Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023

Sun/Rain | Lost Pug | Cubbison Court | Ag Department | Hellish Muzak | Librarian Nik | MacKerricher Fog | Clunky AF | Food Drive | Fundraiser Date | Jughandle Rock | Ed Notes | Boonville Claus | Frida Fest | Holiday Events | Name Changers | Big Surf | Blacksmith Shop | Ukiah Contrasts | Willits Moonrise | Fishy Trial | Yesterday's Catch | Strange Situation | Year End | Backing Biden | Sideline Fire | Genocide Joe | Maginot Line | Truce Extension | Onions | Nabka Two | Jimi 67 | Alt Christmas | Mindfulness Now | Bipartisan Deception | American Treasure | Dmitri Ermakov | Suppressed Anxieties | Machine Living | Bots

DRY CONDITIONS TODAY will be followed by light to moderate rain tonight into Wednesday, mostly south of Cape Mendocino. An active period in the latter half of the week will bring more chances for precipitation in northern zones with some interior mountain snow. Potential for more impactful rainfall is possible next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Tuesday morning it is a bit warmer with 42F under partly cloudy skies. We will have increasing clouds today leading to a chance of rain tonight. You can [see] our weather maker sitting to the west of us on the satellite shot. Off & on showers are forecast everyday well into next week. We'll have to take this 1 day at a time for a while.

MAN DIES AFTER BOAT CAPSIZES NEAR FORT BRAGG; search continues for his lost pug

The man was identified Monday by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.

by Madison Smalstig

A man died and his dog went missing after a boat they were on capsized last week near Fort Bragg.

The man, identified as Lloyd Dorris, 61, of Lakeport, was pulled from Pudding Creek by first responders Friday afternoon. Medical officials performed CPR on him before he was airlifted to Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, according to a news release from the Humane Society for Inland Mendocino County.

Dorris was pronounced dead in Sonoma County, according to the county’s Coroner Unit, though Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Misti Wood said a time and death were not immediately available Monday.

Mendocino County residents are still searching for Dorris’s pug, Priya, who had an orange life jacket on, the release said.

No one had spotted the dog as of Monday, but an orange life jacket sized for a canine was located in the coves near Pudding Beach, a spokesperson with the Humane Society for Inland Mendocino County said.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond when asked for information on the boat capsizing last week.

Anyone with information on the Priya’s whereabouts is encouraged to contact the humane society at 707-485-0123 and dogteam@hsimc.org.

(pressdemocrat.com)

MENDOCINO COUNTY AUDITOR BACK IN COURT FOR CASE OF ALLEGED MISAPPROPRIATED FUNDS

Chamise Cameron Cubbison was suspended from her position about 90 minutes after her first court appearance in October. She’s returning to court Nov. 29

by Colin Atagi

Mendocino County’s suspended auditor-controller and treasurer is expected to return to court Nov. 29 to enter a plea in a case where prosecutors have accused her of misappropriating $68,100 in public funds over a period of nearly three years.

Chamise Cameron Cubbison is scheduled to appear before Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder about 9 a.m., according to court records.

Also expected to appear is Paula June Kennedy, a former payroll manager and co-defendant in the case.

Both have been out of custody since mid-October, when the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office charged each of them with one count of felony misappropriation of public funds.

If convicted as charged, they could be sentenced to as much as four years in prison.

Neither could be reached for comment over the weekend.

According to a criminal complaint filed in court, money was taken between Oct. 1, 2019, and Aug. 31, 2022. It stated that Cubbison, an elected official, was Kennedy’s supervisor.

The complaint alleges funds were paid out to Kennedy without authorization of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, which oversees the county budget and approves most big-ticket expenditures.

Cubbison’s attorney, Chris Andrian of Santa Rosa, told The Press Democrat in October that Kennedy was owed money by the county and his client, as the county’s elected accounting chief, had approval to disperse funds.

Cubbison was elected to her position in June 2022 after running unopposed. She had been filling the position on an interim basis following the September 2021 retirement of her predecessor, Lloyd Weer.

Kennedy is represented by the Mendocino County Pubic Defender’s Office and her attorney could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Cubbison and Kennedy both made their first court appearances on Oct. 17 and were released on their own recognizance.

Their arraignment took place at the same time as the Board of Supervisors’ regular meeting that week.

About 90 minutes after Cubbison appeared in court, the supervisors voted 5-0 to suspend her without pay and bring in an acting auditor-controller, Sara Pierce.

Though Cubbison’s position is an elected one — after a merger that preceded her election, she is also the county’s treasurer-tax collector — California law allows for suspension of county treasurers in matters involving alleged official misconduct.

Andrian has noted that Cubbison is not alleged to have benefited personally from the county’s $68,000 payment to Kennedy as the former payroll manager. He’s painted the case brought by District Attorney David Eyster as politically motivated.

Kennedy has been unemployed since January for reasons unknown.

According to Transparent California, Kennedy was last paid $96,928 annually as of 2022. Cubbison was paid about $73,000 annually.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

ANDREW SMITH, the Sonoma County Ag Commissioner who has been filling in as Mendocino County Ag Commissioner part-time (two days a week) for more than a year now, is ending his interim appointment at the end of the year and returning to Sonoma County full-time. Mr. Smith’s fill-in role was supposed to give Mendo time to find a permanent full-time Ag Commissioner. But the two candidates they offered the job to in recent months both turned it down. According to our source, Mr. Smith got nothing for this fill-in assignment although Mendo was paying Sonoma County a fully loaded part-time salary; apparently Sonoma County was keeping the money on some shaky grounds that Smith was not working overtime, but just splitting his regular time. Mendo has turned to the State Department of Agriculture for help, but the state will only provide the minimum of Ag Department functions, mainly those that absolutely require some kind of professional certification. All other daily tasks will be taken over by the CEO’s office. The Ag Department will thus become yet another major department being run by unqualified staff assistants. The CEO’s office is already running the Human Resources Department, the Auditor-Treasurer’s office (including payroll), General Services, Cultural Affairs (including local parks), Emergency Services, Cannabis, budgeting, cost efficiency ideas, and more. 

