Mendocino County Today: Friday, Dec. 29, 2023

Big Waves | Windy Showers | Noyo Sky | Coastal Waters | Tweeker Dawn | Adoption Event | Eel-Russian Project | Navarro River | Water Issues | Acoustic Folk/Pop | Rain Gear | Redding Bound | Cubbison Papers | Town Meeting | Food Banking | Lauren's Eve | Circle Dance | Vendors Market | Doctors Benefit | Pancake Breakfast | Assembly Candidates | Ed Notes | 2024 | Pathetic Life | Yesterday's Catch | Reno | Golden Gate | American Rhyme | McCheeseburgers | Democracy Dies | Wilt | Coconut Joe | Not War | Educated Idiot | Tree Commute | Election 2024 | Best Christmas | Ethnic Cleansing

WAVES hitting the West Coast estimated as high as 40 feet kept surfers grounded — well, most of them, anyway — and served as a magnet to hundreds of spectators.

AN APPROACHING STORM SYSTEM will generate another round of strong southerly winds today. A period of moderate to locally heavy rain is forecast with the associated frontal passage around midday. Showers and isolated thunderstorms tonight will be followed by lighter winds and diminishing showers over the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A really warm 58F this rainy Friday morning with .27" already in the bucket. Rain, wind & large waves today giving way to showers tomorrow. We have a chance of rain everyday into next week except for New Years Day. The surf is still up so continue to be careful near the shore.

COASTAL WATERS FORECAST for Northwest California

Gale force southerly winds will impact most of the waters today as another strong frontal system approaches. Small craft conditions will continue in the northern inner waters that are slightly sheltered from SE winds. Winds will subside substantially Friday night into Saturday. Seas will lag a bit behind, finally falling below 10 ft late this weekend before another system approaches the coast by late Tuesday.

ndbc.noaa.gov/data/Forecasts/FZUS56.KEKA.html

TWEEKER'S DAWN

A light rain outside of the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center.  Chanting the Hare Krishna mahamantram in the spacious parking area.  The sound of enraged methamphetamine smokers is heard from across the street on notorious Observatory Way.  The early morning traffic goes by.  All things change and all things remain the same.  

— Craig Louis Stehr

NAVIGATING THE WATERS: Updates on the Russian River Water Forum and the Future of the Potter Valley Project

by Monica Huettl

On December 5, the Sonoma County Supervisors and the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission voted to create a new Joint Powers Agreement to form the Eel-Russian Project Authority, an entity authorized to negotiate with PG&E regarding takeover of the Potter Valley Project diversion facilities. The proposed redesigned diversion will be called the New Eel-Russian Facility…

mendofever.com/2023/12/27/navigating-the-waters-updates-on-the-russian-river-water-forum-and-the-future-of-the-potter-valley-project/

NAVARRO RIVER after Wednesday’s storm system (photos by Jeff Goll)

FIRST DISTRICT SUPES CANDIDATE ADAM GASKA disagrees with our prediction that a Potter Valley Project Joint Powers Authority could be set up quickly: 

Gaska: “Well, the JPA for taking control of the PVP and managing the Eel Russian Diversion is happening. Board make-up has been decided as has who will be the representatives. The first public, Brown Act compliant meeting will be in January. Huffman secured $2 million for studies to figure out which of the 2 options (a roughened channel or pumping station) would be the least harmful to the fish. The least harmful option is what will move forward. If they are equal, then it will be whatever has the potential to divert the most water. There will need to be conversations with SWRCB/DWR [State Water Resources Control Board/Department of Water Resources] to figure out how this is going to affect appropriative rights and how do we adapt the water rights system.

I am suggesting we develop a Demand Management Program to more closely monitor winter diversions on the assumption that many water right holders will shift from diverting water in summer, which won’t be available, to pumping water in winter to store in ponds. Ideally there would be a program to allow people to change their water rights and allow for more storage. Currently, it can take years, if not decades, to get a right to store diverted surface water. Hopefully we can get funding to raise Coyote Dam, build a reservoir in Potter Valley, upgrade PVID’s delivery system from dirt ditches to being piped, and get some groundwater recharge projects going. I am already looking to how we can use RVCWD’s [Redwood Valley Community Water District] ag water system to take water from Lake Mendocino to flood fields for groundwater recharge when the lake is full and the Army Corp is needing to release water for flood control. I have also been looking at other ways we can safeguard the Ukiah Valley Basin groundwater supply through recharge projects.”

* * *

Mark Scaramella replies: OK. Does that mean the JPA is formally approved or just that it has members and will meet per Brown Act? Are all the official agreements in place? Exactly what powers will the JPA exercise, and with what “authority”? Also, none of these other proposals and idea sound like anything will happen soon, if ever.

MENDOCINO COUNTY ROTARY PROJECT FINALIZES

On December 17^th 2023, a Rotary Club project was finalized here in Mendocino County helping our local Mendocino County Search and Rescue team with some much-needed rain gear. For the past 20 plus years, our local Search and Rescue team had been utilizing their own personal rain coats in all different designs, colors, brands with no uniformity whatsoever. But before I get ahead of myself, let me tell you the entire story that you may not have heard. Mendocino County has a total of 5 Rotary clubs including 2 in Ukiah, Fort Bragg, Mendocino and Willits. Back in the summer 2023 the Mendocino County Search and Rescue team made a local presentation to three of the five Mendocino County Rotary Clubs, with the intent to help raise $20,000 to purchase rain jackets for the entire team. The presentations seemed to go well with positive feedback from each club. A few weeks later, South Ukiah Rotary club President, Chris Philbrick contacted me, as the SAR board Secretary sharing, that he was exploring a path to help the team. This Rotary project was spearheaded by Philbrick, presenting an idea to all of the Mendocino County Rotary clubs and Rotary International as well. Four out of the five local clubs together would do a collaborative grant with matching funds coming from Rotary International with $24,000 raised to purchase rain jackets and pants for our local Mendocino County Search and Rescue Team.

