Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Dec. 17, 2023

Public Funds | Sunset | Showers | Gaza Rally | Candidate Forum | AVUSD News | Holiday Party | Devil's Punchbowl | Measure Betrayed | Geraldine Rose | Lady Panthers | Haschak Report | Pet Jewel | Shattuck Campaign | Crab Feed | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Yuletide Advice | Dream Job | Marco Radio | Purdy Surprised | Grim Season | Herb Caen | Bold | Home Christmas | GOPcare | Supreme Contempt | Backless | Fistula | Think Tank | Shortest Day | Home Mechanic | Ubiquitous BS | Laundry | Started It | Killing Civilians | Not Us | Israel's Boy | Garden Court

DA’S USE OF PUBLIC FUNDS EMERGING AS ISSUE IN AUDITOR’S CRIMINAL CASE

by Mike Geniella

When suspended Mendocino County Auditor Chamise Cubbison appears in court on Tuesday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a felony charge of misappropriation of public funds, it is not just her handling of internal money matters that will be center stage.

District Attorney David Eyster’s own alleged misuse of public funds regarding staff dinners and travel expenses is also under intense scrutiny, emerging as a key element in legal efforts to bar the DA from personally prosecuting another elected official that he has battled with for years over office spending. 

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder will hear arguments Tuesday to recuse Eyster from prosecution of the suspended Auditor. Cubbison and co-defendant Paula June Kennedy, the County’s former payroll manager, are finally expected to enter pleas to the charges the DA has leveled against them. Their plea entries have been delayed since October because of wrangling over Eyster’s role in Cubbison’s prosecution.

In a new court filing Friday, Cubbison’s attorney Chris Andrian argued that “Mr. Eyster’s retaliatory behavior toward Ms. Cubbison clearly demonstrates that he has an axe to grind with her,” and that he is attempting to prosecute the Auditor for “the same misuse of public funds she alleged of him.”

For Andrian, a noted Sonoma County defense attorney, the filing was a stinging rebuke to the state Attorney General’s decision announced this past Tuesday not to intervene in the case. The AG’s San Francisco office issued an opinion that it found “no actual proof” of conflict on Eyster’s part, and that the DA has not subjected Cubbison to “unfair treatment.”

Andrian said he will ask Judge Faulder, who has the final decision, to formally recuse Eyster at Tuesday’s scheduled court hearing from prosecuting the criminal case. 

Andrian said there in fact is evidence of Eyster’s conflict of interest based on his “prior treatment of Ms. Cubbison,” and his “retaliatory decision to prosecute Ms. Cubbison for the same misuse of public funds she alleged of him.”

Specifically, Andrian cited the DA’s demand of Cubbison in 2018 and 2019 to use public asset forfeiture funds to cover staff dinners at the Broiler Steak House for dozens of employees, and their guests. Eyster labeled the dinners “End of Year Staff Workshop and Continuing Education.” Cubbison questioned the public picking up the $2,400 tab for all dinner guests at a so-called office training workshop and said at most the County should only reimburse for actual costs associated with DA employees.

Andrian also cited the time Cubbison drew attention to the DA’s alleged personal use of County funds when she challenged the validity of his reimbursement claim for the travel expenses of a deputy prosecutor, and her live-in partner, that included hotel, airfare and conference costs that totaled in excess of $1,000.

“In response to Ms. Cubbison’s shining a light on his misuse of public funds, Mr. Eyster began a campaign against Ms. Cubbison and her job, culminating in the filing of a criminal complaint against Ms. Cubbison alleging the very same misuse of public funds.”

Andrian said Eyster’s behavior toward Cubbison “goes beyond creating a perception of improper influence.”

“He took action against her after she refused to bend to his will and accept his reimbursement claims,” charged Andrian.

Andrian said Eyster needs to be removed as prosecutor, and the Cubbison case independently reviewed and judged on its own merits.

Eyster has engaged in running disputes with the Auditor’s Office since 2011 when he took office. In 2021, he took the extraordinary step of publicly denouncing Cubbison when she was up for appointment as acting Auditor because of the early retirement of then Auditor Lloyd Weer. The DA told the Board of Supervisors she was unqualified, and that he personally favored a board plan to force a controversial consolidation of the county’s two independent financial review offices – Auditor/Controller and Treasurer/Tax Collector – in hopes of eventually creating a new Department of Finance more closely aligned with board offices and the County Executive Office.

Cubbison, a 16-year veteran County employee, in 2022 was elected by County voters to lead the newly consolidated offices, to the chagrin of Eyster and County board of supervisors members who had publicly questioned her abilities.

New court filings show that in September 2022 County CEO Darcie Antle and County Counsel Christian Curtis met with Eyster and outlined their suspicions about the extra pay made to Kennedy beginning three years earlier. A Sheriff’s investigation was launched, but it was more than a year before Eyster chose to file felony charges against Cubbison and Kennedy. Before he acted, the DA offered to file only a misdemeanor charge against Cubbison if she resigned as Auditor.

Cubbison chose to fight the accusations, contending she did not personally benefit from the extra pay. Attorney Andrian said there is no doubt the pay was for work Kennedy completed under difficult circumstances during the pandemic. “My client did not receive one penny of the money paid out,” said Andrian.

“Can there be any doubt that District Attorney Eyster has an axe to grind against defendant Cubbison?” argued Andrian in his submitted written argument to Judge Faulder.

Eyster, in a declaration filed within two hours of last week’s AG opinion, outlined for the first time his criminal case against the Auditor, and the county’s former payroll manager.

The DA accused Cubbison of using an obscure county pay code to allow Kennedy to collect $68,100 in extra salary for work done during the Covid pandemic. Eyster claims the code was used in hopes of not drawing attention of county administrators or the board, neither of whom had authorized the extra pay.

 Cubbison claims the extra pay deal was reached between retired Auditor Weer and Kennedy before she won election to be his successor. Eyster counters in his declaration that Weer and Kennedy in statements given to investigators deny they engaged in the extra pay “scheme,” and that it was Cubbison who solely allowed the unauthorized payments.

Cubbison and attorney Andrian contend what is really behind the high profile criminal case is a vendetta waged by Eyster after she repeatedly questioned his office’s spending. The DA has tangled with three different Auditors over spending related issues since he took office in January 2011.

Cubbison, when acting as Assistant County Auditor, took her ongoing concerns about the DA’s spending practices to a San Francisco law firm hired by the County Board of Supervisors for advice on internal issues.

In February 2020 Cubbison warned Morin Jacob, managing partner of the Liebert Cassidy Whitmore law firm, that long-standing issues with Eyster were becoming more contentious. It was clear in Cubbison’s detailed letter to the firm that she was seeking advice on how to deal with a DA who had waged a decade-long battle with the Auditor’s Office over use of asset forfeiture funds, travel reimbursements, and now a so-called evening training session for staff and their guests at the iconic local steak house.

Jacob’s response lacked the clarity that Cubbison sought, so she wrote again. Cubbison again noted discrepancies between the legal advice offered and existing county policies. Cubbison received no response from attorney Jacob to her follow up.