(Mark Scaramella)

GIMME SHELTER 

Hello Fort Bragg, 

My name is Nik and I am in search of a new housing arrangement in town. I am currently employed at the local public library and am looking for something within safe biking distance of work (No further south than Hare Creek bridge and no further north than Airport Road, unless accessible from the Mackerricher State Park Trail). I look forward to staying in the area so that I may continue to experiment with growing vegetables in this coastal climate and, additionally, I look forward to attending the Krenov School of Woodworking's summer course pending a successful application in 2024. 

It is a medium-term goal of mine to live simply over the next few months and save money and materials so that I may build myself a tiny home using locally milled timber frames, additional reclaimed lumber, and intigrate a passive solar design using as little to no synthetic materials as possible. With this in mind, I am looking forward to finding someone who may have need for a partial work/trade agreement, especially if you are fortunate enough to possess any wooded acreage that needs help with upkeep. It is my hope to learn careful, intentional forest management, through the practice of actual field work while providing opportunities for mitigated fire risk and improved biodiverse ecosystem health. Plus, I am eager to practice my green woodworking skills with any downed trees. Lastly, my needs around housing are such that I may keep my book collection (~600 items on homesteading, cooking, natural building, gardening...etc) in a dry, cool space as well as have access to high-speed internet so that I may do research on my tiny house project. 

Lastly, I practice a vegan, whole foods, plant-based, organic and as local as possible diet. Having a kitchen to myself is ideal but willing to share as long as I can use my own appliances and cookware. 

I recognize this is a particularly specific request so any leads or suggestions are welcome. I am willing and able to move at any time. Preferably before the new year if possible. Thank you all for reading and Happy Holidays! 

Best,

Nik Robalino

Fort Bragg

BOB ABELES, local computer hotshot, comments on the Superior Court’s on-line access system: “The on-line court calendar is clunky AF, but as of right now it shows a schedule for today (Monday). That said, it looks like someone hastily stuffed a link to a PDF in last night to make it look like it’s working. As a bonus, it tried to sign me into a Microsoft account when I accessed it. Pure amateur hour, IMHO.”

AV UNIFIED GRADE LEVEL COMPETITION FOOD DRIVE BEGINS MONDAY!

If you can, please take a moment to bring a can of food for the community. The grade level baskets will be up in the breezeway. All donations go to the food bank. I thank the Leadership class for their coordination of this important community event.

Also, last chance to make your reservation for free pozole dinner in the cafeteria and student artwork exhibition on tuesday at 5:00! We also have the ELAC dinner on Thursday at 5:00 at the high school library. PLEASE call the school office at 707-895-3496 to sign up for these free events!

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

CORRECTION ON THE AV VILLAGE EVENTS CALENDAR

The Anderson Valley Housing Association Winter Fundraiser has been postponed to Saturday February 24th and is NOT Sunday, December 3, 2023.

See the Housing Association website for more information to come: andersonvalleyhousing.org/events/winter-fundraiser

ED NOTE: First I've heard of it. How many of them? Where will they go? I have a nice spot for one. The Housing Association might consider lobbying the 5th District supervisor to limit transient rentals in The Valley. 

ED NOTES

FETCHING personals ad from the London Review of Books: “It was a dark and stormy night...Writer of utter pap, and proud of it, (male early fifties), seeks woman unable to take Gerald Kaufman seriously.”

AND “Astonishing man. Quite unique and somewhat entertaining. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll probably wonder why.”

IF THE LIKUD FASCISTS resume their carpet bombing of the Gazan people, already having killed at least 15,000 of them, almost a third of the fatalities being children, with an unknown number of Gazans still buried in the rubble, count me in for the next big Frisco demo. Haven't swelled a mob since the big lie attack on Iraq, but this all-out blitz on Gaza is in a class of atrocity all by itself, and all of us Yanks are complicit, thanks to the Democratic Party. 

CHECK THAT: Got arrested a few times in the showbiz demos during the Redwood Summer period, which I attended in my, ahem, professional capacity as journalist but managed nonetheless to be in custody for a few hours each time. The funnest one of all occurred at Stafford in HumCo where, in a ritualistic crossing of a line visible only to law enforcement, I found myself on the bust bus with Bonnie Raitt, a very pleasant person who told me she read the AVA. True or untrue, she won me over, which is all it takes, a verbal pat on the head, a jolly chuck under my chinny chin-chin. Incidentally, the HumCo cops played it just right. They herded all us recreational bustees onto buses and drove us up 101 and dumped us off under an isolated overpass. “But officer, I have no way of finding my ride.” Officer to the kid who complained, “Hah-hah. Bye.”

LYNDA MCLURE offered a workable strategy that might help you to avoid arrest in demos to come. Writing about an interesting explanation for why she and her fellow activists were thumped, bumped, flashed, banged and sprayed instead of being arrested during the WTO riots in Seattle. Protesters wore stickers on their outfits stating that they wanted to see a lawyer, that they pled not guilty, that they did not waive time, that they planned to exercise all their civil rights, and exercise them hard. According to McClure, these pre-emptive civil rights notices caused the cops to trade McClure and Company a squirt of mace or a welcome-to-Seattle thump with their fungo bats instead of jail time. Depending of course on one’s capacity to absorb a tax-funded punch in lieu of lock-up, I’d say McClure’s tactical option is at least worth considering the next time you exercise your rights of citizenship in hostile venues. 

