BIDEN honored the nation's war dead on Memorial Day by taking part in a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, where he said Americans have long fought for “rule of the people.” “Democracy itself is in peril — here at home and around the world,” Biden said.
DID HE SAY, “here at home”? Are we looking at Civil War Two? Biden called the chaos outside Air Force One a “struggle for the soul of America itself” – a recurring theme of his campaign and administration. And, spectacularly untruthful all his days,
BIDEN’S SPEECH WRITERS also called for “truth, founded on facts, not propaganda…” “Empathy is the fuel of democracy,” Biden said. “The soul of America is animated by the perennial battle between our worst instincts, which we’ve seen of late, and our better angels. Between me first and we the people, between greed and generosity, between cruelty and kindness, captivity and freedom… We gathered at this sacred place in this solemn hour engaged in the most fundamental of undertakings: the right of remembrance. To remember those who gave their all in the service of America and the service of freedom and the service of justice.”
WHEN CEO ANGELO locked retiring Supervisor McCowen out of his office on a bogus theft of county property claim, she followed that up with a covid lockdown of the Low Gap headquarters, thereby shutting all the Supervisors out of their offices. Everyone's been vaxxed, and it's past time for the entire leadership posse to get back to their offices and desks. (Supervisor Mulheren has since moved back into her office.)
ANGELO also inadvertently revealed her assumption of how county government works when, asked by Supervisor Mulheren why the Adventist complex isn't being considered for a psych unit, Angelo replied, “It wouldn't be in the community's interest.”
UH, excuse me Ms. Angelo, but Mulheren is elected and you are appointed. It's for her and her colleagues to decide what's in the county's interest.
THE LATEST ITERATION of the county's pot program is a belated attempt, and a logical enough one except for the ten acre stipulation, to bring some order to the Green Rush. But it seems from here that whatever strategy is adopted at this point is probably futile because so many grows are already out there, meaning that a state of reefer anarchy will obtain for years to come, assuming that the market continues to make dope a lucrative and ever-expanding enterprise.
YOU'VE had to have noticed by now that whenever you stray from mainline vocabulary on your magic box that the cyber grammarians swoop down to underline what they see as an error. My spiffy phrase above — “anarchy will obtain” — is not only the correct usage of “obtain” in the context, it's goddam elegant! (That's a joke, son.) I understand from some undoubtedly dubious source that the Mormons have the computer concession for prose do's and don'ts, which may explain the strict adherence to an elementary style guide serviceable enough for most computer messaging but unreliable for any deviation therefrom.
GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN, Trump's former National Security Advisor, has again established that he's a more or less functioning 5150. He's trying to take back his endorsement of a violent military coup in the United States—despite his comments being caught on video. No surprise that the whacked-out Flynn was addressing a Dallas QAnon conference when he was asked, “Why can't what happened in Myanmar happen here?” Flynn replied: “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.” After his comment was reported, Flynn rushed out to claim he hadn't said what he'd said. “Let me be VERY CLEAR,” he wrote. “There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort.” QAnon crackpots have cited the Myanmar coup as an example of how Trump could be reinstated as president.
AND THEN THE NYT reported that Trump is telling people he will be reinstated as president by August, after his original National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said a Myanmar-style coup “should happen” The New York Times' Maggie Haberman wrote in a Tuesday tweet what Trump has been telling people, sharing a CNN report that has Trump supporters expressing favor for a coup that would put him back in power.
CRAZY is certainly the prevalent national vibe, and if the Trumpers were bold enough to mob Congress back in January… Well, if the camo buddies are gearing up for an attempt to restore Trump they're going to need a lot more brains and discipline than they've so far demonstrated. They're also going to need at least the tacit support of the police, the armed services and the intelligence apparatuses, which is highly unlikely. America may be bananas but we're not a banana republic.
