Mendocino County Today: Friday, April 28, 2023

Warm | Hopland Horses | Lee Spotting | Rob Giuliani | Food/Water Symposium | Medicare Fraud | Help Allens | Find Riley | Rental Proposal | Coastal Snail | Remembering Stan | Grocery Outlet | Stinging Scale | AVUSD News | Dragon Slayer | Mum's Day | 1960 SF | Planting Potatoes | Blue Heron | Gardens Tour | Bradley Correction | Yesterday's Catch | Complex Carlson | Northern England | Estherisms | Jerry Springer | Gobsmacked | Annotated States | Lia Sez | Accepted Opinion | Great Job | Ukraine | Bible Hate | Capitalism Romance | Self Loathing

DRY CONDITIONS and above normal temperatures will persist across interior areas of Northwest California through Saturday. Coastal areas will also experience low clouds during the morning and part of the afternoon. Otherwise, a cooling trend will take place Sunday into early to middle portions of next week, with showers and possible thunderstorms developing across the region during the period of cooler weather. (NWS)

YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 95°, Boonville 95°, Laytonville 92°, Yorkville 91°, Hopland 86°, Fort Bragg 69°, Point Arena 57°

THE ARREST OF LEE JOAQUIN

On Wednesday April 26, 2023 at approximately 2:00 PM, An officer from the California Highway Patrol stopped a speeding vehicle on Highway 101 at Nelson Ranch Road in Ukiah.

During the traffic stop the driver was arrested for being in possession of a firearm and transportation of marijuana.

Upon arrival at the Mendocino County Jail it was determined the driver, Lee Anthony Joaquin, had provided a false name to the CHP Officer during the traffic stop and subsequent arrest.

Mendocino County Corrections Division staff recognized Joaquin from prior contacts, and as a result he was booked on the active arrest warrant in connection with this homicide investigation.

The Sheriff's Office would like to thank the California Highway Patrol (Ukiah Office) for their assistance in apprehending Joaquin.

ROB GIULIANI of Signal Ridge Road, Philo, died this week. He and his wife Lee Serrie were long-time fixtures on Signal Ridge. Rob and Lee were former tv producers from the Bay Area. We hope to have an obituary in the near future.

PREVENTING MEDICARE FRAUD: An Online Event With Anderson Valley Village

Newly released Federal Trade Commission data shows that consumers reported losing more than $5.8 billion to fraud in 2021, an increase of more than 70 percent over the previous year. The percentage is expected to be even higher in 2022 and 2023. The amount of scam calls you get and pressure by the bad guys is only going to increase.  Learn how to protect yourself and loved ones from Medicare fraud!  Empower yourself and others to prevent, detect, and report health care fraud, errors, and abuse.

Don't miss this opportunity - Friday, April 28, from 10 to 11 am on Zoom.

Please Register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMscOGprT4rEtSgk5BDww-3qxlbpFeN4zaw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

More info: andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/3255-hicap-preventing-medicare-fraud-:-an-online-event-with-anderson-valley-village

OLIVIA ALLEN:

My family is finishing our fourth month of the worst nightmare we’ve ever had… and it’s one that doesn’t end with sunrise each morning. On December 29th, 2022, my parents’ truck went off the road near their Philo home in Northern California, and crashed into a row of trees. Thankfully my mother was largely unscathed, but my father was badly bruised, broke one clavicle, suffered a fracture to his skull and severe brain trauma.

He was airlifted to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital where he spent three weeks in the ICU deep in a coma from his traumatic brain injuries. It was the worst three weeks of our lives, seeing him in such a devastating state, completely unresponsive and unstable, with no idea what was going to happen.

Updates:

[1] Over the following weeks after dad finally opened his eyes, he was able to make eye contact and eventually began to quietly speak. He can now sometimes answer questions or say things rooted in present space and time. Much of the time, however, he is in some dreamland away from reality, or not awake at all. He has very little control over his body, as in he has successfully given a thumbs up, one time. He can sometimes move his legs and arms in a very subtle way when asked, although his arms cause him a great deal of pain. He has daily physical, occupational and speech therapy to help him regain function. Perhaps the most heartwarming (and heartbreaking), is he can now offer us very small but very warm smiles.

[2] Wow! We are so moved by how much support we are receiving to help with dad's recovery. There have been a few medical setbacks, but he is recovering and doing well now. He is back on track to soon take the swallow-test to get his trache removed and begin to drink water and swallow liquid food on his own. Thank you all so much for your prayers, your donations, and your love.

https://helphopelive.org/campaign/21595/

Ed note: Please share this fundraiser for Bill Allen and his family. They need the support, financial and otherwise! As far as a donation goes, no amount is too small…

RILEY HSIEH STILL MISSING: It has been 2 weeks and we still have not found my brother. Please continue to send in any tips to the Mendocino County Sheriffs office. We try to monitor tips on Facebook but the best way to ensure it will get followed up on is to give them a call at 707-463-4086.

COUNTY SUPERVISORS REFUSE TO REQUIRE PERMITS FOR RURAL MOTELS

by Mark Scaramella

The County Planning Commission’s proposal to require use permits for certain short term rentals was unceremoniously dropped by the Supervisors on Tuesday, opposed most loudly by Supervisor Ted Williams and his libertarian view that people should be able to rent their houses without government interference. Local realtors and the wine-lodging-tourism lobby hated the idea too. The other four Supervisors weren’t quite as agitated as Williams, but they all felt that there are probably better ways to alleviate the County’s housing shortage than requiring somebody to apply for a permit to rent all or part of their house if they feel like it. So in the end they overturned the Planning Commission’s somewhat cumbersome and limited use-permit proposal in favor of revisiting the housing problem later, maybe someday, nebulously. 

