangeland, subject to a land use permit.

I know the issues of expansion and new permits in Rangeland are controversial but that is where the discussion should take place.

Without Board direction Supervisors Williams and Haschak have opened up issues that have been debated and decided multiple times with the same result every time.

I'm concerned that this backdoor attempt to undermine existing neighborhood protections will distract from and possibly jeopardize the need to enact critical reforms needed to put the industry on a sustainable footing in Mendocino County.

This ploy may succeed but at the cost of residential quality of life and a sustainable cannabis industry.

SARAH BODNER responds:

John McCowen: We have worked side by side for cannabis policy solutions many times over the years, and also often disagreed. It keeps it real.

This time, I seriously disagree with what you're suggesting. I think the language brought forth in the County's ordinance is a meaningful step forward in ending prohibition and updating our local cannabis policy.

The proposed language brings Mendocino County into alignment with CA state law passed by the voters in 2016, with consideration of personal rights as codified per California Health and Safety Code Section 11362.1 which states in part a person may:

(3) Possess, plant, cultivate, harvest, dry, or process not more than six living cannabis plants and possess the cannabis produced by the plants;

100 sq ft per patient is an antiquated prohibition era relic - a throwback to county SB 420 era policies which the voters did not adopt when they passed Prop 64.

What the voters passed in Prop 64 is 6 personal plants per person.

Setbacks don’t apply for personal cultivation, per state law. The commercial setbacks you want to see applied to personal cultivation would essentially extend prohibition for many county residents, and especially impact the rights of people with fewer resources (smaller parcel sizes). This is a step backwards, and it’s undemocratic.

This proposed policy aligns with the State law. This is what the voters of Mendocino decided on, why would a formerly elected official take issue with that?

The expressed goal of the board was to move scaled commercial cultivation into ag appropriate zones. The Phase 3 ordinance does that thoughtfully, and with discretionary review. The goal was not to violate personal rights, or contradict state law.

MARK SCARAMELLA COMMENTS: “This subject has become tiresome and the legalization problems seem intractable. This looks like yet another attempt to fix the problem by tweaking the current local rules. Mendo continues to thrash around trying to find some way through the pot reg maze, much of which McCowen created. I think Williams and Haschak probably mean well and have no intention of creating some kind of neo-green rush (over the one already in place). McCowen is kinda paranoid on this subject, always has been. It has driven his approach to hyper regulation for years and is largely the reason we are where we are. McCowen, like Ellen Drell and Dennis Slota, et al, objects to any relaxation of the rules which are his (and their) baby. At the moment almost all growers are illegal for pot cultivation rule violations or other site-related permit violations. Look at Rays Road in Philo. Does anyone think that anything Mendo proposes for pot regs will make any difference there — or in Covelo for that matter? The Sheriff has made it clear that minor unpermitted grows which don’t do much environmental damage and don’t bother the neighbors much are such low priority as to be equivalent to legal. To be legal, growers still have to comply with a mind-numbing array of state regs and requirements no matter what Mendo does. My guess is that Williams and Haschak are trying to make it easier for small growers, which McCowen & Co. see as a large “opening up.” Who knows if it will? Small growers will still have a hard time getting legal, even if McCowen's precious rules are weakened. But it's hard to tell from the proposed new regs themselves because nobody really knows how any of this will play out. I'd like to hear Jim Shields’ opinion on this rather than trying to analyze the particulars of this latest proposal, which may or may not even materialize.”

FORMER SUPERVISOR McCOWEN'S alarm that marijuana planting might escape his cockamamie, utterly failed local rules is almost funny in its pure delusion. I'm sure pot gardens thrive within a few yards of McCowen's Westside Ukiah home, just as they thrive everywhere else in all kinds of neighborhoods throughout the county. They certainly thrive in central Boonville. Why I even had a small garden on my place this year! Me, a guy who doesn't smoke the stuff and never has except, you know, late at night way back when we were all drunk. Never had the slightest desire to re-visit the love drug. Let me explain further: This Mexican kid I know asked me if he could put in a “legal” garden to the rear of my heavenly acre. “I will give you five thousand in November. Cash,” he said. I told him I didn't need five thousand, I needed fifty, at least, and not to worry about it. If “legal” ever had a more protean meaning than “legal” has in this county… Hell, even Humboldt has rules, on paper anyway. Mendo's rules are like that old joke about the umpire who makes a bad call. Challenged on his interpretation of the rule, the ump says, “I'll show it to you as soon as the ink is dry.” So all summer a couple of young guys, and a little kid they were apparently babysitting, came and went, tending their magical gro. By the end of the summer, their plants looked like marijuana plants. I admired their enterprise, their work discipline. Then, one day in late October, they uprooted the plants and drove off. In November, the jeffe kid came to me and said, “I have bad news. I am sorry to tell you that I got drunk with these guys in Ukiah. They told me they would take my buds and pay me $40,000 in one week from then, but when I went to get paid they laughed and told me to go away or they would kill me. I got ripped off.” The story might even be true, but I said I didn't care that I wouldn't be getting five thousand, and that I was sorry he'd worked so hard for six months for nothing. “Be careful who you get drunk with,” I said.