THE PD WEIGHS IN ON FIDDLEHEADS
Maybe Chris Castleman is a fan of P.T. Barnum, the 19th century showman and circus owner who is often credited with saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. A year ago, Castleman closed his Mendocino restaurant, Fiddleheads Café, and boarded up with the windows rather than comply with pandemic-related public health orders requiring, among other things, that employee wear masks. At the time, Castleman told Staff Writer Mary Callahan that masks were a matter of “personal responsibility and personal choice,” and he didn’t want to be responsible for enforcing those rules.
Well, Fiddleheads is open again, and Castleman is back in the headlines — but this time he is making news with his own set of coronavirus rules. A poster in the window reads, in large print, “$5 fee added to orders placed while wearing a face mask.” Below that is a warning that there’s “an additional $5 fee” for anyone “caught bragging” about their vaccines. Here’s another quotation widely attributed to Barnum: “The foundation of success in life is good health.” Right now, good health starts with a coronavirus vaccine. Don’t hesitate to brag about getting yours.
I WROTE to the now nationally famous (or infamous) Chris Castleman of Mendocino's Fiddlesheads restaurant: “As a guy often on the receiving end of community opprobrium, I admire your sticking to your guns. Don't agree but anybody who takes a lonely stand gets my applause. How has business been? Economic boycotts can be fatal.”
CASTLEMAN promptly replied: “I appreciate your sentiments. Business has been average. Memorial Day weekend is typically our second busiest weekend of the year, but looking around town last weekend it seemed to be about half the tourists that we normally have in town. I’ll survive financially… The lockdown gave me the opportunity to be more frugal and rearrange my personal expenses so that I can get by with less income. (I live in my van these days, homeless by choice I suppose.) It’s given me a rare opportunity to stand for what I believe in and not worry if it will render my cafe chairs empty. Fortunately, I have discovered that there ARE people in Mendocino, Fort Bragg, and beyond that are incredibly supportive of what I represent, but you won’t hear much about it because the local online discussion groups and news outlets want people to believe I have zero community support. The fact that I am still in business is a testament to the fact that there are many folks in our community that want me here, they’re just afraid to talk about it online. Thanks again for having the courage to speak your mind in times like these. Hopefully this community can come to a better understanding of one another once all this coronavirus stuff dissipates.”
JILL RAVITCH is SoCo's DA. She faces an expensive recall election in September although she's said she is retiring in 2022. A Windsor-based developer, Bill Gallaher, owner of a home building company and a chain of senior living stalags located across California and Nevada, began the recall effort because Ravitch's office prosecuted Gallaher’s firm, Oakmont Senior Living and two of its affiliates, over its abandonment of seniors in two of Gallaher's Santa Rosa care homes during the 2017 Tubbs fire. And Gallaher has gotten away with funding the recall to the tune of about $800,000 most of it his own unlimited money although private money for recalls is supposed to be limited.. Gallaher paid for signature gatherers and all the filing fees. The recall is obviously one man's retaliation.
NO. Recalls are supposed to be for the removal of office-holding crooks. Ravitch isn’t a crook. This one should have been stopped by the courts.
RAVITCH was a prosecutor for the Mendocino County DA's office while she campaigned for office in Sonoma County, and even given a Mendo County vehicle to commute to her West SoCo home in one more example of Mendocino County's long tradition of gifts of public funds to its favored sons and daughters. Ravitch's stay in the Mendo minor leagues occurred during the haphazard reign of Meredith Lintott.
A GRIM MIX of Javert and Madam Dafarge, Ravitch always seemed to me a perfect prosecutor. Her hate is pure! She pinned me with distinct death vibes on the few occasions I met her in Ukiah's temple of doom. Did I only imagine her muttering, “I pray for the day I see you at the defense table, Mr. Man?”
NO, BOYS, Ravitch never struck me as an admirer of our gender or even particularly tolerant of it, not that I blame her, but you want hand holders in that job? Take a look at what the lack of prosecutions has done for San Francisco.
THE OLD GIRL won't win any charm awards, but Ravitch is good at her job and she wasn't afraid to take on the big bucks sleaze bag leading the recall against her, a major point in her favor. Worst of all, the spine-free SoCo supervisors, by not denouncing the unfounded recall and the indefensible cost of it to taxpayers, have tacitly approved it.