Of course, Official Mendo is completely incapable of doing anything about the housing problem as they’ve demonstrated time and again. They can’t even bring themselves to require a permit status report from their own Planning Department to stay on top of extended review and approval processes. And if short term rentals are a problem, they could simply adopt versions of Sonoma County’s more sensible approach (which simply bans non-resident or outside/corporate ownership of short-term rentals) or even Fort Bragg’s only-in-certain-areas approach.

But there’s more to the problem than just the fact that short term rentals take housing stock off the market in favor of high-profit de facto rural motel businesses.

As Navarro resident Don Shanley explained during public expression on Tuesday, having someone or a commercial real estate outfit buy a house and then open an unmanaged commercial motel business next door on a rural private road can create major neighborhood problems.

Don Shanley: “I have been a resident of the county for over 55 years. I don't understand this fear from real estate lobbyists about a use permits. The purpose of a use permit is to inform the neighborhood, addressing fire considerations, safety -- all the basic considerations you would expect from someone building something. So I don't get the fear about that. My wife and I are opposed to the appeal of the resolution from the Planning Commission. On November 21 of 2019 my wife and I presented a 25-page document to the Planning Commission hearing in opposition to the use permit for a short term rental on a private road passing through our property on Highway 128 in Navarro. Our neighbors and my wife and I devoted hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to oppose this use permit application that never should have been considered if the Planning Department had completed basic due diligence. Later it was determined and proved that it was already an illegal structure. There were three kitchens on the property and the application should never have come before the Planning Commission. So we got to spend five grand and get our neighbors together for the appeal. Every single person on our road opposed it. In the words of former County Counsel Terry Gross, A major use permit for a short-term rental application allows those individuals most affected, the neighbors, to voice their concerns about fire safety, invasion of privacy, liability, destruction of quality of life, nuisances, and not meeting the requirements of Mendocino County code. These were the specific reasons that the Planning Commissioners voted unanimously, 5-0, too deny the permit. We urge you to watch the November 21, 2019, hearing appeal to understand the details of our opposition. We are not suggesting short-term rentals never be approved. We keep hearing the shrill references: Oh my God! Property rights! They can't possibly have this! Please. They can still be approved in a residential neighborhood. We submit that individuals do not move to a rural zip code to wake up to a commercial hotel operation next door where perhaps there isn't even an owner or a manager on-site to attend to transient renters' needs and safety. One need only look at the real estate ads posted in office windows to understand that the proliferation of short-term rentals on private rural roads is a sales pitch to wannabe absentee owners who needn't even be present to manage the renters who are paying their mortgages. We appreciate local residents needing to supplement their incomes, but not at the expense of their neighbors. Thank you.”

As usual, the Supervisors rudely ignored Shanley not even giving him the courtesy of a “thank you.” Then they proceeded to turn down the Planning Commission’s modest proposal unanimously. 

Perhaps the most terrifying part of Tuesday’s discussion, to anyone needing housing in Mendocino County anyway, was Williams’ declaration that these Supervisors are going to take up the housing shortage problem sometime later this year.

STAN MIKLOSE

Back in 2005 I had just moved to Fort Bragg after being Managing Editor of the Napa Valley Register for five years then teaching at Dominican. Mom and dad had come here in 1986 and mom was living alone, although not really needing me for much. I went to work as cub reporter for the Fort Bragg Advocate News. 

One of my first assignments was to do the We Live and Work here section where I met Mark from North Coast Brewing, Paul from Thanksgiving Coffee and other community titans such as Stan Miklose. All these people were fantastic and beloved but Stan had a special way of just telling it like it was. About himself, his store, the grocery business and anything around here. He had me laughing but it was hard not to admire his store and the work he went to to sell real food in the old fashioned way. Some very real eggs and chickens you could buy nowhere else made it on his shelves, along with the very best of local farm products. 

When Stan was in high school he worked for the Finnish cooperative grocery, which fittingly is now a Latinx grocery store, after decades as the Paul Bunyan Thrift Shop. He partly kept the old ways alive and partly jumped into a hot new trend, Health Foods. There was a very sexy Health Food store in Massachusetts we went to when I was a kid called Garden of Eatin, with skimpily clad Adams and Eves inside, or bellbottoms or beehives. 

The numerous health food stores rather quickly faded away but Stan kept on, feeding central Fort Bragg terrific vittles decade after decade. He told of finding health foods at the regular grocery stores and yet he continued, by innovating. He had stuff you couldn't get anywhere else, like real baking soda. And those little healthy snack packets at the front door were irresistible. 

I did a few more stories with him over the years. We shared a love for ReUse and and Repurposing. He kept up an old lost grocers tradition, keeping the boxes for giveaway to customers for free. He was the longest serving member of the Fort Bragg Planning Commission ever and was replaced this week, with his friend former Mayor Dave Turner, coming down to give his speech for him while he watched on TV, along with Councilman Lindy Peters and others. 

Stan died Thursday morning and his Down Home Foods was closed today, something you never saw in heck or atmospheric river. Maybe drop a card for Rose and the crew. It's supposed to be open tomorrow. Someday, there will be only chains and nobody local will ever have this type opportunity, so stop by and enjoy some fresh delicious green juice, a homemade dessert and a sandwich with sprouts and some spicy trail mix for dessert. 

Frank Hartzell

HAVEN'T WE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE?

