DISNEY seems to have abandoned Mickey and Minnie. The mammoth film conglomerate is now featuring a new cartoon series that features black children rapping about reparations. Disney's rappers are called the Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, whose characters sing about their town being built by slaves as a hapless white character stands on the stage with a poster that says “still not atoned.” Professionally offended pale faces have called the film “blatant anti-white propaganda.”
THE PRESENT-DAY race discussions seem to me to be your basic dialogue of the deaf. I guess I understand that in a country of historical illiterates a white citizen could be offended by the basic facts of this country's founding by white aristocrats who, if they'd had their way, only rich white men would have had the vote. And who can possibly argue against the fact that capital accumulation in this country was expedited by 400 years of slavery and its accompanying real estate boom simplified by the wholesale murders of the people who'd lived on that real estate. Think positive! Consider the neo-fact that race relations among ordinary people have never been better, that there are now literally millions of genuinely loyal, affectionate, intertwined ethnic relationships in a country where there were virtually none in 1960! Too bad improved race relations arrive just as our country, the first to go directly from barbarism to decadence with no intervening civilization, as the sage explained, hits the skids. In the meantime, count yer blessings, Whitey!
ENJOYED this brief look-back of veteran newspaper guy, Mike Geniella: "I started out with the Hoiles-owned Freedom Newspapers in my hometown of Marysville. It was an era when pay raises were 10 cents an hour (seriously), and if you got caught accepting a cold beer from anyone you were fired.
The Press Democrat when I arrived in Santa Rosa was so large and successful that anything smacking of legitimacy could be put on the expense account, a tedious but generous process.
Then came the bomb. The New York Times arrived.
The Times thought big. I got to go on a 10-day trip to Cuba, where I entertained a couple of dozen Little Leaguers from Whitethorn with hot dogs and cokes poolside at the Hotel Nacional in Havana. But that was a short ride in the glory lane. Suddenly, the accounting department began to question the Ukiah News Bureau's running account at Wildberger's [old fashioned corner store opposite the County Courthouse] for 'office supplies.' You know, much-needed things like toilet paper and napkins.
"How many rolls of toilet paper do you need?," snarled a bookkeeper at the NYT-owned paper I now worked for.
Rick Wildberger and I did our best to satisfy the beast, providing hasty documentation but eventually, we had to close out the account. The PD started sending up boxes of paper, pencils, and such things…"
PEBBLES NEEDS HELP
gofundme.com/f/new-campaign-for-your-old-friend-pebbles-trippet
As of today, Pebbles is safe but in a temporary living situation & has a loving local community rallying around her. Her home is uninhabitable. Her health has deteriorated. One emergency after another has drained her savings. As a radical spirit, as independent as they come, residing off-grid for decades, she is now in need of assistance. (Dobie Dolphin)
IN CUSTODY DEATH
On Tuesday, February 7th, 2023, at about 12:30 A.M., an intoxicated 64-year-old male from Ukiah, was brought into our custody for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, Refuse Disposal in State Water, and a Violation of Parole. The arrestee was on Parole for Failure to register as a Sex Registrant. The arrestee was brought into the Jail’s intake room where he was evaluated by our in-house medical staff. Our medical staff took the arrestee’s vital signs and cleared the arrestee to enter the facility. The arrestee was housed in the Jail’s Sobering Cell where the arrestee was monitored for a minimum of 4 times per hour.
At about 6 A.M., Corrections staff were checking on the arrestee housed in the Sobering Cell, the sole occupant of the cell. Corrections staff did not get a response from the inmate and summoned our in house medical staff. Staff checked the arrestee for a pulse, and they were unable to find one. Staff started resuscitation measures and called for an ambulance to come to the Jail. When the fire and ambulance staff arrived to the Jail, they assisted the Jail staff with life saving measures until death was pronounced at approximately 06:32 A.M.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Investigation Bureau was called to investigate the cause of death.
ED NOTE: Booking logs show that the person described in this press release (age, charges, city, date, parole status) was probably Mr. Ronald Pedigo, 64, of Ukiah, who has been arrested about once a year in Mendocino County starting in 2015 when he was popped for a parole violation. Most of his subsequent arrests were for parole violations for trespassing, a transient registration charge, and a failure to appear. On Christmas day of 2021 he was arrested for failure to register as a sex offender with priors and sent to state prison in February of 2022 where he served eight months of a 16 month sentence.
