Mendocino County Today: Monday, Oct. 16, 2023

Shower Chance | Ed Notes | Abandoned Trains | Past Misappropriation | Burroughs Memorial | Death at Building Bridges | Mendo Rainfall 2022-2023 | Sourdough Slim & Robert Armstrong | Fiscal Crisis/Geiger’s Markets | Eel River | Ukiah Soundtrack | Kelley House Cypress | Yesterday's Catch | Berkeley Bulrusher | Niners Lose | Granddaughter Fishing | Dislikes Protestors | Cartoonist Sacked | Gaza | Peace | Genocidal Campaign | Finest Medicine | Ukraine | Teen Confessions

GUSTY SOUTHERLY WINDS and clouds continue to build into Northwest California as a cold front approaches the area. Widespread light rain with localized heavier amounts are forecast for today. Unseasonably hot temperatures along with dry weather is anticipated to return by mid to late week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Monday morning I have a cloudy 53F with approaching rain by later morning. Our forecast warms temps up thru the week then cooling back down for the weekend. More rain next week? We'll see.

ED NOTES

POUR ON THE HUMILIATIONS, DA Eyster, but why not set bail at a mil each considering the magnitude of the non-crime. If there were a way of knowing for sure, but it's obvious that Eyster and Supervisor Williams colluded on this one, maybe even bringing Supervisor McGourty along for comic relief. Truly one of the more shameful episodes in Mendocino County's unfailingly sordid history. The two falsely accused County workers might be consoled by public opinion, as measured on Mendo comment lines, is running heavily in their favor, and they should have a monster pay day in compensation when they sue for false arrest when Andrian slam-dunks Eyster before a jury.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING, ‘Big Vape,’ a documentary on Netflix. I first noticed high school kids walking past the ava office often emitting great clouds of smoke, or maybe it was steam. Whatever their composition, the clouds were impressively large. 

THEN I HEARD from a local teacher that vaping, via a slick little device that looked like a computer accessory, was something of a problem because our nation's future was managing to smoke in class, concealing the cloud bi-product in their garments. And they were often inserting marijuana in the device's cartridges which, as you tokers know, is much stronger than the ditch weed gramps and grams smoked in their flower power years.

ANYWAY, Big Vape's subtitle is ‘The Rise and Fall of Juul.’ The culture having passed me by, I was aware that vaping was popular among the young, but darned if I knew why? The documentary informed me that the Juul was loaded with nicotine, its poison was disguised with wild flavors — mango, mint, even, of all things, creme brulee. Only a kid could get behind flavored nicotine, but millions did, and they were as hooked on what were essentially cigarettes wrapped in a cool-o little Bic-like thing, hooked as firmly as the Marlboro Man ever was. Bunches of keen teens wound up in emergency rooms with collapsed lungs.

JUUL was the brand name of an electronic smoke, or e-cigarette, that would help adult smokers finally quit smoking plain old smokes, and it did help lots of people abandon standard cigs for e-cigs that theoretically spared their lungs the worst stuff that came in cigarettes. 

CREATED IN 2015 by a couple of Stanford whiz kids, Juul quickly drew the buzzards of investment capital to become one of the fastest growing companies in the world.

JUUL'S GLORY was short-lived. Proven as bad as Marlboros, it was sold for billions to the Big Tobacco it had aimed to replace, and its two founders retired to live out their lives in the infamy associated with their invention, just after Juul was denounced by the FDA as a major health hazard, especially for the young, and the product has been on the defensive ever since. 

LONG TIME READERS will recall that when the Mendocino County Grand Jury charged then-sitting elected official Supervisor Kendall Smith with misappropriation of over $3,000 of travel reimbursements (starting in 2007, then three additional repeat charges in following years), Smith simply stonewalled the Grand Jury, claiming (demonstrably falsely) that that the County’s reimbursement policies allowed her bogus travel claim. (Smith claimed reimbursement for her commute from Fort Bragg to Ukiah and back that she didn’t travel and for room rental in Ukiah that she got for free from a friend.) Then District Attorney Meredith Lintott, a personal friend of Smith, refused to take any action. Soon after David Eyster was elected District Attorney in 2010 he sent Smith a demand letter saying that if Smith didn’t return the funds (she’d kept it for over four years) he’d charge her with felony misappropriation. Smith quickly abandoned her position and wrote a check to the County for $3,087 dollars. No charges were filed. Eyster was rightly proud of this outcome. 

Now, more than 12 years later, with no comparable evidence or charges from the Grand Jury, instead of sending a demand letter for a specific amount of money to County Auditor/Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison, DA Eyster summarily charges Ms. Cubbison with felony misappropriation without offering Cubbison an opportunity to explain or respond or return any supposedly misappropriated funds. 

What’s the difference? With Cubbison it’s personal. She gets slapped with a formal felony charge with no opportunity to respond or repay. 