The Fort Bragg Planning Commission will hold a hearing at Town Hall on May 10, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. to consider making a recommendation to City Council regarding the following project: Coastal Development Permit, Design Review and Parcel Merger to construct a Grocery Outlet Market (retail store). The proposed project includes the demolition of an existing 16,436-square-foot vacant former office building and associated 53-space parking lot and wooden fencing along the property line, and the construction and operation of a 16,157-square-foot, one-story, retail store with a 53-space parking lot and associated improvements and infrastructure. 

Please see the Public Hearing Notice: 05102023 Grocery Outlet Notice of Public Hearing

More information about this project can be found here: Projects | Fort Bragg, CA

(Fort Bragg Press Release)

AVUSD NEWS

Our next Drug/Bullying Task Force is Thursday, May 11 at 6:00 p.m. in the high school gym. We are hosting a nacho bar created by Mrs. Rhoades and need an RSVP, if you plan to attend. We will also work to have a speaker from Behavioral Health about the current issues within the county related to drug use. I hope you can attend!

Please call either school office to make your reservation. Students are also welcome. We hope to have a full house.

RSVP at: (707) 895-3010 for Elementary Parents, (707) 895-3496 for Junior/Senior High Parents

---

Mendocino College Is Offering An Amazing Opportunity!

We are excited to partner with the Redwood Coast K-12 Collaborative to offer our first summer session aimed at supporting dual enrollment students. The program will run from 9AM-3:05 PM Monday to Thursday from June 12^th to July 20^th,  six weeks. We have the three courses, below, scheduled at the North County Center in Willits. WHS will be working with us to sponsor lunch. 

Instructional Outline

The vision is for students to sign up for these courses as a cohort. Starting with Geometry, then a study hall with supervised tutoring and then History of Rock and Jazz. Students will have lunch provided during the study hall. We will also have support staff to assist with an online class if they would like to take one online class and one on ground class, or even two online classes with on ground support staff.

Additional Incentives for Students

In addition to earning college credit, students who complete the program successfully will also have the reward of a fun trip at the end of the program. This will likely include a visit to Sonoma State and their choice of visit to a ropes course, escape room, or museum, etc.

If we can get six students to attend, we will assign a driver and provide transportation.  Please contact Chris Howard asap to register 707-895-3496!

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District

MOTHER'S DAY SALE WITH FILIGREEN FARM & BOONVILLE BARN!

Filigreen Farm and Boonville Barn Collective are teaming up for a Mother's Day sale! 

Swing by Velma's Farmstand at Filigreen Farm on Saturday May 13th from 11am-3pm.

Shop Filigreen's everlasting flowers, fresh flowers, dried fruit, and olive oil and Boonville Barn's chile powders, chile flakes, mole kits, and maybe even strawberries!

Velma's Farmstand is located at 11750 Anderson Valley Way

Local Seed Potatoes from Natural Products of Boonville

IT’S NOT TOO LATE FOR PLANTING POTATOES!

I have successfully grown a decent crop of potatoes here planting them as late as early July. SO, unless i have an unforeseen ‘run’ of folks wanting seed tubers I should have some of the fall-maturing ones available until sometime in June; perhaps as long as another couple of months

FYI, some cultivars and landrace types tend to produce larger tubers when they are maturing in the fall, when days are shorter.

Here’s an updated list, with comments: 

Exotic and gourmet Potatoes:

Gunter Blue - a new high yielding ‘blue’ potato. round to oval, medium size w/a few ‘lunkers’. Does well in long days.

Nemah - late maturing, bright yellow interior similar to classic ‘Papa amarillo’ type that are SO popular in areas where potatoes originated. 2”-3” tubers, but sometimes larger in the fall. Stores very well. Produces best when days are short.

Chiquilla Pitiquiña - visually appealing tubers with rather late maturity. stores well. Produces best when tubers mature in the fall, so late planting (June/July) is preferred.

Inkah Gold - late maturing complex hybrid. occasionally available commercially. I have only small tubers - about the size I started with. they produced well despite starting small, but heavy fall rains reduced the size of the many I dug up. also yellow inside. 

Can be planted as late as the first week of July for a November harvest

Loowit - al season Tom Wagner hybrid that’s deep red inside and out if matures in cold weather, otherwise pink to reddish inside. [Red and purple pigment production is related to cool temperatures.] Mine were ’top-shaped’ last year; perhaps related to maturing in heavy rain periods.

mashed they look incredible :-)

Skagit Valley Gold - bright yellow flesh. early maturing round diploid with a longer dormancy than most diploids. Excellent roasted whole or split. 2”-3” for the most part. another Papa amarilla type. even now would be possible to get 2 crops this year with this one .

Bloody Banana - unusual fingerling that’s gold outside with red spots here and there. interior is bright yellow with occasional red streaks. an early maturing, unique, and very cool looking fingerling type diploid. Like most ‘Papa Amarillo’ types, tubers for eating can only be stored a short time. They tend to sprout quickly even kept cold and dark. they are very tasty for the short interval one has them. given space they produce VERY well for an early potato. 

Needs to be planted ASAP.

Ozette -Heirloom indeterminate fingerling from the Makah Indians. If kept moist through summer it often grows through the season until frost. Can produce huge fingerlings in long season areas. occasionally available commercially. stores fairly well.

Rozette - a new red F1 hybrid derived from Ozette. Can be streaked with pink or red inside. otherwise very similar to Ozette. Excellent split and roasted.

Criolla Rosado - early maturing diploid with bright yellow flesh and red skin. does NOT store well- but is worth growing for it’s taste, etc. as it is a classic ‘Papa Amarillo’ type. I grew it from ’True Potato Seeds’ and (unlike a couple of other ‘good ones’ ) have managed to keep going as a clone line. 