JORDAN & MAGICK, COP FIGHTERS!
JORDAN CAMPBELL, Willits. Battery on peace officer.
MAGICK EVANS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, battery on peace officer, resisting.
IF I WERE BIDEN, I'd say the economy is great because football fans bet an estimated $16 billion on Sunday's Super Bowl. In fact, though, millions of people are struggling to stay housed and fuel up their transportation, and likely as not their children are in bad schools while gram and gramps' social security checks don't cover their expenses. To check the true state of the economy, visit your local food bank and ask around. Here in Mendo County, half our families qualify for food stamps. There are no jobs for the average young person, college educated or not, that will pay enough for him/her to ever buy a place of their own.
IN 1970, I bought a one-bath, two-bedroom house in Boonville for $23,500 with a thousand down I chiseled out of credit cards. In 2005, that house sold for $450,000 to a couple of city yuppo-guppos. There is seldom a property in Boonville that sells for less than a quarter mil, and there are few-to-no jobs that pay enough for, say, a young two-job couple to qualify for a mortgage. There are lots of empty homes or houses that have been given over to wealthy transients, and those of you who struggle for shelter have my blessing to occupy any of them convenient to you.
USED TO BE that the Democrats prided themselves as the party of working people then, with the advent of the Clintons and from them on, the Democrats ceded working people to versions of Trump and then Trump himself, and now it's obvious that neither party represents people making less than a hundred grand, and only a thin slice of Americans make that much.
THE MAGAS, some of them anyway, probably know the difference between liberals and socialists, and the diff between socialists and communists, but deliberately conflate all three. Are there socialists in America? A few, less than a million probably. Are there communists? Maybe two in Mendocino County. (I'm a socialist, not a communist.) People who identify as communists? If there are fifty thousand in this country I'd be surprised, and there sure as hell isn't a Lenin among those toothless lions of the faculty lounges. The money drifts inexorably upward, the millions of Americans getting absolutely screwed are represented by no one.
WHILE it's beyond obvious to most people that Biden is not fit to be president now, let alone for another four years of on-the-job deterioration, the closest the MSM gets to stating the apparent is…
A TYPICAL MSM assessment of Biden appeared in this morning's NYT: …It’s been widely reported that Biden plans to use the State of the Union to set up his case for re-election. There’s a rift in the Democratic Party about whether this is wise for an 80-year-old to do. Democratic officials are largely on board, at least publicly, but the majority of Democratic voters are not. “Democrats say he’s done a good job but he’s too old,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who conducts regular voter focus groups. “He’ll be closer to 90 than 80 by the end of his second term.” Perhaps reflecting this dynamic, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that while 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents approved of the job Biden has done as president, 58 percent of them wanted a different candidate next year."
OCCASIONAL AVA CONTRIBUTOR William J. Hughes tells us that he’s written a new novel entitled “Yellowstone.” It’s available in paperback on Amazon.
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, speaking in rebuttal to Biden's committee-written State of the Union speech last night, said the political division now is “crazy vs. normal,” a totally wacky thing to say given the number of spectacular nut cases in her Republican Party. I think both parties are utterly contemptible, but contemptible in different ways, alike in their venality and devotion to the darkest forces in our terminally fragged country.
SPY: “a person who secretly collects and reports information on the activities, movements, and plans of an enemy or competitor.” (Dictionary.com)
SO THE CHINESE flew a “spy” balloon over North America where everybody could see it and where it could be easily shot down so they could get better pictures of easily visible unhidden sites in Montana and Missouri than they were already getting from Google Earth or their satellites? Oh sure. The Chinese are too dumb to do their spying in secret. They just do it out in the open for all to see? Right.
Remember the U-2 Spy Plane Incident?