(Mark Scaramella)

DEATH AT BUILDING BRIDGES

Now Here

The day was spent mourning a long termer at Ukiah, California's Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center who suffered a heart attack. The coroner, ambulance, sheriff, police, and obligatory fire truck left around Brahma Muhurta, 4AM; Yama, the god of death had come for her. 

Awoke around 10AM, and following morning ablutions, walked up to Talmage Road and did the laundry. Afterwards, went to the Ukiah Food Co-op for a breakfast burrito and some coconut water. Shopped at Safeway for food for tonight, and then walked back. 

Identified with "that which is prior to consciousness", the mind chanting Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare, the passing show of this world just goes on and on and on. 

Craig Louis Stehr

MENDO RAINFALL Oct 1, 2022 through Sep 30, 2023 (compared to normal)

JEFF GOLL: Today's photos start with Sourdough Slim and Robert Armstrong who appeared at Emandal's Not Just Cowboy Poetry event.  Sourdough Slim has played Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center displaying his award winning yodeling and his "Last Of The Vaudeville Cowboys" humor and song.  Coming to the bucolic Emandal Farm in Hearst, Mr Slim and Mr Armstrong were great entertainers combining accordion with steel guitar and bowed saw for their version of Ghost Riders in the Sky for the Halloween time.  These two guys are founding members of the 8th Avenue String Band and R Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders and it was a most enjoyable time at Emandal.

PUBLIC THOUGHTS ON COUNTY’S ‘FISCAL CRISIS’

by Jim Shields

The past couple of weeks, I’ve covered the fiscal crisis that has been the main topic under discussion at Board of Supervisors meetings for the last year.

I’ve called for the County to stop talking about the County’s fiscal crisis and start doing something, get to the bottom of the root cause(s), and then take decisive action to solve it.

I’ve shared with you public dialog between Supervisor Ted Williams and myself over our different opinions/solutions to these financial troubles

Now it’s time to hear from the public and what their thoughts and insights are on this issue:

“Regarding the fiscal mess and Williams saying “hard decisions” needing to be made: Let us start by keeping all of the employees that we need to preserve the infrastructure of the county and necessary services, the actual front line workers (and pay them well). And then weed out as many administrators and assistant paper pushers as needed to balance the budget. We obviously do not need all of these administrators/paper-pushers as they apparently do not under stand what they are pushing as evidenced by the current Fiscal Mess. If they can’t explain or correct the mess we don’t need to be paying them. Additionally, getting rid of the unnecessary administrators/paper-pushers and their assistants should also reduce a lot of office space and expenses related there to.” — Joseph Turri

“Jim, I’m sure the supervisors are all good people but some sort of change happens to them once they actually walk into their meeting room to start ‘representing’ the people of this county. They seem to forget what their jobs are and wander all over the map talking and making decisions that have very little to do with the lives of ‘real people.’ Millions of dollars for pay raises of all the executives and consultants while they tell the employees ‘sorry no money for you because we have this crisis that we don’t know the cause of.’ Ditto for road repairs, the always growing homeless situation, and the mental health tax approved by voters that spends so far all the money on buildings but not the people who are mentally ill, etc. This is the real crisis but they just don’t get it. Thank for your leadership on this ‘real crisis’ we’re in, I know many others feel the same way.” — Barbara Miller

“If the BOS knows that their CEO leadership is bad, then why don’t they do something to correct it vs. letting these lunatics keep on doing bad things? I JUST DON”T GET IT! Former CEO) Angelo governed on her feelings, you never knew what to expect from her. Yet the BOS bowed down to her. Now look where we are! The empress had no clothes, never did, and you are now seeing the truth. These people should be held accountable. If they aren’t doing the job, toss them out. My god, grow a pair and do your damn jobs Board. You have placed this county where it is and continues to be. Put your selfish agendas and egos aside and do your damn jobs, to represent your people. Listen to those who have knowledge and accept the fact that you don’t know everything.” — M.E.

“As a retired front line County staff, I can attest that over the years I watched the administrative bureaucracy grow and grow. If staffing reduction is necessary, that is where the cuts should come.” — Chuck Dunbar

“For example, I get the distinct impression Ted Williams is trying to blame Prop 13 for our economic woes LOL!!! Even though he criticizes past administration, he doesn’t cite specific examples of where the rotten spots are now, just that we’re short on cash for infrastructure, etc. Sounds fishy to me, like he would like to raise taxes to solve ‘our’ (actually the BOS’s, present and past, and other entities, not the public’s) habit of overspending, as well as effective oversight of performance by our many public servants.

Actually that’s not quite fair, as Ted WIlliams does mention we need to see if mental health services are effective enough to reduce the burden on police and sheriff. However, no clear picture on the logistics of that. Could also turn the tables and ask if all of the “interference” by police and sheriff with the mentally ill/homeless has anything to do with the actual need for that interference …” — Sarah Kennedy Owen

* * *

Geiger’s Market Owners Announce Grand Opening Of New Hopland Store

A few days ago, the owners of Geiger’s Market, Laytonville-Hopland, announced on Facebook the grand opening of their new Hopland store.