After reviewing several manufacturing companies, Mountain Uniforms, Colombia and Arc’teryx. The decision was made to go with the Arc’teryx manufacturer brand, as their product deemed to be the best for being water tight utilizing the latest technology in these gore-tex jackets. All of the patches, logos and screen printing needed to be finalized next. Lisa Davey-Bates, past South Ukiah Rotary club President, was instrumental in getting the Rotary club logo for a patch design that Starkey’s of Ukiah was able to bring to life. Several patch designs, sizes and shapes were presented and one was finalized by the Rotary team. Next came the design and placement of all of the patches, scripting, pockets and Velcro for the name badges. Reflective screen-printing placement was thoughtfully laid out. The manufacturer, Arc’teryx had added the special reflective screen printing and piping on the jackets and the design proof was sent over for final review before the manufacturing was started. It took just 6 weeks to complete the manufacturing process with the jackets being delivered the first week in December. Annually, the Mendocino County Search and Rescue team has an end of the year dinner and award presentation for its members at the Broiler Steak House. This year this was scheduled to be on Sunday December 17, 2023 with the four Mendocino County Rotary Clubs coming together for a presentation of the new gear. In attendance was Sheriff Matt Kendall, retired Sheriff and Willits Rotary member Tom Allman, South Ukiah Rotary President Chris Philbrick, John Nickerson South Ukiah Rotary Club Service Director, Lucy Nickerson South Ukiah Rotary Club Community Services Director, Carolyn Welch South Ukiah Rotary Treasurer, Dianna Trouette South Ukiah Rotary Foundation Chair Ukiah Rotary Club President Lee Kraemer, Willits Rotary club member Tara Moratti, Fort Bragg Rotary Club Area Governor Gary Champlin and his wife Eve. 

Do you ever have thoughts of making a difference in your local community? Think about joining one of these local Rotary Clubs in the town near you. They are making a difference right here in our own backyards. Thanks so much to the Rotary Clubs of Mendocino County who worked on this project. It is much appreciated!

Jim Schmidt

Mendocino County Search and Rescue

CITY OF REDDING HIRES Mendocino County Counsel Christian Curtis: cityofredding.gov/_T18_R105.php

From the Redding Presser:

“After a nationwide search performed by Peckham and McKenney that garnered several applicants, the Redding City Council found Mr. Curtis to be the ideal candidate to become the new City Attorney.” … “I am excited to relocate to Redding, along with my wife, Marie, and our flock of sheep,” said Curtis. “I look forward to being near family and continuing my commitment to public service here in Redding.”

MS NOTES: So… Curtis and his wife are taking the Board of Supervisors with them to Redding…?

THE CUBBISON PAPERS: NO SMOKING GUN

by Mark Scaramella

But maybe some gunshot residue…

We submitted our Public Records Act request for information related to the suspension of former Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison back on November 3, 2023 because there was speculation that Ms. Cubbison’s suspension was an orchestrated, pre-planned exercise, the result of the Supervisors’ extended and growing program of frustration and complaint which we referred to as Operation Get Cubbison.

So we asked the County for:

Emails, cell phone text messages, and correspondence for the time period January 1 through November 3, 2023, for: 

(a) the five individual supervisors with the District Attorney; 

(b) for the five individual supervisors mentioning Sara Pierce, Chamise Cubbison, or the Auditor-Controller, and 

(c) between any staff within the CEO’s office with any staff within the Sheriff’s office.

2. Meeting agendas and attendance logs for all supervisors closed session meetings in 2023 where Sara Pierce or the County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector were discussed or when the District Attorney was present either in person, on the phone, or by electronic means.

3. A current list of Deputy CEO’s, their responsibilities, and their educational backgrounds and training records.

4. Deputy CEO Sara Pierce’s resume, educational background, and training record.

After weeks of delay and postponement, Assistant County Counsel Charlotte Scott responded first on Monday, December 11, 2023, then again on Friday, December 22, 2023. 

As to Item #1, Ms. Scott replied, “…There is no centralized retention storage for cellphone text messages held by the County (and/or the Sheriff’s office) and the cellphone carrier does not retain text message content for any extended period of time. Instead, a search for responsive cellphone text messages must be performed by manually searching the individual County-issued cell phone through the assistance of the individual County user. The County has reached out to the individual Supervisors as to any responsive text messages (for 1(a) & (b)) and relevant Executive Office staff for 1(c). The County will produce all non-privileged/non-exempt cell phone text messages specific to your request.”

Ms. Scott first provided emails and text messages responsive to #1a and #1b for Supervisor Gjerde, adding, “I will provide a further release of records on or before December 22, 2023 (and on a rolling basis until I complete review).”

Instead of closed session agendas and attendance logs, Ms. Scott simply referred us to the Board’s agendas and minutes and videos. She added, “The County may neither confirm nor deny whether there have been any closed session meetings in 2023 referencing the topics you have identified.”

Regarding the Deputy CEOs and their qualifications, Ms. Scott provided basic duties and educational/training info, but nothing else, saying, “Resumes that may be included in personnel files are exempt as personnel or similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

Ms. Scott provided a miscellaneous collection of emails and attachments, most of which were unrelated ordinary correspondence between Supervisor Dan Gjerde and Supervisor John Haschak and the Auditor’s office. These included notes from constituents or local government staff related to specific accounting practices and tax matters with little information on responses, resolution or follow-up.

The only small bit of Cubbison suspension info in the Gjerde material was a short text message exchange on October 17 (the same day Cubbison was suspended) between Sara Pierce (who was appointed to replace Cubbison) and Gjerde:

Pierce: “Cubbinson’s [sic] suspension and indictment was an awakening, but Eyester [sic] has a lot of baggage. We shall see. Why does Loyd [sic] Weer get off scot free?”

Gjerde: “Yes, I think Eyester [sic] should want to explain his reasoning for his hands-off of Lloyd. I have not heard — but left wondering. Is it because: 1) Lloyd is gone and can no longer do harm, 2) he believes Chamise made contradictory and untrustworthy statements to investigators, 3) all of the above and something else.”

Lloyd Weer was Cubbison’s predecessor as Auditor-Controller (before she was elected to the combined office of Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector (ACTTC). Of course DA Eyster hasn’t explained his reasoning beyond his fairly cryptic court filings and has complained that people shouldn’t even ask or talk about the case. We don’t know what “harm” Gjerde thinks Weer may have done; we know of no public complaints of that nature. We assume that whatever statements Ms. Cubbison may or may not have made to investigators (either Sheriff’s or DA’s) — what Eyster “believes” is irrelevant, what he can prove is what matters — will be addressed during the prosecution of her case. But we agree with Ms. Pierce that Mr. Weer should have been interviewed and we expect that if the case goes forward he will be, if not by Eyster, then by Cubbison’s defense.