(From the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)
“At the height of the cold war, as critics of the Eisenhower administration complained about the growing ‘missile gap,’ the United States secretly [our emphasis] gathered data on Soviet missile capabilities through photographs obtained from U-2 reconnaissance plane overflights of the Soviet Union. In May 1960, plans were finalized for a crucial Paris summit conference between western nations and leaders of the Soviet Union with disarmament to be the main focus. Hopes for a successful summit were dashed when on May 1, 1960, May Day, an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet air space. On the first day of the Paris summit, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stormed out after delivering a condemnation of U.S. spy activities.…”
In other words, the preternaturally skeptical Eisenhower didn’t believe the military industrial complex’s exaggerated (and expensive) “missile gap” hype and wanted to (secretly — i.e., secret mainly to the US military propagandists) prove they were exaggerating Russia’s missile capability with U-2 overflight photography. (Russia, by the way, wanted America to think they had more missiles than they had as well. The missile gap myth benefited both sides of the Cold War.)
But the U-2 flights were not “spying.” They were Eisenhower’s well-intentioned attempt at disarmament and huge budget savings. (Remember when Eisenhower pointed out that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; from those who are cold and are not clothed…”) He wanted to prove the Pentagon and many politicians were exaggerating to justify boosting defense spending. And it blew up in Eisenhower’s face when the Rooskies shot down the U-2. But the public didn’t know any of that until decades later. (And you certainly wouldn’t know it from silly Hollywood movies like “Bridge of Spies” which made no mention of the real purpose of the “secret” U-2 flights.)
No good deed goes unpunished.
The point? We didn’t know what the U-2 was doing in the 50s. And we don’t know why the painfully obvious Chinese balloon was floating over the heartland. China said it was a weather research balloon which went off course (even though it apparently had some limited navigational capabilities).
Whatever it was, portraying these kinds of overflights as military spying and as provocations only benefits the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.
(Mark Scaramella)
SARAH KENNEDY OWEN: The state wants to cut the food assistance program (which was expanded during Covid) regardless of the greatly inflated prices people are now facing both in buying groceries and paying for housing and energy to heat their homes and fill their tanks. This is untenable, as I am sure “they” (those responsible for these decisions) know well. However, the state is also in the process of spending over 4 billion dollars to build (statewide) new courthouses and jails (and jail additions such as the one here in Mendocino County). Yet Governor Newsom claims California is facing a budget shortfall this year. The new jails statewide were part of a plan to relieve pressure on state prisons, by shifting the burden of incarceration onto counties, as well as to force counties to implement better mental health, rehab, etc to keep folks out of jail in the first place. However, the counties invariably chose the new jails (and courthouses) over more complicated plans to implement recovery for so-called “criminals”. Another part of the state’s plan was for counties to revise laws so that minor crimes do not require incarceration. This idea also fell, replaced by the apparently irresistible draw of new jails. The counties failed, in other words, in all but the idea of mass incarceration. Apparently our state officials are willing to overlook this failure and allow California to build new jails exclusively. This indirectly sacrifices the well-being of law-abiding citizens who are under pressure to pay over-inflated expenses and now will not be able to afford food. It does this by overlooking basic survival needs of the main population and allowing exorbitant projects (new jails and courthouses) that only benefit the law enforcement and legal professions. They are also enabling county officials to not do their jobs efficiently and in a capable manner. All this to make way for the lazy attitude of our counties to self-benefit with fancy new courthouses and big jails to keep our troubled populace out of sight behind locked doors. This is bureaucracy at its unchecked worst.
MIKE GENIELLA: Chief Cervenka is a welcome addition to Mendocino County law enforcement leadership circles. Congrats!
* * *
Chief Cervenka Receives Award
Fort Bragg Police Chief Neil Cervenka was presented with the Hank Koehn Memorial Award for Most Inspirational Student at a recent conference held by the Law Enforcement Command College Program. The Chief is very deserving of this high honor, given through the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).
The Law Enforcement Command College is a 14-month program designed to prepare law enforcement leaders of today for the challenges of the future. The program focuses on development of strategic foresight, strategies to identify emerging issues, proactive responses, trend analysis, methods and benefits of stakeholder engagement, procedural justice and the impact of social systems on a global society.
We know the Fort Bragg community is as proud as we are of our Police Chief. Please join us in congratulating Chief Cervenka for receiving this award.
MALCOLM MACDONALD:
One of my favorite succinct newspaper stories concerned a native of Little Lake in Mendocino County. This brief notice ran in the mid-1870s within the Marysville Daily Appeal: "Elijah Frost has suspended the business of horse stealing in Shasta county, and retired to San Quentin for four years."