“Opening day at Geiger’s Market!! We truly appreciate the community support and excitement celebrating opening weekend. We were overwhelmed to see so many familiar faces and made lots of new friends. We continue adding more great product choices and expanding our fresh deli, meat and seafood (coming soon!) offerings. More to come at Geiger’s Market!! HOPLAND HAS A GROCERY STORE!!”

As you all know, for nearly two years now the Laytonville Geiger’s Store has been a grocery store in name only, as evidenced by all the empty shelves, little to no vegetable produce, mostly empty cold storage cases, almost no beer, wine, liquor, etc.

Novel idea to operate a grocery without groceries.

Last Spring, the owners put out a letter-statement to the Laytonville community, essentially laying the blame of the store’s decline on the collapsed weed industry.

While I have certainly spoken and written thousands of words about the failed County Cannabis Ordinance’s adverse impact in our rural areas, most of us business owners are surviving, albeit with reduced revenues.

Local people are doing their best to support local businesses.

Laytonville area folks would have continued supporting Geiger’s if they had not been driven away by an empty store and owners who seemingly don’t give a damn.

People here in Laytonville supported Geiger’s Store for 80 years. They made it an institution. A place where everybody shopped, stopped and talked to neighbors, renewed old acquaintances, and met new folks. It was kind of a happening place.

None of that is happening anymore.

The owners don’t seem to be aware of any of that.

But the people in Hopland got themselves a brand new grocery store that actually has groceries in it.

Imagine that. What a novel concept.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org.)

UKIAH SOUNDTRACK: HOWLS & ROARS 

by Tommy Wayne Kramer 

An out of town guest was visiting for a few days and while we were on the back deck dawdling over a sampler of Ritz crackers, Velveeta cheese and PopTart hors d’oeuvres, we discussed Ukiah’s robust homeless population. 

A chorus of big loud engines suddenly roared by in waves. 

“What the…?” he said, cocking his head to the side. Trophy the wife explained about the Fairgrounds, the Speedway and the weekly car races. 

He thought the reality of a town holding stock car races was so wild, so retro and so fascinating he planned to attend next week’s. 

The sky darkened and at precisely 8 p.m. came scattered calls from canine-type voices howling in the approximate style of coyotes and wolves. It startled our guest as much as the engines and screeching tires had jolted him a short while earlier. 

“They do it every night at 8 o’clock,” I said. “Been doing it for years, at first to honor workers in the Covid days. Now it’s just part of the west side soundtrack.” 

“Ukiah,” he said. “What a place.” 

Graffiti Spreads, City Sleeps 

Local graffiti has long been confined to outlying areas of town where the residents are few and the blight is more obvious. 

No more. The scourge of gangsta graffiti has spread around the city and is conspicuous in places that had forever been off-limits. Whomever or whatever “MBZ” stands for, the brand is flourishing all over town. 

Todd Grove Park, forever a sanctuary and Ukiah’s most gracious and welcoming island, has been heavily MBZed. So has downtown. Those expensive, green custom-made City of Ukiah benches sprinkled along South School and sections of North State Streets have been defaced courtesy of the ubiquitous MBZ and other miscreants. 

City officials apparently don’t see it, and why would they? They also seem not to care, and I suppose we should ask the question again: Why Would They? 

Graffiti just grows, they must think, like weeds grow in the garden, like black rubber smudges grow on State Street bulbouts, like closed down shops, stores and buildings grow all over Ukiah. Things sprout; what can ya do? 

But if the city invested a small fraction of the money it spends on a Pumpkinfest or a seasonal ice rink, it could smite graffiti in a week. City officials could appeal to citizen volunteers that actually do care about how Ukiah looks, and organize a citywide paint-over. 

Maybe some cops or firefighters, with ex-Supervisor John McCowen leading, could volunteer to head anti-graffiti teams amed with rollers, spray guns and paint donated by Home Depot.

I suggest cops and fire guys because who thinks Ukiah’s imperial administrators would deign to join a mob of common citizens? 

What if someone were to ask Sage and Shannon if they really think they provide Ukiah with a half-million dollars of value every year? 

Aleve, Drug Of Choice 

Threw my back out the other day, or should I say my back threw me out? 

There is pain among us humans, and then there is back pain. Consider the types: Toothaches, dog bites, broken heart, broken ribs and sunburn. 

All these add up to no more than a small percentage of the woes back pain brings us. 

We’ve all heard of the alleged pain of childbirth, but let me ask you this: How many women have (willingly, mostly) undergone multiple childbirths? And how many of us have agreed to even one extra dose of screaming lower back pain? 

Answer: Many and None. Case closed. 