Instead, a few months later, the Board of Supervisors suddenly amended county travel policies to specifically exempt the DA from usual procedures and changing the authorities of the Auditor’s Office. Cubbison said as a result the County is likely no longer in conformity with federal IRS requirements “as they relate to the DA’s Office travel.”

The Cubbison criminal case has triggered a public uproar, promising a lengthy and costly legal struggle for taxpayers if it goes to trial. The Board of Supervisors also faces potential legal challenge to its arbitrary suspension of Cubbison without pay before she was even given an opportunity to publicly speak in her own defense. 

Cubbison was locked out of her office after Eyster filed his criminal charges, and on October 13, 2023, personally escorted out of the County’s buildings by CEO Antle and HR Manager William Schurtz. A few days later, the board voted to suspend her without pay before she or her attorney had a chance to offer any public explanation.

SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS will move through the coastal waters and parts of the coastal regions today, expanding inland tonight with moderate to heavy rain. Widespread moderate to isolated heavy rainfall will develop Monday, along with increasing southerly winds. Additional rainfall is forecast into Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Our "moving target" forecast has moved again this Sunday morning on the coast. Let's start with a partly cloudy 49F. Light rain will eventually develop later today leading to a windy and rainy Monday & Monday night. Rain on Tuesday & Wednesday morning gives way to some dry skies briefly later Wednesday.

JADE TIPPETT notes: 27°C, 81°F in Fort Bragg, CA on December 16. Likely a new record?

SUPERVISOR CANDIDATES TACKLE MENTAL HEALTH, WATER, AND COVID MASK PROTESTS

by Sarah Reith

Candidates for inland Mendocino County supervisors seats appeared before a packed crowd at the Ukiah City Council chambers Thursday night, to address mental health, water, and who took part in a barefaced protest at the co-op during the height of pandemic tensions.…

mendofever.com/2023/12/16/political-showdown-in-inland-mendocino-county-supervisor-candidates-tackle-mental-health-water-and-covid-mask-protests/

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

The semester closed and the beginning of the holidays roared in with a multitude of festive events this week. 

Bravo to preschool teachers Anita and Lupita for a beautiful craft evening dinner with homemade sweet tamales, the elementary reclassification dinner and student of the month was well attended, and the high school students donated more than 700 pounds of food to the food bank with 9th graders earning the top finish with 239 donations. 

As I traveled around the district this week there was a sense of normalcy and expectancy that I've not felt in full swing since before Covid. Kids and families lost so much over that scary time. Some students lost family members, all students lost the connection of school and their teachers, teachers and staff lost the participation and collaboration of daily family contact. All I can say after walking around this week is: It’s back. I am so grateful to everyone.

If your student signed up for the Winter School holiday camp, please make sure you send them. We have staffed up according to the reservations, and we want your kids there! Lots of fun things are planned!

In construction news this week, we received the Notice to Proceed from Caltrans. An architect has been appointed for the track and we will be roaring ahead on that one. Linoleum samples have been selected for the high school and we are hoping for the elementary hallways as well. The kitchen remodel plans at the elementary school have been submitted for a preliminary appointment at DSA along with the temporary classroom portable permit, and the construction contract for the high school was awarded to Cupples construction by the Board. It's going to be an incredible year of transformation ahead.

School returns on January 8th. We look forward to seeing your student back on that first day. May I wish you a very happy holiday and thank you for all your collaboration and partnership.

* * *

CONGRATULATIONS to Business Manager Leigh Kreienhop, as she received her Certificate of Completion from the FCMAT CBO Mentor Program Friday! This is a rigorous 12-month program for school district business managers to receive instruction and mentorship from the best fiscal experts in school finance. We appreciate Leigh's time and dedication as she spent one weekend away from her family in Sacramento to attend these trainings! Great job Leigh!

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

AV VILLAGE MONTHLY GATHERING: HOLIDAY PARTY

Sunday, December 17th, 4:30 PM, Anderson Valley Senior Center, Potluck Dinner (bringing a dish is optional)

Join us for a festive get together with friends old and new – all ages welcome! We are planning on singing some holiday carols around the piano with Lynn Archambault (songbooks provided). We’ll also once again have a bonfire to “banish your woes.” Think about any worries, cares, glooms, negative thoughts, etc. from the past year you would like to let go of, and we will write them down and burn them together as we make room for more joy in our lives.

Consider carpooling if you don’t like driving in the dark. Village members, let us know as soon as possible if you would like a volunteer driver and we will try to find one or bring a friend that can give you a lift.

Please note: Our gatherings are open to Everyone, but we recommend staying current on your vaccinations. Thank you!

Please RSVP with the coordinator – thank you!

Anica Williams
Cell: 707-684-9829
Email: andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

THE BETRAYAL OF MEASURE B IS NOW OFFICIAL

by Mark Scaramella

The County’s long overdue ACFR (Annual Comprehensive Financial Report) for 2021-2022 is being bragged about — no specifics, of course — by at least two County supervisors. But besides touting its simple publication, they offer no reasons for why it’s such a great thing. That’s probably because it isn’t. 

From the ACFR: 

“Mental Health Treatment Act/Measure B. Total FY 2022-23 projected Measure B tax revenue is $8.2 million, a $1.5 million decrease from prior year. Projected FY 2022-23 expenditures are $23.4 million, a $15.3 million increase from prior year. The voters of Mendocino County passed Measure B on November 7, 2017, for the creation of the Mental Health Treatment Fund, to provide facilities, services, and treatment for persons with mental health conditions, into which 100% of the Measure B tax revenue shall be deposited. For a period of five (5) years, a maximum of 75% of the revenue deposited into the Fund may be used for facilities with no less than 25% dedicated to services and treatment; thereafter, 100% of all revenue deposited into the Fund shall be used for ongoing operations, services, and treatment.” … “The Mental Health Treatment fund had a total fund balance of $34,486,702, with a net increase of $7,535,617, or 28%, during the year. This increase is due to the continued receipt of sales tax proceeds in excess of current year expenditures. While some multi-year mental health treatment projects are complete, many are still in development. Treatment services are still ramping up to meet the needs that can be served by the newly sourced and/or developed facilities.”

“Treatment services are still ramping up…”? 

Measure B was passed six years ago in 2017. |t is now six years later and not one nickel has been spent on the “treatment services” that are “still ramping up,” [a statement which itself is demonstrably false] despite the specific language in the Measure as noted above that “no less than 25% [of the funds be] dedicated to services and treatment.” 

Further, Measure B called for an “oversight committee” that was supposed to ensure that the provisions of Measure B were met by the County. That Committee dithered so pathetically for so many years that the County effectively eliminated their role and turned the Measure over to the County’s Mental Health Department. 

The only person in authority who has occasionally mentioned this alarming services shortfall as required by the Measure is Ukiah Assistant Manager (and Measure B oversight committee member) Shannon Riley. When she raises the question (and this only in the last couple of years) her fellow committee members nod their heads, but no recommendation or proposal has been forthcoming. No formal statement from the “oversight” committee that the Measure is not being honored. 