The material about the Deputy CEO’s was skimpier and less interesting than we had expected; we were surprised that there are only three “Deputy CEOs” (two now, since Sara Pierce has been appointed ACTTC) — Cheryl Johnson, Steve Dunnicliff and Sara Pierce — apparently most of the CEO’s 18 senior staff have titles like “senior analyst” or the like.

Since Sara Pierce has a BA in Business Administration from the Adventist College in Napa County and has been with Mendocino County for about three years; it appears she meets the minimum qualifications required by government code for appointment to the “acting” position she now fills.

In the second set of materials, there were inquiries from Haschak and Mulheren to the Auditor about cannabis tax receipts and a few other routine, unrelated matters.

However there was this exchange between Haschak and Third District constituent Janet Orth the day after Cubbison was suspended.

Orth: “I was disappointed that you voted yesterday to suspend Chamise without pay. I can see a suspension while the case plays out, but why take such quick and punitive action when we have yet to see any evidence of wrongdoing? There has not yet been a court hearing. Also, was Chamise informed of the emergency agenda item? She was not present for the vote. Had this been on a noticed agenda, I think there would have been more public comment. In past actions we’ve seen you take a wise stance even when in the minority, and that’s what I had expected yesterday, so I was surprised by your vote. I do appreciate your asking the questions that you did. This is my individual, personal opinion based on my long work experience dealing with the County Auditor’s office, and just a logical, compassionate mindset. So I’m contacting you as my Third District Supervisor. Is there any chance of a move to reconsider? Thanks for your attention to this matter. Janet Orth” 

Haschak replied: “Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I can't talk about the situation because it is a criminal and HR matter. It wasn't a quick or lightly taken decision. As for a vote to reconsider, I know that it wouldn't go anywhere. Best to you and Tony [Janet Orth’s husband],
John.”

Janet Orth: “Thanks for the response, John. Then why was it not in closed session? Or was some of it? I just thought it should be administrative leave or suspension WITH pay.”

Haschak: “Hi Janet. We have had several closed sessions about this. John.” 

“Several closed sessions”? 

We went back through the County agendas for the months leading up to the Cubbison suspension and there is nothing in any of the closed session agenda titles to indicate a discussion of Cubbison or the Auditor’s office.

On October 19, 2023, Supervisor Maureen Mulheren asked Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson: “The rumor is that there was a mass-exodus of people from the Auditor Controller Treasurer Tax Collector office after the merging of the Elected Officials office. Is it possible to find out how many people have left vs how many have been hired?” 

There was no response to this question in the emails the County provided.

One of Supervisor Mulheren’s constituents, Suzanne Farris, asked: “I just wanted to share that I’m quite skeptical of this action, and it makes the impression of being politically motivated.
With the background of DA Eyester [sic] not liking Cubbison’s questioning some of his use of funds (which she’s not alone in) and Ted Williams pushing about certain things, it seems rather convenient. And the fact that she is an elected official makes it rather dicey to remove her also. I have to say further, that the decision of the board of supervisors to consolidate the two departments, of auditor/controller and treasurer/tax collector, comes back again to bite them as the poor decision it was. I wish I could feel more confident in the actions and motivations of the Board.”

Mulheren responded: “I can’t comment on criminal matters.
The Board has not consolidated two departments yet there are still considerations on going.
Our constituents deserve financial transparency and that is what I will continue to work towards.” 

Farris: “Thanks for responding.
I’m not sure what you say when you refer to consolidation of two departments. That was done in 2021. I’m attaching a piece of an article the Sunday’s Ukiah Daily Journal that refers to that action. Maybe you are referring to the rumored intent of some at the board of Supervisors to create some other system? A Department of Finance, or something…? A non-elected position possibly, which is also questionable. But you did vote for the consolidation, back in December of 2021. I’ve attached a screenshot of that event in Jim’s Shield’s UDJ article on Oct 23, 2023. The whole article is worth reading.” 

Mulheren: “The elected offices were merged. Future changes to the department have not been better [?] by the Board that was a separate agenda item that will include consideration of oversight of an elected official and which functions they would have, that change would like to [?] before the voters but County Counsel has not returned with the legalities one way or another.” 

* * *

That’s what we have. Perhaps a little more will be forthcoming since Ms. Scott says she’s still looking for additional responsive materials.

What can we make of this?

Supervisor Mulheren’s replies to Ms. Farris were incoherent and lame. She was not asked about any “criminal matter” — she was asked why the abrupt suspension without pay and why they consolidated the departments. 

Supervisor Haschak’s replies blowing off Ms. Orth’s legitimate questions were dismissive and insulting. At no time did either Supervisor attempt to explain or justify their abrupt suspension. Hiding behind charges being filed or “an HR matter” to justify their action is bogus. There was nothing automatic about the suspension since nothing has been proven and no imminent harm being prevented was cited. Nor is there an “HR matter” angle, since Cubbison is an elected official, not hired help.

There’s no clear evidence of a orchestrated plot to get rid of Cubbison. However, Haschak’s reference to “multiple closed sessions” about the matter which we cannot find any evidence of is troublesome. That would be a Brown Act violation and perhaps an indication of an orchestrated ouster. Ms. Scott’s seemingly unnecessary claim that “The County may neither confirm nor deny whether there have been any closed session meetings in 2023 referencing the topics you have identified” when such matters should have been on itemized on a closed session agenda is also suspicious for the same reason. We are considering further follow up on this question.

It’s also clear from the materials provided that the Board had a cordial and respectful relationship with Cubbison and her office during most of her tenure. There is no tone of annoyance, frustration or grievance in any of the materials. There is nothing from the Board asking repeatedly for the undefined reports they claimed to have requested (but never did provide the examples there said they’d provide) and not received. 

On the theory that incompetence explains more than intrigue or conspiracy, and on the basis of what’s on the record in open session, we can only conclude that the Board simply wanted a more compliant and cooperative Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector who would make nice and tell them what they want to hear and not argue with them or point out failings of other departments, the Board, or the CEO’s office. So they used the DA’s charging of misappropriation as an excuse to abruptly and mindlessly fire Cubbison and replace an inconvenient elected official with an unelected staffer of their own choosing for no stated or substantial reason.