My back pain came slow, steady and sure. When it struck it was like someone lit the fuse that ignited the Pain Control Center in my lower back. When it hit I laughed so hard I couldn’t get dressed. I still can’t put my socks on. 

Jumping forward, I don’t know how Aleve does it, but it does it well. When a spark of rebellion erupts down there in the lumbar vertebrae region I just take a couple Aleve. A couple bottles of Aleve, that is. If it didn’t have long-term (and short-term) side effects I’d run through a case a week. 

Forever Preening 

They’re at it again. They never stop. They can’t be stopped. 

Those relentless self-promoters that call themselves Back to the Landers are now taking stage, and probably liberties, telling and re-telling fabulous lies about the 1970s. At the Ukiah Playhouse, where else? 

If you get a chance to miss it, do so. You’ll always be able to marvel at their stories and triumphs and courage when they get a grant and turn it into a movie. 

Like the man said, “Ukiah. What a place.” 

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO HISTORY…

October 15, 2003 - A dying Monterey Cypress tree on the Kelley House lawn was cut down. "We are very sad about it coming down, but we can't afford to endanger anyone,” local historian and long time resident Dee Lemos said.

Rich and Jack Lemos estimated the tree to be 100 to 125 feet tall, making it the third-largest cypress on the Mendocino Coast. Although there’s no record of when the tree was planted, it was known as “Daisy’s Tree” because it’s believed Daisy Kelley MacCallum helped her father William Kelley plant it when she was a child.

The issue of removing the tree first came before the Mendocino Historical Review Board in early summer. Mendocino County Planning Department staff explained that the cypress tree was diseased and had become a terrible liability for Kelley House.

Bill Jacobson, the project chair and a resident of Mendocino, recounted the discussions, saying, "When we initially went to the historical review board, some people were opposed to it. They talked about trying to nourish the tree or some sort of enhancement in order to save it." An arborist was consulted, who pointed out the dead limbs at the top and scarred marks halfway around the base, indicating underlying issues with the roots. Due to the extent of disease in the old tree, the Mendocino Historical Review Board approved its removal in the interest of public safety.

Mendocino High School teacher Bill Brazill took the accompanying photo as part of a school project with a 35mm film camera on a tripod. Bill’s students did a survey and determined that Daisy’s Tree was the largest tree in town at the time.

The tree felling crew was led by Tatanka Russell of Tonk's Tree Service in Fort Bragg assisted by David Lindstrom and Shane Welter of Big River Tree Service.

A big “Thank you!” to Bill Brazill for the story idea and photo!

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, October 15, 2023

CHAMISE CUBBISON, Ukiah. Felony misappropriation of public funds.

JAMES EADS, Willits. DUI, child endangerment.

MANDY FRASER, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

AARON GRIFFIN, Willits. Cultivation of more than six pot plants, pot possession for sale, felon-addict with firearm.

JUSTINE HUNTER, Redwood Valley. DUI.

PAULA KENNEDY, Ukiah. Felony misappropriation of public funds. 

CODY LADD, Ukiah. Criminal threats, paraphernalia.

MARCOS LOVO-MONTOYA, Gualala. DUI.

BILL KIMBERLIN: This play will also be performed at the Berkeley Rep this month. A Bullrusher Is a foundling or illegitimate child in Boontling.

A co-production with McCarter Theatre Center, Bulrusher follows a multiracial girl found as an infant floating in a basket on the Navarro River in Mendocino County. It’s 1955, and Bulrusher is 18 and restless, with a gift for clairvoyance that makes her feel like a stranger even amongst the eccentric, dialect speaking folks of her predominantly white enclave of Boonville. When a mysterious young Black woman from Birmingham comes to town, Bulrusher discovers new facets of her identity — and uncovers her place in the world. A Pulitzer Prize finalist called “captivating and lushly poetic” by the LA Times, Bulrusher is infused with rhythmic language, passion, and down-home humor.

49ERS GOT A HUMBLING REMINDER FROM THE BROWNS THAT THE NFL IS HARD

by Ann Killion

The NFL is not easy, the Chronicle has learned.

Until Sunday morning, the San Francisco 49ers had made it look super easy. They were turning the brutal league into a cakewalk. A laugher. A fun and carefree endeavor.

No more. The NFL is tough. The 49ers were reminded of that in a very hard way in Cleveland. And maybe that’s a good thing. A little humbling never hurts.

The 49ers lost their first game of the season, falling 19-17 to the Browns. They lost it when their rookie kicker missed what would have been the game-winning field goal, the first high-pressure kick he has faced.

But, as Kyle Shanahan pointed out, even if Jake Moody had made the kick and they had stayed undefeated, there would have been plenty to feel lousy about.

Now, that big “1” in the loss column has everyone’s attention.

“It’s the first time we’ve come into the locker room after a loss in a long time,” Shanahan said.