THE 1921 DESTRUCTION of Tulsa's black Greenwood neighborhood was remembered by Biden in full insincerity mode last week. He said the atrocity was the work of an “angry white mob.” The mob was white but it wasn't angry, It was celebratory. as photos of white participants demonstrate. Despite efforts by Tulsa's white ruling class to keep it quiet — a town dominated by homicidal maniacs was not good for business — the mass murder was no secret among, ahem, informed Americans.
A PLEASANT young woman named Laura Brickman stopped in this afternoon. She's doing site prep for a documentary film on the Bari Bombing saga. Rather than drag you, dear reader, along familiar paths of this story, assuming you pay any attention to my overly-frequent mentions of the case, I'll confine myself to two major points about the alleged mystery of who tried to kill the 1990 diva of Northcoast dissent. (1) Not a single member of the Bari family, including her parents when they were alive, and her well-placed sister, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, or the children of Mike Sweeney by Sweeney's former wife and the two daughters he had with Bari, have ever said a public word about the case. Don't know about you, Dad, but if my kid was blown up in a murder attempt this dad would still be out in front of the Federal Building with an angry placard demanding that the bomber be pursued. (2) Neither the Oakland Police Department nor the FBI looked at Bari's ex-husband as the logical perp, making Sweeney the biggest elephant in the smallest room, ever.
FROM MARILYN DAVIN'S excellent account of her recent knee replacement surgery: “Who hasn’t had a knee problem? Consider the lowly knee, limited in its range of motion and uniquely exposed to all manner of jarrings, accidents, and even to the inevitable ravages of age itself as decades of faithful use pound its cushioning pads thin, ultimately surrendering its suffering host to the orthopedic surgeon’s scalpel.”
I WAS ENCOURAGED to have this surgery several years ago, but weighing the minor pain I live with against the major pain of the surgery and the time away from my sanctified task — the bringing of truth to benighted Mendocino County — and fully aware of the ruthless math of the actuarial tables — I'm 82 in July — I decided, Nope, the next doctor I see will be the one in the Adventist's Meat Locker cackling over my corpse. “Hah! We finally got this bastard.”
I WAS ALSO belatedly aware that I'd probably been mesmerized by the smiling eyes of the attractive young medical maiden who showed me the x-rays allegedly showing dangerous deterioration, and suspecting I was being hustled — us fully insured geezers are pure gold to the mercenary medical system we suffer in this country — I've subsequently avoided the “most advanced medical system in the world.”
BUT I WASTED a year of periodic cortisone needles to the knees, whose beneficial effect lasted maybe three days — max. One afternoon a fill-in doctor, sweating profusely as I speculated on his mental health, jammed the needle somewhere in my lower kneecap. “That ought to hold you,” he said, and fairly sprinted out of the room. That was the capper, and I beat myself up for being so dumb as to submit to these quacks and hustlers for as long as I did.
ME DEAR OLD MUM, a registered nurse, would always say, “Don't tell me about doctors. They're all drunks and drug addicts.” Of course she went back to the days of haphazardly managed drug cabinets where anybody in a white smock could help him or herself to the pharmaceuticals. And high school sports physicals were conducted by an old boozer with an unfiltered Pall Mall hanging out of the side of his mouth who did about forty “physicals” in ten minutes. Rubber hammer to the knee and, “Yer fine, kid. Move on.” Now, it's deceptively antiseptic and all smiles, but Buyer Beware I say.
LOOKING BACK, I think I wrecked my knees when I got caught up in the jogging craze. I bought a lot of inadequately cushioned running shoes, and spent hours with sweating, puffing packs of my fellow obsessives pounding the pavement. Walking and hiking you not only can enjoy the scenery, you're not rubbing away your knee bones. Live and learn, as they say. What they don't say is by the time you learn it's too late.
I'M FINDING that one big advantage of my senescence is re-enjoying movies I haven't seen in sixty years, such as The Last Picture Show. I remember liking it, but I didn't remember liking it as much as I did Sunday night when I watched it again. The whole cast is good, but Cloris Leachman was never better, and she was good in everything she did.