These need to be planted soon. Still possible to get 2 crops this year with this one.

'Red Eye Russet’: A new, yet-to-be-commercially-released smooth-skinned oval potato with red spots here and there. Kinda pear-shaped so far.

Dense, with high solids, so good for french fries, baking, salads, etc.. It stores well - unlike most of the delicious diploid types I grow. there’s 1.25 pounds of this one left at $10/lb.

Diploids are often difficult to locate for planting due to their short dormancy periods - but with our climate it’s easy to do at least 2 crops a year, and many people prefer the flavors of diploid potatoes.

Many of the these are described, with photos, at www.cultivariable.com

The source of the ones I planted last year to have seed tubers for myself and others this year.

Geoffrey Pomeroy

geoffrey@naturalproductsofboonville.com

'ART IN OUR GARDENS' TOUR Coming to Ukiah Valley Saturday, May 20th

Ukiah Valley once again celebrates art, culture and the artists who live here! The  ‘Art in Our Gardens’ tour is once again gracing Ukiah Valley Saturday, May 20th. Enjoy a delightful day of meeting artists and viewing their art in the peaceful surroundings of beautiful gardens as twenty two artists display and speak about their art. 

This once a year event is presented by the Mendocino County Art Association celebrating their 75^th anniversary. It is free and runs from 10am to 4pm. For more information, maps and directions are available at the Corner Galley, 201 S State Street, Ukiah during the month of May. You can also visit Artsmendocino.org for more information.

In Ukiah the featured artists are Svetlana Artemoff, Katie Kight, Dorleen McBride, Mary Monroe, Laura Fogg, Katie Gibbs, Polly Palecek, Nancy Collins, Gina Greco, Georgine Hultz, Cindy Lindgren, Ann Maglinte and Diana Steele. In Ukiah the gardens hosting the many artists are Laura Fogg’s, Dorleen McBride’s and Cindy Lindgren. 

In Redwood Valley the featured artists are Wanda Bennett, Deborah Briggs, Jeanne Koelle, Marie Pera, Michael Riddell, Juanita-Joy Riddell, Susan Walker, Spencer Brewer & Esther Siegel. The gardens in Redwood Valley hosting the artists are Mike & Juanita Joy Riddell’s and Esther Siegel & Spencer Brewer’s. 

For more information contact The Corner Gallery at 707-462-1400 or email kathleen@mendocinoartassn.org.

See you there for a day of sunshine, gardens and eye candy!

SHERIFF ISSUES PUBLIC CORRECTION/RETRACTION TO ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE 

On Tuesday, April 25, 2023 a further review of this coroner's investigation revealed that the information released in the 04-18-2023 original press release contained inaccurate information.

As a result, the Sheriff's Office is publicly correcting and retracting the inaccurate information which was mistakenly disseminated to the public in that original press release.

Toxicology results did confirm the presence of methamphetamine toxicity, however an anthropological examination of Thaddeus Keegan Bradley's (27, from San Antonio, Texas) skeletal remains showed signs of perimortem injuries. The cause of these injuries is unknown and unexplained thus far.

As a result, the classification of Bradley's death is Undetermined with his cause of death being Unknown. The classification and cause of death will remain as such until further information is developed to assist the Chief Deputy Coroner in determining the final classification and cause of death.

The coroner's investigation thus far has determined Bradley, commonly known by the nickname “Tad,” was transient (on foot) and traveled between Humboldt County (Fortuna and Arcata), Trinity County (Weaverville) and Mendocino County over the last several years. The locations in Mendocino County included the cities of Willits, Ukiah and mainly the township of Mendocino dating back to June 24, 2015 to the last known contact a Deputy had with him on July 26, 2021.

The Sheriff's Office is asking for the public's assistance with this coroner's investigation, especially with any known interactions with Bradley/Tad on or after July 26, 2021. 

Anyone with information that could assist investigators in this coroner's investigation is urged to contact the Sheriff's Office Tip-Line by calling 707-234-2100 or the WeTip anonymous crime reporting hotline at (800) 782-7463.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, April 27, 2023

NICOLE ALVAREZ, Mendocino. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, battery on peace officer, resisting, probation revocation.

BENJAMIN BICKNELL, Fort Bragg. Protective order violation.

CHARLES BOWEN JR., Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

LEE JOAQUIN, Covelo. Murder, use of firearm, felon-addict with firearm, marijuana for sale, false ID.

LAROY MADDEN-STEPHENS, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER PIKEL, Ukiah. Use of tear gas.

MORGAN REED, Boonville. DUI.

LEROY ROBLES JR., Fort Bragg. Suspended license, conspiracy.

HUNTER SCOTT, Woodland/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

CHRISTOPHER STAFFORD, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-intoxicated by drugs & alcohol, failure to appear.

ELEA VANWORMER, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, elder abuse, probation revocation.

MAYA WELLS, Woodland/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

MCKENZIE WILSON, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CAROL MATTESSICH:

Many of the people who are now busy hating on Tucker Carlson, with reason, are missing the bigger picture. Carlson was a genuine aberration in U.S. corporate media. Which is why he is gone, sacked by media “titan” Rupert Murdoch.

Yes, over the years Carlson played on white fears, placing him firmly on the right. But he also gave over his massive corporate platform at Fox News to some of the most critical and thoughtful independent journalists and pundits around — from Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore.