The fate of Elijah Frost after he ended his respite at San Quentin is at the core of Chapter Eight, "The Bridge," in my book Mendocino History Exposed.
Not too far south from that bridge, in the heart of Willits (182 S. Main St.), you can purchase Mendocino History Exposed at the Book Juggler. Give them a call at 707-459-4075 to make sure Mendocino History Exposed hasn't sold out again.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING, especially if you have children going off to their first year of college after 18 years of safe, comfortable, rigorously supervised parental indulgence, “Stolen Youth, Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence,” this doc should be of special interest to you.
SARAH LAWRENCE has its detractors, described by a disillusioned parent this way: “If you are a liberal, communist, socialist, atheist, queer, or anarchist, you'll find a group of likeminded people here. Sarah Lawrence is a liberal haven, but there are a fair number of conservatives. The population tends to come from SLC's reputation as a hippie-arts school, as well as its proximity to New York City."
WHICH SEEMS UNFAIR given that the same could be said of any liberal arts school; besides which, college, the theory goes, is a time to be young and free and exposed to all kinds of screwballs, not including the faculties. I'm sure Oral Roberts University also has its share of pervs and predators among its young MAGAS.
AT A SCHOOL charging $61,000 a year mom and pop could ordinarily assume at least minimal supervision from the school authorities, that a 50-year-old man just out of prison, who moved into campus coed housing with his student-daughter, would promptly get thrown out. Nope, this character, wowing the kids with bullshit about his fantasy life with national big shots, proceeds to make cult-zombies and prostitutes out of several of the kids, although two of their alert roommates had immediately and accurately assessed “Larry” as a predatory creep. It's a shocking but fascinating saga in three episodes on Hulu.
TONS OF CASUAL SLURS drift down out of cyber-space round the clock. I was intrigued by this one: "City of Fort Bragg dumps raw sewage into Pudding Creek every year. The fine is cheaper than upgrading the system to handle the volume. Don’t eat bottom fish caught near the mouth of Pudding Creek. I’ve never seen so many worms in a fish."
CHECKING with Fort Bragg's on-task mayor Bernie Norvell, the mayor promptly asked Fort Bragg's Director of Public Works, John Smith, to respond to the anon fisherman's unfounded canard: “We’ve not had a spill at Pudding Creek since we had the cease-and-desist order back in, I think, 2007. This is when we moved the sewer force main onto the Pudding Creek bridge. The line used to run under the creek. The line on the bridge has secondary containment to prevent spills. We would have had spills before we moved the line to the bridge.”
MY BODY, MY TEMPLE DEPARTMENT: Red Sox outfielder (and pinch hitter) Bernie Carbo on his game prep for the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, in which he hit two pinch hit home runs, including a grand slam: “I probably smoked two joints, drank about three or four beers, got to the ballpark, took some speed, took a pain pill, drank a cup of coffee, chewed some tobacco, had a cigarette, and got up to the plate and hit.”
BART PAID $350,000 for a homeless program that served one person.
BART paid $350,000 for a 2-year homeless program. It served one person. Three years since BART and the Salvation Army rolled out a $350,000 program to tackle surging homelessness on trains, the results are in: One person received services during the life of the contract, according to a recent report from BART's inspector general. (SF Chronicle)
REGARDING that BART fiasco, check this homeless program out of Fort Bragg supplied by the town’s mayor, Bernie Norvell writes:
What a waste [BART’S program] but not a surprise. Fort Bragg made the decision to go against the grain of the current help the homeless/mentally ill status quo. We are all aware the current system does not work and pouring more money into it won’t help either. We made the decision to take care of it our way. We were not afraid to fail knowing our intentions were good and that we already had a well laid out plan on how not to succeed at solving the issue. The state had done that for us. With a grant of $221,793K this is what we have accomplished in the last nine months. You will see in the numbers, arrests of transients have gone way down but arrests are up. That is because our police officers now have the time to address real crimes and arrests criminals instead of spending 75% of their time dealing with homeless/mentally ill issues. Ok, so what is my point? Next time give me the money. Until those receiving funds to serve this demographic are required to provide programmatic reports proving they are making a difference nothing will change. Chief Cervenka will be giving a larger more detailed report on the 27th at the regular meeting of the Fort Bragg City Council.