AS MOST MOVIE FANS know the film is based on Larry McMurtry's East Texas hometown of Archer City, renamed Thalia in his book, The Last Picture Show, become the famous film, which he mostly wrote with director Peter Bogdanovich. The story of teenagers coming of age in the 1950s, although set in small town Texas, could be of teenagers almost anywhere in the United States at that time. I especially enjoyed a sequence where every place in town the teen football players went the day after a losing game they got insulted by adult fans. “Ya know, boys, tacklin' keeps the other team from scoring.” Etc.
WHICH REMINDED the garrulous old coot writing this of my high school football coach who said to me after one of many losses, “You know, Anderson, I hope I'm there when you get yours.” I know I irritated him — “Buck up, coachie, it's only a game” — but can you even imagine a high school coach these days wishing out loud for a kid's death? (For the record, I was unfazed. The coach was always good for a laugh.) The young weren't cosseted back in the day but relentlessly love bombed these days.
McMURTRY, probably best known for Lonesome Dove, again put his dying home town on the map when he converted the mostly abandoned downtown into a series of bookstores, which became a mandatory stop for bibliophiles from around the world.
AS IS OFTEN POINTED OUT, a mere five websites now control what the cyber-dependent know about the world. And they are banning people wholesale from their platforms, including Big Orange. I don't think anybody should be banned, that people should be trusted to sort out truth from untruth on their own. You say that's a bad idea in a country where 70 million presumably literate high school graduates believe their tanning booth oracle when he says the election was stolen? And what about the even more evil characters out there promulgating race hatred and demonstrably untrue notions like Holocaust Denial? Let 'er rip, I say, and hope reason and verifiable fact prevail.
THE BODIES of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife have been moved. Forrest is notorious for the massacre of 300 black Union soldiers after they surrendered at Fort Pillow, and is one of the founders of the Klan. The bodies are being moved to a museum 200 miles away from where Forrest's statue stood over his grave in Memphis. The statue was removed a few years ago by The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a small group of historically ignorant nostalgics who consider treason and slavery as the South's finest hour. Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery, will now rest, with his statue, in the National Confederate Museum at Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee.
WHERE, I HOPE, it is at least noted that as a matter of historical fact, Forrest, on his deathbed, said he repudiated the racism and the consequent evil he did his entire adult life.
WHICH IS ANOTHER reason that today’s cancel culture, or whatever the ignorati of historical re-write call themselves, should be condemned for their inhumanity. ‘We're the righteous and the good and you people are irremediable racist dog pigs.’ General Forrest ought to be celebrated as a man who came to see the light, not remembered only for the villainy of much of his life. If he could change….. Perspective, nuance, context, you fascists!
THE CHINESE not only hold a big share of America's ever-accumulating debt, they seem poised for a monumental green breakthrough. (Better start teaching the grandkids some basic Mandarin.) They've developed a fusion reactor called the “Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak” that will provide “limitless clean power.” Fusion is considered the Holy Grail of energy and is what powers our sun. Our geniuses are also working on it, but the Chinese seem to be out in front of getting it done.
DR ARUNA KHILANANI, who is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, delivered the talk virtually to Yale University medical students and faculty back in April. She was invited by Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center. Audio of the 50-minute talk was published on journalist Bari Weiss' Substack blog on Friday. She made a series of stunning comments during her talk that was largely based on the psychology behind “whiteness.” Khilanani said she had fantasized about “unloading a revolver into the head of any white person” who got in her way. She went on to say that white people feel they are being bullied when people of color bring up race. At various other points, she described white people as being “out of their minds” and said that they make her “blood boil.” Khilanani also said speaking to white people about race was “'useless” because she says they are not at the same level of conversation. “Addressing racism assumes that white people can see and process what we are talking about. They can't. That's why they sound demented. They don't even know they have a mask on. White people think it's their actual face. We need to get to know the mask,” she said.
PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF. The conservative media makes it seem that lunatic statements like Khilanani's are prevalent in the groves of academe. Doubt it, but it's a very big irony that this nut, and too many others like her, attempt to whip up mob fever in a time when race relations, at the everyday human level, have never been better, which is quite remarkable given that in 1950 there were emphatically not the millions of loyal, affectionate cross-race relationships there are today. Yeah, there remains systemic racism at the macro-level, but at the micro-level, people get along better than ever, and that trend is upward, even among millions of Republicans. At the macro-level systemic racism is a consequence of capitalism, not the innate evil of white people pedaled by the race demagogues, a few of whom we have here in Mendocino County where they are widely regarded as the frauds they are.
FISH & WILDLIFE'S WILLITS RAID
On May 11, 2021, wildlife officers with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) served a search warrant on the 1400 block of Buckhorn Road in Willits. Support was provided by a CDFW Environmental Scientist, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and Mendocino County Code Enforcement. Prior to serving the search warrant, a thorough records check was conducted on the property to determine what steps may have been taken to secure a state license. In this case, no state license to cultivate commercial cannabis had been issued. … Over 4,100 illegal cannabis plants were eradicated and over 75 pounds of processed cannabis was destroyed. A formal complaint will be filed with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office. No other information is available at this time.
ON LINE COMMENTS re the above described raid:
1. So when I was a kid and placed rocks into a stream to cross so my feet didn’t get wet, I was supposed to get a permit?
2. Did that rock involve all this: A manmade dam that was impounding the natural stream flow. An illegal water diversion that was used to irrigate cannabis plants. Sediment placed where it can pass into waters of the state. Unpermitted stream crossings. Cultivation areas with deleterious materials located near waters of the state?
3. Shit, weed growers deserve it. But if ya do this shit for grapes, lettuce, tomatoes, avocados or not to get your feet wet, no permit required. Dam that shit up, use pesticides and strew your trash all along the river/creek beds everywhere throughout California.
4. Someone send them a dictionary. Impound a stream’s flow? Deleterious materials? And yes, these days you would need a permit, inspection and full CEQA study to move the rocks in what used to be your stream, and now belongs to the state. But it’s okay if your herd of cattle mangle the stream banks and use the waterway for their toilet.
IT’S SURELY NOT TOO EARLY to admit that Biden’s governing policies are Trumpism with a human(oid) face. Just as Trump’s governing policies where Obamaism in the face of a white avenger. The fundamentals didn’t change and won’t change. The ever-expanding military budget will remain sacrosanct, corporate behavior will be deregulated, fossil fuels will power the economy until they’re depleted, health care will remain a for-profit industry, the poor will be mercilessly policed, immigrants will be exploited for cheap labor and detained and deported when they become inconvenient, the nuclear arsenal will be continually and provocatively upgraded, working-class people will be kept buried in debt, wages will be kept as low as possible, the public commons will be turned over to extractive industries at subsidized rates, Israel will be kept stocked with weapons and get out of jail cards and Cuba will be slowly strangled with sanctions until it renounces its revolution and pays reparations for kicking the CIA’s ass at the Bay of Pigs.
— Jeff St. Clair
A READER WRITES: “Google ‘Telecare lawsuits’ and you’ll learn a lot. I hope Adventist Health does the Mendocino PHF and not Telecare. AH has experience, facilities and medical staff to operate it.”
THE READER IS CORRECT: Telecare — the company CEO Angelo and Mental Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller have pre-picked years in advance of the actual need for services in a Psych facility that CEO Angelo estimates will cost $20-$25 million and take years to construct — is a giant California mental health care services operation with lots of apparent lawsuits having been filed against it. We are in no position to review or comment on them, although the company is large, has operations in many areas of the state and is in a business that has inherent legal liability. In addition, Telecare has taken heat from the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury which referred Supervisors there to a critical report by Santa Cruz chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) because, the SCruz GJ said, “Grand juries do not have the authority to investigate the performance of private, for-profit contractors to government agencies, so we were not able to evaluate the accommodations in the CSP or the allegations of the NAMI Santa Cruz task force report.”