ON-LINE COMMENT: “This rapidly approaching county budget train wreck has been a long time coming, and only the willfully ignorant can feign surprise when the offal hits the fan. The same can be said about the proposal to remove the two dams on the Eel River, all done with the consent of our Democratic Party elected leaders beginning with Jared Huffman and ending with our Board of Supervisors. Of course when the offal hits the fan on that one, and the rivers are worse for fish, and Lake Mendocino is dry, who will recall why?"

THE ASSUMPTION of the dam and lake dismantlers seems to be that the Eel will again be lush with fish, that their magic return will revive the entire Northcoast fishing industry, which once thrived in places like Fort Bragg. Sodden thought: What if all the related damage to the river, its feeder streams, the ocean, what if all that damage moots whatever eco-benefits may come with a restored Eel?

JEFF GOLL: Exploring the Chat Gpt DALL-E 3 image generator, I prompted it to: "Create an image of downtown Boonville, California during Christmas time with Santa Claus and people on Rt 128." In the full prompt that AI interpreted and created, it included the phrase:  "A heartwarming scene." It burped out the attached image; there must be some sort of ghost in the machine programming biases.  And Open AI seems in a fluster about rushing out Artificial General Intelligence.

GABRIELA LENA FRANK: Mexico’s most iconic artists (and infamously stormy lovers) leap off the canvas in this new musical portrait from Grammy Award-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank [makes her home in Boonville] and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. When a desperate wish on Day of the Dead reunites Diego Rivera with his wife Frida Kahlo, he jumps at the chance to seek forgiveness. But Frida refuses to return to the world that caused her so much pain, until another departed soul inspires her to look back at the art (and the man) she once loved.

Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados commands a cast packed with international talent, including Daniela Mack, Alfredo Daza and Ana María Martínez in this tribute to one of the most pivotal romances in history. The artists‘ own emblematic paintings merge with a folklore-inspired score to breathe new life into the love-hate saga of Frida and Diego. Don't miss your chance to experience what the LA Times calls one of the "must-see arts events" this Fall.

Enjoy Special Activations Before The Show

Ofrenda (All Performances)- Visit the Frida y Diego ofrenda, designed by Oaxacan-American artist Aldo Cruz (Xicaru). You're also welcome to contribute your own photographs before the performance or at intermission.

Folklorico Dancers - Evening Performances - Nov. 18, Nov. 30, Dec. 6 and Dec. 9

Enjoy a Folklorico performance by Ballet Folklorico Leyenda at 6:00pm on the 2nd floor.

Show your Artsy Side - Matinee Performances - Nov. 26 and Dec. 3

Wear Flowers Like Frida-Wear Flowers Like Frida! Frida Kahlo often wore fresh flowers in her hair, picked from her own garden. Join us in crafting a flower headband, so you can wear flowers in your hair too!

Draw a Self Portrait-Many artists, including Frida Kahlo, have drawn or painted their self-portraits over the years. These portraits tell stories about the artists themselves. Tell your story by making a self-portrait.

Join us on Newcomer Night, Thursday Nov 30. New subscribers attend an exclusive pre-show talk to introduce you to the story and music and an intermission reception with wine and desserts. Book this 3-Opera Newcomer Package starting at $54. Available for a limited time. SIGN-UP

Join us following the Sunday, Dec 3 performance, enjoy music, food and fun on the plaza at Celebración de las Artes hosted by Hispanics for LA Opera (HLAO).

Get More with a DYO Package. Design-Your-Own Package with 3 or more shows starting at $56. Customize which shows and dates you attend plus receive added benefits.

UPCOMING HOLIDAY EVENTS WITH SUPERVISOR MULHEREN

Mo Mulheren, Second District Supervisor for the County of Mendocino is happy to announce upcoming holiday events. Santa will be joining in the First Friday Art Walk, December 1, 2023 at 304 N State Street in Ukiah. The Art Walk is a recurring event that promotes local artists and musicians and celebrates community, the first friday of every month. This December she will be showcasing local artist Tim Poma who will have pieces for sale to give as gifts. The event will run from 5:00p-7:00p, Santa will be available for photo ops from 5:30-6:30p. The Santa Stomp is a community walk on the Great Redwood Trail, December 10th, 2023 at 11am. There is an ugly sweater contest and Santa will be taking part in the stroll. The walk begins at the Commerce Drive entrance to the Great Redwood Trail and lasts between 45 minutes and an hour. The Great Redwood Trail is a paved path that runs through Ukiah, the current length is 1.7 miles. This is a strolling event, pets and strollers are welcome. Santa hats are optional but encouraged. If you have questions about either of these events you can contact Mo at 707-391-3664 or email her at themoyouknow@gmail.com.

FORT BRAGG NAME CHANGE TEACH-IN on Monday, December 4, at 7:30 p.m. 

Change Our Name Fort Bragg Invites the public to a Teach-in on Monday, December 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church located at 367 S. Sanderson Way, Fort Bragg. 

A local grass roots non-profit, Change Our Name Fort Bragg is dedicated to an educational process that leads to changing the name of Fort Bragg so that it no longer honors a military Fort that dispossessed Indigenous people or Braxton Bragg, a Confederate General. who waged war against our country. 