THE PANDEMIC does have something of an upside. Darn near all the orphaned dogs at the County Animal Shelter in Ukiah have found homes. The last time I had a look at the place they seemed to have every dog in NorCal in border-like cages, so many, and so many pit bulls, I had to admire the people engaged so faithfully in what seemed so obviously a hopeless task. 

NOW IF WE could find permanent homes for all the orphaned children this small county manages to produce we might call ourselves a civilized, even “progressive” kinda place. But orphaned children, unlike orphaned cats and dogs, are valuable as orphans, little funding units worth hundreds of thousands dollars each to the caring professionals whose cush jobs they fund, but by the time these funding units reach 18 when they are suddenly non-reimbursable, and the caring professionals disappear.

HERE'S one that makes me feel violent every time I hear it: “Violence is never the answer.” Violence is always the answer, as even the most cursory glance at the historical record demonstrates, and the history of this country's social-economic organization establishes beyond all argument.

HERE'S A STAT FOR YOU: Since Biden was born in 1942, he, and everyone else of his vintage, has seen a full 33 percent of all our history. Who arrived at that stat I don't know. I read it somewhere and then spent an hour or so jotting down as many major historical events I could think of and I arrived at 40 percent. Has Biden learned anything from all that experience? No indication that he has, and what choice do we have but to live in hope?

NOT INTENDING to come off as a sexist here, but I am able to distinguish Megyn Kelly from the rest of the blonde women with giant neon white teeth who appear regularly on television. Meg said the other day that media outlets like CNN are partially to blame for the January 6th Capitol riot because they failed to cover Donald Trump fairly. “They hated him so much that they checked their objectivity, and it wasn't just CNN, all of them did,” Kelly said in an interview with the BBC Saturday. She said the outlet openly described Trump and his behavior as racist, sexist and misogynistic and their views made the public lose trust in the network. “Part of the reason we saw what happened at the Capitol … is because there had been a complete lack of trust in the media and people don't know where to turn for true information.”

THE BIDEN BAILOUT PLAN consists, so far, of an extension of unemployment benefits; $1400 checks for you and me; and tax breaks whose beneficiaries are not identified. Total package — $1.9 trillion. 

“TRUMP'S finally gone, but if Joe Biden wants his return to normalcy to be any more successful than his predecessor’s appeal to greatness, he’ll need to take on the real issues dragging red and blue America down: economic torpor, ever increasing inequality, and policies that diminish people’s prospects of making it into or maintaining their positions in the middle class. These pressures are felt most among the young, a third of whom suffer from anxiety disorders and who collectively have very low levels of optimism about the future—with good reason. Many express their frustration in shockingly violent ways, sometimes by dressing up as ‘riot ninjas.’ What we have been witnessing—during the protests this summer and after the canard of a “stolen” election—reprises the often inchoate peasant rebellions that happened periodically in Medieval Europe. More troubling still are similarities with the German Weimar Republic, evidenced by the mass support of a would-be despot in the White House, rising anti-Semitism, an out-of-control upper bureaucracy, a politicized media, and the rise of armed militant groups at both extremes of the spectrum in a modern version of the street fights between Communist and Nazi street gangs, committed to bashing each other and undermining basic civil order. Acquiescence and outright approval for looting, burning and even takeovers of urban neighborhoods were widespread among progressives this summer. The people who stormed the capital on Jan. 6 may see themselves as ‘patriots,’ but they acted more like Nazis.” — Joel Kotkin

THESE TIMES certainly emit a Weimar vibe, the diff being that we've managed to out-Weimar the Germans in the decadence department. And the Germans had a large communist movement with intelligent leaders but not intelligent enough to arm themselves against the nazis, who also had intelligent, capable leadership. (Literalists please understand that by simply noting that the nazis had capable leadership isn't an endorsement of them.) Our commies are, well, heavy on theory, but unless tenure at the university level is abolished, but at this point, our fascisti lack leadership, to put it mildly. They have the numbers, though, and in the crunch, as in Germany, the big money will be behind them. 

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] My daughter married a young Brit and they now have two children. At one point their oldest had a serious infection and he received excellent care. If not for the NHS the medical bills would have broken them. I’ve been an advocate for universal health care in America all my life and the point I was trying to make is that it’s becoming more and more elusive in the US. 