Even former Sheriff Tom Allman who was the lead advocate of Measure B and its language has given up and has become the leading advocate for spending Measure B money on the new jail wing.

The last time the mental health services question came before the Supervisors was this fall when a proposal was made to allocate some Measure B money to Ukiah’s Ford Street Project. Despite the misleading use of the word “services” in the agenda title, that proposal did not include any services, just some money to help build expanded facilities for Ford Street. Even this proposal was denied by the Supervisors on grounds that they didn’t know how much money was left in Measure B (and still don’t and have never asked) so they were afraid to commit the money to Ford Street.

Nevertheless, a couple of months ago, the Board decided to “borrow” up to $10 million of Measure B money to cover part of the huge overrun of the County Jail expansion project. 

Although the “borrowing” was supposed to include a payback plan, no such plan was requested and none has been prepared.

At that time, the Board claimed that the expanded jail facility would be used (in part) for mental health services if and when it ever gets built (currently scheduled for late 2025 but costs continue to rise). 

There is no plan for staffing the new jail whether with conventional corrections officers or mental health service providers. Nor has any money been allocated for staffing the new jail wing when it opens. 

Cynics expect that the corrections officers for the new wing will probably be funded out of Measure B’s 1/8-cent continuing sales tax increment and nothing resembling “mental health services” will ever be provided.

GERALDINE HARSHNER ROSE May 23, 1945 - December 05, 2023

It is with heavy hearts we announce the passing of Geraldine Harshner Rose, she left us peacefully in the small hours of the morning of December 5.

Geraldine was born in Oakland, CA to Edward and Romilda Harshner and grew up in Oakland with her two sisters. She graduated from Holy Names High School class of '62, earned her bachelor's degree at Cal State Hayward and went on to achieve her Law degree at JFK University, passing the bar exam in 1981. Geraldine settled in the small town of Boonville, practicing law in Mendocino County. She was actively involved in the community and served on various commissions and was a member and officer of the Mendocino County Bar Association and Mendocino County Women's Bar Association. Geraldine loved living in Boonville, practicing law, tending to her olive and fruit trees and her large vegetable garden, and sharing her bounty with friends and family. She was eager to learn new things and took many community college courses over the years art, biology, geology, and oceanography. She was ordained a Universal Life minister and one of her greatest joys was officiating at weddings for friends and family members.

Geraldine is survived by her sister and brother-in-law Jeanne and Wayne Boss, and brother-in-law Jerry Johnson. She is fondly remembered by her nephews and their spouses, many great-nieces and great-nephews, and many friends and peers. She was regarded as an exceptional daughter, sister, colleague, mentor, and friend. Geraldine was preceded in death by her parents, Edward and Romilda, and her sister Claudia Johnson, and her beloved Border Collie, Tessie.

There will be a small service with family and close friends held in the Spring, just as Geraldine requested. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to De Un Amor residential care facility for their loving care of Geraldine for these past five years and to Hospice of Santa Cruz County for their continuous support during these past months. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Geraldine's honor may be made to Holy Names High School, Oakland, CA; or organizations or charities of your choice.

AV LADY PANTHERS take the consolation trophy at the Gene Cotter basketball tournament at South Fork high!

SUPERVISOR JOHN HASCHAK:

‘Tis the time to appreciate those who are working diligently to make our communities better. As we all know, the people of Mendocino County are awesome.

The Department of Social Services put on a Holiday party for foster kids and families. Staff are dedicated to making lives better for these kids who are in difficult situations. There were smiles all around. I am thankful for the people who care, families who take on kids in need, and volunteers and businesses who offer their time and resources to make the party a positive experience and life a little brighter. 

Willits residents are working to provide a warming center for those in need when the weather turns cold and nasty. There is the Willits Wild Bunch organizing the Toy Run for kids. The Bud Snider Park was lit up with Christmas trees and hundreds of people were out and about on a very cold evening to enjoy community spirit. Three volunteer firefighters taking the Firefighters Oath for the Little Lake Fire Department deserve our appreciation. 

Laytonville is working on a community emergency response plan. A coalition of local entities including the school district, fire department, the Municipal Advisory Council, Long Valley Health Center, and others are convening to develop their own plan along with the County’s response. Whether it is fire or snow, the people are working to be better prepared for the next event. 

Residents of Covelo have been researching possible ways to acquire a fire hydrant system for the downtown area. Lew Chichester and Kay Richards met with me and staff in Ukiah to look at grant possibilities. After Board discussion on Dec. 5, the County will work on applying for a planning grant when the window opens in January. 

Laytonville residents finally found funding to construct a bridge over Ten Mile Creek. Margaret Andrews, Cindy Lassotovitch, and neighbors persisted and overcame the obstacles. With a bridge, the residents won’t have to drive through the creek bed. This will benefit the fish and provide for a safer passage for the people and first responders. Funding for the bridge will come from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the State Water Resources Board. 

May you and yours enjoy good health, peace and love in this Holiday Season. 

Talk with the Supervisor is the second Thursday of the month at 10 a.m. at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am thinking of changing venues and times to accommodate people. Please send any ideas you might have. I am available by email haschakj@mendocinocounty.org or phone 707-972-4214.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Jewel is a friendly, exuberant puppy. Like all puppies her age, she is very playful — especially with toys, joyfully flipping stuffies in the air with delight! Ms J is happy and social, and a great age to begin basic canine training. We encourage potential adopters to make sure they have plenty of time and energy to devote to a young pup, to ensure he or she matures into a very good dog! Jewel is 6 months old and 49 pounds of sweetness. Jewel is spayed, and ready to trot out the shelter door with you!

For more about Jewel and all our adoptable dogs and cats, head to mendoanimalshelter.com. For information about adoptions, call 707-467-6453. Check out our Facebook Page and please share our posts!

FIRST DISTRICT SUPERVISOR CANDIDATE CARRIE SHATTUCK:

Re: ‘Whistling past the budget gap’:

As I campaign for Supervisor, speaking to the public constantly, I have not heard one positive comment about our current Board. Many citizens are appalled by the Board’s suspension of our independently elected Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector, especially her lack of notice and opportunity to speak the day of suspension. This suspension is going to cost the County millions of dollars and for what? For her doing her job of questioning the use of funds?

I know “they” do not want me in this office. I have consistently spoken about the lack of leadership and direction of our County. I plan to be up front and transparent about where our money is being spent. I will speak and conduct the County’s business independently, without influence from special interests.

Please contact me if you would like me to state your comments at the next Board meeting. I want everyone to have a voice.

If you can, please donate to my campaign for change.

ED NOTES

IT'S SHEN YUN season, the Chinese dance troupe constantly advertised on television that promises you will “experience China before communism.” Tickets start at $80, but if you stay at home and don't eat for three months you can get a pretty good idea of what China was like before communism.