GOOD PEOPLE RESPOND: I'm not bragging, but Karen Ottoboni put it out here on the Facebook that they needed help filling bags at the food bank. I had some time so I threw on my shoes and headed down there. D'Ann too. Karen asked, did you come together? Nope, just saw the call for help. We hustled and filled bags. There were a bunch of elders, and folks all working to fill bags, receive deliveries, break down boxes… There were some jokes and some laughter. I didn't get numbers, but I think I heard about 150 people come and get some food. We packed bags and left before distribution. That's a different team. I'm just telling this story because I feel proud of the people who take care to care. And to let you all know that I left feeling good that I had the ability to jump in and help a little. It was fun. I'm glad I did it. (Saffron Fraser)

BOONFIRE AT LAUREN’S AT THE BUCKHORN

Sunday, December 31, 9pm - 12am, Lauren’s, 14081 Hwy 128, Boonville

Get down with NorCal’s preeminent rock n’ reggae band, Boonfire, at Lauren’s restaurant this New Year’s Eve! $10 cover and drink specials all night!

WINTER SOLSTICE CIRCLE DANCE this Sunday, New Years Eve, 4-7pm

This year we will celebrate the return of the light ritual on New Years Eve with extended hours, 4-7pm, at the Mendocino Community Center. We will dance with candles to light up the winter’s darkness, and there will be a break for a festive finger food potluck, so bring something to share if possible.

No previous experience or partners necessary! All dances are taught before each one.

To dress the part wear a white outfit under a black or dark over garment so you can embody the dark first and then the rebirth of the light! If your closet does not provide these Gwen always brings extra white and black garments so you can join in. 

Also, while we will dance inside the Mendocino Community Center, we will keep some windows open for Covid protection, so bring layers.

There will be a wealth of dances. some very simple, some beautifully layered and complex. Please tell your friends to come. Not dancing and sitting out some dances is totally fine. This is a special occasion that nurtures and celebrates Community and the hope that comes with the lengthening days and the new year.

Dance is one of the oldest ways in which people celebrate community and togetherness, and the circle is the oldest dance formation. Circle Dance mixes traditional folk dances with new choreography's set to a variety of music both ancient and modern from around the world. Dances can be slow and meditative or lively and energetic.

Circle Dance groups are a grass roots phenomenon, with hundreds of dance circles in the US, England, and throughout the world. The Mendocino group has been dancing every month for over 30 years. As one dancer put it, “We are doing what people have been doing for millennia — on beaches, in forest glens, around campfires — dancing together in circles to express joy, passion, solidarity, pain and faith.

Covid Safety: Please don’t come if you are not feeling well or have been exposed. We actively support at-risk individuals or persons caring for at-risk individuals by wearing masks if we would like. However, masks are not required. The best way to know you are not contagious is same day testing with the simple at home 15 minute test - Gwen will have extras if you want to test on site.

For more information on Sacred Circle Dance go to CircleDancing.com. For local info contact Devora Rossman at drossman@mcn.org or 937-1077.

Come for the Dance, come for the Community, come for the Ritual.

Tom Wodetzki <tw@mcn.org>

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS UKIAH FUNDRAISER

Mendocino Environmental and Social Justice Center and KMEC Radio will present a benefit for Doctors without Borders January 27, 2024 1 to 5pm at the recently reopened MEC studios and center. Come prepared to share. Enjoy Live DJ sets by current KMEC 105.1 djs Smokin’ Joe and Bill MC Squared who are back on the air. Light Snack, beer and wine provided. Show up, share and donate or get involved! For more info contact Bill 707 380 7350.

ANDERSON VALLEY’S BEST PANCAKE BREAKFAST

Sunday, January 14, 8:30 - 11:00am, Philo Grange, 9800 Hwy 128, Philo

It’s the best deal around! Orange juice, coffee or tea, scrambled eggs, bacon, and of course, our secret Grange flapjack recipe (gluten free upon request). All the fixings and then some, including Dr. Derek's special warm fruit topping. Some people come for the company, visiting with old and new friends. Some people come for the music by Los Panqueleros. Most people come for all of the above. Held the 2nd Sunday of every month, with an exception every once in a while.

INLAND MENDOCINO DEMOCRATIC CLUB

Monthly hybrid meeting 2nd Thursday, 1/11/24, at Mountain Mike's Pizza and on Zoom, 6:30pm - 7:30pm.

EVENT: 5 of the Democratic candidates for Assembly District 02 have been invited to speak to us.

The invited speakers are: Rusty Hicks from Humboldt, Ariel Kelley from Healdsburg, Frankie Myers of the Yurok Tribe Del Norte, Chris Rogers from Santa, Rosa, and Ted Williams from Albion.

Not every candidate has confirmed yet.

They will have time to introduce themselves and then answer your questions.

Please join us in person or on Zoom to become informed about the very short race to the Democratic primary on March 5th. Zoom login can be found on our IMDC website.

ED NOTES

AS OTHERS SEE US: “Traveled with my son recently and had dinner in Fort Bragg at the restaurant next to the motel too tall. While waiting to be seated we shared a drink at the bar with an urchin diver who told us stories of his encounters with Great Whites, bloody tales that particularly garnered the attention of my son who spent many hours earlier that gray blustery day riding the waves at Pudding Creek. The steamed clams and crab were excellent, and the waitress and the bus boy who served our table, two young people obviously working their asses off to make a living in this increasingly difficult world (we saw the same bus boy working breakfast at another restaurant early the next morning) were wonderful. I thought about them later, and I thought about the AVA, and I thought about sharks, and I thought about all that money sitting idle under that empty new motel too tall, and I thought, yep, the cliche is true, life is a bitch, a complicated bitch. Keep ’em locked and loaded.”

YEARS AGO, I received a chilling cassette tape recording wrapped in brown paper with only “Fortuna” and its zip code by way of a return address. The recorded voice sounded like that of an older man echoing warnings like the Prophet of Doom himself In the cadences of a Pentecostal preacher. 

WITHOUT resorting to racist epithets, the prophet railed about the horrors of “race mixing” and about how the Jews were behind a vast international conspiracy to “mongrelize the white race” and carry off all our TV sets, too. 

MY WIFE happens to be a Third World Person of Color with whom I’ve done what I can to mongrelize the white race and, looking back on my fiscal history, the greatest economic crimes committed against me happened to have been committed by white boys of Scotch-Irish extraction. 