Overall poor health is now common here. Young men who apply to join the armed forces are turned down b/c they can’t meet the physical requirements, are functionally illiterate or have a criminal record.

[2] I’m surprised that Trump even really WANTED to be re-elected. He got the job by accident and, reportedly, very much to his own surprise. During the four years of his Occupation of the White House, Trump showed himself to be a guy who really didn’t seem to want to do the job either. It was just a huge ‘reality TV show’ to him. The final episode has been a drama worthy of a fifth-rate three-in-the-morning soap. But, boy, howdy! Is he going to MISS all the attention! When he was sent to the Naughty Corner and had his social media cut off, that was bad enough. But when his money-faucets were also turned off, that must have really hurt. 

When he could no longer grift the 34% of Americans who were flicking him a few dollar-bucks every week or so, or sell them his “Made in China” tatt, the realization of his own impotence must have come over him like a cold sweat. 

Result? True to character, he threw his own loyal supporters – the ‘Capitol Stormers’ – under the bus in a feeble attempt to help save his own skin or at least lessen the possible charges he faces, come Thursday.

[3] I was and remain non-partisan … I didn’t like Trump, and I’m not too enthusiastic about Biden. I think he (and his party) are too old. too fossilized, too prepared to get along with the forces that are wrecking America.

Not as much as the Republicans, but it’s a lousy choice really – do you want to be bitten in half by the shark or swallowed whole?

The more fevered hopes and dreams of a Trump victory post-3 November have not come to pass – ranging from the ultra-fruit-loops of Q-Anon, through to the semi-fruit-loop Sidney “Kraken” Powell.

I think it’s indisputable that Trump had the worst legal team imaginable. While it is far from clear that Trump might have done better with real lawyers, it was almost certain that the stars of Four Seasons Total Landscaping were not up to it.

Looking forward, I trust that even the most fervid Trump supporters accept the new reality, and start to think and act sensibly and productively. Steal or no steal … it is what it is.

I trust they get over believing Joe Biden is a senile puppet propped up in a chair (he is not); get over claiming that Biden & Son are totally in the pocket of the CCP on one side, and Soros-Gates on the other (it’s nonsense); and hopefully will finally get over Covid-19 being a myth (it’s real).

Otherwise it’s just going to be interminable bickering and pointless posting of endless false conspiracy nuttiness – haven’t we had enough of that? Time for a decent dose of reality – and look at the things that are really challenging the nation (hint: the economy, pandemic, race, urban mayhem, suburban blight, immigration, debt, climate, and jobs, jobs, jobs).

[4] These transgender guys should at least be required to get “package removal” surgery. That shows commitment. As it stands, any guy can slip on lady’s running shoes and pink shorts and proclaim himself a competitor in women’s athletics. Pull out the big scalpel and see who stays and who runs away!

[5] Bottom Line: the situation in the hills of Humboldt is a million times worse than before the green rushers took over. People used to respect the forest and waterways. Now it’s all about profit and greed. We used to look at diesel indoor growers as villains. Now every “legal” grow in Humboldt has multiple diesel generators running 24/7. That “full sun” bud is usually just more diesel bud being grown with natural or supplemental light. When is Humboldt going to enforce the alternative energy regulations? These “legal” grows are supposed to be using 80% alternative energy for their power needs, but as we all know no one is following or enforcing these guidelines. We need our supervisors to take this issue to heart and start requiring “legal” grows to use alternative energy like solar to power their farms….

Come on Humboldt!

We can do it!

Let’s make Humboldt the alternative energy cannabis farming capital of not only CA, but the world!

[6] The way Big Media is covering Biden, I haven’t seen anything like it since ’08, when they proclaimed Obama to be The Messiah. The word ‘Sycophant’ doesn’t quite describe it. MSNBC went so far as to compare Biden to Jesus Christ himself — yet, Biden has a 50 year track record to examine, in which he’s proven himself to be nothing more than a run of the mill pol looking for the Main Chance.

Almost all of their reporting seems like DNC agit/prop; is it meant to be taken seriously?

These media people in Atlanta, NY and DC, they have no problem debasing themselves in front of a national audience? What’s the goal? Do they think we’re all stupid out here, that we can’t see thru them? For example, yesterday, hard hitting reporters at MSNBC were raving about the fab shoes Kamala was wearing.

“Who designed them? The color is just right, matching her outfit perfectly. Isn’t it wonderful to have someone back in the White House with such exquisite fashion sense? We will let our audience know where they can get a pair of these shoes as soon as our exclusive interview with the VP tonite.” And so on.