JUST TO KEEP up with The Enemy, I log an hour or so a week of Fox News and News Max. Both entities yearn for the return of Trump. By contrast, MSNBC and CNN and The New York Times, pretend Biden is a functional president and pretend it will be Biden and Trump in a '24 rerun, America's grim Hobson's Choice. I predict that Biden will be bundled off stage any time now and Newsom will be the Democrat's candidate for president.

GAZING AT FOX/NEWSMAX Friday morning, both stations interrupted their scheduled programming to bring their viewers Melania Trump, live, welcoming new citizens. Melania delivered an untrue riff on her alleged struggles to become a citizen and how grateful she was to have become one of us while her husband and both Fox and NewsMax railed about “the invasion at our southern border.”

NOT TO BE too cynical about the leadership, but it seems to me that the forces of the apocalypse have been up and galloping for at least a half century now, that the difference between Biden and Trump, or Newsom and Trump, is that Trump will get us to greater disasters faster than Newsom. They're both funded by and loyal to the people who have gotten us to the edge of the precipice. 

BACK IN 2000, the supervisors voted to hire a consultant to advise them on the best way to care for Mendocino County’s population of the mentally ill, one of whom happened to be their colleague and the other four… well, let's not be judgmental.

THOSE OF US who are now at the very top of the actuarial tables will remember when California enjoyed what was called a state hospital system, collections of secure but aesthetically-pleasing structures arrayed on park-like grounds, the whole resembling a college campus. 

WHY, wouldn't you just know we even had a branch of the hospital system just east of Ukiah at a place called Talmage — a beautiful architectural skein of mission-style buildings amid towering elms and meticulously maintained lawns and gardens. The premises even included a working farm and a perfect little baseball field. (The hospital fielded a competitive semi-pro team, as did San Quentin. The overall operating assumption was that dependent people were also human beings.)

MENDOCINO COUNTY could have purchased the newly abandoned state hospital at Talmage for a token $1. But Mendo, with typical foresight, rejected this almost unbelievable gift, voted it down for fear of maintenance costs. Buddhists were subsequently undeterred and snatched up the premises.

THE LIBERALS, career office-holding branch, as some of us will recall, had conspired with the Reagan-ites back in the early 1970s to free the mentally ill from treatment in stable, secure settings like Talmage and put them on drugs so they could enjoy life “in the community.” 

SO, in 2000, as the mentally ill bedded down on the streets with the outdoor drug community, the Supervisors’ decision to hire a consultant to help the county’s small army of “mental health professionals” deal with an ever-larger number of free range disturbed persons. The result nearly a quarter century later? The small army of walking wounded shuffling up and down State Street today, un-tended to, while the supervisors blah-blah about what to do with the money approved by County voters to house and treat them.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, December 16, 2023

JESSIE ANGUIANO-LOZANO, Willits. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

JILL GARAYALDE, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

JOSHUA HARDAGE-VERGEER, Ukiah. Assault.

JONATHAN LARSEN, Crescent City/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

RICHARD THOMAS, Probation revocation.

CHRISTINE WHITEHEAD, Ukiah. Domestic battery, paraphernalia. 

SEQUOYAH WRIGHT, Davis/Ukiah. DUI.

RYAN YOUNG, Willits. Failure to appear.

YULETIDE ADVICE

Season's Greeting

"Follow your bliss! All other routes lead to the abyss."

Craig Louis Stehr

MEMO OF THE AIR: The bloody olive.

”When your enemy is making a mistake, don't interfere.” — Sun Tzu

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2023-12-15) 7.6-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0571a

This was the first Memo of the Air show that was heard on the real air all the way south in Mendocino since I lost the use of KMFB in November of 2011. Marshall Brown teaches media tech and related material at Mendocino High School, and he manages KAKX, Student Powered Radio there. He ran a test of KAKX’s automation grabbing my stream. It was only for the first hour, but sometime this week we'll work out exactly what hours to join for further Friday nights' shows. I appreciate the opportunity and the lift.

This show features the usual announcements of concerts and plays and yard sales, as well as a lot of community input on the Navarro River's problematical sand bar. Xeno on so-called electrosensitivity. A plan to erase millions of dollars in local medical debt. Craig Louis Stehr. A little about my bid to admin. the MCN Announce listserv rather than let them shut if off because of a few bad apples. Poetry, astronomy, Garrison Keillor, Doug Holland, Bruce Anderson, David Gurney, David Herstle Jones, Niels Weisberg, Louis Bedrock, Clifford Allen Sanders, Eleanor Cooney, Ralph Nader, Flynne Washburne, Paul Krassner, Zane McNeill, the Comtesse DeSpair, Suzi Zipp, Sebastian Iturralde, my dream journal, jokes, Kent Wallace, Ezekiel Krahlin, and Tom Whitwell's 52 things he learned in 2023. And The Shadow from Xmas Eve 1939.

I'm happy to read your writing on the radio. Just email it to me and that's all you have to do.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Rerun: The Bloody Olive. I don't know what happened since last year and all the years before. If you can find a version of this Christmas classic with English subtitles, or that you can turn on generated closed captions in English for, send a link, please. If you speak Dutch or French, this'll do fine for you. https://vimeo.com/12487814

Auroras resulting from the latest solar coronal mass ejection. (Click to view the gallery and scroll down.) https://newatlas.com/photography/annual-aurora-northern-lights-photography-2023-gallery/

And this is coming in 2024. A channel of news that's written, assembled and delivered by imaginary people who move their hands in current-streaming-delivery fashion as they speak. “Let's start with our reporters. You can see us, and hear us, and see our lips moving, but no-one was recorded saying what we're saying. I'm powered by sophisticated systems behind the scenes. And I can speak in any language...” The Black imaginary newscaster in the demo seems gay to me. I'm not sure why I think that. His gentleness? I don't know. (You might have to click the sound on.) https://twitter.com/channel1_ai/status/1734591810033373231

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

PULL THE PLUG, STEPH

It’s been a long, grim season for the Golden State Warriors — and we haven’t even made it to Christmas yet. The shameful debacles are piling up exponentially, with late-game collapses and hapless unraveling becoming the rule, not the exception. Long-term haters of the Warriors dynasty are dancing riotously all over Golden State’s newest grave. And why not? The stage has been set for maximum schadenfreude. Steve Kerr is coaching games with the dazed look of a man who has witnessed one too many human rights violations on his watch. According to advanced stats, Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins are “washed.” Draymond Green can no longer control himself at work in a way that the social contract expects of 33-year-old men. Green will soon likely be filming another therapy session with Deepak Chopra and podcasting the Zapruder film version of his hard foul on Jusuf Nurkić.

— Alex Siquig, SFgate

HERB CAEN TAUGHT US HOW TO TWEET

Nothing goes stale faster than newspaper copy. Wrap a fish in it and see which holds up better three days later. I’m betting on the fish.

But I make an exception for Herb Caen, the iconic San Francisco columnist whose centenary took place on April 3, 2016. Even during his lifetime, Caen was more a monument than a journalist. If you ask native San Franciscans of a certain age to list the things they associate most with the city, Caen’s name shows up right after the Golden Gate Bridge, the 49ers, cable cars, and sky-high rents.