WE'VE ALL heard the Fortuna kind of thing before, but the combination of fervor and confidence with which the lunacy was served up on that cassette was unique in my experience, eerie even. Putting that little aural adventure together with information we’ve published in the AVA about the unhealthy political views of at least one HumCo “Christian Identity” church, it’s likely that there is some proselytizing going on among the more primitive Christian congregations of the Northcoast.

ANOTHER READER WRITES: “‘Lupine, a common wildflower, may be the cause of birth defects blamed on the herbicide 2,4-D, according to University of California-Davis scientists. Birth defects can be caused by a poison in milk from goats who forage on lupine. Raising goats is common in areas where the issue of 2,4-D has arisen. (So is long hair.) Timber/West, March 1982.’ I am reduced to sending you the news, because I haven’t seen a fresh AVA for quite some time. The last issue I received was the Jan 26 issue, and it arrived a week late. Six weeks or more ago I spoke with Ling about another lapse and she kindly sent me a replacement, which arrived a day or two before the missing edition arrived, looking somewhat tattered and disheveled. In the U.S.P.S. mail stream (maelstrom), there must be a huge eddy between here and Boonville, where lost articles circle for eternity.”

OSWALD DID IT. BUT WHO KNOWS?

Editor,

I've read your newspaper for about 25 years. You have never been “back and forth” on the Kennedy assassination! You have always said Oswald did it alone and now you suddenly change your tune? And now you tell us you were in the Marines at the same time and place as Oswald! I think maybe you were involved, and I intend to prove you were on the Grassy Knoll!

So you now have Doug Holland writing for you? And you've had Aaron Cometbus writing for you in the past. Well, don't you know all the zine luminaries? Suggestion: Why not serialize Holland's great zine from the early 90s called ‘Pathetic Life’?

Regards, 

Ralph Coon 

Pasadena 

PS. Whatever happened to the guy who was riding around Boonville with the corpse of his dead mother in his mini-van?

ED REPLY: Last I heard Mom came back to life and is working for our supervisors as an at-large cemetery consultant. As for Lee Harvey and I, I mentioned he and I were in the Marines at Camp Pendleton at the same time — '57-'59 — simply to point out how improbable it was and is for a guy from our prole backgrounds to have ambitions aimed at defecting to Russia, a desire at the time beyond unthinkable. I think Oswald was the lone shooter; maybe there was a second hitman but I've never been able to suss out where he could have been shooting from. The Grassy Knoll? With a ton of spectators milling around a guy with a spiffy sniper rifle takes a hurry-up position, shoots, breaks his gun down and runs off unmolested? No way. I think, though, the reason so many documents related to the case are still unavailable is because Oswald was funded and controlled by agents of our government, meaning Kennedy was killed by American taxpayers. Sleepy Joe promised to release all the docs, but that was before he became totally ga-ga. Big Doug's zine was among the best ever, and we revere his every contribution.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, December 28, 2023

JESUS BANDA-MARIN, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation.

CATHERINE FAUSTO, Talmage. Domestic battery.

CHERYL MATTSON, Willits. Domestic battery. 

MICHAEL MENDEZ, Ukiah. DUI, protective order violation, failure to appear.

FRANKLY MORRIS, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, offenses while on bail.

DANIEL SANCHEZ, Fort Bragg. County parole violation.

THE LIGHTS of Salt Lake City began to fade, an evanescent shimmer on the rear horizon. A few more minutes and the landscape was again a black void. We were crossing the Great Basin, the arid heart of the American West. The pilot announced that the next glow of civilization would be Reno, some 600 miles away. I remembered two things about Reno. The annual precipitation there is seven inches, an amount that Florida and Louisiana and Virginia have received in a day. But even though gambling and prostitution are legal around Reno, water metering, out of principle, was for a long time against the law. 

— Marc Reisner

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Editor: 

Nobody was worried in 1927. The Dow hit 200, and to a foreign visitor visiting America for the first time, the most striking thing was how staggeringly well off it was. The book “One Summer in 1927” describes America’s bounty: “Of the 26.8 million households 10 million had cars, America added more new phones (781,000) than Briton possessed in total.”

Bill Bryson wrote that 42% of all that was produced in the world was produced in America. Kansas alone had more cars than France. America owned half of the world’s gold.

The stock market already booming, would rise by another third then crash. Our debt today stands at $32 trillion, and interest alone is $669 billion annually. Many Americans can’t afford to buy a home. Women are second-class citizens, and a wannabe dictator is threatening revenge on his political critics if elected.

Insultingly, our top 1% earn more wealth than the nation’s entire middle class. The S&P 500 hits another high, led by seven tech stocks holding 30% of the capitalization. History may not repeat, but it can rhyme.

Dave Heventhal

Windsor

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DAYLIGHT

Eight years ago the Washington Post pledged to save democracy, but now argues we need to be saved from it

by Matt Taibbi

A month ago in the Washington Post, not long before the Colorado mess, neoconservative icon Robert Kagan wrote, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” We may accuse Kagan — husband of Victoria Nuland, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, and co-author (with Bill Kristol) of the “benevolent hegemony” theory of world conquest that was the real reason for America’s Iraq invasion — of much. We can’t accuse him of not knowing history. The graphic was a bust of Caesar, perfect for a six thousand word opus on stopping Donald Trump at all costs, whose sniper-scope subtext was as subtle as the Bullwinkle float at the Thanksgiving Day parade. It could have been headlined, “Where’s Hinckley When You Need Him?”

Kagan kept trying to suggest a biological solution to the Trump problem without actually saying it. The word count can get hot quickly when you’re trapped in that kind of mind-loop. Here he tries to express the idea, “We gotta stop Trump before the election”:

Indicting Trump for trying to overthrow the government will prove akin to indicting Caesar for crossing the Rubicon, and just as effective… What limits [his] powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice — all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent.

If elected, Kagan went on, it would mean:

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans threw every legitimate weapon against Trump and still failed. Will they turn instead to illegitimate, extralegal action?

What’s the irony level of a clarion call for a Caesarian “intervention” appearing in the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Washington Post? Can that level of hypocrisy be quantified?