Here is the link to the article: consortiumnews.com/2023/04/27/tucker-carlson-tried-to-serve-two-masters/

IMAGES FROM NORTHERN ENGLAND from Randy Burke

ESTHER MOBELY:

A very good piece in Slate looks at the whiplash-inducing scientific research on whether or not alcohol is healthy. In the nineties, the scientific community promoted red wine as beneficial; now, it seems, the consensus has flipped. Tim Requarth offers an insightful history of this debate.

An ordinance passed in Napa last year, meant to enable small-scale winegrowers to host visitors at their vineyards, hasn’t worked out as intended, reports Shana Clarke in VinePair. So far, only three wineries have tried to take advantage of the new rule, and none has received approval yet.

There are new developments in the saga over Bud Light’s social-media promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which sparked outrage from some of the beer’s right-wing customers, like Kid Rock (who made a video of himself shooting Bud Light cases with a semi-automatic weapon). Now, two top marketing executives at Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, are on a leave of absence. Those developments underscore possible consequences of when companies attempt to appeal to liberal values, writes Charles Homans in the New York Times.

DAN WOOTTON: The snobs sneered and the critics raged, but without Jerry Springer ordinary people would never have become the biggest stars of the entertainment industry. Without him, there would have been no Kardashians, no Big Brother, no American idol. Jerry, who died peacefully on Wednesday at 79 after being diagnosed with cancer, quite literally revolutionized television across the world by proving mere mortals were far more interesting to watch than most of the pampered A-listers who cost millions to hire. To the fabulous and infamous daily chant of “Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry,” the folk who previously never got on screen were given the opportunity to fight out their mundane problems in front of a global audience, all while becoming local celebrities for five minutes. Oprah Winfrey might have tried to convince us that we wanted to remember our spirit with mumbo jumbo Californian claptrap, but actually there were times we just really loved watching our contemporaries air their dirty laundry. And that was OK.

TIP OF THE ICEBERG

by Michael Messing

Ramped up, amped up, ratchet up, gin up, up the ante, double down, jump-start, be behind the curve, swim against the tide, go south, go belly up, level the playing field, open the floodgates, think outside the box, push the edge of the envelope, pull out all the stops, take the foot off the pedal, pump the brakes, grease the wheel, circle the wagons, charge full steam ahead, pass with flying colors, move the goal posts, pour gasoline on, add fuel to the fire, fly under the radar, add insult to injury, grow by leaps and bounds, only time will tell, go to hell in a handbasket, put the genie back in the bottle, throw the baby out with the bathwater, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, have your cake and eat it too, a taste of one’s own medicine, stick to one’s guns, above one’s pay grade, punch above one’s weight, lick one’s wounds, pack a punch, roll with the punches, come apart at the seams, throw a wrench into, caught in the cross hairs, cross the Rubicon, tempt fate, go ballistic, on tenterhooks, hit the nail on the head, a nail in the coffin, joined at the hip, welcome with open arms, rub shoulders with, shoot oneself in the foot, dip one’s toes into, have a leg up, dance to the tune of, the next shoe to drop, in the DNA of, the gold standard, a gold mine, land mines, a run for the money, money to burn, penny-wise and pound-foolish, lap of luxury, off the charts, over a barrel, late to the party, it takes two to tango, behind the eight ball, pride of place, final straw, full throttle, no holds barred, red flag, silver lining, on a silver platter, in the rearview mirror, bargain basement, silos, morph, meme, trope, mind meld, warp speed, inner demons, have skin in the game, game changer, change agent, strong suit, ground game, ground zero, inflection point, tipping point, playbook, page turner, singing from the same hymnal, singing a new tune, straight out of central casting, the devil’s in the details, take the bull by the horns, the canary in the coal mine, chickens coming home to roost, beat a dead horse, pony up, the straw that broke the camel’s back, open a can of worms, buy a pig in a poke, cash cow, rabbit hole, dog days, dog whistle, bells and whistles, tool kit, third rail, the tip of the iceberg, the light at the end of the tunnel, the arc of history, speak truth to power, break the glass ceiling, the writing’s on the wall, between a rock and a hard place, beyond the pale, take the wind out of the sails of, that ship has sailed, sinking ship, tidal wave, roller-coaster ride, gravy train, tanked, cratered, Rubik’s Cube, Rosetta Stone, Rolodex, poster child, problem child, rock star, pundit, national treasure, charter member, heavy hitter, heavy lifting, political football, throw a Hail Mary, full-court press, hit a home run, play with house money, laser-focused, secret sauce, red meat, piece of cake, bread and butter, cherry-pick, low-hanging fruit, sticker shock, kick-start, kick into overdrive, kick the tires, kick the can down the road, where the rubber meets the road, an albatross around the neck, a feather in the cap, long in the tooth, armed to the teeth, cut one’s teeth, rib tickler, spine tingling, pull the wool over the eyes of, pull the plug on, pull the trigger, loosen the reins, sweep under the carpet, throw under the bus, throw for a loop, read the riot act, lead the pack, the short end of the stick, at the drop of a hat, the jury is still out, hung out to dry, as if that weren’t enough, it would be an understatement to say, it would be no exaggeration to say, despite or perhaps because of, what goes around comes around, for all intents and purposes, make a long story short, the fact of the matter, to be sure, truth be told, a who’s who, famously, arguably, literally, zeitgeist, mantra, optics, granular, narrative, interrogate, paradigm, venue, robust, compelling, fever pitch, pitch perfect, picture perfect, perfect storm, take by storm, eye of the storm, back burner, petri dish, echo chamber, hot button, hard wire, go viral, bingeable, blockbuster, on steroids, testosterone-laced, metastasize, contextualize, preternaturally, outsize, gobsmacked, turbocharged, weaponized, apocalyptic, existential …

(Michael Massing is the author of “Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind.”)