In other words, Caen was built to last. His columns—even the half-century old ones—still entertain. If you doubt me, check out a few.

When Caen received a special Pulitzer Prize a few months before his death in 1997, the award citation called him the "voice and conscience of his city.” They got that right. Although I wish they had found time to mention his humor, his geniality, and the nonchalance with which he crafted a must-read newspaper column six days a week for more than a half-century.

Yet, at his death, even the San Francisco Chronicle—his home base for most of his career—was forced to admit that Caen was “largely unknown in much of the nation.” Within the range of the newspaper’s daily deliveries, matters were very different. Caen’s following was so strong that editors feared that as many as a fifth of the paper’s subscribers might cancel without his column to keep them informed and entertained.

No one lives forever, but I must admit disappointment that Caen didn’t survive long enough to make his mark on the World Wide Web. If Twitter had been around during the Cold War years, Caen would have been much more than a local hero—he would have been a global media one-man brand.

In fact, Mr. Caen ought to be called the grandfather of the tweet. His daily column was just a collection of bits and pieces. He called it “three dot journalism.” But I prefer to think of it as the prototype for today’s social networking.

Over the course of a thousand words, Caen would serve up between 20 and 30 bite-sized observations. Each was concise and ready to go viral—although back then, Caen’s wit would be spread via conversations at the water cooler or neighborhood bar or family dinner table.

If you read Caen, you got the news, but you also received a judicious dose of gossip, jokes, opinions, reviews, announcements of future events, insider scoops from City Hall, true crime stories, puns, sports talk, human interest tales, and social commentary. If it wasn’t in Caen’s column, it wasn’t worth knowing, at least not for those operating within the city limits of San Francisco.

Just imagine what he could have done with the Internet instead of just a typewriter!

A typical column from 1980 tells us that Marlon Brando has been phoning Cupertino in an attempt to get shares in the Apple Computer IPO. Caen then reports that Stevie Wonder, currently staying at San Francisco’s Sheraton Palace, created a mob scene by giving an impromptu performance in the hotel bar. He shares a rumor that Las Vegas casinos have been pumping extra oxygen into the air to keep gamblers awake and at the tables. He touts a charity performance by Joan Baez, gives an account of a caterer foiling a carjacking by defending herself with a gallon of apple juice, and shares juicy details of a vice squad arrest on O’Farrell Street.

But you probably can’t believe everything in this column—for example his secondhand story that Ronald Reagan responded to the shooting of John Lennon by admitting: “I hated his father’s politics, but I love the way his sisters sang.”

Caen wasn’t even a native San Franciscan—he was born in Sacramento in 1916. But he had a response for those who scrutinized the details on birth certificates. (There are still a few of those around, no?) He explained that nine months before his birth, his parents were visiting San Francisco. Take that, you birthers!

His first column in the Chronicle, entitled “It’s News to Me” appeared on July 5, 1938, and for the next sixty years he was a man about town almost every evening. No one was more connected in those days before Internet connectivity. The Chronicle once reported that “in a typical year he dropped 6,768 names, got 45,000 letters and 24,000 phone calls.”

Two years after Herb Caen’s death, Jack Dorsey moved to San Francisco, where he later established the company Twitter. Coincidence or karma? You be the judge. For my part, I find it all-too-fitting that less than one mile separates the Twitter CEO’s desk from Herb Caen’s old office at the SF Chronicle. As I see it, Twitter just took over from where Caen left off.

Even today, people involved in social media could learn from Caen’s example. Here are the rules he wrote by:

Make it informative and funny in 40 words or less: No journalist of his day was more concise than Herb Caen. In just a few words, he could tell you the facts and also keep you amused. Often it took just one sentence, and rarely more than three.

Be accessible and responsive: People who phoned the San Francisco Chronicle with the expectation of reaching Herb Caen’s assistant or receptionist were frequently surprised when he answered the call himself. They thought they would deal with intermediaries, but instead had the undivided attention of the most influential journalist in town. Caen realized that this accessibility kept him informed and provided him a steady stream of tweet-worthy items for his columns.

Give credit to others: When Caen heard a clever witticism or a funny joke, he would share it in the column—but always give the name of the person who fed him the material. They didn’t call it retweeting back then, but this was exactly what Caen was doing. And his willingness to share the limelight ensured that the cleverest people in San Francisco kept sending him their humorous one-liners and wry observations.

Treat people as friends, not sources: I once heard someone gripe that “you could bribe Herb Caen with a box of donuts.” That wasn’t a fair criticism. It would be more accurate to say that Caen saw his sources of information as friends, and he applied the ethical standards of amicability and bonhomie to his dealings with them. You didn’t even need to bring the donuts. He would try to find ways of publicizing your event or tell your story, because that’s what friends do. In other words, he understood the importance of sociability even before they called it social networking.

And here’s what you wouldn’t see in a Herb Caen column: You would never encounter those rants that make Facebook and Twitter sometimes seem like the waiting room at an anger management clinic. You wouldn’t find trolling and flame wars and name-calling and all those other virtual behavior patterns that make you consider giving up the web for a 90-day mental detox.

Social networkers could learn from all those things that Mr. Caen didn’t do, just as much as from what he did. If he were around today, the Internet would be, to some degree, a better place.

Happy 106th birthday, Herb Caen. In my book, you are the patron saint of the tweet, and the best way of paying homage is to try to do it the way you did back in the analog age. I don’t think anyone around today can match you. But I’d certainly like to see them try.

I'LL BE THERE ALRIGHT

I'll be home for Christmas

You can plan on me

Please have snow and mistletoe

And presents by the tree

Christmas eve will find me

Where the love light gleams

I'll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

I'll be home for Christmas

You can plan on me

Please have some snow and mistletoe

And presents by the tree

Christmas eve will find me

Where the love light gleams

I'll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

I'll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

SUPREME CONTEMPT FOR WOMEN

by Maureen Dowd

The Irish expect the worst to happen at any moment. And they have what my colleague Dan Barry calls “a wry acceptance of mortality.”

Still, Ireland was shaken to its core in 2012 by the death of Savita Halappanavar, a beautiful, sparkling 31-year-old Indian immigrant, a dentist married to an Indian engineer. Savita was expecting her first child. She wore a new dress for the baby shower and prayed for the future. But that night she got sick. She went to a Galway hospital, where she was crushed to learn that her fetal membranes were bulging and her 17-week-old fetus would not survive.

Knowing her life was at stake, she begged the medical staff to remove the fetus. As Kitty Holland wrote in “Savita: The Tragedy That Shook a Nation,” a midwife explained to her, “It’s a Catholic thing. We don’t do it here.” Ireland had a long history of punishing women, sending them to religious asylums if they were pregnant out of wedlock or deemed “fallen.” Savita developed septic shock and died four days after her baby girl, whom she named Prasa, was stillborn.