Envisioned as a program to educate attendees about the issues involved in the name change and to hear neighbors’ ideas, the teach-in will last about one hour and will feature three speakers and a question and answer/discussion period. 

Speakers will be: 

Christie Olson Day arrived in Fort Bragg 25 years ago, and both her children were born and raised here. She owns and manages Gallery Bookshop, on Main Street in Mendocino, and in 2020 served on the Fort Bragg City Council Citizens’ Commission to consider changing the town’s name. 

David Martin, originally from Sacramento, moved to Noyo 35 years ago to fish commercially. He bought a house here, got married, raised a child, and had a kayak shop in the harbor for several years. 

Carol Furey has lived in the 95437 zip code for over half her life. She is a home health care assistant and family caregiver. 

Discussing a controversial topic requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is neither sponsored by nor affiliated with First Presbyterian Church. 

This program is free and open to all.

For further information: changeournamefortbragg@gmail.com

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO HISTORY…

November 27, 1964 - The old blacksmith shop on the northwest corner of Lansing and Little Lake streets (where Century 21 is located today) was demolished. According to the Beacon, the big building “went down with a crash when Clarence Ponts made his final attack on it with his big cat.”

The building had its beginnings in November 1882, when blacksmith and wheelwright George Hall built a 24x40 foot shop for his business at this location. In addition to blacksmithing, he also provided essential services to the community like carriage repair, made-to-order buggies, and horseshoeing.

By the end of the following year, Hall had converted the original space into a store selling groceries, boots and shoes, cigars and tobacco, and canned fruit, candy and apples. Hall proudly advertised his grocery store as “cheaper than the cheapest.”

Blacksmithing remained an essential service, and Hall expanded the building to accommodate his diverse offerings. A horse barn on the west end of the store and a new shop on the north side allowed him to continue his blacksmithing and wagon business while expanding into woodworking.

In 1888, the building was renovated and turned into a saloon under the management of H. B. Seavey, owner of the Alhambra Hotel on Main Street, and businessman Moses Greenwood. Over the years, the barroom changed hands multiple times, passing through the ownership of G. Goranson, Mike Sullivan, Jack O’Donnel, Jack Baskerville (with “Duke” Herzog tending bar), and finally William Grotz.

In January 1897, Grotz moved his saloon business to Main Street, and blacksmith Emil Seman began restoring the building to its original purpose. Emil was already well known in Mendocino as a first-class wagon builder. In 1891, he had partnered with Jacob Stauer in the blacksmith shop located on the east side of Lansing Street (where the Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department’s fire station is today). Following Stauer’s death in a tragic accident in Arizona, Emil purchased the other half of the business from Stauer’s widow.

By October 1897, the renovated building was ready, and Emil moved his blacksmith business into the shop at Little Lake and Lansing. When his son Emil, Jr. left school, he joined his father in the blacksmith business. Besides blacksmithing and horseshoeing, they manufactured and sold tools and galvanized tank hoops. By 1907, they had incorporated a machine shop into the building, powered by a gasoline engine.

When Emil, Sr. passed away in 1926, the Beacon wrote, “Mr. Seman was an accomplished mechanic and a hard worker, and built up a profitable business by his industry and craftsmanship. His was one of the few [blacksmith] shops that did not go out of business when the auto superseded horses. Deceased was upright and honest in all his dealings; a good citizen who took a keen interest in his community’s welfare and all its activities.” Emil, Jr. continued the blacksmith business in the same shop until his retirement in 1950.

After years of disuse, the dilapidated blacksmith shop was razed. In 1972, Village Music opened in this location in “the sparkling new building with the red door.”

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The new Ukiah downtown streetscape certainly is a stark contrast to and accentuates the vacant storefronts, the desperate advertising using sandwich signs to clutter the sidewalk, the unabated graffiti everywhere, the mentally ill and bums walking the streets intimidating women and kids, the dilapidated tottering Palace Hotel, the older hotels being used for prostitution and junkie gatherings, shootings on Observatory Street, and on and on. Why would anyone want to spend their tourist dollars in inland Mendocino County? This rapidly approaching county budget train wreck has been a long time coming, and only the wilfully ignorant can feign surprise when the offal hits the fan.

POTTER VALLEY TURNS OUT EN MASSE TO HEAR FISHY TRIAL

(Ukiah Daily Journal, Apr 16, 1909)

Potter Valley turned out en masse last Thursday to hear the trial of the famous fish case that had set the valley all agog. The day was a beautiful one and the men folks, the women folks, the boys and the girls, and the hired hands, all took a vacation and attended the trial. It had every appearance of a 4th of July celebration, people sat around on the village green and ate their lunches and chatted earnestly over the outcome of the case.

By and by the craning of necks and breathless whispers, “Here they come,” announced the approach of Assemblyman Preston, attorney for the defense, and Robert Duncan, representing the people. Judge George E. Shinn called court and “they were off.” According to the general understanding, Wm. Ray and B. H. Miller caught Clyde Brooks and young Gardy Gibson over on the Eel River with four fish in their possession which had been gigged. The game wardens showed the fish to A.V. LaMotte and he pronounced them steelheads. The fish were sent to the Fish and Game Commission in San Francisco and were pronounced steelheads. So the game wardens notified the District Attorney and arrested young Brooks to test the case, and then the fun commenced, and the Valley turned out en masse as indicated.