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: At a time when women are still fighting for pay equity and reproductive rights and our own spaces safe from biological males - prisons, shelters, and yes, locker rooms - we have the likes of Lia Thomas telling feminists how to be feminists and what we are and aren't allowed to be upset by. Why wouldn't she feel so emboldened? Lia Thomas has been anointed as the greatest activist-slash-athlete since Muhammad Ali - and what an insult to Ali, a man who truly fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, all at great personal cost. To all the women who are as alarmed and outraged as I am: It's past time to speak up. The call is coming from inside the house. Women ourselves are being brainwashed into thinking we should happily cede the ground for which we've fought so long and so hard. That it's not a big deal, that womanhood is a big tent, merely personhood. That we're being that most sexist of claims: Hysterical, Latin root meaning 'of the womb.' How ironic.

AMERICA, THE SINGLE-OPINION CULT

Narrowing permitted ideas on both left and right, one unsuitable voice at a time

by Matt Taibbi

That interview says it all, doesn’t it?

Not long ago I was writing in defense of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When she first entered Congress as an inner-city kid who’d knocked off longtime insider Joe Crowley with a Sandersian policy profile, her own party’s establishment ridiculed her as a lefty Trump. Nancy Pelosi scoffed that her win just meant voters “made a choice in one district,” so “let’s not get carried away.” Ben Ritz, director of the Progressive Policy Institute, an offshoot of the old Democratic Leadership Council, groused, “Oh, please, she just promised everyone a bunch of free stuff.” 

This was before AOC decided to be the next Pelosi, instead of the next Sanders. The above sit-down on MSNBC shows the transformation. Having shed the mantle of an outsider who shook the old guard with online savvy, she appeared in soft light for a softball “interview,” by a literal Biden official (Inside With Jen Psaki is as close as you can get to a formal dissolution of the line between White House and media). In it, she seemed to argue for the outlaw of Fox News. “We have very real issues with what is permissible on air,” she said, adding people like Tucker Carlson are “very clearly” guilty of “incitement to violence,” a problem in light of “federal regulation in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.”

I was attracted to liberalism as a young person precisely because it didn’t want to ban things. Every liberal morality play in the seventies, eighties and nineties featured a finger-wagging moralist who couldn’t stomach an obscene joke (Jerry Falwell, over a Hustlerparody), “obscene” art (Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, over Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos), “objectionable” music (Tipper Gore, in the now-seems-tame record-labeling furor), or unpredictable humor (NBC, in its attempts to put Richard Pryor on tape delay for Saturday Night Live). Pryor’s favored writer Paul Mooney objected so much to all the hoops they had to jump through to be allowed on air, he ended up writing a parody “job interview” skit that sent SNL’sratings soaring, though ironically it would probably never air today.

Hollywood made self-congratulating feature films about nearly every one of those speech clashes, from The People vs. Larry Flynt to Dirty Pictures (starring James Woods, about the Cincinnati episode!) to Parental Advisory. The movie Field of Dreams features Ray Kinsella’s wife Annie telling off “IRATE MOTHER” in a school library debate about banning writer Terrence Mann, with Annie saying after: “Fascist. I’d like to ease her pain!” (The actual book Shoeless Joe featured J.D. Salinger, one of America’s most-censored authors). From To Kill a Mockingbird to Dead Man Walking liberalism celebrated the belief that truth, tolerance, and forgiveness are the way to reach closed minds. I mentioned this before, but Rob Reiner’s The American President — a naked hagiography of Clintonian politics — came to a climax with “President Andrew Shepherd” defending his flag-burning girlfriend’s honor, saying:

You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating, at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing…

That scene, which sounds like it should apply to any Democrat thinking about someone like Carlson, would become ironic later. Back to AOC and Fox: like so many other things in America, the marketplace of ideas is no longer a market. Voices with organic appeal are artificially restricted. Watching “approved” news these days is like watching scab baseball: you know most of the players the crowds really want to see aren’t even in the dugout. By no means is this phenomenon confined to the right.

As far back as the spring of 2017, when Google introduced “Project Owl,” a new tool designed to “surface more authoritative content,” outlets like the World Socialist Web Site, Alternet, Truthdig, Democracy Now!, and Consortium News reported dramatic drops in audience. Wikileaks traffic plummeted (that site’s content is extremely difficult to access for a variety of reasons now). Years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google employed “maintainers” to tend to an “‘anti-misinformation’ blacklist” to prevent sites from “appearing in Google News and other products.”

The next big event was the removal of Alex Jones from Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify. No fan of Jones, I was struck by how quickly critics moved to looking around for the next targets. Rob Reiner, the “acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil” auteur, said on MSNBC, “You have Fox, Breitbart, Sinclair, and Alex Jones, which has now been taken off of Facebook, thank God…” Senator Chris Murphy said Jones was just the “tip of a giant iceberg” and “companies must do more than take down one website.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook insisted the Jones episode was not coordinated with the other firms, saying, “I’ve had no conversation. And to my knowledge, no one at Apple has.” Later stories like the Apple-Amazon squeeze of Parler ended the ruse that the major distribution platforms were not working together to create private agreements on speech, and the #TwitterFiles showed countless episodes of supposedly independent companies engaging in seeming anticompetitive behavior, coordinating on everything from election “misinformation” to pandemic messaging and holding regular “industry meetings” with government to discuss moderation issues. 