That tragedy jolted the turbulent debate in Ireland about the right of women to control their bodies. Savita’s story was vividly evoked by women and men when I covered the 2018 referendum to revoke the Vatican-approved Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which made abortions illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. That draconian amendment had women selling their cars and going to loan sharks to get the money to fly to England for procedures. It stamped women with a Scarlet Letter and psychological trauma because they felt their country had turned its back on them.

I remember, as I reported on the vote, having a flash of gratitude that I lived in America and not Ireland. I thought to myself that I would hate living in such a benighted country shaped by religious fanatics.

But now I am. Religious fanatics on the Supreme Court have yanked America back to back alleys. American women are punished, branded with Scarlet Letters, forced to flee to get procedures.

And we have our own fraught case of a 31-year-old begging for a termination: Kate Cox, a married Texas mother of two who was thrilled to be pregnant until she was told that her fetus had a deadly chromosomal abnormality. Continuing the pregnancy could also keep Cox from getting pregnant again.

“I kept asking more questions, including how much time we might have with her if I continued the pregnancy,” Cox wrote in The Dallas Morning News. “The answer was maybe an hour — or at most, a week. Our baby would be in hospice care from the moment she is born if she were to be born alive.”

Cox, more than 20 weeks pregnant, had to leave Texas to have an abortion because the state’s boorish, mega-MAGA attorney general, Ken Paxton, gleefully threatened to prosecute “hospitals, doctors or anyone else” who helped her, even floating first-degree felony charges. The case has become so politically toxic that even the voluble Ted Cruz, who is running for re-election next year, has clammed up about it. The Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, playing school nurse, warned Republicans on the Hill to talk less about banning abortion and more about the benefits of contraception.

I’m sure even Donald Trump, who was once pro-choice but now panders to evangelicals, has qualms about criminalizing abortion. It’s a political loser and could cost him the election if women are supermobilized. He called Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban in Florida “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” Once Trump bragged about appointing the conservative justices on the court who were pivotal in overturning Roe v. Wade. But that won’t be a great sales pitch in the general election.

It is outrageous that such an important right in America was stripped away by a handful of cloistered, robed zealots, driven by religious doctrine, with no accountability.

But the Savonarola wing of the Supreme Court — all Catholics except Neil Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic and went to the same suburban Washington Catholic prep school as Brett Kavanaugh — could go to even more extreme lengths. The court announced Wednesday that it will consider curtailing the availability of a pill used to terminate first-trimester pregnancies. Soon, it’ll be mandating the rhythm method.

An explosive new Times article by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak revealed that Justice Samuel Alito was even more underhanded than we knew as he plotted to engineer “a titanic shift in the law” by vitiating Roe. Conservative judges who assured the Senate that Roe was settled law in their confirmation hearings could barely wait until Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died to throw it in the constitutional rights rubbish bin.

The more we learn, the more infuriating it is that our lives and choices about our bodies are determined by conniving radicals. The Supreme Court is way, way out of order.

MATT & WALTER

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, how are you?

Walter Kirn: Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not well. And I’ve got a little story about that. I was on the Greg Gutfeld Show in New York City Monday night and performed wonderfully, I thought, and jetted back here to Las Vegas. And last night I got an email at an email address that’s on my Twitter account so people can contact me. And it was from a dentist in Canada who said, “I watched you on the Greg Gutfeld Show, and I looked at your lower left jaw, and I think you have a fistula.” And I said, “What the hell?” He said, “Yeah, I think you have an infection in your mouth that’s draining to your lower left jaw and creating this bump that we call in dentistry a fistula.” So not having any way to diagnose myself now, and on a very busy schedule, my world is completely rocked by this dentist’s TV diagnosed.

Matt Taibbi: Oh my God.

Walter Kirn: So until I can get to a dentist, Matt, I’m living in a kind of free floating anxiety. I can’t think of a worse word than fistula. And I imagine that the condition itself-

Matt Taibbi: It is a bad thing.

Walter Kirn: The idea that I’ve just been living with it, going on television, doing this podcast, kissing my wife without noticing something that apparently can be diagnosed from hundreds and miles away-

Matt Taibbi: From television.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, from television. And I’m going on television again on Friday night on the Bill Maher Show, or tonight when people see this Friday night, and I have no way to disguise this. So I guess I’ll say to the makeup lady, “Can you minimize the fistula on my left jaw?”

Matt Taibbi: Oh, man. The joke has to go from there, though. You have to get a call from a different kind of specialist after that, right? Like, “Walter, hi, I’m a rheumatologist. I live in South America-

Walter Kirn: Exactly.

Matt Taibbi: I think you’re suffering from a rare autoimmune condition.

Walter Kirn: I’ve decided though, that this is the ultimate practical joke to play on people who are on television and are stupid enough to let their email be public. Just call in and say, “I’m not sure, but that twitch in your left eye is consistent with a rapidly spreading brain tumor.”

Matt Taibbi: I think you got to make a command decision pretty soon not to accept those phone calls.

THE SHORTEST DAY 

by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome, Yule!

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Get your news from anywhere you can get it.

I watch Fox most of the time and regularly turn it off when the talking heads talk nonsense. I turn on CNN and MSNBC and marvel at the level of bias and sheer stupidity of those talking heads.

Then I realize that the absurdity of these people is signed up to by a majority of the people of this country and get depressed. Not for long. You tube and Apple News give decent coverage, but liberal and disgusting at times. I discontinued the local newspaper years ago as it was absorbed into the Gannet world of misinformation.

Speaking of misinformation, one of the few things I agreed with the academics at my grandson’s graduation is that education is supposed to give you the tools to recognize misinformation. It comes from both sides, It used to be called Bullshit. It is ubiquitous.

LAUNDRY was a laborious undertaking during the late 1800s. Commencing the process involved letting the garments soak overnight, a practice widely recommended during that era. Subsequently, the steps included applying soap, boiling or scalding, rinsing, wringing out excess water, dying, starching, and ironing.

Enterprising women of the time developed various remedies for stain removal. Notable solutions included employing sour milk to counteract iron rust, utilizing chloride of lime for wine stains, and relying on salts of sorrel to eliminate ink marks.

A unique technique known as “bluing” emerged, wherein whites were boiled in hot water infused with a touch of blue dye. This method served the purpose of concealing the yellowing of fabric.

Bleaching involved soaking cotton garments in buttermilk for several days. This method aimed to achieve the desired whitening effect on the clothing.

IF YOU FOLLOW THE “They started it!”, “No they started it!” arguments of the Israel-Palestine conflict back to their source at the beginning, you come to “Palestinians should have laid down and accepted their violent mass displacement and theft of their homes by Israel in 1948.”

— Caitlin Johnstone

MASS MURDER

Editor: 

I think any country that deliberately kills civilians in a war should be condemned by the rest of the world and pressured to stop. Taking sides is pointless.