The first time since the Kansas City Chiefs game almost a year ago, because the loss in Philadelphia in the NFC Championship game was a foregone conclusion by the end of the first half and wasn’t so much a football loss as a weird game of attrition.

Sunday’s mistake(s) by the lake in Cleveland was a humbling, soul-searching, football loss dealt out by a superior defense and an efficient offense. And that kind of loss in midseason is not necessarily a bad thing.

“It’s definitely a big-time learning experience,” Nick Bosa said. “I don’t think we deserved to win today.”

The 49ers lost the game because Brock Purdy had the worst game of his young career, by far, looking every bit the below-average player his critics insist that he is. For the first time, Purdy couldn’t prove those critics wrong.

“We’ve got to look ourselves in the mirror and see the flaws; that starts with me,” Purdy said.

They lost it because they lost two of their key weapons to injury during the game. Deebo Samuel went out early with a shoulder injury. Christian McCaffrey went out with an oblique injury. The 49ers never recovered and they never seemed to figure out that George Kittle, who scored three touchdowns last week, was one guy who did not leave the game with an injury.

The 49ers lost, in part, because of some bad calls from a woefully inept officiating crew. The crew called a combined 25 penalties for 224 yards. That doesn’t happen by mistake. And the worst call, from the 49ers’ perspective, was a personal foul on Tashaun Gipson that kept alive a Browns drive that led to what was ultimately the winning field goal.

But don’t blame this on the officials.

The 49ers lost because they played the NFL’s No. 1 defense, one that looked every bit like the No. 1 defense. Unlike the Cowboys — who had come into Levi’s a week ago as the league’s top-ranked defense at the time — the Browns were ferocious and unrelenting. They left Purdy discombobulated and tentative. Aside from the opening drive, the Browns shut down McCaffrey.

“Talent, scheme, they’re really good,” said Shanahan, whose personal record against Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz fell to 1-8.

“An unbelievable defense,” Bosa said.

“They earned it and we didn’t,” Fred Warner said.

Aside from their opening drive, which ended with a McCaffrey touchdown, the 49ers could never get the offense going against the dominant Browns. They were completely swamped in the second half, with the Browns outgaining the 49ers 146 to 21 yards until the 49ers’ final drive to get into field goal range.

At halftime, Cleveland coach Kevin Stefanski gleefully told the Fox broadcast crew that his team was “dragging (the 49ers) down in the mud with us.” And that’s exactly what continued to happen.

Purdy was out of rhythm and off target, missing Brandon Aiyuk several times, overthrowing all his receivers, making questionable decisions. When he threw his first interception of the season, on the 49ers’ first drive of the second half, you could see it coming. The 49ers’ offense went three-and-out four times in the second half and was generally lifeless.

For the past week, the 49ers have heard their praises sung across the nation. They became the Vegas favorite to win the Super Bowl. Their players were becoming favorites for the MVP. They were prematurely being compared to the greatest, most complete teams in 49ers history. There was no way all that love and adulation didn’t seep into the locker room.

That’s not to presume they had a letdown in this game. The 49ers have been excellent at staying focused. At keeping their eyes on the January goal of having home-field advantage. But they were never going to go undefeated. A loss was going to come at some point.

This wasn’t a brutal, unfocused loss, a one-sided butt-kicking due to being too cocky or not being good enough. It was a 10 a.m. loss in wet and windy weather in a notoriously tough place to play against a dominating defense. And the 49ers lost because they missed a field goal.

Afterwards, the 49ers players actually sounded like they knew the loss might be a good thing for them in the long run.

“We needed to be battle tested,” Warner said.

“It’s a good learning experience,” Trent Williams said. “It was a dogfight.

“This team can draw a lot from this game today.”

And the first lesson is obvious: the NFL is hard.

* * *

49ers game grades: Offense goes missing in an ugly first loss of the season

by Michael Lerseth

You can dispense with any notion that the San Francisco 49ers were going to go 17-0 this season, and that Brock Purdy would never lose a regular-season game. Now that the 5-1 49ers have suffered their first defeat of the 2023 season, falling 19-17 to the Browns in Cleveland. How did the Niners’ individual units do?

Offense: F

Brock Purdy is human. And a healthy Christian McCaffrey is critically important to the 49ers’ success. Purdy had a miserable outing — 12-for-27, 125 yards with his first interception of the season. The offensive line didn’t do him many favors as he was often left to run to avoid the rush, but he had more than his share of misfires and missed opportunities. McCaffrey scored his weekly TD, but left the game having accounted for only 52 total yards. Deebo Samuel had two runs for 11 yards before he, too, was forced out of the game. After an 84-yard scoring drive to open the game, S.F. gained 131 in its next 12 possessions — eight of which gained zero or fewer yards.