Which, while correct, does not prevent the Grand Jury from evaluating the oversight conducted by the County nor the reports from the contractor. Either way, however, it’s yet another reason not to contract out for such services. What little accountability county employees have is almost non-existent when the service is contracted to a private company.
From the SCruz Grand Jury report:
“Until its closure in December 2013 the Dominican Santa Cruz Hospital BHU was the receiving facility for all people placed on involuntary holds. The County then built its own BHU, which opened in 2014. Rather than operate the BHU with Behavioral Health staff, the County contracted with Telecare Corporation, a private, for-profit provider. Telecare’s facility is now where individuals placed on involuntary holds are brought. They are first taken into the crisis stabilization program. Here those placed on hold can spend up to 24 hours while undergoing evaluation. After evaluation, the person will either be: referred to an inpatient treatment facility (possibly one of the beds at the BHU) if they cannot be stabilized; or sent to a detention facility if a crime is involved; or released. The County’s contract requires Telecare’s CSP staff to be able to evaluate two juveniles and eight adults at any given time. They are also required to maintain separation between the juveniles and adults at all times. In October of 2017 the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) of Santa Cruz issued a task force report that was critical of Telecare’s practices. The contract between the County and Telecare provides for periodic oversight meetings and the right to review services performed. There is no publicly available record of any County audit or inspection of the Telecare facility.”
(Mark Scaramella)
GEORGE & BRUCE GO DEEP:
Bruce Anderson: At the macro-level systemic racism is a consequence of capitalism, not the innate evil of white people pedaled by the race demagogues, a few of whom we have here in Mendocino County where they are widely regarded as the frauds they are.
George Hollister: Really? Has every human culture in history been capitalist?
Bruce Anderson: Actually, George, capitalism is an historical anomaly. Back in the Garden of Eden, and for eons after, people had to cooperate collectively or die. Now that capitalism is murdering the planet some people are belatedly revisiting their assumptions. Our capitalism here in Liberty Land needed four hundred years of free labor from black people to get the momentum that got US to WalMart. I’d say capital owes them at the least a few breaks.
George Hollister: That is my point. Cultural prejudice, racial prejudice, and racism are as old as humanity, exist in all cultures, and have nothing to do with whether an economy is private or public. In fact the case could be made that racism is worse in government-run economies. Far worse.
Bruce Anderson: Uh, not really, George. Cuba, for all its faults, is pretty close to a fully integrated state, and in many places of the world, much of Europe for instance, racism isn’t the major concern it is here. Racism in this country isn’t nearly as intense as it was when I was a kid. It’s learned behavior, not innately human. Racism’s always been helpful to the owners of this country, though.
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] RE MENDO'S POT PERMIT PROGRAM: The frantic years-long attempt to rescue a sinking pot licensing program has long since progressed past the old comparison of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Stupes have imported deck chairs, debated the merits of various deck chairs, and are frantically searching for more and different deck chairs. Meanwhile, the pot legalization program in Mendoland continues its inevitable Titanic descent into the depths of fumbled legalization.
[2] “Does Memorial Day 2021 seem an unusually grim lull between spring and summer this year?”
Memorial Day is not solely about the military. Memorial Day is a time intended to… REMEMBER. To remember LOTS of things.
These days, we can reach back in our minds and hearts (if we are of sufficient pre-Woked-Up age) to remember the kind of Country we used to have. To remember the kind of people we used to be. To remember all the souls we’ve lost along the way. To remember and mourn all the values we’ve discarded along our way. To remember a Nation that was been blessed more than any other in human history and to reflect on how poorly we’ve maximized all those incredible blessings. And to remember how so many of us just ignore those blessings or take them all for granted or peddle some narrative nonsense on how we are somehow ‘entitled’ to them because we are so ‘special’. And if we ARE so special, was it not those very Blessings that were GIVEN to us and not something we did to earn such a lofty status?