J.W. Preston, fresh from big laurels at Sacramento where he had increased his stock of wisdom as to fish lore, was secured to defend the young man. Experts were placed on the stand to prove that the fish were steelheads, but they could not distinguish between a dorsal fin, an anal fin or a Russian Finn, when Preston got through with them. The adroit attorney had introduced a disciple of Isaac Walton to go and catch a fish just like the ones caught and produced it in court and the experts declared it to be a salmon. Preston then proved by Dr. Jordan and others that there was no such a thing as a steelhead in these streams, that they were all white salmon. The crowd was with Preston and would cheer every time he made a monkey out of the experts, which he did at regular intervals. It was really better than a circus and will long be remembered as a red letter day in the history of Potter valley ichthyology.

Judge Shinn himself was formerly a Columbia river fisherman and was satisfied that the fish were not steelheads, so he discharged the boy. Then pandemonium broke loose, the kids and everybody else played “ring around the rosy” and gave the “right hand of fellowship” in their glee. They raised the sum necessary to pay Preston's fee, and the game wardens departed from out of the land and the lazy school boy continues to gig fish with impunity.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, November 27, 2023

RAYMOND BRITTON, Willits. DUI.

ALEJANDRO CRUZ-RUIZ, Covelo. DUI. 

DENA MORRIS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

GENEVIEVE NEARY, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

POLLY GIRVIN on Buffy St. Marie: I feel sad and sorry for her. Her song Now that the Buffalo are Gone was inspirational for me. I can also vividly remember her singing on the beach in front of Ghirardelli Square in support of the occupiers of Alcatraz. She has been a part of advocacy for tribal rights and culture all of my adult life. I worked with her Cree woman attorney years back when working with the Assembly of First Nations in Canada. She is standing by her.

It is a very strange situation.

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”

— Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing In America

BACKING BIDEN FOR 2024, Conformist Democrats Have Been in Denial. Now They’re in a Panic.

by Norman Solomon & Jeff Cohen

Over the weekend, Politico published the latest in a tidal wave of stories about President Biden’s dwindling prospects for re-election. Under the headline “The Polls Keep Getting Worse for Biden,” the article pointed out that Biden is trailing the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in a large majority of the latest polling.

The trend is dire, Politico reports. “The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them.” He continues to slip in key swing states.

The outlook is now grimmer than ever, but the big divide between Biden’s low popularity and public support for the Democratic Party overall was clear a year ago, despite the hype giving Biden credit for midterm election results in November 2022. Back then, the New York Times reported that one House Democrat offered a more candid assessment: “Biden’s numbers were ‘a huge drag’ on Democratic candidates, who won in spite of the president not thanks to him, the lawmaker said on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House.”

Our RootsAction.org team had no reason to avoid antagonizing the White House. Immediately after the 2022 election, we launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign. Last winter, it included TV ads in New Hampshire and other early primary states as well as in DC. We also placed full-page ads in print editions of The Hill newspaper, widely read on Capitol Hill; one depicted congressional Democrats as having their heads in the sand.

A steady flow of news releases went out, citing data on Biden’s electoral vulnerabilities. A mobile “Don’t Run Joe” billboard circled the Capitol and White House when Congress reconvened in January.

But elected Democrats, loyal boosters and allied organizations stuck with the party line. Apparently, they couldn’t imagine being independent enough to call for a candidate who could champion a progressive agenda and be a stronger contender than the anemic Biden in the 2024 race.

Ironically, we were often told that shining a critical spotlight on Biden’s re-election chances or his corporate militarism would help Donald Trump or another Republican to win in 2024. But the opposite has been the case. Biden’s amen-corner enablers -- going along to get along rather than risk disapproval from the White House -- have been unwitting helpers of the upcoming GOP ticket.

The bleak poll numbers might actually understate the problem, as they measure only voter discontent and not activist discontent. For months next summer and fall, Democratic activists will be needed to win over undecided voters and mobilize occasional voters. But many activists who worked hard to elect Biden over Trump in 2020 now have little enthusiasm for the president, due to his policies on climate justice Gaza and other vital concerns.

After Biden formally filed as a candidate seven months ago, Don’t Run Joe transitioned into Step Aside Joe <https://stepasidejoe.org/>. The campaign has continued to be adamant that Biden should voluntarily be a one-term president.

“The truth remains that a president is not his party’s king and has no automatic right to renomination,” a statement from Step Aside Joe said in April. “Simply crowning Joe Biden as the 2024 nominee is unhealthy for the Democratic Party and the country. In the face of clear polling that shows he is ill-positioned to defeat a Republican nominee, Biden is moving the Democratic Party toward a likely disaster in 2024. As the Democratic standard bearer, Biden would represent the status quo at a time when ‘wrong track’ polling numbers are at an unprecedented high.”

But Joe Biden and his coterie of backers continue to insist that he wear a crown. The fascistic forces behind Donald Trump are surely delighted.

(Norman Solomon is national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press. Jeff Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org, a retired journalism professor at Ithaca College, and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. In 1986, he founded the media watch group FAIR.)

GENOCIDE JOE

Editor,

Genocide Joe. How well those two words go together – the alliteration and the actuality.

A Commander-in-Chief must make difficult decisions to defend his country. He must be able to declare war when necessary and condemn thousands, even millions to injury and death. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the slaughter of the Palestinians does not make America safe. Actually, it is the reverse. Since 1948, Israel has adopted the behavior of its former persecutors by engaging in the systematic brutality, incarceration and genocide of the Palestinians, which we Americans see in our homes every day. The US Administration staunchly supports Israel’s behavior for its own hegemonic interests..

Gaza is destroyed, Israel is not necessary for America’s defense. We have a dozen bases in the area. Why not turn our aid and efforts to an effective two state solution. It just might end the conflict.