Karen Cooper

Hilo, Hawaii

JOE BIDEN: IN ISRAEL’S SERVICE

by Jeffrey Blankfort

Israel appears to be in more serious trouble diplomatically than at any time in its history following the botched attack by an “elite” commando squad on the Mavi Marmara in the early morning hours of June 1 that left at least nine dead and scores wounded. Thanks to Al-Jazeera and Iran’s PressTV, whose reporters were aboard the ship, much of the world was able to watch the attack unfold on its TV and computer screens and the result has been an avalanche of outrage and ongoing protests against the Jewish state. Within Israel this has led to finger-pointing and calls for resignations while its hasbara machinery has gone rapidly into damage-control and disinformation mode.

Lest we forget, the first U.S. official to give Israel’s bloody assault a thumbs up sign was Vice President Joe Biden. The former Delaware senator has been a key part of Israel’s hasbara branch, American section, since entering the Senate in 1973 and on the Wednesday following the Israeli attack, he appeared on the Charlie Rose Show where he showed no hesitation in defending Israel’s handling of the raid, something that President Obama had been reluctant to do.

On the following morning, Jerusalem Post Editor David Horvitz speaking for 45 minutes to Congressional staffers and AIPAC members on a conference call praised Biden’s performance. “It is not entirely clear in Israel where America stands,” he said, but “Israel was very pleased with what Joe Biden had to say.”

But isn’t that why Joe was picked for the job? Was it not to get the vote and the money from those Jews who were afraid that Barack Obama — who they suspected of being a closet Muslim—was no true friend of Israel?

Obama picked Biden “who is about as close to the pro-Israel community as any member of either house,” observed MJ Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer, on TPM Cafe, just after Biden’s selection. “Biden is rated 100 per cent by AIPAC… When he goes to the synagogues in Florida, he goes not as a visitor but as ‘mishpocha’ [family]. The Jews simply love the guy.” “Bottom line,” concluded Rosenberg, “the Biden choice pretty much eliminated Obama’s ‘Jewish problem’.”

That was then and now it doesn’t seem to matter what position Obama takes, Biden seems to answer to his real boss. And it ain’t Barack. Appearing on the Charlie Rose show was but the latest assignment for Biden in his long career of serving Israel, the first 35 years of which he was drawing salary and gaining political clout as a US Senator for a state whose population is only slightly larger than that of San Francisco (783,600 to 776,733).

“Look,” Biden told Rose in a rambling monologue in which he confused Ehud Barak with Ariel Sharon, “you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not… but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they’re at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here?

What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people’.”

No big deal, Joe, at least nine dead, or four less than the number of Israelis killed since the first Palestinian rocket was fired from Gaza. And notice how easily he says “my” and pretends that rockets are still being fired from Gaza.

That “my” was not a Freudian slip. Like scores of other US politicians who have traded their political souls for access to the seemingly bottomless checking accounts of Israel’s American supporters, Biden has become a poster boy for “dual loyalty.” Given that he has done this as a member of Congress and continues to do so while now a heartbeat from the White House should probably qualify him for a treason trial and a cell next to Jonathan Pollard.

Back in 2007, on one of his many visits to Israel, he told a Shalom TV interviewer that the Jewish state was “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East.” Going beyond the standard AIPAC scripted boilerplate, Biden stated, “When I was a young senator, I used to say, ‘If I were a Jew I’d be a Zionist.’ I am a Zionist,” he said. “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”

Asked about his prospective cell neighbor, sentenced to life-imprisonment in 1985 for turning over mounds of top secret information to Israel, Biden spoke of leniency for Pollard but not a pardon.

“There’s a rationale, in my view, why Pollard should be given leniency, “said Biden. But there is not a rationale to say, ‘What happened did not happen and should be pardoned.'“ In other words, should Biden become president, it is likely that Pollard would be freed.

Looking at Biden’s track record, it would seem that he has not just been a key cheerleader for Israel; he has aspired to be a member of its coaching staff.

Speaking to an AIPAC meeting in 1992, he was quoted by the organization’s Near East Report as saying that it was time to “tell the American people straight out that it’s in our naked self-interest to see to it that the moral commitment and political commitment is kept with regard to Israel and that Israel is not the cause of our problem, but the essence of the solution.” This was in response to President George H.W. Bush’s second refusal to support Israel’s demand for $10 billion in loan guarantees. Which of America’s problems Israel was able to solve Biden didn’t mention.

In December, 1995, two years after Oslo, he spoke at an AIPAC meeting in San Francisco and told a lunchtime audience that included most of the Bay Area’s public officials that they needed to spend more time educating new members of Congress about the wonders of Israel and its strategic value to the US:

“Be prepared to both convert and be prepared to deal with those who are not converted….

“Israel is taking more chances on her security today than any time in her history… Arabs make peace with Israel only when they realize that they can’t drive a wedge between the US and Israel. We cannot afford to publicly criticize Israel.” This past March, back in Israel on a “fence-mending” assignment, just before he was blindsided by the announcement of Israel’s plan to build 1600 new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, Biden had modified his “can’t drive a wedge” to read “there is no space between.”

At that time Biden gave his San Francisco speech, he had taken in over $100,000 from pro-Israel PACs which was small change compared to what he had received in individual donations. By far the largest of these came in 1988, when he made his first bid for the presidency. It was a $1.5 million gift from San Francisco financial real estate magnate Walter Shorenstein, who was, by no coincidence, AIPAC’s main man in California as well a major player in the state’s Democratic Party. It turned out to be a poor investment since that was the year that Biden was caught plagiarizing a speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock and had to withdraw from the race.

In 2007, true to form, Biden took the lead in the Senate in rejecting the Iraq Study Group’s conclusion that the United States would not be able to achieve its goals in Iraq unless it “deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” a view taken more recently by Gen. David Petraeus.

“I do not accept the notion of linkage between Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Biden said during his opening remarks at a January 17, 2007, Senate hearing. “Arab-Israeli peace is worth pursuing vigorously on its own merits, but even if a peace treaty were signed tomorrow, it would not end the civil war in Iraq.” It was not that the study group said that it would but it was convenient straw man for Biden.

It was not his first comment on Iraq. It may be recalled that on May 1, 2006, Biden had co-authored an op-ed piece for the NY Times with his guru, Leslie Gelb, a former Times columnist and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, that called for Iraq to be divided into three confessional states. It was starkly similar to what had been written in a policy paper back in 1982 by Oded Yinon, a senior Israeli foreign affairs official, in which he wrote that, “To dissolve Iraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it’s Iraqi power that constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.” Gelb had first raised the issue in an op-ed in the Times in November, 2003.

During the 2008 election campaign Biden was outraged to find his loyalty to Israel being questioned by what he reportedly thought was AIPAC but which turned out to be the Republican Jewish Coalition. The RJC had accused him of not towing the AIPAC line on one or two occasions which caused Biden to defend his willingness to oppose AIPAC on some pieces of legislation.

In a 20-minute conference call with members of the Jewish media that September, Biden said it was up to the Israelis to make decisions about war and peace, including whether to launch a strike aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.