“Despite the torrents of mendacious narratives and fogs of gaslight deployed in this campaign, a substantial chunk of the public resists suffocation and has finally begun to fight back…”
The way to ‘fight back’ is grounded in our ability to remember the best of who and what we were… and want to be (or become) again. The ‘torrents of mendacious narratives and fogs of gaslighting’ will be poured down upon us without end as we continue our journey groping our way through Today’s Conjured Darkness. And it is our response to that societal poisoning that will determine if we will exist as an America we want to be… or if the Name will live on like a failed brand but the ideals and foundation that defined the America We Want To Be are snuffed out and erased and buried under the weight of all those mendacious narratives and fog of gaslighting… and worse.
When we take a wrong turn on the highway and head off in a wrong direction, the only way to get back to where we intended is to REMEMBER where we want to go. If we are to have a future worth living in, the only way to find it is to REMEMBER the kind of Country and People we want to be. That’s the enduring message of Memorial Day.
[3] Well, don’t get mad… Like I always say, some things you just can’t control…
If people won’t get their vaccine, they can’t win the $1.5 Million!
If people won’t get their vaccine, they will likely be wearing masks forever!
Got to move forward now, we got an extreme, historic drought threatening to kill your valuable cash crop, we got shortages of everything from rental cars and houses to good sense, we got people shooting other people for no reason, we got the Mangroves dying in Senegal…
And guess what ? The Chinese say: Go ahead and have 3 kids! Whoa!
The biggest problem in Humboldt, is the folks there are unable to move forward, to evolve!
Pay attention! Wander outside the walls of the asylum occasionally!
People don’t want weed, they want lots of alcohol, Ecstasy, Cocaine!
People want to buy a house, get a great job, have a nice life! They don’t want to sit around smoking a plant that is 60 years ago…
Move on, and to the 10 or so people who regularly post the same comments:
1) There’s no little microchips in the vaccine
2) There’s only a tiny chance of a “breakthrough infection”
3) Your DNA can’t possibly be changed by an mRNA vaccine, no matter what you read on the internet or saw on YouTube
4) Churches who preach anti-vax, are full of vaccinated people
5) “Counterfeit Vaccine Cards don’t exist, and if they do, only a very silly person actually carries one
[4] Actually attended a funeral dinner today. Seniors love ’em, regardless of who died. They don’t have to make supper and it’s a chance to shoot the breeze with Republicans and Democrats alike Everyone seemed to have reverted to their “old roles” Pandemic…what pandemic? Who is Darnella Frazier, anyway?
[5] Yep, when you allow corporations to decide policy and buy politicians, when the rich get richer, when the minimum wage hasn’t changed with current costs, when you create a divide and conquer political landscape, when cheating and lying become the norm, when the population is fixated on their phones and celebrities, when White Nationalism rears its ugly head, when education is defunded for over 50 years, when just about every facet of a person's life is a corporate grab for their money, when the military industrial complex is handed an obscene amount of tax payers money, when a fraudulent professional bullshitter is elected as if he’s god's gift, when equality and justice have to be fought like a war, yeah, this country is going down the tubes. No amount of flag waving is gonna bring it back, it’s too far gone. There is too much that needs fixing and there’s a contingent of citizenry that love the old antiquated status quo even though it’s killing the good old USA.
[6] So how do you distract the public? They’ve tried different ploys over the past few decades most of which fit under the caption “culture wars”.
In my books the Democrat faction of the governing elite has been the most inspired and creative as they deploy one sexual derangement and behavioral lunacy after another, depicting each as the latest in “progress” in enlightened thinking. And just when I think they can’t get any crazier, they get crazier.
But the Democrats have got more than one playbook and for this I give them credit. They’ve far outdone their Republican rivals with the ability to dazzle and energetically at that, with the “race” thing going full tilt, and they’ve been nothing but amazing with AGW, strenuous and impassioned with both issues with their exaggerated posturing and thundering denunciations.
The Republicans ought to have been able to easily out-flank and out-run and out-maneuver all this phony baloney, and for a while Trump, for all his other deficiencies, did exactly that by addressing material issues directly affecting livelihoods of the vast American middle. And much to the consternation of anybody who’s anybody, managed to win in 2016.