This is the paper that re-branded itself as America’s living bulwark against authoritarianism after Trump’s election, covering its new slogan like the naming of a Pope. They ran multiple self-referential stories about the significance of their decision, and paid CBS $5.25 million to introduce football fans to “Democracy Dies in Darkness” via a preposterous Super Bowl spot, which was narrated by Tom Hanks with the leaden gravitas of the U/North ad in Michael Clayton. It showed scenes of Normandy, Selma, and Apollo 11, then a montage of journalists who died for truth, before declaring, “Because knowing makes us better.”

This was after Trump’s inauguration, and right after his conniption-fit inspiring “The FAKE NEWS media… is the enemy of the people” tweet. The Post’s message couldn’t have been clearer: we’re willing to die for the truth, and under Trump, we may have to. (After Kagan’s piece, the message seems to have been reversed, but who’s counting?)

Poor Bob Woodward was dispatched to tell the slogan’s origin story on Face the Nation. It’s revealing in hindsight. We learned from Jeff Gerth’s epic Columbia Journalism Review story on Trump-Russia coverage that Woodward tried to warn Post reporters away from the “garbage” Steele Dossier, only to discover a “lack of curiosity” on the subject from staff. It’s therefore an eyebrow-raiser that Woodward took this early moment to note that “Trump is right” that “some of these stories have been out of bounds,” but “the key is to get the big things right.” It was a muted plea, but at a time when it was heresy to suggest Trump could be right about anything, even partially, Woodward was showing a measure of the courage the Post was bragging about. No one caught it.

Trump opponents argue, at times persuasively, that J6 and Stop the Steal prove Trump can’t be trusted to respect “norms,” but the Post and its sources were throwing “norms” out the window at the very moment the paper was paying millions to advertise devotion to them.

From mid-2016 on, the paper was a factory of anonymous intelligence leaks, often false. Not long after the Woodward appearance, it wrote that a Russian named Sergei Millian was the source of the Steele Dossier’s “most salacious claim,” the “well-developed conspiracy” of five years with Russia. It later had to pull the allegation and change its headline after reports emerged that Steele source Igor Danchenko, hilariously no Kremlin insider but a Brookings Institution analyst, was at the zoo when supposedly meeting Millian. Worse, the paper had to concede the infamous story of Trump cavorting at the Moscow Ritz with peeing prostitutes may have come not from Millian, but “a Democratic Party operative with long-standing ties to Hillary Clinton,” as the Post put it in a tail-between-legs explainer from 2021.

The Post racked up lots of these oopsies. It ran the damaging April 2017 leak about the FISA court surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page, wrongly dubbed an “agent of a foreign power.” It botched the “Nunes memo” story, ran at least eight different wrong scare pieces about Russian bots, bit on “Bountygate,” and helped build the oppo-crafted story of Trump as a Manchurian Candidate whose “warm views” of Russia “began in the 1980s, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union,” who appeared to change the Republican Party platform to help Russia, and “tried to conspire” with Putin. It’s hard to see anything but willful cooperation in a goofball intelligence-led caper to paralyze the Trump administration through a campaign of leaks and manufactured rumors that began before Trump’s inauguration, before he even had a chance to do the bad thing.

The “Dictator” essay got a ton of clicks, but Kagan revealed himself a bulkier, less introspective version of Shakespeare’s Brutus, who was also over-convinced of his aristocratic rectitude while completely misreading the public. Kagan must have missed the “Brutus is an honorable man” speech, and its lethal lesson for patrician leaders lost up the backside of their own self-regard. Antony’s final address is considered a standard-bearer for political oratory, but Shakespeare’s point is that it didn’t need to be, because the Roman street was already seething at the plotters’ arrogance, and could have been knocked over with a feather. Julius Caesar is literature’s most famous warning to elites about the perils of ignoring popular sentiment, and ours don’t get it.

Papers like the Post insisted since 2016 that Trump’s sole currency is racism, so it was a shock to see Kagan write, “Trump is running against the system. Biden is the living embodiment of the system. Advantage: Trump,” or, “On Trump’s watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.” Where was that before? Was there an agreement in places like the Post op-ed page to avoid analyzing Trump in conventional political terms until it was too late to be useful, i.e. until after his voters had been alienated through hysterics about “deplorables” and white supremacists?

More revealing still were Kagan’s passages about how easy it will be for dictator Trump to pursue enemies in modern imperial America, a state Kagan helped build, where the executive has almost limitless ability to thumb the scales of justice. I get why Kagan would be nervous — he and his CIA-ogling pals like Bill Kristol and David Frum will likely be first in line to herded into the proverbial C-130 and pushed out over the Atlantic, should Trump and Steve Bannon go that route. Still, it’s astonishing Kagan didn’t know how much he gave away, in laying out fears of “tyranny.”

“Nor will it be difficult to find things to charge opponents with,” he wrote. “Think of all the laws now on the books that give the federal government enormous power to surveil people for possible links to terrorism, a dangerously flexible term, not to mention all the usual opportunities to investigate people for alleged tax evasion or violation of foreign agent registration laws.” He also complained about the “whiff of new McCarthyism” from Trump acolytes accusing opponents of being “communist” or tools of China.

It’s as if Kagan doesn’t remember — or maybe he does — the last eight years of accusing everyone out of line with uniparty orthodoxy of siding with Russia, the overzealous FARA prosecutions of Trump allies like Thomas Barrack and Matthew Grimes, or the constant leaks about how the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns would serve up the long-awaited evidence of collusion. Moreover the line about the possible misuse of the “dangerously flexible term,” terrorism, coming from Robert Kagan — the man who helped lead us into war by conjuring a fictional “scenario” involving Saddam Hussein and terrorists — is enough to make anyone wonder how inflated his fears of dictatorship are.

This last week in December is normally when the campaign season turns white hot, with orgies of TV buys and canvassing sweeps. This year the decisive battles will take place in courtrooms and in invitation-only party Zoom meetings (the modern smoke-filled rooms), rather than in New Hampshire diners or town halls in Sioux City or Ames. Already we see that only a few candidates will be permitted to run without severe impediments in the form of ballot exclusion efforts, censorship, or (in Trump’s case) criminal prosecutions, making the outcomes of Colorado-style ballot suits, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s lawsuit against Google/YouTube, or even challenges around third-party entities like the “No Labels” party, as important or more than primaries.

Americans clearly hate this drift in the direction of a third-world-style continuous power contest. An incredible 28% dislike both parties now, a record high and four times the percentage from 2002, with the public distrusting both parties equally. The removal of so much campaign drama to courts and other venues means voters may not have as much of a say in things as they traditionally do (although I hope the change isn’t too pronounced, as this site is planning to spend a lot of time on the trail).