| July-December 2021 | July-December 2022 | |
|---|---|---|
| Transient Arrests | 157 | 74 |
| Total Arrests | 299 | 417 |
| Percentage Arrests of Transients | 53% | 18% |
| CRU I-Cases | 0 | 485 |
| Clients Served | 0 | 140 |
| Average Age | 0 | 46 |
| Female | 0 | 67 |
| Male | 0 | 73 |
Homeward Bound: 12 total bus tickets purchased. Ten successful reunifications ending homelessness and two failures; one due to mental health complications and the second due to being arrested and incarcerated the night before departure.
Approximately 22 individuals were assisted with fuel funds. These individuals were non-local homeless individuals attempting to reach support systems in other areas.
Rehabilitation Services:
Three individuals were provided assistance in being admitted into In-Patient Rehabilitation services. Two individuals completed their In-Patient programs and are currently in sober living environments. Eight other referrals have been received and the CRU Team is actively working on finding placement.
Unduplicated Individuals Temporarily Housed by Extreme Weather Shelter (EWS): 82 (11/15/22- 2/4/23)
Seven individuals were moved to permanent or temporary housing following their participation in the EWS program.
Other Services Provided:
Coordinate transportation with the County Probation Department to ensure probationers are successful while on supervised probation. This includes transportation to court dates, probation check-ins, and employment and housing opportunities.
Attending Behavioral Health Court and providing reports to the Court related to the client’s progress, and assisting the Court with connecting client to additional services.
Providing on-site immediate triage and assistance to individuals during homeless camp cleanup operations conducted by law enforcement and Code Enforcement. This service has previously been made available to Sheriff’s Office at locations outside our jurisdiction.
Provided critical assistance to individuals transferring from homelessness to permanent housing during the opening of the Plateau Housing Project. This included identifying immediate needs of clients related to furniture, kitchen and bathroom supplies, and general assistance in learning how to live in a home. CRU continues to provide ongoing assistance to these individuals to ensure they stay housed.
Collaborating with Jail Discharge Coordinator to assist with housing, employment, and connection to services before individuals are discharged from jail.
Providing immediate and ongoing support to families with family members experiencing mental health illnesses by offering wrap-around support, connection available services, and general assistance.
CRU serves as an immediate point-of-contact for all social services in the Fort Bragg areas during critical incidents. For example, during the recent storms CRU collaborated with County agencies to quickly mobilize to assist with the housing and needs of individuals living outside our jurisdiction but affected by the storm.
#TheFortBraggModel
Bernie Norvell, Mayor, Fort Bragg
ALMOST DROPPED my coffee cup last Friday morning while cruising England's infamous on-line tabloid, the Daily Mail, when up popped a photo of DA David Eyster alongside this blurb: “That's one way to win a case! Motorist escapes DUI conviction by arguing driving drunk was necessary to 'escape two angry women' after his wife caught him in bed with a neighbor who kept her llamas at their ranch. Thomas was found by his estranged wife performing oral sex on his neighbor Ann Landauer while he and his wife Lara were estranged after she asked to visit her llamas on the ranch.”
THE SORDID DETAILS and the names of the players must have been sold to the Mail by someone on the Mendo inside because these facts were not released locally. (The Mail pays for this stuff.) Al Kubanis, Mendo's most visible Trumper, was the defense attorney, and the jury obviously had a fine sense of the ridiculous in acquitting the guy. This latest Only In Mendo event reminded me that for a population of only 90,000 people, half-of-them presumed innocent, Mendo gets more outside media attention than any comparably-sized area of the country.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY DAVID EYSTER RESPONDED ON LINE:
The AVA Editor wrote: “THE SORDID DETAILS and the names of the [two angry women] players must have been sold to the Mail by someone on the Mendo inside because these facts were not released locally.”
Not as nefarious as it may seem. It is assumed that the Daily Mail simply went to the Superior Court’s new-ish “Information Portal,” typed in the defendant’s name, and looked at the defense attorney’s “motion in limine and statement of the case” in which attorney K provided the full details — player names and all — from a defense perspective. Yes, the Daily Mail would have had to pay 50 cent a page to the court for the 7-page defense document ($3.50) but anybody could have and can do that on this or any other case of interest. Yes, I will agree it is unusual to have such intimate detail provided for public scrutiny outside of a courtroom.