The attendees of the call below include Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, Wikimedia, even Medium, gathering to hear the “USG” list “watch-outs” and other threats.

In the six years since “Project Owl,” think about how many voices have been fully or partially removed from public view. True-blue “progressives” won’t mourn many, from Jones to Donald Trump to Carlson to RT and Sputnik to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Add the deamplification or algorithmic blacklisting of sites like Truthdig, Wikileaks and third-party candidates like Jill Stein, the removal under government pressure of content from people like Joe Rogan, and the seemingly endless advertiser boycotts of various other classes of badthinker, and the field of view has been drastically narrowed. 

The one undeniable fact about Carlson’s show is that it was materially different from other Fox content. The product was not the same as what you heard in the Hannity slot. As was the case with Donald Trump, you don’t need to cheer the message, or believe it’s sincere, to recognize that this differentiation exists. For instance, the Washington Post this week cited “people familiar with” Rupert Murdoch’s thinking in saying Carlson’s ongoing eye-rolling about the war in Ukraine, and use of terms like “pimp” to describe Volodymyr Zelensky, had “drawn furious blowback from powerful Republicans who see U.S. support for Ukraine as a bulwark in a fight for freedom and democracy — some of whom had Murdoch’s ear.”

Removing Carlson from Fox makes the rest of conservative media more homogeneous. The constant policing of content in blue media accomplishes the same. When the American Prospect ran a feature about Carlson that merely had a sarcastic headline (“The Smuggest Man On Air”) and was only critical roughly every second or third paragraph, filling in the rest of the space with detached analysis of what made Carlson’s show successful (e.g. a willingness to “mock ruling elites”), the magazine was hit with the usual grab-bag of Scanners-style head-exploding from a handful of reporters. This immediately caused two Prospect editors to roll over, throw their writers overboard, and replace the mildly different piece with the usual wire-to-wire bloodcurdling diatribe against Carlson as a “neofascist” “threat to democracy.” 

I like and respect editor David Dayen, but a sequence like this sends a message to every writer that you’d better come at topics in a certain way if you want to be bylined. Liberals in the Bush years used to mock the metronome predictability of Fox, but the same kind of thing has been going on on what used to be my side of the aisle for so long, most mainstream media products are basically identical. Everyone with a noticeably different point of view gets moved out, even if they’re obvious audience assets, with Glenn Greenwald (pushed out of the Intercept for wanting to publish what turned out to be the correct angle on the Hunter Biden laptop story) and Lee Fang being notable examples. 

It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going. To paraphrase Mencken, you don’t have to think Carlson’s motivations were noble to see that his rhetoric on Ukraine stood out in the current TV environment like a wart on a bald head. The rest of the corporate press, be it left or right, will now be a parade of generals and security experts whose argument won’t be about whether or not the U.S. should be involved in Ukraine, but which party is most committed and whose strategy will lead to Putin’s defeat faster. We are moving back toward an era of two homogeneous messaging landscapes that will intersect on national security issues, with the beaten antiwar left a fading memory and the isolationist right fired, under indictment, or banned. 

People like AOC can couch these moves in terms of prevention of violence all they want, but it’s just too conspicuous that what’s left of major commercial media also happens to be much engaged in the trumpeting of government messaging, to the point where the people reading the news are government officials. It was once considered healthy for the press to play to mass audiences and position itself as a skeptical thorn in the side of officialdom. 

There is no institution like that left in American life. What we have instead is an increasingly pissed-off population that needs to look about eighty results down in every Google search to find its point of view represented. Who thinks that situation is going to hold?

UKRAINE, THURSDAY, 27TH APRIL

Two Ukrainians are dead in the Zaporizhzhia region where more than 80 Russian missile strikes were recorded over the past day, the military administration said.

At least one person died in a Russian missile strike targeting civilian buildings in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv Thursday, authorities said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Chinese President Xi Jinping gave “words of support” for the Black Sea grain deal. The two leaders held a phone call Wednesday — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

Meanwhile, Russian troops are fortifying their defenses around Mariupol, according to an official. On the other hand, recent satellite imagery reviewed by CNN shows Russian forces have emptied out a key base in northern Crimea.

(CNN)

CAPITALISM IS DEMOCRATIC The Way Rape Is Romance

by Frank Scott

“Whenever I see he/him or she/her I think fuck/you. You must be living an awfully precious life if, amid the pervasive despair of an economy in free fall, your uppermost concern is clinging to your pronouns.”

— Norman Finkelstein

The present mental state of the American public is almost as bad as the ruling military idiocy which is pushing us closer to a nuclear confrontation as we conduct a proxy war against Russia using Ukrainian lives while we supply the weapons. In the face of this and a recent United Nations report calling for more urgency than ever in dealing with the environmental breakdown of nature under assault by capitalist market madness, Americans are under an attack on sanity more deadly than ever for not dealing with material circumstances but rather a set of alleged problems which make fairy tales sound like intellectually sound reports on material reality.

Herds of otherwise thoughtful people are moved to become an intellectual lynch mob as consciousness control and mind management organizes a frenzy of demands to televise the Trump court fiascos, suppress speech found painful by privileged folks totally protected from physical pain, and other aspects of personality and character disorders among a socially tortured people suffering political and economic deprivation under the rule of morally depraved leadership whose power comes from amassing incredible wealth and having its political servant class accept and teach that as democracy. Suppression of thought and rape of language labels a market process as electoral choice and a political system threatening more people with less information than ever before is dubbed “our democracy.”