Still, even this coming year extra-ballot battles will be heavily influenced by the court of public opinion, the modern version of the Roman square, where a chicken-egg question will be debated: who abandoned democracy first? A lot of people seem afraid of how the country will answer, including the editors of the Washington Post. They might be right to worry.

THE RATTIEST RIGHT-WING CONGRESS CRITTER

by Jim Hightower

Vangunu, one of the Solomon Islands, is home to a giant species of rodent called Vika. Astonishingly, this rare and very large rat has jaws so powerful it can bite through a coconut shell!

That made me think of Rep. Jim Jordan, the GOP’s rattiest, far-right-wing congress critter. There is no documented proof that this extremist partisan was raised on Vangunu, but he sure keeps gnawing on Joe and Hunter Biden, desperately trying to crack open a scandal that simply doesn’t exit. Vikas are powerful, but they’ve not been accused of being smart.

Jordan, the former coach of a boy’s wrestling team, now has his team of House Republicans in a choke hold, draining national media attention to his goofy obsession with impeaching Joe. Impeach him for what? Well, says Jordan, we’re looking for a reason.

He has it bassackwards — real impeachment proceedings start with specific charges of an official’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But Coach Jordan is perverting that Constitutional requirement by first accusing Biden of high crimes, *then* holding hearings in hopes of finding one. But poor Jim — it turns out to be easier for him to bite through a coconut than to fabricate a Biden crime.

But Jordan keeps gnawing, wasting Congress’ time, staff, and credibility (plus millions of taxpayer’s dollars) scuttling down trails that go nowhere. Meanwhile, as he and the GOP House prioritize their clownish political agenda, they can’t perform the basics of government, which is simply to keep essential public services funded and functioning.

Unable to govern, Republican leaders abruptly stopped working in the House in early December, saying they’ll get serious next year. But, uh-oh, the vika congressman has just announced he’ll hold more impeachment hearings next year so he can keep gnawing at the Biden coconut.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Have you ever heard the term “EDUCATED IDIOT”?

I think of this term more and more on a daily basis.

The last time I checked, they are winning the war against common sense.

I’m sure you know very bright people who couldn’t pour piss out a boot with the directions on the heel!

These folks are just clogging the drains and have not solved the problem. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

If the shoe fits, wear it!

ELECTION 2024: YOU ASKED FOR IT, AMERICA

The prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch shows how far U.S. democracy has fallen—and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

by Kevin D. Williamson

The problem with campaign rally songs is that nobody ever picks the right one. Franklin Roosevelt chose “Happy Days Are Here Again” in the middle of the Great Depression with Adolf Hitler rising to power in Germany. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” has charmed Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, none of whom apparently ever actually listened to the lyrics of that lament for post-Vietnam malaise and economic decline. George H.W. Bush used Woody Guthrie’s pinko anthem “This Land Is Your Land.”

Lately, Trump has been using Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” a diabetes-inducing hunk of treacle that makes me want to join the Islamic State, while Joe Biden has gone back to the Guthrie well with a version of “Shipping Up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys, a band that, like Joe Biden, is still getting by playing hits from the 1990s.

I have my own theme song for the 2024 election, David Bowie's magnificent 1995 collaboration with Brian Eno: “I’m Afraid of Americans.” It is an anthem for our times. 

Presidential elections are almost always showy, nationalistic affairs, full of appeals to patriotism and , unity, occasions upon which even Ivy League diversity officers wave the flag and festoon the public square in red, white and blue. And that points to the tension at the heart of the dreadful and contemptible 2024 presidential election, which almost certainly will be fought out by Donald Trump, a depraved game-show host who tried to stage a coup d'etat when he lost his 2020 re-election bid, and Joe Biden, a plagiarist and fabulist first elected to public office 53 years ago who is going to be spending a lot of time this campaign season thinking about his family's influence-peddling business and the tricky questions related to it, like whether you can deduct hookers as a business expense. 

Run Old Glory up the highest flagpole you can find, but 2024 is going to be the least patriotism-inspiring election in American history so far, a reminder of what a depraved, decadent, backward, low-minded, primitive, superstitious and morally corrupt people we have become. 

Don't blame “the system,” you gormless weasels. You chose this. For most of my life, the dominant myth that informed American politics was that there was too much “big money” in the system, that Washington lobbyists in Gucci loafers gathered with self-seeking party bosses in smoke-filled rooms to subvert the will of We the People and foist their preferred candidates and policies upon the country. The moral of the story was that the common people do not have enough of a voice. 

But that's the great lie of American politics (and of democracy at large): that the people cannot fail but can only be failed. Conservatives told themselves a carefully tailored version of that story, one in which Republican Party careerists insufficiently committed to limited government allowed themselves to be pushed around by the liberal media, selling out their principles and the electoral interests of the GOP so that they could feel welcome “at Gerogetown cocktail parties,” as the slavering imbeciles of talk radio still put it. 

The left told itself a similarly inane story, with Big Business turning the Democratic establishemtn into corporate shills with no interst in anything more radical or fundamental than smoothing out the rougher edges of capitalism rather than—finally!—“putting people over profits,” as the idiots over in their village put it. 

And then, a funny thing happened. Two funny things, in fact. 

First, the Internet broke the old media oligopoly, which at the height of its power had consisted of three newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal —alongside three television networks that aped those three newspapers, and the Associated Press, which digested all that and regurgitated it, birdlike, into the pages of 10,000 local newspapers. This ensured that the same biases that shaped the political coverage of the Washington Post ended up in the Sacramento Bee and the Tulsa World, serving up DC-NYC gruel at a hundred million breakfast tables across the fruited plain. 

With the old media gatekeepers gone, right-wing content creators rushed in and filled the world with QAnon kookery on Facebook, conspiracy theories powerful enough to vault the cretinous likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene into Congress, fake news sponsored by Moscow and Beijing and fake-ish news subsidized by Viktor Orban and his happy junta, and whatever kind of poison butterfly Tucker Carlson is going to be when he emerges from the chrysalis of filth he's built around himself. 

The prim consensus of 200 Northeastern newspaper editors has been replaced by the sardonic certitude of 100 million underemployed rage-monkeys and ignoramuses on Twitter. The news was democratized, and, as such, it became corrupt, irresponsible and ugly.