— DA Dave
P.S. Rosie (the Welsh Terrier) sends her condolences to the family and friends of LD on his passage over the Rainbow Bridge.
FARTHER NORTH, ON THE MENDOCINO COAST, the area’s isolated feel was heightened during the storms. “There are limited ways in and out,” said Matthew Kammerer, the chef at the Harbor House Inn, in the town of Elk, which can be reached only via hairpin turns on coastal Highway 1 or through winding redwood forest roads. Two of those routes, including a portion of Highway 1, were closed for days. While this storm was major, it wasn’t unprecedented — Harbor House had already made the decision to close its restaurant during January, largely because of safety considerations for the staff. The hotel itself remained open. “We weren’t telling guests not to come, but we were telling them that it was dangerous,” Mr. Kammerer said. “We turned Harbor House into a bit of a safe haven for our staff, and opened it up for them to come stay, or cook a meal.” (New York Times)
CAPSULE SUPER BOWL REPORT: Great game won by Kansas City 38-35. Mahones, playing in pain on a bad ankle, was above and beyond as usual. Lots of amazing plays by both teams, with a big advantage going to KC on a jaw-droppingly bad call in KC’s favor near the end of the game. Watched a Reels and Short Videos video of a frightening Philadelphia crowd, including little kids, bombarding Chief's fans with F-bombs — ugly squared. The fly over in celebration of imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and pointless wars featured female pilots. Nice redneck rendition of the National Anthem by a fat guy in a cowboy hat. Lots of repellent “celebrities” — are there any other kind these days? — including that world class swine, Rupert Murdoch. A vulgar half-time show featured a woman with one name we're apparently supposed to know belting out sexual invitations while grabbing her crotch and rear end as white-clad sperm in dark glasses danced back-up. I listened for a few minutes until she got to “I will make you feel like a man” when I felt only like slitting my wrists if I had to listen to any more. All-in-all, except for the exciting game itself, another reminder that our nation is sinking fast.
JEFF BLANKFORT:
Here is Chris Hedges's excellent commentary about what I have mentioned in two previous posts, the use by the American political establishment of "paint jobs" to provide the illusion of "diversity,' to paper over its crimes:
"We live under a species of corporate colonialism. The engines of white supremacy, which constructed the forms of institutional and economic racism that keep the poor poor, are obscured behind attractive political personalities such as Barack Obama, whom Cornel West called “a Black mascot for Wall Street.” These faces of diversity are vetted and selected by the ruling class. Obama was groomed and promoted by the Chicago political machine, one of the dirtiest and most corrupt in the country.
“It’s an insult to the organized movements of people these institutions claim to want to include,” Glen Ford, the late editor of The Black Agenda Report told me in 2018. “These institutions write the script. It’s their drama. They choose the actors, whatever black, brown, yellow, red faces they want.”
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] Empires come and go, always have. And they leave behind the ruins of once great buildings in ancient capital cities. We like to explore these historic places as tourists. Imagine someday in the future “touring” through the ruins of our former automobile culture. Imagine places like Las Vegas or Gatlinburg TN all boarded up, vandalized, and crumbling apart while being scrapped for building materials. Imagine derelict and rotting skyscrapers being explored by the wanderers of a century from now. Imagine North America returning to the way it’s been for the last 30,000 years or so. Inhabited by squabbling semi-tribesmen living the good life in simplicity, Living Amish style. Clopping down dirt roads in horse drawn buggies and using coal and wood powered steam engine trains for long distances. No soup for you! And no nat gas or petroleum!
[2] MARIJUANA, an on-line comment: While not everyone who smokes pot as a teen develops mental health issues, many do. We even saw that in the 60s and 70s. Not emphasizing the “gateway drug” thing, though many believe it is. Not everyone who drinks ethanol becomes an alcoholic. Not everyone who takes cocaine dies from a myocardial infarction the first time. Not everyone who smokes cigarettes develops lung cancer. Not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is a moron. And on and on. I’m just saying kids shouldn’t smoke pot. It’s bad for their growing bodies, their scholarship, and their interpersonal relationships. And let’s face it, their life now is tougher in many ways than ours was. They don’t need more trouble. Even if you want marijuana legalized everywhere, you shouldn’t want kids hurting themselves.