But Trump, while pointing the way to electoral victory, had to overcome the active hindrance not only of Democrats but of his own party of traditional Republicans, plus the non-stop opposition of the Deep State. It was quite a feat and for that he deserves a tip of the hat. Because when Trump talked about real issues, all the razzle-dazzle distractions weren’t much good.
So, what’s next? How about a fun war? That usually works. There’s problems galore that need attention but all those are major boring. Nobody who’s anybody can be bothered.
If Wall Street goes tits up nobody in the real America of dollar stores and payday offices much gives a shit. I mean, what has Wall Street done besides “asset stripping” flyover America as our esteemed host puts it? But what about when the local mill shuts down? Oh, sorry, that’s already happened, that was part of the asset stripping, which is why we saw the improbable rise of The Donald.
So back to the question, what’s next? Black lives don’t matter, never have, because if they did matter to the legions of race hustlers and legislators and bureaucrats and academicians and theoreticians and the panoply of ‘ologists of the past hundred years, Black people wouldn’t be in the disastrous state they’re in.
Hispanics don’t matter either, their situation may be a bit better than Blacks but not by much. Gays and trannies don’t matter because for all the sound and fury, they’re a small proportion of the population.
Is AGW the crisis all the leading lights say it is? I doubt they even believe it. Koonin doesn’t. A lot of other guys of the scientific variety don’t think so either. They just can’t say it out loud. In any case you will see noise on this and nothing much else.
So who or what really matters? I mean really?
No matter, a distraction is needed, one to divert the mob’s attention. People get desensitized to all the nuts ‘n’ sluts stuff.
I think it will be war, maybe of the civil variety. I doubt the Chinese will want to fight. I mean, why interfere while Americans are busy ruining themselves? Neither will the Russians want to fight. Same reason. Plus it’s bad for business. Canada is ripe for the plucking but that’s a war that won’t last more than a couple hours.
But I think a civil war fits the bill. If you can’t find someone to fight outside the country, find someone inside.
[7] And lofty, high-minded types sneer “White Grievance”. You hear it all the time usually from somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, like somebody from a coastal enclave or another country altogether, or somebody well off, maybe younger and so with no knowledge of the downward path of so much of the country. If it had been their own families and hometowns subjected to asset stripping, the attitude might be different.
No matter, White Grievance has got legitimacy given the last 30 years of predations. It’s unbelievable, first they ruin people and then they insult them. If that isn’t looking for trouble I don’t know what is. And if you look for it you generally find it. Anyway this “White Grievance” might be the most potent force of all of them, still awaiting a leader with the right chops.
After all Deplorables are the backbone of the US military with millions of veterans and those in active service. They know leadership, teamwork and how to fight. Stay tuned.
Time will tell. If you had told somebody in the year 1900 what was coming they wouldn’t have believed it. Yet it happened.
[8] STEPHEN GLOVER: Did the Covid virus, which has already killed more than 3.5 million people and devastated the world's economy, escape from an internationally renowned laboratory (inset) in the Chinese city of Wuhan? For the best part of a year, the idea that it might have done so was treated with almost as much incredulity as the notion that the moon is made of cheese or that Stonehenge was built by aliens. Facebook even took down posts claiming the virus was man-made. The social media giant, which has cheerfully tolerated all manner of political mendacity over the years, drew the line at upsetting the Chinese government. As for the Western scientific community, it overwhelmingly rubbished the theory that Covid was man-made, and accepted Beijing's contention that it had somehow jumped from animals to humans. What was once regarded as a crackpot theory has become mainstream. In an interview last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the widely respected director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agreed that a lab escape was 'a possibility'. He said he would back a second investigation by the WHO. Two weeks ago, 18 biologists, immunologists and other scientists criticized the WHO's findings in a letter to the journal Science, and called for a more thorough inquiry. Then, just over a week ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became so sick in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a confidential U.S. intelligence report. Beijing claims the first Covid case was on December 8, 2019. Pictured right: Chinese President Xi Jinping, the official Chinese timeline of the beginnings of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
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