You know, the one in which Julian Assange is driven closer to death by hordes of former reporters who have become storm troopers in the army of propaganda purveyors who were once at least an occasional source of fairly unbiased news reporting. As banking and finance show signs of near collapse and most of the world moves further from dependence on the American dollar that is fast becoming as sound as digital or counterfeit currency, and the murderous war budget continues to grow in killing Russians by sacrificing Ukrainians lives along with American dollars, an assortment of allegedly life or death struggles over races other than human, genders other than male and female, and other themes and variations of fantasy fiction which act as programmed mental blockades for the public, as we sink closer to mental and physical doom that threatens far more than only our nation.

The breaking down of a global system of imperialism shows itself in a variety of ways that remain invisible, unheard, unseen and never analyzed in the main stream of consciousness control and mind management that fading ruling powers are using in more desperate fashion than any previous assault on American mental health. The daily poisoning of national capacity to think has become a raging epidemic to make the corona virus seem almost simple by comparison, though it came from the same source: capital private profit marketing under the guise of freedom and democracy that guarantees Americans the right to buy a weapon in order to protect themselves from the most frightening creatures in the universe: other Americans.

We are warned against fictional problems with Chinese “spy” balloons and Chinese “spy” police while murdering one another, frequently in groups ranging from children and their teachers to shoppers at a mall or worshippers at a proposed religious haven and spending hundreds of billions to menace and murder all over the world as a form of protection for what people who make religious fanatics seem thoughtful call “our” democracy”.

This cherished fantasy takes place in a population in which 8% are millionaires; multi-millionaires and billionaires while the overwhelming 92% majority are manipulated when not physically beaten into accepting such idiocy as “equality”.

The billions keep pouring into the proxy war in the Ukraine which murders Russians who are alleged to have invaded when the truth is their borders have been menaced by the U.S. and its Nato lap dogs since the end of the soviet union and communist rule which supposedly brought the world closer to peace. But not according to the ruling powers of minority wealth which expanded its war profiteering and actually further menaced the future with nuclear war as the aggressive minority which rules America asserted its deadly control more fully by making a sick joke of words like democracy, freedom and equality, while destroying every step in the direction nations took trying to achieve such things, most especially our own.

A population previously frightened by profitable pro or anti trans fat diets has become enamored of more profitable trans gender relations, further alienating many while pleasing others troubled by what may have once involved seeking counsel or joining a church or drinking alcohol or taking drugs or all four and more. We are already embroiled in a supposed democratic action which is to begin more than a year into the future when the two parties of capitalism will wage multi billion dollar marketing wars called a presidential election. At the present moment there is no alternative voice beyond the Green party, which is at a severe disadvantage in a supposed capitalist democracy. It does not have billions of dollars stashed with which to buy marketing time to see its program which calls for system change and not simply a cosmetic personnel change to reward one or another nice guy-girl-man-woman-shim from an identity group other than-different from others in the creation of ever more alienation and division among the people to strengthen our ruling minority and its front line servant demublicans and republicrats.

Our savage divisions under false race idiocy in denial of the fact that we are all members of the one and only human race have been joined by seemingly lesser but just as dangerous divisions alleging more than the two sexes involved in human evolution. A surge of separate but unequal identity groups has occurred as ruling power works harder than ever to divide humanity and thus make majority action democracy impossible. Unless disabled Polish American gay Jews of color are acknowledged progress is impossible and poor people can just drop dead on the streets until alleged bi-racial trans-sexual-tri-species-quad brained humans take their place alongside Batman, Captain Marvel, fairy godmothers, Founding Fathers and enchanted animals.

Considering the fact that the overwhelming 92% majority of us are carrying more than 31 trillion dollars in public debt, more than 16 billion in personal debt and have absolutely no chance under capitalist private profit political economics of seeing anything but further growth in that debt, we should move to at least share the pronoun “asshole” as at least one way of establishing our common membership in a class of humans reduced to mental slavery under the assault on our ability to think. But there is hope, and not only from the rapid awakening in the rest of the world that America is not some biblical ruler of the universe but from the awareness growing here despite all thought suppression that if we don't do something about it humanity and most especially America will suffer even more greatly.

Still, minority control of our minds and worse our nuclear weapons and their desire and commitment to destroying Russia and China make it all the more important that struggles for one or another minority or one or another aspect of environmental destruction that do not confront capitalist private profit-public loss political economics as the root cause of our problems will make them far more difficult if not impossible to solve.

Making a profit by creating electric cars instead of gasoline-powered vehicles will benefit minority capital and some of its servants but we need to reduce the total environmentally destructive control of life that the private automobile has become. Not only does it pollute but private profit auto transit creates public loss by killing tens of thousands of us every year, while crippling even more along with fouling air and poisoning land. We need public transit that makes it possible for any of us to get anywhere in time for whatever we have to do and for it to be safe enough to guarantee an end to the sheer butchery of the overwhelmingly wasteful and murderous single occupant private auto transit system. And that will only be possible when we have democratic control of the economy through political democracy which is absolutely impossible under minority dominated private profit-public loss capitalism.

Whether we achieve that peacefully or not will depend on shattering the steel curtain covering material reality with a media strengthened view of reality that is a nightmare trending towards a disaster. We need to wake up from an induced slumber so that all of us, whether pigeonholed by our rulers as left or right, can come together, transform reality before it destroys us, and salvage our world and our race as unified “influencers” of a democratic revolution. What's been called a “woke” state of mind has become a joke but we do need to “wake” from the idiotic trance social mind control has put us under. And anyway, “woke” is past tense. We need to “wake” to reality in the present or there may not be a past tense available to us, here or elsewhere.