“This is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do,” said the Democratic vice presidential candidate. ““Israel has the right to defend itself and it doesn’t have to ask, just as any other free and independent country. I have faith in the democracy of Israel. They will arrive at the right decision that they view as being in their own interests.” That as vice-president his job would be to protect US interests and not Israel’s and that an attack on Iran might jeopardize American interests either had not occurred to him or was of no concern.

In the interview, Biden tried to position himself as being even more pro-Israel than AIPAC, vigorously defending his record of occasionally breaking ranks with the pro-Israel lobby. “AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community,” he said. “There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential.”

Moreover, Biden insisted, “I will take a back seat to no one, and again, no one in AIPAC or any other organization, in terms of questioning my support of the State of Israel.”

“Insiders at the lobby were more bemused than offended by the outburst” wrote the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Ron Kampeas, “saying they regarded Biden as essentially pro-Israel. Sources familiar with the situation said the Obama camp’s explanation was that Biden had mistakenly thought it was AIPAC who had criticized him, as opposed to the RJC.”

Upset at the RJC’s questioning of Biden’s pro-Israel credentials The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, entered the lists in his behalf. Wrote Peretz in TNR and the Jerusalem Post in September, 2008: “If ever there was a true friend of Israel in the United States Senate it is Joe Biden. Oh yes, there were also Owen Brewster, Republican from Maine, and Guy Gillette, Democrat from Iowa. But that goes back to the very founding of the state.

“This is not hyperbole about Biden. It is true. And it is so not just on a philosophical basis but in deeds, too. Biden is a true friend on both a higher and a deeper level, and he has been that for three and a half decades. It is reckless for Jews to trifle with such allies. We have, as I’ve said, many friends. But what we do not have is many such allies — formidable, expert, truly passionate.”

Following the election and now, as vice-president, Biden continued to merit Peretz’s confidence. Speaking at AIPAC’s 2009 policy conference in Washington, he began by describing how he had been warmly welcomed on a visit to Israel in 1973 as a freshman senator by Prime Minister Golda Meir and befriended by Yitzhak Rabin. Then, to loud rounds of applause, he told his audience:

“[W]e have to pursue every opportunity for progress while standing up for one core principle: First, Israel’s security is non-negotiable. Period. Period. [sic]Our commitment is unshakeable. We will continue to provide Israel with the assistance that it needs. We will continue to defend Israel’s right to defend itself and make its own judgments about what it needs to do to defend itself.”

Toward the end of his speech, Biden timorously advanced a position that has long been official US policy. “You’re not going to like my saying this,” he said, but [do]not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement.” There was no applause.

In 1994, Biden was a key player in one of the ugliest episodes in American political history and one that characterizes the subservience of Washington to Israel in its way much as did the cover-up of Israel ‘s attack on the USS Liberty 53 years ago on June 8th. It featured a star chamber recantation before a confirmation hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Biden, of Strobe Talbott, former Soviet affairs analyst for Time, of an article he had written, following his nomination as Deputy Secretary of State by Bill Clinton. Talbott was facing the inquisition as a result of a major article he had written for the magazine in 1981, “What to do about Israel” (9/7/81). In it, Talbott had advocated a new policy towards Israel-US relations that would “rescue that relationship… starting with the delusion that Israel is, or ever has been, primarily a strategic ally.”

While expressing the obligatory degree of affection for Israel, Talbott had not been equivocal. Referring to problems that had been created for the Reagan administration by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Talbott wrote in words, especially pertinent today, “His country does need the US for its survival, but the sad fact is that Israel is well on its way to becoming not just a dubious asset but an outright liability to American security interests, both in the Middle East and worldwide.”

Talbott was referring to Israel’s destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak and a deadly bombing raid over Beirut that killed over 100 people and wounded 600 more, most of them civilians. Talbott had advised that, “If Israel continues to take international law into its own hands as violently—and as embarrassingly to the US—as it did in Baghdad and Beirut, then the next display of US displeasure ought to be more sustained and less symbolic. It might include severe cutbacks in American military aid, which is $1.2 billion for fiscal ‘81 alone.[It is now officially $3 billion].

Pressed to recant, Talbott uttered the required response. As reported by the New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse, “‘I do want to set the record straight on the question of my view of Israel as a strategic asset,’ he said, sounding chastened and contrite. ‘On that I have simply changed my opinion.’ “On the other hand, straining to reassure supporters of Israel, Mr. Talbott said, ‘I have always believed that the US-Israeli relationship is unshakable. Second, I have always believed that a strong Israel is in America’s interest because it serves the cause of peace and stability in the region…’

“During his 21 years at Time, Mr. Talbott often criticized Israel. Today he took a markedly different tone, portraying himself as a friend of Israel.”

In the article Talbott, had written that “Begin recognized that American Jews wield influence far beyond their numbers, but he also knew that there is considerable pent-up irritation in the US with the power of the pro-Israel lobby (which includes, of course, many non-Jews).” It was clearly his own opinion, as well.

Biden, according to the NY Times, jumped on that statement, calling it, “totally inappropriate,” to which Talbott, “asserting that no sight was intended,” noted that this “was simply a statement of fact,” and turned to Sen. Bernard Metzenbaum from his home state of Ohio for confirmation. Metzenbaum said that he was “satisfied” with Talbott’s remarks, but, “Maybe, in retrospect, he might have changed some phrases or some paragraphs.”

Mind you, Talbott had questioned Israel’s strategic value to the US in 1981, in the heart of the Cold War when he was considered one of the main stream media’s ranking Soviet experts. Before going before the Senate, he had become a senior advisor on the former Soviet Union to the Clinton White House. By 1994, with the Soviet bloc no longer in the picture, it was generally agreed, even in Tel Aviv, that Israel’s value to the US had been severely diminished.

Biden went on, citing the same article, noted that Talbott also had written: “Israel has been a credit to itself and its American backers.”

Playing the role of Torquemada, he asked Talbott, “Do you believe that?” “Yes, senator, I do,” he obediently replied.

His “conversion” process having been completed, Talbott received the senator’s and subsequently the Senate’s approval. The reader should not be left with the impression that Joe Biden’s prime passions are limited to the love of Israel.

While in the Senate, he was a key supporter of the credit card industry, much of which is based in Delaware thanks to its cozy industry friendly tax laws and he was a key beneficiary of its campaign contributions. In return, he became a leading supporter of the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” which, despite its title, made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy. Biden was one of the first Democratic supporters of the bill and voted for it four times until it finally passed in March, 2005. Twisting the truth, a spokesman for Sen. Obama told the NY Times, “Senator Biden took on entrenched interests and succeeded in improving the bill for low-income workers, women and children.”

But even the Times wasn’t buying that. Biden, the paper noted, was one of only five Democrats who voted against a proposal that would require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Obama had voted for it.

Biden differed with Obama again when he helped to defeat amendments which would have strengthened protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military. He was also one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.

So why did Obama pick Biden for his running mate? We already know the answer.

(Jeffrey Blankfort is a former radio host and journalist in Northern California and can be contacted at jblankfort@earthlink.net.)