Defense: D

Yell if you want about the debatable personal foul call on Tashaun Gipson that gave life to what would be the Browns’ game-winning field-goal drive, but the proper response would have been to stop Cleveland after that and the 49ers couldn’t. Deploying their third starting QB in three games, the Browns rolled up 334 yards of offense against the heretofore stout 49ers’ defense. P.J. Walker threw for 192 yards (67 more than Purdy) with two interceptions (by Fred Warner and Deommodore Lenoir), but the 49ers’ vaunted pass rush managed just two sacks. 

Special Teams: D

This unit was the strongest of the day until Jake Moody’s would-be game-winning 41-yard field goal went wide right in the final seconds. It was Moody’s second miss of the day; the other was from 54 yards. Mitch Wishnowsky was his now-typical borderline great, punting a season-high six times, averaging 52.3 yards (including a 60-yarder) and had two downed inside the 20. 

Coaching: D

Perhaps the absence of McCaffrey influenced his thinking, but it’s hard to fathom why — with the 49ers having the ball and the lead with just 3:21 to play — Kyle Shanahan eschewed the run and called three consecutive pass plays. All were incomplete, the first resulted in an intentional grounding and the Browns got the ball back after the 49ers ran only 25 seconds off the clock. He also failed on a first-quarter challenge. 

Overall: D

Humbling. Frustrating. Disappointing. Revealing? Feel free to add the adjective of your choice. The 49ers went into the game flying high after their smackdown of the Cowboys a week earlier and now have been knocked off their lofty perch as an NFL unbeaten. There are plenty of questions, beginning with the health of McCaffrey and Samuel, followed closely by whether Purdy’s effectiveness is diminished in less-than-perfect weather.

(SF Chronicle)

GRANDDAUGHTER FISHING THE SACRAMENTO SUNDAY

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Watching video of the pro Palestinian rallies across the country. In big cities but on college campuses too. I notice Trannies & Hipster types are getting in on the aktion. But its Arabs with head wraps who have control of the bullhorns and are leading the chants.

“No peace on stolen land!”

“There is only one solution

Violent Intifada revolution!”

Stuff like that. Over & over.

Strange thing, at the Universities anyway, participants in the crowd appear to be mostly young, white overweight coeds, with purple or green hair, nose rings, weird eyeglasses, & dressed in black. At Clemson a few days ago there was a rather large rally because the Administration removed tampon dispensing machines from men’s restrooms and men’s locker rooms. The women (mostly) rallying for Palestine seem almost identical to the women pissed about the tampon machine removal policy. Indeed it may be the same group moving around to different events. This is where the LBGQT crowd intersects with violent Jihad lol.

THE BRIT GUARDIAN HAS SACKED ITS CARTOONIST OF FORTY YEARS FOR THIS CARTOON, CLAIMING IT'S ANTI-SEMITIC:

ISRAELI-HAMAS WAR UPDATE

Diplomats struggled to ease an escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza and get foreigners out of the blockaded enclave as intensifying clashes along Israel’s border with Lebanon and Israeli airstrikes inside Syria stoked fears of a wider conflict in the region.

With senior Israeli military officers signaling their intent to invade Gaza, Israel’s new emergency wartime government held its first formal meeting on Sunday, and appeared to be preparing for the invasion. “We will take Hamas apart,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the government ministers, according to a statement from his office.

The United States sent a second aircraft carrier strike group, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, joining the Gerald R. Ford and its escorts, to help “to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement.

Israel is days into a campaign of punishing retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza that began after Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,300 Israelis in a brutal incursion last weekend.

On Sunday, Israel’s military again warned residents of the enclave to move south and offered a three-hour midday window to leave via Salahuddin Road, a main highway. But Gaza’s Health Ministry said it would not evacuate hospitals. “Our moral position obliges us to continue working,” the ministry’s spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement.

At least 2,670 people in Gaza have been killed over the past week, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Palestinian news media reported on Sunday that an Israeli strike on a home in Rafah, near the closed Egypt border crossing, had killed at least 17 members of a family.

Nearly half of Gaza’s population of more than two million people has already been displaced and is facing dwindling supplies of food and water after Israel declared a “complete siege” to cut off basics from the enclave. Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday that Israel had restored the water supply to part of Gaza, though there was no immediate confirmation from officials there or in Israel.

The United States has been trying to persuade Israel to open a corridor that would let aid in and foreigners out while simultaneously trying to broker a deal for the same through Egypt’s Rafah crossing. Yet even as foreigners gather near the Egyptian border in anticipation, the diplomatic efforts are hitting hurdles.

Fighting along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has escalated in recent days. On Sunday, at least one Israeli was killed and three others were wounded after fire from Lebanon hit the border community of Shtula in northern Israel. The Israeli military said it was returning fire.

The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, who has been in the region since Thursday meeting with Israeli and Arab leaders, and said he had a “very good conversation” in Cairo with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Mr. Blinken said that David Satterfield, a veteran diplomat, will arrive in the region on Monday to start trying to coordinate shipments of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israeli airstrikes overnight at the international airport in Aleppo, Syria, materially damaged the site, disrupting service there, according to Syrian state media. Earlier in the week, Israel said it attacked airports in Aleppo and Damascus.