[3] The only way to fight back against the uniparty of Chaos is secession. There’s nothing wrong with the founding documents. There is something terribly wrong with all the psychopaths and obvious criminals we’ve stupidly elected over the years. That’s why we need secession and the total collapse of the current system with ALL the people currently working for it or in it removed and forever banned from holding any government jobs. Then maybe after 5 or 10 ten years or so, we can hold another constitutional convention and decide if we want to form another central/federal government. If not, then we’ll occupy North America as collections of states or confederations of states. That’s how freedom and democracy is supposed to work – what we have now is pile of crap run by mentally ill and delusional psychos.
[4] RESTRAINING ORDERS, an on-line comment:
In my own humble examples and being exposed to the experience of others rarely has a restraining order benefited anyone. You finally get to that point of seeking a restraining order. Thought it over for eons finally got the strength to do it, thinking that that’s going to be a beginning of the end for you. Yet a DV R/O has little weight or chance of enforcement. Law enforcement is often quick to negate them. They will ask for copies of the restraining order from the victim even though the restrained person is in the CLEFT [law enforcement computerized] system. I have seen many an abuser have the police called on them and then have the victim shamed and made fun of by the police during the call. The fun and games really begin after the police leave. Just ask any victim.
Yes!!! 100% restraining orders should be something more than a piece of paper. Violating an R/O should be a felony, 1 year minimum with no sentence reduction. Response should be immediate, not let me get a deputy to give you a return phone call and a ho hum.
[5] WHERE HAVE THE FISH GONE? An on-line comment: The connection between the community and the fish has indeed been lost. I was taught about the fish by dozens of expert fly fisherman who cared deeply and constantly tried to get the DFW of California to be more proactive. To no avail! Now the fish are gone. The sole hatchery is at half capacity. The rearing ponds on the eel and its tributaries are gone. The pot growers suck its low summer flows dry and phosphates and poisons contaminate the meager flows. The DFW does nothing about the massive squawfish invasion that has assisted in decimating the runs. And the county board of supervisors has closed virtually every public fishing access to the rivers at the request of a few property owners as a solution to transient camps and garbage dumping, rather than preserving our legacy as they should. The fishermen have moved or travel elsewhere, to states that care and preserve public access. They have fish because they care. There are too few of us left in Humboldt and especially California that care. It’s a woke life now. I prefer to call it the asleep movement. People looking without seeing, listening without hearing. Caring without doing.
[6] The failure of the fourth estate in addition to Congress becoming a career instead of temporary service, the feminization of American politics and destruction of the nuclear family have foundered our once great Country. All in favor of perversion, decadence, greed, jealousy, depression and sloth.
[7] HOMELESSNESS. More pie in the sky, money will fix it unreality. It’s true that there is not enough affordable housing. Especially for people who earn nothing. And it’s also true that it is cheaper to house people in an apartment than a hospital. What is not true is that all that needs to be done is provide an apartment. The government would be required to provide an apartment with plumbing that works after a mentally and/or drug addict tries to flush a shirt, has non stinking heating after a person pees into a heating vent, a kitchen that is replaced after the resident burned it down, security for other residents when one starts attacking others because they looked at him the wrong way, etc etc etc. Then hires a lawyer for a class action suit because their residences are not maintained properly. They will sue if they don’t. Get rid of the troublemakers and the troublemakers will sue if they do. Then the good doctor complains about people who are likely to be these people’s neighbors protesting about housing there. Hello! While it makes fodder for the media, the reality is that free roaming mentally ill drug addicts make piss poor dangerous neighbors. The bottom line is that protecting the freedom of people whose lives revolve around drugs and insanity is a whole lot harder than giving them a decent place to live.
[8] Spay/Neuter: I helped my father-in-law neuter very young, small boars on his farm. He gave me about 5 minutes training before setting me to cutting. Basically it was: make a small cut with a sharp knife, squeeze the testicles out, put some antibiotic ointment on the cut, and then on to the next little piggy. It was a very, very quick assembly line process on that farm. There was no operating room or sterile environment or anesthetic but there was good light and the knife was really sharp.
Be First to Comment