By the way, the Ukraine war is lost. It is Vietnam redux. Let’s cut their losses and ours.

Joan V.

San Francisco

ISRAEL AND HAMAS AGREED to extend their truce for two more days, according to officials in Qatar who helped negotiate the initial cease-fire, as Israeli officials signaled that a fourth exchange of hostages and prisoners would go forward Monday.

Majed Al-Ansari, a spokesman for the foreign ministry of Qatar, which has helped mediate the talks that led to the initial pause in fighting, said an “agreement has been reached to extend the humanitarian truce for an additional two days in the Gaza Strip.” He did not elaborate on the terms.

(nytimes.com)

NAKBA TWO

For more than six weeks now we’ve been witnessing terrified and defenseless children running once again from terror in the air; this time in a non-state called Gaza. As of this writing, the Israeli saturation bombing and cutoff of food, water, fuel, electricity and shelter for the Palestinians continues, the very definition of a crime against humanity. Joe Biden and his administration have embraced these atrocities in thought, word and deed, even to the extent of publicly disputing the independently verified ever-growing body count of the dead. With the exception of the “Courageous 18” in the House, both parties in Congress march in lockstep with the president’s policies.

As in Vietnam, the corporate media network has been the steamroller for the official Washington line and lays out or ignores anyone who dares to disagree. Embarrassingly, the New York Times and CNN have acted as bullhorns for both the Biden administration and the rightwing government of Israel. The Times desperately continues to search for nefarious tunnels, an endeavor reminiscent of its futile search for the imaginary “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Not to be outdone, the purportedly liberal MSNBC brazenly silenced its three Muslin commentators during the first weeks of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza—without a peep of protest from its other hosts who, as perpetual cheerleaders for the Democratic Party, sail smugly onward in their game show format with political retreads waiting eagerly in their onscreen boxes to drop their pearls of banality on the audience.

However, these barrages from mainstream media have not been successful in shoring up Joe Biden’s plummeting approval ratings among young voters, people of color and progressives—the very voters who carried him into the White House in 2020. As his numbers tank, potential opponents pop up in anticipation. Biden is being challenged on the Left by Cornel West and Jill Stein, on the Right by Joe “Oil Can” Manchin, and spookily, by Bobby Junior. His chances for re-election grow dimmer by the day as the atrocities in Gaza continue unabated.

— Don Santina

AN ALT CHRISTMAS CAROL

by James Kunstler

“You can start being normal and stop being unhinged anytime you want. Try it. I dare you.” — Aimee Terese on X

The White House, Christmas Eve, 2023. Imagine the painfully lugubrious scene….

“Joe Biden” rattles around in the upstairs “residence” like a BB in a packing crate. Nobody is around besides a few secret service agents, so still at their posts they might as well be statuary. The Big Guy is all alone. His spouse, Dr. Jill, had enough of pretend caretaking quite a while ago, and flew off to Oprah’s place in Santa Barbara for counseling and commiseration. Hunter is Gawd-knows-where doing Gawd-knows-what.

“JB” shuffles out of the residence kitchen, where he just demolished a half gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream® ice cream, against his doctor’s orders. His gall bladder writhes in revolt, sending a distress signal up the vagus nerve to the shriveled hypothalamus in his brain. A jumbled fugue of emotions — rage, fear, sexual arousal — quickens his step as he navigates by dead reckoning to the executive bedroom where he hurries to bed and falls into leaden slumber — only to be awakened by a cacophony of ringing bells. His eyelids roll open like shades in the windows of a skid row hotel room. Plangent moaning resounds as a mist emerges through the bedroom door and resolves into a mysterious figure garbed in the raiment of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Joe Biden” shrinks under the luxury Boll & Branch signature duvet— acquired when the agriculture minister of Ukraine slipped him an envelope stuffed with 100 hryvnia notes. The spirit wails something that resembles the old Confederate anthem Eatin’ Goober Peas.

“Who are you spirit?” the quaking president asks.

“Why, I am your old pard from the Senate,” the ghost of Robert Byrd declares, removing the pointed hood to reveal his leonine head of hair and scowling face. “Why have you thrown our sacred borders wide open, suh? I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels.”

“Y-y-you don’t uh-uh-understand,” “JB” says, his childhood stutter returning. “They are muh-muh-migrants from oppression and vuh-vuh-very fine people.”

“Fine people, my ass,” the former Senator from West Virginia cries and clears the dust of the sepulcher from his throat. “I will send three spirits to you this night as a review of what has been and what shall become, so beware….” And with that the spirit returns to mist and slips back out through the keyhole. . . .

“Joe Biden” is shocked from slumber again as an attractive blond female ghost floats through the bedroom window.

“Don’t I know you?” he asks.

“Cad! That is the very line you used to pick me up on spring break in Nassau, 1966,” says “JB’s” first wife, Neilia Hunter. “Shall I show you the meretricious spectacle you made of our family after that truck driver on Limestone Road ended my life and your little daughter’s too!”

“No-o-o-o-o,” the president moans, but is magically transported to the Wilmington Hospital room where his banged-up boys, Beau and Hunter, are recovering from their injuries. A TV crew is present as “JB” emotes for the camera, a cruel victim of fate, he blubbers, who will yet conquer his grief and go on to forty years of electoral victories and the sedulous gathering of tribute from “donors” far and wide to soften the blow of his loss. The room dims….

He wakes up startled to a thunderation of rap music. An African American giant sits on a gilded throne with a 40 oz bottle of Colt 45 in one huge hand and a little glass pipe smoldering at his lips. “JB” isn’t sure who this is.