In one example of the conflict upending global politics, the relationship between Colombia and Israel, friendly for years, has been frayed in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks. President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist leader, has been starkly critical of the Israeli government, comparing comments made by Israel’s defense minister to comments made by Nazis about Jews. Israel, in turn, has just announced it is cutting “security” exports to Colombia. Petro has shot back on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying he’s open to cutting off the relationship.

In response to a call for Gazans to evacuate the north before an expected ground invasion by Israeli forces, doctors at the Kamal Adwan Hospital refused to leave while caring for infants unable to survive without the help of medical equipment. “If you want to kill us, kill us while we continue working here,” Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya said on Sunday. “Transferring these children from this place means handing them a death sentence,” he said.

(NY Times)

THIS WAY FOR THE GENOCIDE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

Washington and European governments are cheerleading Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The failure to intervene to halt the carnage threatens to ignite violence throughout the region.

by Chris Hedges

I have been in urban warfare in El Salvador, Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia and Kosovo. Once you fight street by street, apartment block by apartment block, there is only one rule — kill anything that moves. The talk of safe zones, the reassurances of protecting civilians, the promises of “surgical” and “targeted” air strikes, the establishment of “safe” evacuation routes, the fatuous explanation that civilian dead were “caught in the crossfire,” the claim that the homes and apartment buildings bombed into rubble were the abode of terrorists or that errant Hamas rockets were responsible for the destruction of schools and medical clinics, is part of the rhetorical cover to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.

Gaza is such a small area — 25 miles in length and about 5 miles wide — and so densely populated that the only outcome of an Israeli ground and air assault is the mass death of those Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calls “human animals” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “human beasts.” Israeli Knesset member Tally Gotliv suggested dropping “doomsday weapons” on Gaza, widely seen as a call for a nuclear strike. Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Friday dismissed calls to protect Palestinian civilians. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible … this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true,” Herzog said. “They could’ve risen up, they could’ve fought against that evil regime that took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” He added, “We will break their backbone.”

The demand by Israel that 1.1 million Palestinians — nearly half of Gaza’s population — evacuate northern Gaza, which will become a free fire zone, within 24 hours, ignores the fact that given the overcrowding and sealed borders there is no place for the displaced to go. The north includes Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the strip, with 750,000 residents. It also includes Gaza’s main hospital and the Jabalia and al-Shati refugee camps. 

Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion military aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to close 14 food distribution centers leaving half a million people without food relief. Gaza’s only power plant has run out of fuel. The United Nations says 12 of its staff have been killed by Israeli air strikes, 21 out of 22 UNRWA health facilities in Gaza have been damaged and hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies.

Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas. 

The West refuses to intervene, as 2.3 million people, including 1 million children, are deprived of food, fuel, electricity and water, see their schools and hospitals bombed and are butchered and rendered homeless by one of the most advanced military machines on the planet.

The gruesome images of Israelis gunned down by Hamas is the currency of death. It trades carnage for carnage, a macabre dance that Israel initiated with the massacres and ethnic cleansing that allowed for the creation of the Jewish state, followed by decades of dispossession and violence meted out to the Palestinians. The Israeli army, before the current assault, had killed 7,779 Palestinians in Gaza since 2000 including 1,741 children and 572 women, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. This figure does not include Gazans who died due to drinking contaminated water or being denied access to medical treatment. Nor does it include the rising number of Gazan youth who, having lost all hope and struggling with deep depression, have committed suicide.

I spent seven years reporting on the conflict, four of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I stood over the bodies of Israeli victims of bus bombings in Jerusalem by Palestinian suicide-bombers. I saw rows of corpses, including children, in the corridors in Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I watched Israeli soldiers taunt small boys who in response threw rocks and were then callously shot in the Khan Younis refugee camp. I sheltered from bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes. I climbed over the rubble of demolished Palestinian homes and apartment blocks along the border with Egypt. I interviewed the bloodied and dazed survivors. I heard the soul crushing wails of mothers keening over the corpses of their children.

I arrived in Jerusalem in 1988. Israel was busy discrediting and marginalizing the secular, aristocratic Palestinian leadership of Faisel al-Husseini and driving Jordanian administrators from the occupied West Bank. This secular and moderate leadership was replaced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat. But Arafat, very likely poisoned by Israel, and the PLO were also ruthlessly pushed aside by Israel. The PLO was replaced by Hamas, which Israel openly fostered as a counterweight to the PLO. 

The escalating savagery of Israel against the Palestinians is reflected in the escalating savagery of the Palestinians. The resistance groups are Israel’s doppelgängers. Israel believes that with the eradication of Hamas the Palestinians will become docile.  But history has shown that once one Palestinian resistance movement is destroyed, a more virulent and radical one takes its place.