Second, the same forces that disintegrated the old media cabal have radically democratized fundraising for political campaigns and committees. Whatever control those smug party bosses once lorded over candidates mostly had resided in the power of the purse. But the Internet made it possible for politicians and hustlers to go straight to the people, who don't want to hear about the need to raise their Medicare premiums and reduce their Social Security checks to avoid a national fiscal crisis. 

No, We the People want to hear more from that Marjorie lady about the Jewish space lasers and how Donald Trump is going to wreak vengeance against the “communists” and “Marxists” who run… Microsoft, and how vaccines are what gave them lumbago. The digital masses may not be dropping bundles of C-notes into the campaign contribution tip jar, but they hit that tip jar pretty often with smaller change, and there are an awful lot of them. 

Whatever real power big money donors had to shape the political agenda has been dwarfed by the power — the much more thoroughly corrupting power — of small dollar donors, who, unlike the National Association of Realtors or the AFL-CIO, do not have a long-term policy agenda or the attention spans to maintain one, because they are in this regard not citizens in a meanful sense, but only content consumers. Spend a couple of hours reading political posts on Facebook and tell me that the smoke-filled room doesn’t look pretty good by comparison.

Like the protesters’ placards say: “This is what democracy looks like.” And it's kind of gross. The great political players of our moment include university presidents who cannot explain why they'll expel students for failing to use made-up genderless pronouns (Zie! Zim! Zir! Zis! Zieself!) but not for calling for a global pogrom against Jews, which needs “context.” They include January 6 vandals and goons and the former (possibly future) president who insists that the ones convicted of crimes are “hostages” and “political prisoners.” They include Proud Boys cosplaying revolutionaries and the college professors who are sure there were some very fine people sawing the heads off Jewish children in Israel. 

Meanwhile, the family-values guys over in the evangelical Christian world are showing more loyalty to Donald Trump than he ever showed to any of his wives, insisting that the lying, chiseling, philandering, coup-plotting grifter and occasional porn-movie performer is Jesus' Own Personal Guy chosen to hold off the forces of darkness in Anno Domini 2024. Apparently, all that old “Thou shalt not bear false witness” stuff has gone right down the theological toilet Nobody makes boots tall enough to wade through the avalance of bullshit headed our way in the next eleven months. Republicans, having decided that knee-walking Trump sycophant Kevin McCarthy was not quite sycophantic enough, have entrusted their legislative agenda to Mike Johnson, a swamp grotesque from Louisiana who was among the leading 2020 coup plotters and apparently believes that he is the second coming of Moses. And so critical national priorities will be taking a back seat, for the foreseeable future, to utter kookery. 

If you think Ukraine aid has been held up by legitimate concerns about border security, you are not paying attention. Ukraine aid is being held up because a sizable portion of Republicans are Putinists, in and out of the closet to varying degrees, and believe (or pretend to believe) Tucker Carlson's claim that Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jew, simply wants to persecute Christians and that pro-Ukrainian elements in the US hate Vladimir Putin because he — a former KGB goon — is a defender of Christian piety. Meanwhile, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her squad can't get entirely on the right side of the massacre-the-Jews issue. 

If Trump wins, he'll try his best to act like some kind of midcentury caudillo, the unholy spawn of Augusto Pinochet and Don Rickles. If he loses, then expect something along the lines of January 6 or worse. But if you think Democrats can't hold their own when it comes to irresponsible clans about election-rigging and voting-machine tampering, then you weren't around for 2016, 2004, 2000—or any other big election that Republicans have won going back to 1864. 

Sometimes, a country is doing so well that it can afford a silly season. This is not that time, and the US is not that country. The government has a very, very large military budget — but as of 2023, spending on interest payments for federal debt now exceeds defense appropriations. Which is to say, we are spending more money refinancing Medicare subsidies for the dentures your granddad got 20 years ago than we are spending on things like infrastructure, scientific research or, you know, building aircraft carriers and making sure all those nuclear missiles we built back in the Reagan years work. And the Reagan era stuff is the new stuff: We're still enriching uranium in the same facility they were using back In Robert Oppenheimer's day. 

So who do we want sitting across the table from Xi Jinping? Do we prefer the guy who got flummoxed celebrating the musical legacy of “LL…Jay…Cool…J…Uhh” before calling him “boy,” or do we want the guy who was in “Playboy Video Centerfold: Playmate 2000 Bernaola Twins" and who, you know, tried to overthrow the government by invalidating the lawful election of his feckless successor last time around? 

Your choice, America. Enjoy all that pure, uncut democracy. Democracy isn't our form of government — an important and irreplacable element — but it is only a means. The end is well-ordered liberty. Democracy works well only when it is enabled and fortified by a great many institutions that are not in themselves democratic—or that at least aren't supposed to be democratic. One of those important institutions is functional political parties, which, in a sane world, would keep figures such as Donald Trump—and here I mean 2016 Donald Trump, to say nothing of the Caligula-Travis Bickle hybrid he has become—well away from political power, along with, at this stage in the game, Joe Biden. All those gatekeepers occupying the party offices, running the fundraising operations, working in the media, conspiring at the bar at Café Milano in DC — it turns out they were doing something really quite valuable, whether they intended to or didn't. 

Some of the institutions that make democracy work—that make it tolerable—are formal, like the Bill of Rights. Some of them are the result of longstanding conventions. But many of them are organic and ad hoc, institutions and norms that evolved in particular conditions for particular purposes—and that have been swept aside by the radically democratic and relentlessly homogenizing forces of political life in the digital age. 

China, Israel, the debt: Dealing with any of the urgent issues before us is going to be hard in the best-case scenario. And say what you will about Donald Trump or Joe Biden, nobody outside of a few daft cultists believes that either one of these senescent miscreants represents the best-case scenario. Being president is hard, it's harder if you're stupid, and it’s even harder if you are stupid and your next landmark birthday is your 90th. 

That being stipulated, the No. 1 issue in the 2024 presidential campaign is not the debt, the economy, Ukraine, Israel or crime—the main issue is, beyond any doubt, immigration. At least, it's the one at the top of my agenda and foremost in my own thoughts. 

I just haven't settled on where to go. 

(The Wall Street Journal)

THE BEST CHRISTMAS I CAN REMEMBER

— Charles Bukowski