“Is that you, Corn Pop?” he asks.

“Corn Pop, my ass. Don’t you remember me, George Floyd?”

“Oh, that boy who—”

“Boy…!” the ghost fumes. “Get yo’ cracker ass out da bed, right now, and put your limp little privileged paw in my hand!”

Suddenly they are transported on a cold wind to the concrete apron of the colossal obelisk behind the White House.

“Didn’t you tell congressman Clyburn you was gonna rename this thing the George Floyd monument?

“Wuh-whu-well it was a suh-suh-suggestion, not a promise—”

“Suggestion, my ass,” the ghost snorts and cuffs “JB” upside his head. “I’m the baby-daddy of this country now. You best see that it get done!”

“Joe Biden” awakens yet again as more cold wind bearing the fetid odor of swamp blows through the still-opened window. He is yet muttering “yu-yuh-yuh-yessir, yessir,” when a shrouded, hooded figure materializes in the gloom.

“You are… Cuh-Cuh-Christmas Future,” “Joe Biden” says.

“You’re catching on,” says the ghost, holding out his fleshless, bony hand. “Come!”

They are transported to the hearing room of a House committee. Hunter Biden sits at the witness table, tears streaking his face, apparently in mid testimony.

“…and then my dad says to Mr. Zlochevsky, ‘one-million? C’mon man, I’ve got a beach house to renovate’… and Mister Z says, ‘okay I give you one-point-five-mil’… and my dad cracks up laughing… ‘that won’t even cover the area rugs I ordered from Iran’ he says. . . .”

Suddenly the room vaporizes and “Joe Biden” stands next to the inaugural dais on the US Capitol’s west-facing front. Tucker Carlson has just stepped away after being sworn in as vice president and the massive, gold-headed, once-and-future president lumbers up to the Chief Justice, placing his hand on a Bible.

“Oh, n-n-n-no-o-o-o-o…” “JB” wails and wakes up in the presidential bed, panting and sweating.

“Are you all right sir?” A marine standing at his bedside says.

“I had a terrible dream. Trump got back in.”

“That was no dream, sir. You’ve been in a coma since just before Christmas last year when you stroked out on ice cream. It’s Wednesday, November 6, 2024. Welcome back to reality, sir.”

“Reality?” “Joe Biden” says. “We make our own reality.”

“Not anymore, sir,” the lance corporal says.

“Tell me, son, please! Did I manage to pardon my family? And myself?”

“Uh, well, sir, you were in a coma. Anyway, your attorneys wish to see you now…”

(kunstler.com)

THE WORD “BIPARTISAN” usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.

— George Carlin

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

“American treasure.” That’s a laughable term. There is no treasure. Federal Debt is $32 trillion. Private debt is even more. The money is gone. The USA is broke, busted, cashed out, whatever you want to call it. The credit card is maxed out. The interest mongers are calling. It's only a matter of time.

Personally, I am thankful that the end is coming. I’m sick of sacrificing the blood and sanity of our young men and women for ridiculous and illegal wars in foreign nations that have never posed any legitimate threat to America. See: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Ukraine. I’m sick of it all.

DMITRI IVANOVICH ERMAKOV (Russian: Дмитрий Иванович Ермаков) (1846 – 1916) was a Russian photographer known for his series of the Caucasian photographs. Ermakov was born in Tiflis to the Italian architect Luigi Caravaggio and a Georgian mother of Austrian descent. She remarried a Russian named Ermakov whose surname her son Dmitry took. Trained as a military topographer, he took part in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). He then ran a photographic business in Tiflis. He traveled extensively as far as Iran and took part in several archaeological expeditions in the Caucasus, leaving a series of unique photographs. Thousands of his negatives are now kept at the museums in Tbilisi, Georgia. 

MY VIEW is that unless we talk about collapse then our suppressed anxieties will be manipulated by incumbent power to make matters worse.

— Jem Bendell

THE BLIZZARD OF THE WORLD

Letter from America, part two

by Paul Kingsnorth

I was flying into Salt Lake City this morning, and as I looked down at the horizonless grid laid out across the once-empty desert, it struck me how much a modern city resembles the mind of a computer. Or, to put it another way, for the majority of us today, ‘living inside the Machine’ is more than just a metaphor.

For years I didn’t fly. Now, sometimes, I do, though I still feel a bit guilty about it. Beginning a piece of writing with the words ‘I was flying into …’ still makes me feel slightly sick about myself. The guilt is pointless though. Most people don’t share it, anymore than they share much concern about the impact of the phones and screens before their faces at every terminal and cafe table. We fly over the Machine, we live in the Machine and at every opportunity, we drink from the Machine. We seem to like it. We are not separate from this thing any more. We were never separate from anything.

An airport is a condensed symbol of modernity. The hangar-like shops, the brushed aluminium, the expensive cafes. The masks, the screens, the robot checkouts; all the galloping mechanisms of dehumanisation. Everyone is passing through, nothing originates here, nothing is indigenous to the place. Nothing grows that is not planted and occasionally checked by sniffer dogs. Sniffer dogs are the only animals. Everything has a price. The wifi is free. 

Once airports excited me, then they frustrated me, now I just try to look on them coolly, and on my own participation as well. I am writing this on a plane, which I have never done before. I am around 30,000 feet above the ground. The Internet still works. The words ‘I am writing this on a plane’ are absurd. They point to something we might want to see as miraculous, but which, within just a few years, has become mundane. Maybe living under a bubble on Mars will be mundane one day. We can make anything mundane if we try hard enough. We got bored with Eden quickly enough. 