The killers feed off each other. I saw this in the ethnic wars in Bosnia. When religion and nationalism are used to sanctify murder there are no rules. It is a battle between light and dark, good and evil, God and Satan. Rational discourse is banished. 

“The sleep of reason,” as Francisco Goya said, “brings forth monsters.” 

The Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots in the current Israeli government need Hamas. Revenge is the psychological engine of war. Those targeted for slaughter are rendered inhuman. They are not worthy of empathy or justice. Pity and grief are felt exclusively for one’s own. Israel vows to eradicate a dehumanized mass that embodies absolute evil. The maimed and dead in Gaza, and the maimed and dead in Israeli towns and kibbutzim, are victims of the same dark lusts.  

“From violence only violence is born,” Primo Levi writes, “following a pendular action that, as time goes by, rather than dying down, becomes more frenzied.”

The Biden administration has promised unconditional Israeli support and weapons shipments. The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to “deter any actor” who might widen the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The carrier group includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford; its eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft; the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy; and the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt, according to a Pentagon statement.

The U.S., as in the past, ignores the far greater death and destruction, as well as the illegal occupation, meted out by Israel to the Palestinians or the periodic military campaigns — this is the fifth major military assault by Israel on Gaza in 15 years — against civilians. 

Israel says it recovered 1,500 bodies of Hamas fighters after the incursion. This is a number greater than the 1,300 Israeli victims. Nearly all the dead Hamas fighters, I suspect, were young men born inside the Gaza concentration camp who had never seen the outside of the open-air prison until they burst through the security barriers erected by Israel. If Hamas fighters possessed Israel’s technological arsenal of death, they would be able to do their killing more efficiently. But they do not. Their tactics are cruder versions of those Israel has used against them for decades. 

I know this disease, the exaltation of race, religion and nation, the deification of the warrior, the martyr and violence, the celebration of victimhood. Holy warriors believe they alone possess virtue and courage, while their enemy is perfidious, cowardly and evil. They believe they alone have the right to revenge. Pain for pain. Blood for blood. Horror for horror. There is a fearsome symmetry to the madness, the abandonment of what it means to be humane and just. 

T.E. Lawrence calls this cycle of violence “the rings of sorrow.”

Once these fires are lit they can easily become a conflagration.

Israeli tanks and soldiers, to thwart an attack by Hezbollah in support of the Palestinians, have been deployed to the border with Lebanon. The Israeli forces killed fighters from Hezbollah, as well as a Reuters journalist, which saw Hezbollah fire a salvo of rockets in retaliation. Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir announced he would distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli settlers, who have carried out murderous rampages in Palestinian villages in the West Bank. Israel has killed at least 51 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since Hamas launched its attack on October 7.

Psychologist Rollo May writes:

At the outset of every war…we hastily transform our enemy into the image of the daimonic; and then, since it is the devil we are fighting, we can shift onto a war footing without asking ourselves all the troublesome and spiritual questions that the war arouses. We no longer have to face the realization that those we are killing are persons like ourselves.

The killing and torture, the more they endure, contaminate the perpetrators and the society that condones their actions. They sever the professional inquisitors and killers from the capacity to feel. They feed the death instinct. They expand the moral injury of war. 

Israel taught the Palestinians to communicate in the primitive howl of hatred, war, death and annihilation. But it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the complicity of an international community that licenses Israel’s genocidal slaughter and accelerates a cycle of violence it may not be able to control.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

— Henry Miller 

UKRAINE, SUNDAY, 15TH OCTOBER

(Al Jazeera Reporting)

The situation on Sunday, October 15, 2023.

Fighting

Two people were killed in Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, officials said, and two others were killed in shelling of Beryslav city in Ukraine’s Kherson region.

Russian forces continued their assault on Avdiivka, repeatedly shelling the town and launching ground operations in one of the few offensives by Russian forces in months.

Dozens killed including boy as Russia targets Kharkiv

Ukraine’s military said it had withstood 15 Russian ground attacks mounted in the vicinity of Avdiivka, Tonenke and Pervomaiske in the Donetsk region. The fierce Russian onslaught around Avdiivka has been described as a new offensive by Moscow.

Ukraine military spokesperson Oleksandr Stupun said Avdiivka was now a key objective for Russian forces to take “because it is the only chance to show some kind of victory. They have no other options.”

Almost 30 Ukrainian combat drones were shot down by Russian air defences over Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions. Two additional drones were shot down over the Black Sea near the southern Russian resort city of Sochi. There were no reports of casualties immediately.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet conducted drills using rocket launchers off the port city of Sevastopol in the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Regional security

The White House accused North Korea of delivering more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for its ongoing war in Ukraine. Washington released images that it said showed the containers being loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship before being moved by train to southwestern Russia. North Korea has previously denied providing weaponry to Moscow.