So here I am, sealed into a machine, flying over mountains, writing about the Machine. It is all ridiculous, but there is no point in whining about it. Here we all are: cooked barbarians, most of us. You will never hear from the raw, at least not on this medium, and this is how it should be. But we cooked individuals have our own dilemmas. There are many ways to cook food, after all. I’ve been in America’s Mountain West for nearly three weeks, and apart from finally finding out, at the age of 51, what ‘eggs over easy’ actually means, I have sampled just about every kind of meat the region can offer. Beef, bison, antelope, pronghorn deer; sausages, steaks, sandwiches, pies. It’s meat all the way down in those parts. But you can take your steak rare, medium or well done. The same must be true of a barbarian. What kind of dissident are you?

After my time in Madison, Wisconsin, with the good people of Front Porch Republic, I headed west with a different tribe. My family and I were picked up and driven through the plains and interstates and prairies and gas stations and other such Springsteeny landscapes of Wisconsin and South Dakota, down to the mountains of Wyoming, where the snow was coming down hard. There we gathered in the Wagon Box inn, whose walls are bedecked with portraits of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Simone Weil, and where an epic floor-to-ceiling library replaces big screen TV and jukeboxes, for an invite-only conference on what it means to remain human in a machine age.

If the Porchers were mostly cooked, the Wyoming crew between them offered a wide range of flavours and culinary styles, from well done to properly raw. Homesteaders, rebel truckers, hobo poets, train-jumpers, urban organisers, Washington intellectuals, former policymakers, military officers, anarchists, ecologists, recovering journalists, Christian farmers; all of them - us - in search of the key to remaining human. Everyone there could see what was coming as the Machine bore down: the only real question was what form it would take, and how to respond. These are the questions I have been writing about, and my readers have been debating, here at the Abbey for the past two years. 

They are also the questions I had addressed in my keynote address to the Front Porch crew back in Wisconsin. Drawing on an array of voices - René Guenon, Oswald Spengler, Leonard Cohen, Philip Larkin, Eric Voegelin, Simone Weil, Leszek Kołakowski and a few more - I explored how to stand up to the headwinds of what, to quote old Leonard, I called ‘the blizzard of the world’. Longtime readers will be familiar, and perhaps entirely bored, with my argument by now: that the turmoil we are living through represents a spiritual crisis, and that the response therefore needs to look to the construction of a new spiritual culture. After years of exhaustive thinking, reading and living, this is the conclusion I have reached, despite sometimes wanting not to. I can’t see any other picture now. 

Writing in 1927 in his short book The Crisis of the Modern World, Guénon explained in simple terms where we were headed. It is the destination at which we have now arrived:

Those who unchain the brute forces of matter will perish, crushed by those same forces, of which they will no longer be masters; once having imprudently set them in motion, they cannot hope to hold their fatal course indefinitely in check. It is of little consequence whether it be the forces of nature or the forces of the human mob, or both together; in any case it is the laws of matter that are called into play and that inexorably destroy him who has aspired to dominate them …

Guénon suggested, as I said in Wisconsin, that as this process unfolded we would witness a shift from one phase of culture to another. The old world would collapse but the new would take time to be born. He called this period ‘the darkness between worlds.’ That, I believe, is where we are now living. We are children of that darkness. It is why we are fumbling around for answers and understanding.

What is the work in times like this? There are always plenty of ways to be useful, but what I talked about, after analysing the current crisis of meaning, is what it would mean to begin rebuilding a sacred culture in the ruins of the world the Machine has made. This, I believe, is multi-generational work. It requires patience, and we have very little of that. I haven’t, anyway. Still, there is nothing for it but to get started. All of the best work is small work, after all.

I’m going to press ‘send’ in a moment, and the yellow circuitboard is going to somehow fire these pixels from my little machine into yours, and you will be able to read the complaints about the technological society which I wrote at 30,000 feet. The whole situation is absurd, and so am I. Still, what else can we do? Laugh, perhaps: at the Machine and at ourselves. Laugh and live; but hold on all the same to the essence of our humanity. It’s going to be challenged like never before in the years ahead.

After both of the events I attended in the US were over, my family and I spent nearly ten days as tourists in Montana, making new friends who we all hope will be permanent. Maybe the highlight of that week - though there were so many it’s hard to choose - was the time we spent in Yellowstone National Park. Blanketed with snow and virtually empty of people, the Park’s beartooth crags and geyser basins presented a deeply magical landscape. To a European, these ‘parks’, some of them as big as our smallest nations, contain a degree of wildness that we rarely see. A herd of bison fording a river in the snow, with no human habitation in sight, stirs something in the soul that can’t be typed out on a plane. Explorer Beryl Markham tried to put it in words a century or so ago:

To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths or the blemish of an axe. You know then what you had always been told - that the world once lived and grew without adding machines and newsprint and brick-walled streets and the tyranny of clocks. 

The Machine can do its worst. Wherever we are, we have our own work to do, and we might as well do it with good cheer. The world remains beautiful, after all. Old Ed Abbey again, in his essay ‘Shadows from the Big Woods’,1 nailed the story we are all living through as well as any of us could - and nailed the correct response to it too:

The Machine may seem omnipotent, but it is not. Human bodies and human wit, active here, there, everywhere, united in purpose, independent in action, can still face that machine and stop it and take it apart and reassemble it - if we wish - on lines entirely new. There is, after all, a better way to live. The poets and the prophets have been trying to tell us about it for three thousand years.

Amen to that.

(paulkingsnorth.substack.com)

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